Horace Case

Horace once stated that "Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant". This brings up the question, does adversity benefit a person? Horace states that adversity helps develop a person's own personal character. It is true that in times of hardship, people find their inner strength to overcome an unrelenting situation. Adversity occurs in everyone's life at some point; some worse than others. But when challenges arise, a person must fight through them. Through tough fights reveals their true nature. They must use their hidden talents to face their adversity in order to overcome their difficult times. But sometimes there are situations so adverse it takes more than one person to overcome the present situation mentally and/or physically. More talent is shown during critical times than luxurious times; when a person has a good life with few difficulties, they very rarely need to find something that will help them get through a bad situation.

One of the greatest examples of more than one person coming together and overcoming the sorrows of adversity would be the Ancient Romans. The Romans started out as a small group of people on the Italian Peninsula in a small village surrounded by a hostile environment with other unnamed hostilities. But instead of falling apart, the Romans decided to retaliate against their surrounding adversities, and fight on. People came together to promote the Empire due to the enormous amounts of publicity that brought a sense of nationalism. After countless amounts of years, spent on expanding and advocating the Roman Republic, they soon became the most powerful nation of their time. This goes to show that adversity can be conquered if the community can come together and believe that victory can be achieved over the seemingly stacked odds.

My experiences with "the odds" always come in some sort of physical sport, mostly because of my height, rarely about my capability. In a game where size and strength are a depending factor, football is something that challenges me constantly. Size usually does not have an effect on the outcome of my abilities, it actually gets me work harder than others. But in my coach's perspective, they don't see "the player" that can become the game changer, they only see a small,10th grade, 5'3 kid who might get pummelled out on the field, and get used on the "practice squad" for upcoming varsity games. Nothing gets more frustrating than when I get singled out for my physical appearance and not for my ability, but instead of complaining about it, like Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks, I try and become the leader of the team. Watching film constantly for hours on end has helped my abilities to become a better football player, and soon it all payed off. My coaches soon realized that I wasn't an average player, so little by little, they started feeding