Ten Thousand Hours | Teen Ink

Ten Thousand Hours

May 28, 2013
By AlisonWonderland BRONZE, Ottawa, Other
AlisonWonderland BRONZE, Ottawa, Other
2 articles 9 photos 1 comment

Favorite Quote:
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.
Lewis Carroll


True expertise costs ten thousand hours
Well thank you Mr. Gladwell
For teaching me like Marvel
On how to achieve my true power

But please can you give me further instruction
Because in these 17 years I've been given
It seems like all I've been doing is swimming
Or rather drowning in the sea of ‘proper’ teenage function

I’m trying to constantly catch up with my peers
Who have been adding to their hours since they were young
And the song I am singing they have already sung
In their minds and bodies they are always in high gear

When I try to run I see the backs of those who run faster
The silver medal for marks that I achieve
Becomes insignificant when others arms are overflowing with so many awards I cannot believe
My peripheral vision catches all these others on the road to becoming masters

Creativity the use of imagination some of them can access with leisure
Those who have science yet not imagination long to access it
And those with creativity faced with 1 to the 3 become dyslexic
Yet I am in a strange limbo with both, but neither

I come close to both when I began to self teach
My fingertips graze the cocoon of creativity
And I reach for the chalice of knowledge repeatedly
Yet, both are always somehow out of reach

In the arms of another student they are placed
One who started their journey of 10000 earlier
They had expressed their interest much quicker
And I am left close to the nectar of victory yet do not know the taste

A year in hours I am only given roughly 9000
A third is wasted at night on the closing of my eyes
An eighth in a social institution most despise
Yet, you wonder with respects to the goal of 10000 where my anxieties are founded

And I am left wondering how much longer I can go on for
Before I see that 10000 hour door
And close it


The author's comments:
Resubmitted because it was in wrong category.

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This article has 1 comment.


sarah98 BRONZE said...
on Jun. 7 2013 at 7:26 pm
sarah98 BRONZE, Holyoke, Massachusetts
1 article 0 photos 405 comments

Favorite Quote:
It is better to write for yourself and have no audience than write for your audience and have no self.

i love the line about "seeing the backs of those who run faster." i'm not sure why, but that really touched me. great job!!