Prompt: Is adversity necessary for success?
Enduring hardships with tenacity is essential to success in any field. Adversity is imperative to learn from failures and then succeed by capitalizing on mistakes. Several examples from United States history, the professional sports industry, and mathematical breakthroughs demonstrate that adversity is, in fact, essential for success.
The United States’ rise to becoming one of the world’s strongest democracies exemplifies the positive effects of hardship or success. After just five years of living under the Articles of Confederation, which was the first document that declared the United States as an independent nation, the states realized that they needed a new document and a more powerful government. Under the futile Articles, the central government lacked the power to enforce new laws on states, did not have the power to tax, and had no military or navy. In 1786, the Constitution was finally signed and allowed the country to thrive as one of the strongest and most long-lasting democracies of the world. Still in effect, the Constitution removed a number of the Articles’ weaknesses. Essentially, the Articles of Confederation provided the Constitution a basis to detect weaknesses and then thrive.
Former NBA professional Michael Jordan, who was rejected a spot on his high school team but eventually became one of the most successful athletes in history, frequently regards his success as a direct result of his failures. Rejected by coach Cliff Herrington and full of ineffable grief, Jordan was criticized for his inability to play strong defense. As a result, his resilience led him to capitalize on his mistakes, and he was eventually drafted to the NBA. Moreover, he worked assiduously to attain 5 Most Valuable Player awards, 6 NBA championships, and other notable achievements, greatly due to the criticism and rejection he faced.
Carl Gauss, a 16th century mathematician, reached his full potential through adversity as a child. When he was being privately taught in math, his teacher told him to add all of the integers from 1 to 100 in under 10 minutes. Gauss, who quickly realized that it would take an onerous effort to manually add all of the integers, found a shortcut to compete this challenge in under a minute through the Guassian Method. Without the challenge of a seemingly difficult problem under the given time constraint, Gauss would not have developed one of the most important mathematical formulas.
After a careful analysis of the Articles of Confederation, Michael Jordan, and Carl Gauss, one can see that adversity is, in fact, necessary. Without hardships, there would be less motivation to succeed and no basis for judgment of weaknesses.