What is courage? To some people, it is looking over and speaking to a sea of four hundred familiar faces. To others, it is smiling and greeting a person whom they have never met. Still more people would define courage as looking down from the top of a high building without that dizzy feeling, or stepping onto a loop-de-loop roller coaster for the first time. However, all these things I can do without so much as a stammer in my speech or a catch in my breath. Only recently did I find a courage that was real for me.
             I suspect that I am a very difficult person to understand. I experience, and perhaps suffer from, a drive that to most people seems illogical and unreasonable. I want to do it all, and perhaps the problem with that is that I can't accept anything as being done well enough unless I have done it perfectly. In my mind, "good" isn't good enough, I feel I need to be "excellent" and "extraordinary." I want to grab all I can from life, fill my arms with every kind of experience, but I can't accept dropping anything. I want to do it all and excel at it all. I guess you could say I want to have my cake and eat it too. Why? Well, that is another, much longer, paper entirely.
             So, what does this have to do with courage, anyway? Well, my junior year has been a very difficult one for me, as it is for many high school students. I feel overwhelmed with projects, extracurricular activities, and a social life on top of that. It was only during the last week of February that I did something truly courageous for me. I had undertaken a lot at that time. I was directing the Arts Day drama, doing the Junior's Arts Day reading, juggling social issues and Bible projects, participating in a community orchestra, working, hanging out with my friends, managing other homework at the same time, and fitting in other things I can't even remember. The start of track and auditions for the spring drama loomed ahead in my schedule like monsters waiting to...