Academic Success Definition

When I began writing this paper, I knew how my definition of success has changed over the years of experience in the highs and lows of academics, sports, and typical, everyday events. I began to wonder how people that have shown the most incredible amounts of “success” would define what they have. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines success as “the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence” (“Success”). The definition leaves many loose ends open for interpretation. As I researched different quotes and thoughts, I came across a few that I felt molded into my definition of academic success. John Wooden, a legendary basketball coach with over six hundred wins and ten national championships at the University of California in Los Angeles, spoke

I constantly worried myself with what all of my friends and classmates were getting in comparison to what I would get, leading to an unhealthy thought of academic success as a competition. As a big math and science student, I would focus the majority of my time towards my biology and calculus courses in high school and then continue to take easy writing and English courses because I thought that if I took a hard writing course, it would hurt my GPA too much. Even though grades do provide the desirable incentive to perform better, they also cause the undesirable effect of restricting student learning. I kept limiting myself to what would keep me in the running with my friends versus letting myself to explore different subjects and disciplines, like creative writing or the humanities offered at my high

The variety of activities I was a part of showed character and how much I had to divide my time between. I felt that the ratio of my grades to how many extra-curricular activities better showed how I was as a student to the colleges I applied to. It shows practical abilities like time management, versus something unrealistic to my life plan, like titrating acids and bases for a redox reaction. These experiences through so many different time commitments aided me in my journey to figuring out where I wanted to end my academic career and what meant finally academically