However, to be a hair stylist was not as easy as she thought. As a hair stylists there are many different options that you can choose. One of it was open your own salon. At first she thought that she would never open a salon because she knew nothing about business. Luckily, she loves to read. She googled everything to learn about business and how to manage a business so that she can make sure that everything running smoothly. Later, she became a salon owner at 27 years old.

Things that I learned from this story are when things get harder than we think, we should never give up of it. Instead we should find a way to achieve our dreams. Just live Sam Divine, we should always read to increase our knowledge. There are many informations that we will get when we read. 

I think one of the most important things that their stories can teach us is to have a proper mindset which provides better views on the things happening in life. For example, Zia Sheikh did not focus about how difficult things were when he first started out despite not having enough money to support himself. He also ignored the perceptions of the society in regard to adults living with their parents. Instead, he continued doing what he loves and used the money he had to buy books to hone his skills. Similarly, Michael Novak chose to immerse himself in dancing to express himself, and strategizing as he realized that his body is not able to withstand such strenuous activity anymore. He also continued dancing even though he had shin splints as he believed in his passion and wanted to persevere. 
Next, they always try to improve themselves through continuous learning. They also take risks when necessary as it is part of learning. For instance, Zia Sheikh constantly reads and experiment with different recipes so that he could always be better than he was and learn new things along the way. He also put himself out there to learn directly from the people around him as he understood that he could learn a lot from those people. Michael Novak created his own strategy over the years through his knowledge and experience in performing to help him with the routine. He also started learning and reading more about dance history, theory and criticism which opened up his mind and heart again about dancing. In the end, he gave another shot at dancing to see if he could bring his passion to life. Furthermore, they had high perseverance and determination as both of them had quit something at one point but not quitting in life. 

I think all the above strategies can be incorporated in life as they are relevant and useful as a student. If I work to have a growth mindset, I will have better perceptions of things in life, and thus developing more positive attitudes to face any challenges. I will become more resilient, less fearful of failures and keep learning through experimenting and from the people around me as well.

Both these individuals faced the most challenges and uncertainties particularly when starting out. However, one of the ways that they have shown to have overcome their challenges was through perseverance and resilience. For instance, even though Kelly Kramarik was initially rejected by studios and did not manage to secure a job, her perseverance really shined through as not only was she not discouraged, but persevered on by working side jobs such as bartending, constantly looking for opportunities for internships through networking, and taking on freelance jobs before eventually receiving greater opportunities. Sam DiVine also shared a similar experience in which she remarked that starting out in the industry would mean that you would have to prove yourself and earn your way. Additionally, both these individuals share a love of learning which carried them through the challenging times. This is particularly highlighted when Kelly Kramarik shared that she had decided to apply for graduate school in order to hone her skills. She realized that honing her skills further through learning would give her an advantage in competing for jobs and had also opened doors of opportunities for her. This is similarly evident in Sam Divine’s story as she detailed how she knew absolutely nothing about opening or running a business but ended up opening her own hair salon. She explains that there was a lot of new learning and reading to be done, which was something she loved, and that Google had become her best friend as she recounted how she would search for everything business related endlessly and tried to absorb what she had found.

Overall, I think that both the strategies displayed by the two individuals namely perseverance and high resilience as well as love for learning are useful strategies that I can incorporate into my life especially as a student. As a student, it is often easy to get discouraged and fall back into the fear of failure. Therefore, having these two strategies, which are part of the growth mindset, can help place things into perspective and take the focus off the results and on to the learning process which would encourage effective and holistic learning.

For me, both of these amazing individuals share some qualities that should be taken for example. The admirable qualities they share have brought them to be who and where they are now.

Firstly, we are introduced to Sam Divine, a saloon owner. Initially, she never knew that she was going to open up her own saloon, but she did have been cutting hairs since she was young. She said that it was never a career option before. However, she’s now a business owner while getting to do something she loves. Personally, I admire how she figure out what her dream really was. Sometimes, you just need a catalyst to realize what you actually want to do in life. Besides, I respect Sam for having the courage of opening up a business. We all know how hard it can be and she also mentioned that in the industry she’s in, you need to prove your abilities to get recognition from others. Having little knowledge on what she wanted to do was not an obstacle for success. Through the love of learning, she has proven her worth. For me, in life we have to be constantly learning because through this we will be able to improve our abilities. It also shows how we have a growth mindset. To persistently learn will open up more opportunities for us.
 

Next, we have a chef named Zia Sheikh. Growing up, he has been facing and dealing with racism, so he spends most of his time at home with his mother. It was through his mother he started to love cooking. Also, he actually quit engineering school and enrolled himself in culinary school. It amazes me how he really followed his dream instead of his dad’s. For me, I believe in the power of being passionate. In my opinion, when we are into something we love, it won’t feel like a burden instead we will feel happy doing it. Other than that, we can feel the sense fulfillment. Zia is also a smart and hard-working man. For example, even though he had little money, he still read books and also dine out in order to improve his cooking skills. In addition to that, he is not shy to put himself directly with the people he works with to teach him in order to acquire more knowledge. This shows how diligent and sincere he is with what he’s doing. I believe when you really put your heart into something, we will eventually achieve success. 

But the one that caught my attention the most is Lisa LaBracio that worked as an animation director at Ted-Ed. I love the journey of her not just because I like watching anime but because of the up and down she went through in this field. Her determination inspired me because she was always wanting to do animation. When she was at school every time when she is being asked what she want to do she always answer the same which is something related to visual art. She chose a visual art school where the school have specific focus on traditional animation whatever reason is it that she always does what she wants to do. She joined a project, and she was not paid to work on that project. She started an animation in the independent animation world where she worked on documentary and shoot a short film. As an animation director when she gets a script or a project and from there it’s her job to do a research to get the information more in the visual sense.  She looks for other artists work for the inspiration; she also spends time on Pinterest and being reading a lot to get information about the topic.  So, from this I can see that she really determined to be someone who are good in animation. By watching anime, I always want to watch more because it’s addicted. But after watching at her journey I never know that it would be this difficult life as an animator.

As I can see Lisa LaBraciao overcome her challenges is by worked hard, she always draws at her desktop to improve her animation. But she doesn’t have enough hand to do the work, so she decided to hire more people to help her finish the project. But the most important thing is educational when doing the project, so she does a research a lot to get the information about what she’s going to do. It’s important to be really strong in visual story telling. That’s all come from having watch a lot of video and content, worked under project. So that they can learn from that. Other than that, Paul Clifton, a teacher leader who talked about why he wanted to become a teacher and how he is passionate about becoming a role model as a black male in the middle school classroom. Even when his first day had a huge nervous feeling but he managed to control it by thinking positively that this is how to grow himself better. He thinks that being black male there is difficult to find a job but he’s passion in teaching overcome his worried. He’s teaching other kids with love, so it doesn’t matter what subject a black male teach as long as it’s interested. He thinks like change the instruction when teaching and the most important to survive is being humble every day. 

To sum up, one way to identify our center is to know our character strength. Based on the article provided scholars in the field of positive psychology identified 24 universal characters that form the fundamental traits of our personality. As they acknowledge, these character strengths are ‘descriptive’ and not ‘prescriptive’ and help to emphasize the ‘psychological goodness in human beings across cultures, nations, and beliefs.’

Paul’s story revolves around his experience of becoming a sixth-grade teacher leader with a bilingual ability to speak both Spanish and English language back and forth to help the students understand. He expressed that the feeling of going through everyday as a teacher is similar to the first day in teaching college – the feeling of nervous, scared and fear and think it’s impossible to be fully prepared to become a teacher. Yet he seemed to believe that those are the best times to grow and learn better, to get a hang of what supposed to be doing. Without the certainty – the love for teaching the kids – according to him, it can be very challenging. Having the passion for teaching is not as easy as one has to teach in progress and I quoted ‘be humble every day, because what your teaching isn’t working, so you have to change it up in some way.’

What these two stories had taught me is that when you’re certain of your passion, you can overcome any obstacles or challenges coming your way. Michael’s story reminds me of how one can easily give up or burned out due to various factors regardless of internal and external, and to get back on your feet isn’t easy when there’s no passion to begin with. Paul’s story teaches me that the amount of drive you have towards anything you wanted to become determines how successful you can be at anything. Living a life as a student has caused me to have the tendency to give up every now and then due to many reasons, but I have to constantly reminding myself of the passion I have, and that reality isn’t always easy to live by, so be humble and accept changes. When things go sideways, there’s always another way to go.

 

The first video I watched was the video of Sam DiVine, the salon owner. What caught my attention the most was that the fact that she is young and already owned a salon. She had been cutting hair since high school. At the beginning of her career path, she confronted with the phase of not knowing where to begin. She also did not know how to run business or even did know anything about business. But she did not give up. She overcome it by learning new things by herself. She benefits Google to figure out on how to start a business and everything about business. She showed everyone that everything is possible if we seek out for knowledge. 

From her story I learned that everything can be learned if we want to. Where there is a will, there is a way. It is always never too late to learn something. From her story, I learned that we should at least seek knowledge before we decide not to do something that we thought was impossible. Just because something seems impossible, it does not mean it cannot be done. Everything is going to be possible if we are determined.



Story/video 2:

 

The second video I watched was the video of Michael Novak, a dancer at Paul Taylor Dance Company. What caught my attention of this video was because he is a male dancer and has started to dance since age 10. Dancing is not easy. It involves a lot of training, rehearsals and weightlifting. He has to do six to seven dances in a day. It became more challenging when he grows older as his body starts to change. 

When he was around age 13, he developed stutter. He went to speech therapy to regain his ability to speak. When he was in university, he developed shin splints when he was started taking ballet classes because of improper technique. He pushed through the pain and did not give up on dancing until he ended up developing stress fractures in both shins. He also did not make a lot of money even though he spent 80 hours weekly on dancing. Thus, he quit dancing. 

But he did not give up. He was still learning about dancing in class. He studied the history and theories of dancing. It makes him realized how much he loves the dancing field. He wanted to have career in dancing, so he went for it again after college. He did not resist to give it another try. That’s how his career as a dancer began.

Through his story, I learned that we should not over pushed ourselves. When we are injured, or too stress, it is important for us to stop and take a break for awhile. From his story I also learned that we should not give up on the things we like. If we fail today, it does not mean we are going to fail forever. If we failed, we should give it another try when we are ready to restart. 

 

The first video I watched was the video of Sam DiVine, the salon owner. What caught my attention the most was that the fact that she is young and already owned a salon. She had been cutting hair since high school. At the beginning of her career path, she confronted with the phase of not knowing where to begin. She also did not know how to run business or even did know anything about business. But she did not give up. She overcome it by learning new things by herself. She benefits Google to figure out on how to start a business and everything about business. She showed everyone that everything is possible if we seek out for knowledge. 

From her story I learned that everything can be learned if we want to. Where there is a will, there is a way. It is always never too late to learn something. From her story, I learned that we should at least seek knowledge before we decide not to do something that we thought was impossible. Just because something seems impossible, it does not mean it cannot be done. Everything is going to be possible if we are determined.


Story/video 2:

 

The second video I watched was the video of Michael Novak, a dancer at Paul Taylor Dance Company. What caught my attention of this video was because he is a male dancer and has started to dance since age 10. Dancing is not easy. It involves a lot of training, rehearsals and weightlifting. He has to do six to seven dances in a day. It became more challenging when he grows older as his body starts to change. 

When he was around age 13, he developed stutter. He went to speech therapy to regain his ability to speak. When he was in university, he developed shin splints when he was started taking ballet classes because of improper technique. He pushed through the pain and did not give up on dancing until he ended up developing stress fractures in both shins. He also did not make a lot of money even though he spent 80 hours weekly on dancing. Thus, he quit dancing. 

But he did not give up. He was still learning about dancing in class. He studied the history and theories of dancing. It makes him realized how much he loves the dancing field. He wanted to have career in dancing, so he went for it again after college. He did not resist to give it another try. That’s how his career as a dancer began.

Through his story, I learned that we should not over pushed ourselves. When we are injured, or too stress, it is important for us to stop and take a break for awhile. From his story I also learned that we should not give up on the things we like. If we fail today, it does not mean we are going to fail forever. If we failed, we should give it another try when we are ready to restart. 

The way Chef Zia started off his video is by claiming that he’s making a paycheck of $75,000 a year. I mean, yes, money is the subject here. Well, we always pretend that money is not the most essential thing that we need in life, but we tend to forget that, in life, everything needs money. And the more you have in life, the more you keep wanting things to satisfy your desire. Why shouldn’t we, right? Everyone wants a stable, a comfortable life. A life that allows you to keep up with the world’s demands. And to gain it, needs more than just passion. This is when Zia Sheikh’s story should be heard. 

Despite having to face racism issues in his young age, he actually dealt with it properly and didn’t let it affect what he likes to do at home. In fact, spending an ample at home allowed him to discover new interest and made a lot of practice. He practically have no idea that it would be a start-up for his future. So he went into college for engineering major, however, taking his leap of faith, he dropped out of school and started over in culinary schools, when he realized that he has potential in that industry. Of course, he didn’t start easy. Having no significant source of income or experience, he worked very hard during internships, bought cooking books, went to multiple restaurants, seek knowledge from his chefs, all to hone his skills and bring his position to the world. As a result, he succeeded immaculately and able to run his own restaurant.

What I can learn from him is by not stopping at where I am at the moment, I would be able to succeed too. There’s so many things that I can do if I were to create my own success story. Taking lessons, finding informations, make connections, gain face-to-face knowledge, just to be better. And the most important thing is, Zia’s story thought me to always keep the passion of gaining more experience, and perseverance.

On the other hand, I got intrigued by Melanie Fox when she started talking about barriers. “If you keep thinking that you can’t overcome this barrier in your journey, then you just made the barrier permanent to yourself”. That’s an impressive way to be an AP micro and macroeconomics content creator of the prestigious Khan Academy. She keep reminding to find a way to get around those barriers in order to succeed. 

I bet she went through so much more obstacles, but the way she handled her classes is important too. She took fewer classes to get more time concentrating on the areas she’s struggling with. Of course, she didn’t stop there. She also applied for summer classes, because she really wanted to focus on one particular class at a time. The result, she nailed her final exams, and she knew that she did well. The confidence, yes. How many of us felt that after taking our exams? 

One thing she kept reminding was that it is okay to struggle! Struggling is better than not to struggle at all, because if we get through things easily, hitting the first barrier basically won’t bring us anywhere. This when you need to think of a way to push the barrier and get on the other side. 

This reminds me of my first year, as I was struggling with Calculus. I was a bit insecure with the subject, as Advanced Mathematics was not really my forte since high school. However, like Melanie said, I found my way to overcome the situation, did tons of exercise, seek help from friends, getting fully prepared and yeah, it worked. And I’m totally glad it does. It just helps me believe that there’s nothing impossible in this world if you are really determined to prove that it can be done. 

The second stories that I choose is learnStorm Growth Mindset: Chef De Cuisine on his career journey by Zia Sheikh. What attract me to attention abour these stories is Zia Sheikh, a Chef de Cuisine, talk about the twists and turns of his career journey as he developed his sense of purpose and rediscovered his passion for cooking. Zia's story is part of the Growth Mindset Curriculum available with LearnStorm, a back-to-school program aimed at helping students start the school year strong. The growth mindset curriculum helps students take their own life experiences apply their learnings in the face of frustration, making mistakes and learning new things. How did the individuals appear to overcome their challenges is he decided to make changes to his life and went on sabbatical for six months to work on his mental health. Upon his return, he started Restaurant After Hours, a nonprofit that provides restaurants and industry professionals with mental health education, support, and resources. While the negative behavior continued eventually becoming routine, Zia pointed to one specific instance where he knew something had to change

What caught my attention from Michael Novak video is the hardships he through to be as a dancer. The hardship he through at age 13 or 14 when he started to develop severe stutter. To overcome the stutter problem, he goes to speech therapy to regain back his ability to speak. Besides, he said that dance is a method for him to communicate and get out all the frustrations. So, in the age when he had stutter, he takes the initiative by dancing he can express his feeling and communicate. This story amuses me because he still goes trough the hardship and didn’t give up to be a dancer.

While the video from Paul Clifton, the thing that caught my attention is how he’s passionate about becoming a role model as a black male in the middle classroom. In the video, he said that at first day he had a feeling like nervous, scared and fear. So, he overcome that feelings by thinking that those feelings are the best thing as we grow up. I think as we grow up, we need to experience something that we scared of because when we frequently do that thing, we will naturally overcome the fear.

In conclusion, these stories give a huge impact for me on how to improve myself. To gain a success in my life, I must not give up on my path. I need to overcome or improvise all the hardship to reach my ambition. I believe that in every failure, there is success awaited if we didn’t give up.

Thank you.

Now, what caught my attention for Kelly Kramarik is her degree actually. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Multi-Disciplinary Studies, which is very very close to mine. Her whole course is about taking up 3 minors which make up her major. And I am currently taking my bachelor in Liberal Science where I take 1 major and 1 or 2  minors. What I relate to is the fact that she knows the degree won't market well with companies so it would be hard for her to get a head start. After floating around with no job for awhile, she decided to take a step back and went back to study her masters. This is what Kelly had in common with Michael Novak. They took a step back just to come out 2 steps forward.

For Kelly, she took a step back because she thought it would be good for her, career wise. And going back to school wouldn't do any harm anyway. For Michael on the other hand, he took a step back because he wanted to give up. But after studying back the basics and the history, he was reminded of why he chased his passion in the first place. This shows that sometimes, you just need to stop running forward and take a breather.

The saying keep running and don't look back sometimes may not be suitable for you. In my case, I have been struggling for quite awhile. Always worried about my future. Worried that I won't get far in life. Worried that I'll just get to a point in my life where I'm no longer moving forward. I'll be stuck or fall and fail. But these two reminded me that it's okay to feel this way. Other's are going through it too so I'm not alone.

What works for them is never stop learning and always try to improve yourself. Your effort and your skills will be recognized for what it is and you'll be fine. I'll be fine. And that brings me comfort.