“Let me tell you what winning means… you’re willing to go longer, work harder, give more than anyone else. “(Lombardi). The famous NFL coach, Vince Lombardi agrees that hard work will lead people to accomplishing their goals, just like how Malcolm Gladwell points it out in his book, Outliers and Paul Tough who wrote in an article for the New York Times. Tadas Bartkus who is an engineer, researcher on jet engine icing for NASA and he has also discovered what it means to be successful, and that’s hard work.
Success is as complex as the individuals that achieve it, because every person on this earth as their own mindset, dreams that they want to accomplish, and that every person has their own idea what success really is, it’s a combination of a variety of factors, including hard work, determination, and willpower. But in the sources in this essay, very accomplished people like Gladwell, Tough, and Bartkus all agree that hard work is what it is to be successful in the life that people are given.
In the article “What if the Secret to Success is Failure? ” By Paul Tough, Tough wrote an article about educators, psychologist, and sociologist doing research and experiments on if character is important to the success of students. Randolph, who is 49, is the administrator of a competitive school and is leading the charge on if character is really important piece on helping students get better in school.
First Randolph experimented with using character report cards that students would be tested on and that teachers would personally grade the student(selfevaluation). Then Randolph would see what was more important, Moral or Character? After a month of not seeing how his program was doing at KIPP Middle school, he returned to find out that character is as important than intelligence. Randolph explains how hard it was for character report card to be introduced into schools, “Logistically, the character report card had been a challenge to pull off.
Teachers at all four KIPP middle schools in New York City had to grade every one of their students, on a scale of 1 to 5, on every one of the 24 character indicators, and more than a few of them found the process daunting”(qtd in Tough pg. 8). After a month of the character report card being introduced, Randolph returned to KIPP middle schools and had found out his program has been successfully accepted, “There was a bulletin board in the hallway topped with the words ‘Character Counts,’ where students filled out and posted ‘Spotted! cards when say saw a fellow students performing actions that demonstrate character”(qtd in Tough pg. 9).
The Points that Tough made are what he thinks can lead people to success in his or her life because without people trying something new and learning and accepting something different, people can never make the next step forward in what they want to accomplish in life, just as how KIPP schools accepted into something new(character report cards) which helped students found out more about their own character, which leads them to success, because of accepting something different.
Furthermore, in the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell points out what he thinks his idea of being successful is, by using chapters. In chapter 8, “Rice Paddies and Math Tests. ” Gladwell says that the use of rice agronomy has created an ethnic effect and has led to more success, which takes hard work. For example, students in China are able to do better on the subject of math because they understand math at an early age, unlike Americans because of how children are taught at an early age.
Gladwell points out in chapter 8 that people have to work hard to get where they want to get or have to work hard in rder to gain something, “think, for a moment, about what the life of a rice farmer in the Pearl River Delta must have been like. Three thousand hours a year are staggering amount of time to spend working, particularly if many of those hours involve being bent over in the hot sun, planting and weeding in a rice paddy” (Gladwell 236). A farmer in china works more than 3,000 hours a year just to take care of rice paddies, and if they didn’t put that much time into those rice paddies then they wouldn’t be any good.
To be successful as Gladwell points out in cha 8, is that people have to be hardworking, to be able to achieve what they want to get in life or how to get somewhere in life, “First of all, there is a clear relationship in rice farming between effort and reward. The harder you work a rice field, the more it yields”(Gladwell 236). The more people work on something, the more it will become second nature and become easier to understand, which leads to success in something that’s hard at first. Also if people don’t put hard work into something, they want to achieve in, then that person will never achieve it.
Paul Tough and Malcolm Gladwell have the same ideas about success. Tough went through a lot of failures in life to get to where he is now, being a writer, because he worked through all of those failures in life to succeed in life, just like how Gladwell pointed it out, just because it’s seems like there’s a huge obstacle in life(taking care of rice paddies), if someone keeps pushing and working not-stop on that obstacle it will eventually break, and that person will succeed in what they want in life or where to get to in life.
In addition Tadas Bartkus, an engineering researcher on jet engine icing has also agreed that hard work pays in the long run. Bartkus, currently works as a contractor for the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH. He is currently employed by Ohio Aerospace Institute and conduct engineering research where water work on jet engine icing, in short “when jets fly, atmospheric conditions can exist where ice can accumulate inside of the engine, which can lead to negative results”(Tadas).
Tadas fits in the definition of success because ” Conducting research work in engine icing requires knowledge from many disciplines (turbomachinery, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, optics, propulsion, etc. ) and I knew I would apply what I learned in school as well as continue learning every day”(Tadas). To get to where Tadas is now is to work hard on where a person wants to be and be passionate about it. All that hard work in college that he did to earn his degrees has payed off and that projects that he have made, NASA is using, “NASA has several wind tunnels ere water is sprayed out of nozzles and cools to form ice.
We call these icing tunnels. We study how ice builds up on airplane wings and engines in these icing tunnels. I most recently wrote a numerical model that simulates certain aspects of an icing tunnel”(Tadas) If a person puts time and effort into what they believe in any they can dream can be accomplished. Gladwell, and Tough have the same idea about success, hard work while Bartkus has said, ‘We normally think of success as being successful at work. As far as that is concerned, I think one is successful when they find a job that they enjoy doing.
If you enjoy what you are doing, you will be naturally driven to work. You will find solutions to problems, you will complete tasks that are required from you, and you’ll happily do it. But success applies to other aspects in life, not just work. I think that one can also be successful in personal relationships as well. Having healthy, honest, fun and loving relationships with people you care about (family, friends and loved ones) is also part of being a successful person. If you are not successful in any one of those, the other aspects in life/work are affected”(Tadas).
Bartkus says that he thinks people have to enjoy what they want to do in order to succeed while Gladwell and Tough have a different conclusion. “A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done”(Lombardi). I believe success takes hard work, determination and passion in what you believe in.
Malcolm Gladwell has said it over and over again, it takes hard work to get to where you want to get, nothing is going to happen on its own, no matter how tough something is, if you keep trying it, you will eventually succeed, just like how Renee succeeded in solving a math problem that she didn’t get right the first time, she kept trying till she eventually solved it. Paul as also pointed it out that it takes determination to get to where you want to be. Tough struggled through the years trying to find jobs here in America and also in Italy. Eventually he found a gift that he was able to capture and that was writing.
Even in is ‘lows’ of life he was determined to find somewhere where he belonged and now he writes for a famous company which is The New York Times. Tadas Bartkus believed it took passion to be successful in a job and in life. If you enjoy what you do, you will perform better at your job or trying to get somewhere in life, just like Tesla, if he didn’t have the passion that he did have for what he loved, then he wouldn’t be that successful because no one wants to do something and have fun without being in a better mood, and that is why I believe success isn’t just one thing, it takes multiple factors that makes success.
