Perseverance

Perseverance is a quality that I admire in people. It is that quality that makes a person keep trying when no one thinks they will be successful.   Perseverance drives people to succeed when everything and everyone seems to be against them. They somehow find the strength to continue to try. I don’t think perseverance is a quality that people are born with. I think that it is learned and practiced. It is developed and rehearsed with each seemingly impossible situation. 

Dyslexia has taught me all about perseverance.  I would like to tell you that it was an easy lesson and that it wasn’t painful but that just wouldn’t be true. You see, it seems like everything comes hard for me. I have to work harder and longer than my friends to do homework and study for tests. I work for hours on homework every night and also on the weekends. Most people don’t know that about me because dyslexia isn’t something you can see and most teachers haven’t been trained to look for it. In fact, when I was in second grade, I had a teacher that kept telling me that I wasn’t trying hard enough.  She couldn’t see that I was working as hard as I could. Second grade was a painful experience.  Although I wanted to give up, I continued to work hard. There are many very successful dyslexics that attribute their success to their dyslexia. Their dyslexia taught them how to get back up after failing and it taught them all about perseverance.

 Charles Schwab is someone that I admire for his perseverance. From a young age, learning was difficult for Schwab. He didn’t know that he was dyslexic. In fact, most of his teachers just thought that he was slow. In college, he failed both English and French. He learned to never give up. Schwab sees his disability as a blessing because it has allowed him to see the world differently. He explains, “There were people who were a lot brighter than I was, or at least seemed to be, because they got much higher marks. But I could see the bigger picture, whereas they could see what was right in front of them.”  Charles Schwab went on to become the founder of the biggest, most successful discount brokerage firm in the industry. 

I will try to remember the importance of perseverance as my dyslexia teaches me how to keep working and trying my best. It is with perseverance that I will get back up after failing and continue to strive to become the person that God wants me to be.