It takes courage

Matthew Engle
GS2745

It Takes Courage

To overcome any challenge or obstacle in life is to refuse to let it stand in your way. Overcoming difficulties in life does not require physical strength or mental brilliance. To achieve whatever problems or goals you face in life you just need strength of mind. With this you can live your life the way you choose no matter what. There will always be people who will say that you are not going to make something out of yourself and it takes a very courageous and brave person to prove them wrong. Facing your fears and failures takes courage to keep moving. Even when you fall you have to pick yourself up and continue to motivate yourself to keep moving. It takes willpower to pick you up, and make yourself move on. Courage is a refusal to live life ruled by fears; persistence is a refusal to give up on your dreams. When fears surface, replacing them with courage and willpower and remind yourself of how far you have come, rather than how far you still have to go.

Ted Talk

I watched the Video on Bill Strickland. This man was a poor man from Pittsburg. He grew up in a area that was poor and the people didn’t expect anything from the kids there. He was walking through school one day and passed a pottery classroom and was drawn to it. The teacher took him under his wing and taught him, nurtured him and encouraged him with his work. Because of this teacher Bill did what everyone thought he couldn’t do, he graduated high school and went to college. When he was done with college he wanted to give other kids like himself a chance at all the things he had because one person cared enough to take the time to help him. With this in mind he decided he wanted to build a school for poor mothers, kids and workers who had been laid off. He took to this dream by raising money from walking door to door with a trash bag in a box asking for donations. While trying to collect donation money for his dream school he met the founder and owner of Hintz. He explained what he was trying to do with the money he was getting. The man told him if you put a culinary program at your school I will give you one million dollars. Bill accepted his offer and money. With this he built his school and little by little things started to fall into place. After the school was built and running Bill went place to place with a slide show of his achievements. When people would hear his story they would want to help and from these people’s help he added more programs to his school. They have a nurses program, culinary program, photography program, and a digital arts center. All of this was donated or given to him for his school. With out courage Bill Strickland would have never stepped out of his safety zone and when to college and because he did show so much courage and drive millions of other kids can go to college. His courage being so strong when knowing people were always asking him,” why do you want to help those people”? He did it because someone took a chance on him and knew that others from that area needed the same chance. I Think that without his courage and his persistence this school would not have happened, an without it millions of people would be out of jobs and hope. He could have not gone down that road with his schooling or with building this school and millions of other kids would have left the same area he grew up in either in a gang or dead. When you think of the alternatives it makes you sad and it also makes you glad that this man chose such a great thing in his life that not only helped him but made others lives better as well. http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_strickland_makes_change_with_a_slide_show