To Kill A Mockingbird Essays: Personal Experience

In one’s life there are many experiences in which an individual can encounter, yet not all of them are pleasant. Although some experiences are harmful, others are excellent. Knowledge can go by many names: know-how, skill, practice, or the struggle with unfamiliar places or things in life. Such can knock a person down, even keep him there; however, people can always find a way to cease what is happening when someone is trying to find a way to arrive on his feet. Many people undergo experiences that can hurt them, or even put them on their backs. As a result, people ponder that they can never seize another opportunity; hence, they stay there and try to drag others with them. People can undergo frequent challenges in their lives (e.g., fights,

My adventure began when my friends and I had to spring to life every morning at 5:30 and swim to achieve the endurance necessary to last during the mile swim. We would wake up and walk about half a mile to get to the swimming lake. The lifeguards watched us swim different lengths, swimming longer and longer each morning. We were not the only ones swimming the mile, as there were about fourteen people swimming, six of which I knew. There were four practice days and then on day 5 was the Mile Swim. Everyday kids dropped off like flies, so by the fifth day there was only nine people left to swim the mile. This validated my thinking that people will just give up if they are unable to finish what they started and that when the going gets tough, they just quit and say I didn’t want to do it. The nine people that were left finished, and received their badge for swimming the Mile Swim. In the end, this showed that even though they had what it takes, they didn’t want to use it to finish what they started. It could have helped them overcome the challenge, but now they won’t ever know. It also showed me that an experience can either destroy a person’s self confidence or motivate a person to achieve. Ultimately, Eleanor Roosevelt said it best when she said, “The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste the experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes