“Finally, a high schooler, maybe everybody will stop nagging me so much now,” I thought to myself the night before my first day of freshman year. Middle School was a breeze none of my grades ever dropped below an A-. I thought that being as smart as I was that high school would be a walk in the park, but I was about to have a rude awaking, and i was going to learn a lesson, arguably the most important lesson of my life. I was going to have to learn that in order to succeed I couldn't rely on my natural abilities and intelligence anymore; I was going to have to put in hard work and work at it, something I had never done in my life.

I woke up to the sweet aroma of coffee spreading throughout my house, a calling to a first great day at school. I went to school with not one thought in my head or weight on my shoulders, just excited to see my friends again. I struggled a little to find my classes but it was easy to pick up on the pattern of the school just as I was able to pick up on everything else with lighting speed. I dragged through a day full of speeches and introductions uninterested, which was my first mistake. The whole first week followed in suit of the uneventful first day, that is until friday had come. We were to get a math test back from the previous day, and I had no worries in my mind, I was always an A student what did i have to fear. As I got to my math class and I settled in, my teacher was passing back our exams. I nonchalantly flipped over my paper expecting my usual excellent grade. To my displeasure I froze as a searing red F marked my exam. Waves of thoughts began rushing to my head making me think there must've been some mistake. My hands grew numb and sweaty, a shock of embarrassment coursed through me as my neighbor asked how I did. I had failed. The new sensation was unexpected and I had never thought I would be the one to fail. A revelation had struck and I new knew I had to change.

The moment I got home my parents began to scold me. I was frightened and nervous. I had never experienced this before, I always gotten good grades, and I didn’t know what had gone wrong. When my mother asked me how much I studied for the test I realized my mistake, I hadn't studied at all. I was so confident that I'd be able to do it easily since my middle school grades were so good. I realized that me not putting any effort in and relying on my intelligence alone caused me to fail. That's that moment I realized that hard work is what really leads to success. The next day I went to school determined to do better; I had organized all my papers and I had began to do all my homework because I knew that intelligence wasn't going to cut it anymore in that high school was a totally different realm than middle school. Everybody has a different amount of intelligence, however anyone can be hard-working. The successful people are those who are ambitious and passionate and work harder than anyone else to achieve their goals. My own ambition had spawned from my embarrassment of failure and drove to me to become a person who is perseverant and hard-working

Many people say that they are just dumb and they can’t do it, but I don’t think that's true. Intelligence does make the work easier, but it still cannot be done without hard work. As the school year went on, I was able to pull my grades back up. I had formed new study habits and never gave up on something I couldn't do, but most importantly I did my work instead of flying blind and hoping for the best which I had done all my life. For once, I had achieved something on my own merit and overcame a struggle, and working for my victory only made it all the more sweet. It is imperative to understand the necessity for a good work ethic, a lesson that has been around for hundreds of years.

All in all, it was a cruel awakening, but it was one I needed. As Thomas Edison once said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”, success come from hard work, and anyone can have good work ethic. I realized later rather than sooner that intelligence and natural abilities are insufficient to achieve your goals. Today through my hard work and perseverance, I again can be happy knowing I give my assignments my all. Thomas Edison had undoubted natural intelligence, yet it took him over 1000 tries before he created the lightbulb. His immense success was no fluke,he achieved it through his own hard work and perseverance.  Hard work is reliable and builds good habits which can be applied to all aspects of life whether it be school, sports, or personal interests.