Tayleigh Altheide
Excellence Essay
4-29-08

Excellence
What does excellence mean to you? Many today have a different prospective of this question. Is it something that we value or is it something we can try to achieve for ourselves. No matter what, we all have something we strive to do better ourselves.

When we look at The Crooked Tree, we can see that Hui-tse did not value what he had. He looked at the tree as if it did not do anything good for him. He replied to Chuang-tse, that none of the carpenters would even look at his tree, because of all the flaws it possessed. In reply, he says, “It is useless to you only because you want to make it into something else and do not use it in its proper way.” He then tells him what the tree is good for as the way it is. So from this, we need to look at everything from a different angle and except its value the way it is.

Now when we look at the reading from Look out for more Blairs, we can see the values of the students that cheat there way through plagiarism. We can see in today’s society it is a very big problem. Most students do this when they are under pressure to get all there assignments done. One of the facts he states about this way “A 2001 survey by the same institution found that 41 percent of students admitted to cut and paste plagiarism. So this shows that a lot of students do this, most are in college. Some students don’t even find this to be serious.

From this we can see that cheating is a result from being under pressure. From the Reading of Student cheating, this is showing the dishonesty in society. In one part it says, “What cheating shows that merits strong opposition is a student’s pride in deceptively “getting over” on professors and “the system”, even where both are recognized as fair.” It shows how people’s values are getting pushed aside more and more. They feel is they are getting the right answer; it should not matter where they get it.

How do we achieve excellence? We can do this by doing what is right. Also to strive to do the best we can and try to take it a step more. In my opinion, I think if we do what is right and do what we are suppose to, we are achieving excellence. In my life, I defiantly feel the pressure to achieve excellence, especially now, when you have to apply to college and are thinking about your future. So you defiantly are pressured in school to do your work.
So when it comes down to it, you need to know where your values are. When it comes down to it you will see what you will do when you are striving to achieve excellence.