When I look back on my life, I look at my junior year of high school as the time period that I was the least opportunistic. I quit my fall sport out of laziness and my grades also dropped. With more time and less commitment, I should have never allowed myself to reach my lowest point academically in the most important year of my high school career. I lost motivation to maintain my prior academic standing and paid for it later on when I didn’t get in to all of the universities that I applied to. That was the first time in my life that I looked back and thought to myself that I wasn’t achieving my max potential. Since my senior year of high school I have been better at staying on top of my work and putting in the time necessary to be a better student as well as a person overall. Time management is one of the most important things to consider and get bad at when it comes to taking advantage of opportunities. I believe that people who spend their time wisely and know how to manage their time miss out the least on important opportunities in their lives. Instead of using the time I gained my junior year to make my life better, I dedicated more time to hanging out with friends and playing video games than I did to doing homework and preparing for the ACT. If you stay on a tight schedule and understand when things are supposed to be done by, then you will find yourself to miss fewer opportunities and take advantage of situations when you have to. This past week, I took advantage of an opportunity in my life by going to the career fair. By doing so, I put myself in a better position to receive and internship next summer and a job in the future. My friends that didn’t attend the career fair all now regret their decisions. By being on top of my life I was able to prepare myself to talk to dozens of companies and get my resume in the hands of many potential future employers. It is a good feeling to know that you have gotten the ball rolling on getting a job for next summer when it is only the beginning of the school year. Last year when I was a sophomore, I also had this same opportunity and I had passed on it. Because of that, I didn’t find my summer job until April and was very stressed out in the spring over it. I made it impossible for myself to regret my effort to start this school year by staying on top of my work and starting my job search. Having less stress also allows for me to perform better in many different aspects of life. Knowing that you are not achieving your highest potential because you are not taking advantage of opportunities is something that really wakes you up in life. Being disappointed in my failures my junior year of high school and sophomore year of college has allowed me to recognize what the most important things in life are and what I must do to achieve them. I have responsibilities in life as a student and I need to make sure that I take care of those responsibilities under any circumstance. Moving forward, I am going to stay on top of my life more and make sure that I do not catch myself missing out on the important things in life. I do not want to find myself in another situation in which I feel that I haven’t done my best.