Hard Work - the Key to Success

Margaret Thatcher, a British politician and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, once said that: "I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near." (Margaret Thatcher). On the other hand, according to the article "Tickets to Nowhere" by Andy Rooney, Jim Oakland spent all his life waiting for luck to win the lottery, but he was still a loser by the end of his life. Therefore, it would seem that hard work is the better strategy for success because luck does not always work out and no one can get to the top without hard work.

At first, luck is not the best strategy for a successful life. In addition, luck does not always come to you when you need it. For instance, Jim Oakland, as introduced by Andy Rooney on the article "Tickets to Nowhere", waits for luck all his life: "He dropped out of high school because he was impatient to get rich, but after dropping out he lived at home with his parents for two years and didn't earn a dime... Things just never went very well for Jim, and he was twenty-three before he left home and went to Florida hoping his ship would come in down there." (Andy). If he is patient and tries to get higher education instead of dropping out of school, he may have a better life. After that, he dreams about winning lottery: "A week ago, the lottery jackpot in Florida reached $54 million. Jim woke up nights thinking what he could do with $54 million. During the days, he daydreamed about it." (Andy). Luck does not come to him even he calculates his lucky number: "Jim had this system. He took his age and added the last four digits of the telephone number of the last girl he dated. He called it his lucky number ... He clutched his ticket with the number 274802... 'The winning number', the announcer said, 'is 860539'. I'll repeat that. 860539.' Jim was still a loser." (Andy). Luck does not always work out; especially when people waits for it. Moreover, luck is not the only way to success. However, Jim does not know about that and still dreams about winning lottery ticket: "One morning he was driving along the main street in the boss's old pickup truck with six tanks of goldfish in back. As he drove past a BMW dealer, he looked at the new models... he saws the car he wanted... he didn't see the light change. The car in front of him stopped short and Jim slammed on his breaks... The tanks broke... the water gushed out, and the goldfish slithered and flopped all over the back of the struck. Some fell off into the road." (Andy). At the end of his life, he still does not win the lottery ticket. The money that he pays for all of his accidents may be the same with the lottery winning money: "I thought that, with all the human interest stories about lottery winners, we ought to have a story about one of the several million losers." (Andy). Therefore, we have to find the right way to success instead