6th Grade Wisdom…Believe in Yourself and What’s Possible

Here’s a recent essay from a 6th-grader – one of those things you read with new-found respect for what goes on in the minds of your quickly-developing children…

“A Law of Life that I live by is believing in yourself and not letting anyone put you down. There have been more than a few times in my life where I didn’t believe that I could do something because someone else said that I couldn’t or I doubted my abilities. Once, in a soccer game, my team was down by 9 and we started not to believe that we could win. The other team showed really bad sportsmanship and kept saying how bad we were and that made my whole team low in spirits. After we lost the game, I realized that if we had believed in ourselves we could have at least gotten closer to the other team or maybe even won. I know that if we had tried our hardest we would have felt a little better about losing because we would have known that we did our best.

A famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that reminds me of this game is “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. If we hadn’t listened to them or not have let their words get to us, we would have believed that we could win. I completely believe that no one can make you feel like you are worth less than them unless you let them.

Sometimes, my little brothers and sister say that I’m a weirdo or something else that my mom doesn’t want us to call each other. My dad asks me if I am a weirdo and I say ‘no’. I know now that he was asking if I believed them and not myself. You know the saying “Stick and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. I think that is completely wrong. Words can hurt you, but it is whether or not you choose to believe them. If someone is calling me bad names, it does hurt me and I don’t like the names they call me, but I try not to think of myself as any of those things.

Anything is possible unless you believe something is impossible.”

-Katie, 6th grade