Jonathan Smith
Jolynne Berrett
English 1010
29 July 2015
Narrative Essay
Hard work, focus, and dedication, these are vital traits one must possess in order
to get anywhere far in life. These are lessons I was fortunate enough to learn at a young
age. When I was still a boy (12 years old) my family was starting a construction business
in southern Utah. My parents were separated and I was living with my mother who was
the sole provider for her 5 children. As one might suspect we were not financially well
off.
My mother was fortunate enough to have a partner she could work with who was
a general contractor and had built homes before. They were able to find an investor and
soon the newly minted family company was building two homes, albeit on a razor thin
margin. With only some money coming in and a new school year fast approaching my
family decided we would do some of the work, and pay ourselves, instead of contracting
it out. It was during the summer months that these homes were being constructed that I
got the first taste of the vital life skills and just how powerful they are.
One of the several jobs we had undertaken ourselves was the digging of a trench
to run utilities from the box at the street to the house. This trench had to be 36 inches
deep and it had to run approximately 35 feet. This was the same for both houses. I was
the lucky one who got to dig these trenches in the summer sun.
The summers in Southern Utah, the Mojave Desert can reach swelteringly high
temperatures. I would walk out in them with the shovel I was handed and started to dig. I
dug and dug and dug for what felt like an eternity. I dug until my arms and my hands
were aching. I though after my long strenuous effort that I would take a step back and see
how far I’d come. I had barely scratched the surface. I had gotten a stretch of the trench
dug only a third of its needed depth and maybe 4 feet. To my twelve year old self it
seemed like surely I was going to be digging until I was an old man. It simply wasn’t
possible to dig that deep and that far.
After my initial step back and realizing the seemingly impossible task ahead of
me I found myself constantly taking breaks and going to get drinks or going to stand in
the shade, it was just so hard to keep digging as it felt like it was all I was going to do for
my whole life. The first day I had made next to no progress.
The second day I went to work and I kept digging and taking breaks and generally
dreading working as a young boy could. Around lunch time my mother’s partner, the
general contractor came over, and said he would give me a break for a few minutes. I
gladly accepted. After I went and got a drink and stood around for a minute I began to
wonder how he wasn’t tired. After all he had been digging for 15 minutes solid, with no
breaks! He hopped out of the trench that was now the proper depth and he had in those
few minutes done more than I had done all morning. He joked with me as he saw my
eyes wide in amazement that the job wasn’t going to do itself and you just had to keep
working away at it.
Somehow I realized that by just focusing on what I had to do and not taking
breaks and delaying the actual work it would get done, and get done fast compared to the
masterful procrastination I had been employing. So with this realization and newly found
vigor I got into the trench and started digging again.
Over the course of that summer I got lots of chances to see firsthand the results of
just getting done what needs to be done. Although it wasn’t easy I began to quite my
desires to go stand in the shade and replaced it with the desire to complete the task and be
done. Between hauling landscape rocks in wheelbarrows, laying sod, and all other
manners of construction work I started to become a young man who knew how work
hard, focus and be dedicated to get things done.