Ask yourself how often this happens to you: you begin the day in bed, gaze locked onto the ceiling before mustering the energy to get up from your bed suddenly becomes too difficult. If you’re in high school, giving in to a sedentary lifestyle can be especially tantalizing. In fact, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2022, 5.3% of all high school students—a whopping 2.1 million individuals—have, for one reason or another, dropped out of school.
Even if giving up on life may feel like the easiest choice, there are three inherent virtues within all of us that we can cling onto in our darkest hour—hope, grit, and perseverance. In 2013, Angela Duckworth—the psychologist who popularized the term “grit” back in 2004—presented in a TED talk the benefits of grit and perseverance in relation to overall long-term success. These virtues are the product of our hope and are pivotal to our life’s continued welfare and development.
You might think that these qualities may not have much effect in your life now, but Megan Fila, a STEAM academy teacher at James Campbell High School, shared how beneficial and intertwined perseverance is to success in life. “Our school defined four qualities of the ideal graduate. The ability to persevere through adversity made the cut as one of those four qualities over the ability to demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, math, and science [among other things]. Perseverance is one of the greatest qualities a person can possess.”
To further enforce this, the official National Institutes of Health (NIH) claim that “there has been a considerable body of literature showing how grit may relate to school-related performance and behaviors. Gritty students are more likely to have higher levels of general academic achievement among university students in the United States [and] school-related motivation among Filipino, American, and Mexican American students [among other demographics of persons].”
Even if you don’t believe that you have the ability to dig your nails into the grime of life, it is actually extremely diverse and can take on a myriad of forms. It is generally assumed that grit, perseverance and determination all boil down to the same definition—the belief or having the quality of never giving up despite grave hardships. You wouldn’t be wrong, though the origin of these three virtues—hope—is defined solely by whoever beholds it.
“I attest everything to God. I was one of the people who didn’t believe in him, but all of the funny coincidences of my life came together to make me as amazing as some people tell me I am today,” KJ Riser, a senior at James Campbell High School, shared. “Ever since I started believing in God, my life has been getting better.”
While Riser’s hope stemmed from God, Fila also shared with us her struggles in life and how she coped with her reality.
“I spent quite a bit of time alone growing up. It was hard for me to find people I could relate to as a kid, so I adapted by becoming very imaginative,” Fila said. “I used to create pretty elaborate characters in a whole little make believe society that I would play out with stuffed animals. It was something that I could escape into.”
No matter your background or your origin, hope will come to form in the most mysterious of ways. Think back to the bed analogy—you lay prone in bed, yet you know that you have to get up in order to eat, to go to school, work, or participate in any other activity to make your day worthwhile. Even if it isn’t for the long-term, you can still apply hope to the present and the immediate future. Failure begets suffering, though it also beckons growth, wisdom, and understanding. There will be times where you will be faced with difficult choices, though for the sake of your dreams and your aspirations—the future you have yet to behold—you must awaken from your slumber.
At the end of the day, it is up to you to determine what these virtues are and what it means to you. Get up from your bed, open the curtains, and greet the morning with a bellowing yell. Ensure that you take it one step at a time, believe in yourself, and battle with the demons telling you otherwise in your heart.
