Noah Bergeron
September 20, 2006
Writing Workshop – Mr. Brown
This I Believe Essay

Overcoming Challenges

I believe that everyone can overcome their challenges. I also believe that you will not overcome your challenges if you don’t put time, work, and devotion into them. I have experienced this with my challenge with reading. I had never been good at reading and I was always struggling to read the books that my parents wanted me to read, like the Magic Tree House series. It was important to my parents that I learned to read at my grade level.

I put a lot of time into improving my reading abilities. Throughout my second grade summer I had to read for one hour and a half before I could go out and play with my friends. In the end, I think it paid off because at the beginning of that summer I was at a 1st grade reading level and by the end I had worked my way up to 2nd grade reading level. I was still a slow reader, but I felt like I had conquered so much. I had worked my way up to only being one grade behind, but I was still having a hard time reading the books whereas everyone else was just flying through them.

Then in the summer after 4th grade, Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone had just come out, and my teacher had read the beginning to me. I liked the book so much I decided to read it. It took me the whole summer to read the book, but I was devoted to finishing the book. I kept with it, and even though the book took me the whole summer to finish, it was worth the time and effort I put into it because Harry Potter was the first book I ever liked.

Work, time, and devotion are all part of overcoming challenges. If you have the time to do the work, you have to be devoted because there may be many other things out there that are more fun than work. I experienced this while I was working with “work on phonics.” I experienced that it is better to work hard than screw off because you get the work done faster. I think you can overcome challenges faster if you work harder than if you work longer and less hard.

From my experience with overcoming challenges, I believe that in order to overcome any challenge, you need to put time into it, work hard, stick with it, and be devoted to overcoming the problem. Also, I think that everyone has a chance to overcome their challenges whether their challenge is a fear of heights or a reading disability. You can overcome them if you really want to. Nothing is impossible. This I believe.

I would like to acknowledge Isaac Schwarz and Mr. Brown for proof reading my paper.