“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire enjoy the world…”- E.B.White



All my life many things have been done for me. I would thank the and that was that. Now that I have grown older, I need to take care of things for myself. You can’t get what you want without trying. Set expectations for yourself.


In a dance competition everyone on my team thought we would win without a strike. I was setting my expectations too high. I had never seen the other dance teams or how good they were. During the award show, different schools were winning trophies. Our school’s kids were acting cocky and rude because we hadn’t won anything yet. Then I realized: why are we acting so rude and blaming other people for our careless actions?


What we expect of ourselves and people around us is one of the most important things in life. It pretty much controls what we do with our lives. If we set low expectations, we will have low accomplishments. I feel strongly about this because I believe life is a gift and we should use it as an advantage, not waste it. If we place expectations for ourselves, then things will operate better if we complete then.


I feel like that I am so fortunate that I should be helping others. I could be using my time after school to help at a homeless shelter. But now I realize that I can still help the world as I go along. I can give a man on the side of the street a five dollar bill, instead of buying expensive popcorn at the movie theatre. Little changes in me now could benefit in the future.


Expectations of ourselves lead our lives. We can do so much more for the world with them. Not winning very much at the dance competition showed me that I can’t win by whining and pretending that I won. Even though we didn’t win many trophies, if I set reasonable expectations I could have reached them.