Climbing to Success

Climbing to Success

My whole life I’ve always talked to my grandparents about their past and it was always something that motivated me and intrigued me. Once I was given this assignment I was not able to correlate my grandparents effect on my creed and it wasn't until after I learned the definition of the American creed my own personal creed became obvious to me. The stories of my grandparents and the obstacles that they faced in life have helped shape my creed into one based upon self-perseverance, because of this my grandparents were able to build what my family has today.

The objective of the staircase and the images under it is to show the phases of my grandparent's lives and as they persevered they became closer to achieving their goals. The first portion of my staircase which is all black and white represents a point in time where my grandparents really had to persevere. The grave represents the obstacle of having a parent or parents die, the army soldier represents how my grandfather had to serve in the army to get funding for college, the little kid working represents my grandmother’s childhood because she was the oldest girl and her mother passed away so she was left with a lot of responsibility, and the boat represents my grandmother immigrating to America. The struggles in Ireland can be seen because people, “refer to 1950s in Ireland as the decade of ‘doom and gloom’, the 'worst decade since the famine' and the ‘lost decade’” (Glynn). In the second portion of my staircase which is half color, half black and white, I have an academic degree to represent my grandfather graduating from college, a proposal to show how each of my grandparents found partners, and an image of a woman working because my grandmother found many jobs and worked hard when she came to America. I made this part half black and white and a half in color because this part of my grandparent's life is where self-perseverance is still necessary but the benefits of the past self-perseverance are starting to be seen. The third portion of the staircase which is in color represents the positive results of my grandparent's perseverance. The two family photos show how both of my grandparents were able to succeed and create a better life for themselves and their family, the bullseye represents achieving a goal and I chose this because both my grandparents had a goal in life to make life better for their family’s and they both achieved this goal. I made the last section in color because it shows the benefits of self-perseverance and how their hard work paid of and they were able to create a better life for themselves and their family’s. When I learned “for perseverance to be of any value, we need to have worthwhile goals” (“Succes”). I was able to understand how my grandparents were able to persevere through what they went through and what pushed them through it. The third section shows how “Perseverance encompasses what it is to fight until the end of something; to finally reach completion” (Calderale). This is shown in my image because the first two sections show the “fight” and the third section shows “reaching completion”. I chose to put myself walking up a staircase because it shows how my grandparents self-perseverance built the first steps for my family and with self-perseverance, I can continue to go up and create an even better life for my family.

Works Cited

Success Through Perseverance - Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY, wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2000081#h=2.

Calderale, Darsin. “The Importance Of Perseverance.” The Odyssey Online, 27 Aug. 2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/importance-perseverance.

“Irish Emigration History.” University College Cork, www.ucc.ie/en/emigre/history/.