Take a Challenge

Jules Verne wrote a fictional story called Around the World in Eighty Days.  At the time such a trip seemed impossible.  A young woman named Nellie Bly saw the story, not as a fictional account of a trip, she saw it as a challenge.  So she took off from the east coast of America on a journey around the world.  On January 25th 1890, she returned to her starting point in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes.  She overcame bad weather, poor transportation and troubling layovers.  She saw a challenge and met that challenge.

Have you met your challenges?  Do you need to lose weight?  Do you need to increase your fitness?  You are here at Mary Baldwin College, Home of the Fighting Squirrels.  You are young, hopefully you have dreams.  What are you doing to meet those dreams?  Nellie Bly had a goal.  She devised a travel plan to meet that goal.  She overcame numerous obstacles and succeeded.

I have had many young ladies on our athletic teams tell me they want to win.  I have had many young ladies tell me they want to be doctors.  Those are great goals.  However, just saying you want the reach a certain outcome is not good enough.  What are you doing now to work toward that goal?  Do you have a travel plan?  There is a old saying that, if you want something bad enough, you can get it.   That is squirrel poop.  You can't just want something, you have to plan, work hard and accept the difficulties(and overcome them).

What are you doing today to win tomorrow?  Nellie saw a challenge.  Find your challenge.  Overcome the obstacles.  Achieve your goals. There are no guarantees.  If you work hard, will you always reach your goal?  No.  But, if you don't try you will never know what you are capable of.

March on squirrels.  Take the challenge.