I believe in the power of the hard working individual as a driving force. Hard work is the locomotive of our survival and the driving force that has qualified us at the top of our food chain over the last 200,000 years. Sometimes people say that the human race is going into decline, but I couldn't disagree with that further. Yes, today's problems are overwhelming us and are more than worthy of us, but they are problems that we will face the same way we have always faced them, and that is one by one. I was less than 5 years old when I started playing the piano. Playing the piano is not like playing in a band or orchestra where you only spend a fraction of the time playing and even less practicing. While playing the piano, you cannot hide the fact of how long you have been practicing, because there is a direct link between effort and reward which is always true. I never wanted to play the piano myself. It was always my parents' choice and their push to make me do some extracurricular activities. But as I grew up, they started to be interested in piano exams too. ABRSM, the Associate Council of the Royal School of Music, delivers over 650,000 exams per year in over 93 countries around the world. When I found out that my parents had signed me up for the exams I was shocked. I have been playing the piano for more than 5 years but had never had an experience like this. It turned out to be harder than I ever thought possible. My sister and I spent hours together: She would check the scales that I still had to memorize on an Excel sheet at the end of each evening workout. The hard part of an exam like this isn't playing the notes. A piano has 88 keys, none of which are difficult to play. The hard part is playing the non…middle of paper…humanity, which makes us who we are. This I believe. I will continue to add more details in the coming days. I will go into more depth on how the piano exam developed my view of hard work. I could also talk about another example. Hard work matters everywhere we look. If we look around, there is no great thing that is not the culmination of hours of hard work. There is no reward without effort, just as there is no harvest without plowing. I think it's important to forcefully illustrate my one and only point, which is the strong connection between effort and reward, and connect it to my experiences playing the piano since I was under 5 years old. One thing I would like to ask is if I need more than one example. I've seen other people's work and want to know if I need more than my piano example to support my ideas about hard work.