My Own Experiences - Essay Example

Suffering for Discipline and Success Suffering, enjoying, losing, and gaining have a complicated relationship with one another. I have experienced all of them, and that is why I believe they all exist. I have experienced pleasant feelings of success and remorseful feelings of suffering due to failure. My parents taught me that the way to success is not paved for me to walk on; I have to pave it myself. At many stages in my life—from the time I was a kid, through my education—I have faced suffering. I imagine I will continue to face it in the future, as I work in a career. I believe and understand Iyer’s claim that in every loss there is a potential gain. Every obstacle I face, even if it causes me to suffer, has been useful as an experience helping me to achieve success My parents have taught me since I was a child that hard work and suffering could be necessary to reach the goals I set for myself. During my teenage years, my father would often require me to do errands for him. Although they were easy enough for someone my age, and I had no problem going to pick up dinner for the family or whatever else he needed me to do, these errands were actually performing an important role. In short, they were teaching me how to communicate with others, how to act like an adult, and most importantly how to prioritize by doing errands when I would rather be hanging out with friends. The biggest jobs my father gave me were usually cleaning the front and back yards of our house. This took some time, so I used to get angry with my father when he made me do it. I thought he was making me suffer on purpose instead of letting me do what I wanted to do. However, after I moved out on my own, I realized how right he had been to make me do jobs for him, because they had made me more responsible. Since I was now responsible for doing many things on my own, I wished I could go back in time and ask him to give me even more to do, so I would be even more successful and disciplined as an adult. This important life lesson has been made even more clear to me as I continue my education. I have learned the importance of disciplining myself, even if I have to sometimes suffer by not doing what I want to do all the time. I know, thanks to my father, that I have to suffer to succeed. Still, it was hard at first for me to be properly disciplined and advance my educational goals. I noticed I was having a hard time doing all my schoolwork properly, so last quarter I decided I would set myself a proper schedule for studying. I was finally being serious about my studies, and I tried very hard to stick to my schedule. On several occasions, I even cancelled friends’ requests to go out on a Friday night to a party because I had scheduled myself to study the next morning. Each time I had to make this kind of sacrifice, I would weigh in my mind the advantages of having a little fun now and paying for it later compared to suffering boredom now and being able to succeed and have fun later in my life because of it. This always put the issue into perspective, and I could see that suffering discipline in order to improve myself would be a lot better for my future career and happiness. In fact, it has started to benefit me already. I have recently been looking into internship opportunities, so I can start my career earlier and more efficiently. These internships are all very competitive, because seniors and graduate students all want them, and the engineering companies only hire students who have high GPAs and solid resumes. Because of my earlier discipline and suffering, I am in a better position for these internships than if I had gone out partying all the time. Specifically, I was able to work on several engineering projects during my time at CSULA. One of these was my senior project, which involved Green Energy and heliostat solar power plants. These are huge fields of mirrored devices which track the movement of the sun, reflecting its rays towards a tower which generates steam and electricity from the solar heat. I also participated in the Hydrogen Fuel Cell project, where a Honda representative bought an FCX Clarity car to campus. This car only needs hydrogen to run, and its exhaust is water instead of carbon dioxide. My hard work on these projects changed my ideas about our environment and allowed me to get a solid understanding of the ideas behind Green Energy, even if it meant I couldn’t go have fun. Because of the suffering I underwent to take part in them and still maintain my grades in school, I now have a better resume and am more likely to find internships or work from companies interested in such things. In other words, I am already beginning to see the benefits of my suffering and hard work. As Iyer claims in her article, it seems to me that every loss contains a potential gain. My own experiences as a child, teenager, and college student have convinced me that hard work and suffering can be turned into positive experiences for growth. I learned the meaning of Iyer’s claim when I was suffering in cleaning the front and back yards of my house. Even though I was not able to have fun with my friends, I learned early the importance of accepting responsibilities and being a disciplined worker. In my education, the issue has been put into even more perspective: in order to succeed in the long run, I know that I have to work hard now, even if it means I will not be able to have fun and have to suffer the exhausting process of continuous studying. Human beings are inherently selfish, and always want to do things that seem fun. However, as Iyer argues, and as my own life shows, suffering in the present can really improve your chances of success and happiness in the long run, if you keep a positive outlook and think about how your present suffering will benefit your later life. Read More