[starbox]
While the movies we watch today about Superman or Batman might not themselves be real, the true spirit that powers these supermen is every bit as real as life itself.
My favorite hero is the Terminator. For those who don’t know, the Terminator was a robot that looked like a human and was assigned to protect a boy named John Connor, who would one day be the leader of the human resistance against the rise of the tyrant machine.
As a senior at Richardson High School, I’d be lying if I said my mind could not handle to the amount of work or problems I had to face. But whenever I would find myself hanging from a cliff, I would try imagining I was the Terminator.
Yes, the Terminator. The cyborg that doesn’t stop until it completes its mission.
I recall the time from my junior year of high school, when I would often be hammered with a barrage of work from all directions.
At the time, I was working on a humanitarian project in Bangladesh in which I was trying to refine and implement an affordable arsenic water filter which I had developed my sophomore year in the kitchen of my home.
I also had to attend many international science fairs and conferences during the school year.
For many hours a week, I was hold phone conferences with my non-profit organization overseas which helped underprivileged people by distributing my filters to areas of demonstrated need.
To top it all off, I had to juggle the work and study commitments from the 6 AP classes I was taking at the time.
There were times in which I struggled severely to cope with this load. But whenever I got hammered with a ridiculous amount of work, be it from school or outside commitments, I always try to renew my internal spirit as that of the Terminator.
For example, in the past, after working on all extracurricular commitments, I would be left with scarcely enough energy or time to cope with my homework.
The work from the 6 AP classes I was taking as a junior would suddenly look like a mission. The deadline was the enemy. I’d have to protect my uncompleted work from being overtaken by the deadline.
I would then start fighting off repeated bullet blasts of yawns and bouts of sleepiness in my eyes in order to get the work done.
Finally, after the dust clears from the battlefield of the most intense fight, I, the Terminator, look down with pride at my Spanish homework, finished and protected.
Advice to the underclassmen – it always helps to remember the superhuman spirit lives in us all.