Speech+SI15

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence." -Hellen Keller

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of optimism is hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something. Broken down, the three main parts of optimism are hope, confidence, and success. It's present in every day of my life, your life, and everybody else's life. Whether it's after you get a bad grade on a math test, or strike out in baseball, or even just on a rainy day when you can't go outside with your friends (because we get that a lot here in Florida) we need optimism to get through every day in our lives. It has helped me in the past, helps me today, and will hopefully help me in the future.

The first of the three main parts of optimism is hope. Hope is the part of the trio that fuels our future. It's all about attitude; when you set your goals, whether they're long-term or short-term, you need to stay positive as you continue to work towards them no matter what happens. My biggest goal personally is to receive the honor of Validictorian. It's an extremely big deal, and there are several of our classmates trying their best to achieve the same thing. I, along with the others working towards Validictorian, need to be optimistic in the sense that I'm not going to get 100 on every test and assignment. (Unless you're Max.) We need to use optimism to keep our eyes on the prize and just focus on the next assignment.

The second of the three main parts of optimism is confidence. Even though this speech is supposed to be about the future, optimism is needed every day. As hope fuels our future, confidence fuels our present. With no optimism, we have no confidence. No confidence, no success. No success means no goals achieved, and no goals achieved means no confidence leading into your next goals. As you may know, I play quarterback for my football team, the Citrus Park Bills. If you don't know what a quarterback is, it is the leader of the offense on and off the field who tells everyone what hole to run to, who to block, and what route to run in the games. That is putting it simply. The bottom line is that it requires confidence, especially if you're in my situation and are shorter than your whole offensive line. To become the best quarterback I can be, I train with high schoolers from all grades from freshman to senior from all schools like Robinson, CCC, and my new home, Jesuit. Most of the time, I'm the only kid out there who's not in high school. That means that I'm the shortest, weakest, slowest one out there. Optimism helps me through it. Whenever I look at them doing drills or throwing routes, I remember that they were in my position however many years ago and that I'll be where they are before I know it. My quarterback coach is teaching them the same stuff as juniors and seniors as he is teaching me as an eigth grader. Ultimately, my goal is to start for my high school in the years to come. Without optimism and confidence, it wouldn't be possible.

The final of the three parts of optimism is success. Success is how optimism has helped us in the past. It is how we have kept trying and trying, with optimism along the way, and finally come out the way we hoped we would so we can look back on it and think proudly of it. My personal success has been especially in academics. For the past 10 quarters I have achieved Highest Honors, thanks to optimism. Every quarter, there's this one class that's keeping me on the edge, whether it's Art, Technology, Religion, or any other subject for that matter. I just tell myself that I've done it before, I can do it again; I tell myself to keep "The Streak" alive. Yes, we call it "The Streak." Also, I recently got accepted into Jesuit Catholic High School. Not only did I need to be confident and optimistic when I went to take the entrance test with 900 other eighth graders, but it was necessary in all the preparation my classmates and I went through for that same test. For months on end, we read books about it and took practice tests and sometimes went over concepts we were having trouble with for week after week after week. I can tell you that it wasn't fun. Or I should say, it wasn't at first, but we made it fun. We needed to see that as big as the test was, we were preparing ourselves the best we could and it would all turn out okay. That's really all there is to optimism, right? And that same belief that it will all end well will help me in the future because the next four years of my life will be very different and will challenge me more than ever.

All in all, optimism is in every day of our lives. Whether it's hope, confidence, or success, we've all experienced it sometime. I personally need to be optimistic for my big goals like Validictorian, for working towards being a better quarterback, and for basically everythinge else in my life. Not everything is going to go perfectly in our lives; we're going to make mistakes. But, what really matters is how we look at failure. We need to decide whether we look at failure as us ruining our last chances of something we want, or as a learning experience so we can do a better job the next time. I choose to look at it the second way, and that is how I press on to greater achievements in the future.