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Sara Moon

Mrs. Davenport

English 9 Honors

30 March 2017

Ambition in School

Do you have your future planned out yet? What career are you going to have? What

college are you going to? How are you going to pay for it? Are you going to try to get good

grades and a scholarship, or are you going to have your parents pay your full tuition? Do you

have the ambition to get where you want in life? Well, you are going to need some. Ambition is

absolutely essential to have in school. Just make sure you have noble ambition.

In order for ambition to be rewarding, you need to concentrate on enhancing yourself

towards your goal instead of bringing your competition down. Gene, from A Separate Peace, had

some problems with that. He had ambition to be better than Finny, so he worked really hard in

school. He became the top of his class with ambition. His ambition was not morally right when

he sabotaged Finny. Nothing good came from jouncing the tree branch that Finny was standing

on for either him or Gene. Like Macbeth in the play Macbeth, nothing positive will result from

bringing down your competition. Macbeth got rid of Duncan to give himself power and become

the King of Scotland. It resulted in him starting a war and then being decapitated. His ambition

negatively affected others, so it ended up negatively affecting him.

Whether you see this as fortunate or unfortunate, in school you cant succeed just by

making everyone else fail. You must have your own ambition. High school is like the beginning

of a long book. College is like the next chapter and ambition is like turning a page. Paragraph by

paragraph, we have to get through it. You cant jump straight ahead to the exciting part of a book
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without reading the exposition; just like how you cant get the dream job you want without going

through all your years of schooling. How are you going to get through all of that? With ambition.

Colleges want students who get good grades and actively participate in activities at their school.

Doing all of these things requires ambition. Achieving straight As throughout all of high school

is no easy feat. You have study for tests, turn in all your homework on time, say no to hanging

out with friends, stay up late to finish a project, and actually read the book your English teacher

assigns you instead of looking it up on SparkNotes. You should also do more things to get a

colleges attention like doing a sport, being in student council, or joining a club. With ambition,

all of this can be done. But what is the purpose of all of this? To have a better life. More colleges

will want you, and you can maybe get a scholarship and not have to pay as much in student

loans. Ambition will lead you a commendable college. You just need to have it first.

An example of a high schooler with ambition is Griffin Furlong. NBC News wrote an

article on him recently. He was a homeless high schooler living Florida, but with ambition he

was able to become the valedictorian of his class and will attend Florida State University. He

lived with his aunt for a short period, and she said Furlong was always focused on his school

work because he had nothing else. Even with the struggles that arise from being homeless,

Furlong didnt quit. He had ambition to get a better life, and now he will. If he could become the

valedictorian of his class while being homeless, then everyone should at least graduate high

school. No problem that can emerge from school is impossible to overcome if you have

ambition.

Having ambition doesnt stop once you have graduated from high school. College is the

next chapter in your life that will also require ambition. Unlike what many forms of media want

us to believe, college is not just about going to parties. Learning and progressing can actually
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take place at a university. You just have to have the desire and determination to do them.

Ambition is necessary to have in college. Without ambition, there would be no reason to study or

learn or pay attention in class or even to go to college at all. The professors are not going to push

you into passing their class, and your parents arent going to be there to help you. You have to do

it yourself with your own ambition. Patrice Blocker, a student at the University of South Florida,

said Ambition is important because their determination is what will shape our future. Ambition

builds a student up and completes them into amazing human beings (Blocker). Ambition is

gratifying. The amount of ambition you have at college could determine what kind of person you

will become. You could end up working minimum wage at a McDonalds and making people fat,

or you could become a rich doctor that saves lives.

Ambition is positive. Ambition leads to improvements. Ambition leads to success.

Ambition is necessary to have in school. Concentrating on improving yourself will lead to

accomplishment. You arent going to get anywhere in life without having the ambition to do so.

So, stop wasting your time now and go work hard to get what you want out of life. Its now or

never!

Works Cited

Blocker, Patrice. A Student's Ambition. The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 18 June

2012, www.huffingtonpost.com/uloop/a-students-ambition_b_1604280.html. Accessed

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21 Mar. 2017.

Chemburkar, Meg. "The Importance of Ambition." Odyssey. N.p., 02 June 2015,

www.theodysseyonline.com/ambition-key-success. Accessed 21 Mar.

2017.

Ellis, Rehema. "The Power of Ambition: Homeless Valedictorian to Attend

FSU." NBCNews.com. NBCUniversal News Group, 04 June 2014,

www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/power-ambition-homeless-valedictorian-attend

fsu-n122881. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

Evans, Theresa. "Ambition Is The Key To Success". Odyssey. N.p., 15 June 2016

www.theodysseyonline.com/ambition-key-success. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

John, Knowles. A Separate Peace. New York City: Simon & Schuster Ldt, 2003. Print.

Schleicher, Andreas. "Pisa Tests: From American Dream to Asian Ambition?."BBC News. N.p.,

7 Dec. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/business-38212075. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. The Language of Literature. McDougal Littell,

Evanston, IL, 2002. pp 328-419.