Thinking About Success

1) Opportunity
2) Hard Work
3) Skill
4) Luck

The most important ingredient is opportunity.  You can have all of the skill and have the best work ethic in the world but if you don't have opportunity, its all for naught.  All of that skill and hard work will be wasted without the opportunity to put it to work.  The next ingredient is hard work.  There is a famous quote by one of the best basketball players on the NBA, Kevin Durant that goes "Hard Work beats talent when talent fails to work hard."  A person with tremendous skill but lazy work ethic will get beat by someone who may not have have much skill but has a great work ethic every time.  Skill is important, but how you use the skill and how hard you work is much more important, that is why it is number three on the list.  At the bottom of the list is luck.  Luck can help you but there is no way you can rely on it because you have no idea when it is going to happen.  It is a good thing when you get lucky, but you should never rely on luck for success.
 

What I Learned Today

            I did all of my research today on the collapse of the eight story Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013.  It is said to be one of the worst collapses by accident of all time.  Over eleven hundred people were killed during the collapse and over a thousand others were injured.  The eight story building was a garment factory on the top floors and a bank/stores on the bottom levels.  The bottom floors had been closed down due to all the cracks in the building.  But the top garment workers did not stop.  Most of the workers were women.
            The day before the disaster a group of inspectors came to check out all of the cracks in the building.  They said it was a bad idea to use the building anymore but that did not stop the leaders of the factory to make their workers keep working.  Ironically when the building collapsed, the people who made the employees come to work that day were not in the building when it collapsed.  Some headlines read "The Deadly Cost of Fashion"-The New York Times and "Fashion Victims"-Journeyman Pictures.  Even though the building was in terrible shape, the multibillion dollar operation could not be stopped.  After the collapse, many people rioted trying to get the leaders of the Rana Plaza to be executed for killing 1,129 people.

Shortly after the collapse 

Rioting against the leaders of the Rana Plaza organization 

 

A Letter Home

Dear Mother,
          Three months ago you let me embark on the most amazing journey of my life.  Thank you for letting me have the chance to better myself in such a great country as the United States.  The boat trip was quite rough, but I got through it.  When I got to the United States some of the people were very kind and welcoming, but others were not.  Just because of the small tint to my skin color and my religion some people won't even give me the time of day.  My English is getting better but it still isn't perfect, so it's been hard trying to find a legitimate job here.
          I have found a gigantic group of other German people that are just like me.  I have moved into their neighborhood and I am currently attending their church.  The food they serve in this neighborhood is just like the food you cook at home!  It is almost like a little Germany in the middle of this great American city.  It reminds me of home so much.
          Once I leave my German neighborhood it immediately turns into a very foreign place.  Nothing looks or feels anything like Germany.  Everyone looks and acts so much different than the people back home.  I really want to be like them so I am starting to shop for American cloths and food.  I hope you and father are not mad that I want to adopt some of the culture from the Americans.  I want to be able to fit in and socialize, work, study, and eat with people that don't live in the little Germany neighborhood.  Once again thank you for giving me this extraordinary opportunity.
                                                                         Love,
                                                                       Mason