Excellence

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation, we do no act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit” (Aristotle). This quote made by the famous Greek philosopher gives us an example of how we try to achieve excellence as part of our own goal in life. Because every human being is in a continual search for perfection, the state of excellance is achieved by some people who really look for it and keep searching for it as a daily routine or habit. Not evryone strives for execellence, because it puts pressure in our lives weather we like it or not, It is necessary if we are going to be successful and triumph in life.

Is preassure necessary to achieve excellence? If we start describing daily routines that we have had during the past years, we can conclude that we are in a continue search of excellence. We go to school to learn more, so that we can be prepared for college and do the best we can on the job. During our school years we need to work hard to achieve excellence. When people feel a lot of pressure to reach excellence, they sometimes cheat. Is cheating a result of these pressures for excellence? In Bill Puka’s Essay Student Cheating, he shows us how students nowadays (including me) cheat, plagiarize, and make other forms of academic dishonesty in order to achieve excellence. It is in these cases that the values of the students are left a side; consequences are not an obstacle to stop them from cheating, because grades are important and are going to determine the profession they will get into.

Values are defined as those things that really matter to each of us ... the ideas and beliefs we hold as special (pinetreeweb.com). Nancy Gibbs’s article Reading Between the Lies explains the case of Jayson Blair, a “journalist” for the New York Times who was caught after several years of making up stories. Here we have a clear example of how cheating and values did not matter, or were not an option, in order to achieve his excellence. In this case wrote a stories that could get the attention of the readers, keep them informed with interesting news articles. This brings me to the next question, how do we achieve excellence?

Excellence is the state or quality of excelling. It is superiority, or the state of being good to a high degree. Excellence is considered to be a value by many organizations, in particular, by schools and other institutions of education. It is a goal to be pursued (Wikipedia.com). I think that to attain excellence is harder for a person to achieve than for institutions, or groups of people. For example, a regular employee can achieve excellence after he receives a raise, but it won’t last to long, because that means, they are expecting more from him at his or her job. On the other hand, an institutions achievement of excellence could be easier to reach because a group of people is working together to achieve excellence.

In conclusion I think that the achievement of excellence is something does not have an ending, is a continual search to be better in a lot of aspects of our life, and the only way to achieve it is with constant work. Excellence is just a state. It will never be forever, and it depends on our searching and working for it.



Work Cited
Hoff, B. "The Crooked Tree"Ludwig, M. D. (2004) "Look out for more Blairs"
Puka, B. (2005) "Student Cheating: As Serious an Academic Integrity Problem as Faculty Administration Business as Usual?"
Gibbs, N. (2003) "reading Between the Lies: A young reporter who stole and made up stories forces the New York Times to take stock"

Personal Statement

I personally agree that work on the journalism field is the best for me. My interest in journalism, especially sport journalism, it has been since almost forever. Why is journalism the best choice for me? Because during my whole life I have been interesting in how the mass media covers the sports; e.g.; TV, newspaper, radio, websites, etc... and how different they are one from another.

My main reason of why I chose journalism as my professional career is soccer. Since I was a little boy I have been playing every week and watching different matches on TV. Because soccer has opened a lot of doors for me in life, dedicate my professional career to this sport, or sports in general, is something that would make me please to work everyday.

My interest to soccer journalism came eight years ago, when I began to follow soccer of every part of the world. Documentaries, movies, soccer shows… anything relate it to soccer I take it. And is because of that why my knowledge about the sport has been increasing over the last 5 years. I really enjoy watching and analyzing soccer every weekend on TV or internet, is just a routine that I have that has helped a lot and of course will help a lot more once I became a professional journalist.

Been good at this sport has gave me a lot background about it and also how hard work it is. It has help me to improve day by day as a player, if I dedicate enough time to practice, so hard work is something that I’m used to.

What is education?

What is education? First of all, before starting to write about education, we need to find an appropriate definition that will help us to understand a little bit more this term. The website brainyquote.com defines education as “The act or process of educating; the result of educating, as determined by the knowledge skill, or discipline of character, acquired”. Now that we have read an accurate definition of education we can began to explain how and why education has such relevance in our day by day lives.
If we go back in time and start to look when are your first taught in life, we agree that parents are the first teachers. They are the ones who tell you what is right and wrong. Once they have taught you the basic things, you began to learn by personal experience, most of the time by your own mistakes. Is in this point when you really learn to do or don’t do some actions, because in every bad action there is going to be a consequence that somehow will affect you, and not in the good way. For example in the film Dead Poet Society, Neil Perry ends out of his college because he was involved in this little group called Dead Poet Society and his dad did not like that. Is one of many examples that we can have about how the human really learn about bad experience. But there is one more method of learning that could the most important one, called school. During all your school years, which are around 13, you learn the basic things that are going to be fundamental during your whole life. School becomes your second home and even if you agree with that, is where most of your knowledge is learned.
In conclusion education is a constant action where the human keep learning from different aspect in their life, it doesn’t matter if is right or wrong, the process of learning new things will always be active, because is something that you can’t stop doing it.

Works Cited

• brainyquote.com
• The Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, and Ethan Hawke. DVD. Touchstone Pictures, 1989.

Cover Letter

800 Lawrence CT
Marshall, MN 56258
April 7, 2008


Mr. Alejandro Guille
Director
Staff of the Sport Section in CHV
Bellavista 1356, Santiago-Chile


Dear Mr. Guille:

I am enclosing my resume in response to your advertisement in the Radio W, March 1, to be part of the sport section in the TV channel CHV. As a member of different sport teams during my entire life, specially soccer. I am a very good soccer player who has dedicated a lot of time to know more about the background and general knowledge of soccer. Currently enrolled in a Soccer Team for more than 2 years I expected to received a job in the TV station.

My athletic background and my motivation to keep learning about sports, but most of all soccer, have prepared me to help sports journalist in different aspects of their jobs and to cooperate with them in everytime that they need help for. In addition my passion about the biggest sport in the planet has help me to developed more knowledge about soccer.

I hope that I have an opportunity to meet you in person as soon as possible.

Sincerely,



Marcelo Vargas

Resume

Alex M. Vargas Jimenez

800 Lawrence CT, Marshall, MN 56258

(507) 829-7020 mvargas009@yahoo.com

objective: Job opportunity for any mass comunication media that can give me the

chance to work in the sports section

education: Saint Gabriel's School, Santiago, Chile

(graduation December 2007) G.P.A 3.0

Marshall High School, Marshall, MN

(graduation May 2008) G.P.A 2.9

activities and skills: Soccer Team member during Elementary, Middle and Senior School

(Saint Gabriel's School):

* Team Captain, 2000

* Best Defender, 1999

* Top Scorer, 2002

* Placed Second in the ABSCH 8-a-side Tournament, 2002

* Placed Fourth in the Reebok Tournamen, 1999

* Placed First in the ABSCH 8-a-side Tournament, 2005

* Top Scorer Copa Amistad, 2006

Track Team member during Middle School (Saint Gabriel's School):

* Team Captain, 2000

* Placed First in ABSCH Track Tournament, 2000

* Placed First in ABSCH Track Tournament, 2001

Rugby Team Member during Middle Schol (Saint Gabriel's School):

* Placed Third in ABSCH 10-a-side Tournament

Ping-Pong Tournament (Saint Gabriel's School)-Placed Third, 2001

Taekwondo Interescolar (Saint Gabriel's School)-Placed Third, 2000

Tennis UIL District 32-4A (Gutierrez Middle School)-Placed Third, 04

MI CLUB Soccer Team member, 2000-2002:

* Rookie of the Year, 2000

* Best Teammate, 2001

* Best Player, 2001

* Best Player, 2002

Soccer Team member (Marshall High School):

* Top Scorer, 2007

work experience: Peer Helping, Marshall High School, 2008

* Meet every Weednesday during January

Annual Senior Christmas Dinner, Christian Church, 2008

* Set up tables before dinner

* Served food to the people

* Wash the dishes at the end of the meal

reference: Available upon request