The clock ticked on, never stopping, never waiting for me to catch up. I struggled to complete my assignments. Darkness had consumed the world hours ago, and I still was not finished with my homework. My eyes were fatigued from staring at a computer screen, tiredness had fogged my brain and hung over me like a cloud. Disbelief filled me as I realized how long it took. After considering the matter carefully, I came to a realization: it was my fault. I had caught myself in this trap.

I had always been a slow worker. I constantly got distracted on a regular basis and lost my focus easily when it came to completing assignments. It has been a perpetual vice of mine, causing me to spend prolonged periods of time completing the simplest assignments, extending minutes into hours. The total time it took to complete my homework lengthened and lengthened, until I found myself at midnight wondering how time had flown by so quickly and how the clock had ticked by so fast. 

Events like these occurred over and over again until I eventually decided on finding a reason for my slow pace, concluding that it was due to a lack of motivation. I had no desire to complete my assignments, causing me to take so long. But through the disinterest and exhaustion, I continued to persevere, for I knew that completion would aid in my performance and education in the classroom. By putting in the time and effort to complete a task, I was able to overcome obstacles throughout the process and achieve my goal. It is clear that the basis to my perseverance is the knowledge that success formed the end result. This realization has sparked the beginning of my journey into self-reflection as I began to understand how my entire character has been impacted in ways I could not foresee.

One such connection is my unwillingness to accept responsibility for my actions. My mother has claimed I take too long on my assignments—I initially believed it was the homework load. My mother described my room as messy—I believed it was a result of entropy and that she should blame physics. My entire family thinks I am an annoyance—I thought of myself more as a curious and open-minded scholar. I always seemed to have an excuse for my actions; however, I realized that I must acknowledge that I am held accountable for what I do. This seemingly irrelevant facet of my character has been influenced by my realization of perseverance. My driving force to persevere was the anticipation of the results that were to come; however, in order to have a motive in the first place, I must have something to persevere towards. Perseverance has shown me that I need to accept responsibility for my actions and acknowledge that I have an aspect of my life that I need to improve upon before I can work towards that goal; that is, I need to accept my own faults if perseverance can begin. This was the true beginning of my hard work and determination, requiring me to enhance myself and grow as a person. 

My experiences have taught me the origins of my perseverance and how I can inspire myself to be persistent and tenacious in order to achieve success. The extraordinarily large influence perseverance had on my character and the indistinct but existent connections have shown me the importance perseverance has in my life. From the impact homework had on me, I learned a key lesson: if I were to be hiking in the woods and encounter a large rock in my path, I would climb over it, for I knew that the beauty of the waterfall that awaited at the end of the trail outweighed the challenge of climbing.