Corrina+M’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

The America I wish to grow old in is not different from the world I wish to grow old in. To illuminate this idea a clarification of what I wish is in order. In the America I wish to grow old in people will be able to handle distractions with ease. Staying focused on what one wants to achieve is a hard task for any human, especially with the increasing amount of distractions there are today. The distractions I refer to “are the distractions that cause irreversible harm in our lives. Unfortunately, too often, they go unnoticed. Our lives go unevaluated. As a result, we are lured by them away from true significance in our lives.” (Joshua Becker) As high school students we need to consider the education and amount of education we wish to receive, We need to acknowledge the next step in our lives which for most of us is college. College is a form of higher education which is crucial in order to have a better paying career in the future. Unfortunately there are disturbances that oftentimes forbid a person from continuing their studies.

Since studying is what most of us plan on doing in the near future I will focus more on that. Without distractions higher education will be common within the homes of citizens and as an effect the population will become more cultured. If we learn to confront and cope with distractions such as technology, family problems, economic difficulties, or health complications our lives will be much more simple. Sadly people have not yet learned how to manage these situations and often times give into the pressure some difficulties come with. We get so caught up with interruptions that many lose sight of their goals in life. Most people's goal is to graduate from University with a degree in whatever they are interested in so they can have a stable career. But due to the lack of knowledge in order to know how to deal with complications some Americans have abandoned this dream completely. The longer one stays in school the better paying their carer will be, physicians have the highest paying careers in America. Can you imagine having most people be physicians?!

With most people pertaining to a higher education healthcare and overall medical help would be cheaper, today medical bills in America rank the highest costing in the world. In America there are about 2 doctors for every 1,000 people (Pivotfarm), this is not a good ratio, there are many places in this country where good medical attention is out of town and very costly. Physicians along with some other professions are the outcome of higher education since most earn degrees that take about eight years of school after high school, these are the degrees which are the most convenient to receive. If everyone was exposed to higher education it would not be as expensive to pay a visit to the doctor since it would be a common practice. The longer we spend in school the more prepared we will be to take on lifes challenges. In order for this vision to come true I am asking for every citizen of the United States to be able obtain the highest education their brain is able to absorb in order to be citizens of use and service to this country. I am not asking for everyone to become physicians because people obviously have different aspirations in life, all I am saying is that getting a higher education by learning how to cope with the distractions of life no matter what field you’re in can help you be better off economically, “increase the likelihood of engaging in voluntary work and understanding political issues.” (Jane Playdon).

I myself have faced many distractions on my path to receive a higher education, which I have yet to achieve. Learning as much as I possibly can is on my to do list of life since, like I have mentioned, higher education allows for one contribute to society. It is hard to get the best education possible when there are so many distractions in life, many often get off track and sometimes skid off of the road completely. Like many others I have struggled to stay focused on my studies at school, for many years there was one thing holding me back from my dream of doing my best in school and that is: video games. Video games are addicting. They get a firm grasp on you and will not let go until you grab a chainsaw and fight your way out of their reach. A videogame is not an object; it's a person, a world, an emotion. Many teenagers such as myself take gaming to a whole new level, it reached the point where I would refuse to leave my house because the game was too important, homework began to be forgotten and my social skills diminished. I got so caught up with the characters of a game that I had begun to lose my sense of reality, I forgot what life outside my computer was like. Thankfully with the help of my family and literature I cut through the chains of distraction that were holding me down and am able to look back at my situation and learn from it.

I got my first gameboy at age six, playing games like Shrek 2 and Strawberry Shortcake didn't seem so dangerous then. But as time passed more consoles and gaming platforms began to get introduced to me, the Playstation 2 entered my life at about age seven. Only this time the games began to get more demanding, requiring me to finish the level before I could save my progress, and having an infinite amount of levels, it was easy for a person my age to get devoted to the game. Years later I found myself in the possession of five gaming consoles a laptop and over one hundred games, with this many forms of entertainment the possibilities of enjoyment were truly endless. It did not initiate to affect my schoolwork until I entered high school, doing homework and playing videogames was a hard task but I was able to manage it my freshman year since it is the least demanding year of high school. Sophomore year however, was more of a challenge since I partook in Honors courses which came with the lovely task of doing more homework than the average class. This was a problem because it intervened with my holy ritual of gaming for five hours straight; I would try to finish my homework as fast as I could sometimes not even putting any thought into it and managed fit gaming into my schedule. As a result of these irresponsible actions I can barely recall anything I was taught last year. My parents would constantly tell me to stop playing these games but I couldn't, every time I stopped I would feel dim. When my friends would invite me out to eat on a weekend I would refuse to go my excuse being “I have to play, I’m not done with the game”, they would look at me with confused faces at first but after a while they got used to my lame excuse. Every time I joined the dinner table I would receive comments like “Look who finally got out of the cave” and “Why don't you ever talk to us?”. At this point I should have realized that I was pushing everyone away, that I was missing out on life itself for a game, something that is not real.

Junior year came and I made the decision to take AP courses, demanding that we read every night, turn in a chapter packet every week, write essays and DBQs, take tests and on top of all that take the ultimate AP tests at the end of the year! There was not a chance that I would be able to play video games. Being myself I tried to play them after finishing my homework but by the time that I did it was already time to go to sleep. This frustrated me because I would no longer have time to “enjoy my life” the way I wanted to. My parents sat me down and told me that this behavior would no longer be tolerated and that if I wanted to stay at home all day the least I could do was read a book instead of blankly staring at a TV all day.

My dad thinks that reading is the salvation of all humanity thus pushed me to read more, one day I gave in and went to our living room which is filled with hundreds of books my dad has read over the years. I looked through the various shelves and get a book written by H.P. Lovecraft. Opening the page to the table of contents The Thing at the Doorstep called my attention and I began to read. I shortly regained the will to read again, the story was so enticing I had forgotten how fun a good book could be, so I have not stopped reading since. At sixteen years old I read Harry Potter for the first time in my life and I cannot believe that I had missed out on such a great adventure. I plan to move onto more challenging books of course but Harry Potter is a classic. Junior year was a major wake up call, for the first time I knew what life was like without the constant use of videogames, I began to go out with my friends, read more and focused on my schoolwork more which I know will pay off in the long run.

No matter what the case might be, the America I wish to grow old in will be one where people realize that anything that distracts them from their goals in life should be discarded. Whatever it is that you decide to be in the future just remember to study and perfect the practice as much as you can.There will be complications along the way but if we try our best to stay focused we as a society will flourish.

Sources:

2 doctors per 1000 people:  []

Jane playdon: []

Distractions quote: []