Integration 2 Thomas Assaf October 15, 2021 Moreau - Retartha The Path Which Has Shaped Me The question of what have I encountered and how will I respond to those things is a question that looks at how I have gone through my life and how have I or will I respond to things that have happened to me. The first thing I think about when I read this question is what adversity. Adversity immediately makes me think of one of my favorite rappers, Eminem, he rhymes “I been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage, But I kept rhymin' and stepped right in the next cypher” in his song Lose Yourself. This lyric reminds me that even successful people fail to then succeed and the only way you truly fail is to stop trying. While in life I have not experienced a large amount of adversity, as I am a person who will (hopefully)graduate with a degree one of the best universities in the world with no student debt and have been given many opportunities that are not normally available to kids my age throughout my life, I still believe that what I have encountered in my life thus far is very important. The first lesson I learned at Notre Dame is when I asked myself the question of why I am here, outside of the football, family ties, or academics, what I came up with was that I am here because I realized when going through my college process that it is your responsibility to put yourself in a position to be your best self and succeed in whatever you are striving for. I looked at the people I surrounded myself with and how I was conducting myself in the first month or so and realized that I made the right choice. While in high school I learned one of the most important things in my life through an encounter with my Head of Upper school who was also my AP US history teacher, in my junior year. In this encounter he explained to me that do not look at school as just something to go try your best at and it is what it is. He explained that it is a game just as lacrosse is a game, to play the game is to compete every minute like it is your last opportunity to prove that you are the best. This mentality of playing the game is something that gets me going. To play the game of school is not just doing the homework and studying, it is completing to beat a quiz or test, but this applies to life if you want to be successful in life you cannot get to the point you want to get to if you just do what everyone else does you must compete and win to become successful. The way I responded to this encounter with him was to earn a 100 GPA in my junior and senior year, and achieved what I wanted, which was to go to Notre Dame. One thing that has grown even in my time at school more in importance is the value of relationships and loyalty in the world today. Building relationships and keeping them being key to life has always been known by me seeing as my dad's job as a head of school is majority being a people person. But at Notre Dame I have seen even more but this time through my own friends that loyalty is not something that you buy in college or get because of who you know, you earn it and to earn someone's loyalty starts with building a relationship with that person. Finding friends is not always easy though, it's not a walk in the park like the kids who talk about it say it is, it's hard to find people who you genuinely want to be around when you start so much else new in your life at the same time. My first couple weeks of school I was not connecting with some guys that I liked being around, but I figured out that it was no one's fault but effort of trying to build relationships with those people and so I did. I have now created amazing relationships in so many different groups of people because I encountered that difficulty and I was struggling but I learned and fought through it. The idea of hope has grown in importance through my time at Notre Dame, whether it is the hope that the University hired Marcus Freeman or hope that I did well on my Business Tech Midterm, hope is what drives us. I used to think hope was just for overly optimistic people, but hope is what makes you take that chance or that risk, because without hope you would never leave your comfort zone. Without hope you would never introduce yourself to someone on the move-in day or try a new class that you think you might like. It is hope that sparks us to move forward in life and explore without hope life would be boring and uninteresting. (Week 13 QQC). The last encounter I want to talk about in my life is an encounter with my best friend, Justin, a classmate of mine in high school that turned into a member of my family. Justin's family was evicted his sophomore year of high school and he lived with me during the school week. Justin and I were very close before that, but this made us brothers. I saw what adversity he went through, and it taught me even more on how lucky I am in life. While Justin was living with us, we did everything together, this showed me what a family was because as the youngest I was always following or being brought places, but I was finally bringing someone into our family, and it is the most important thing I have done in my life thus far.