Love Is Kind by Ethan Reichman Love is kind. Sometimes people misunderstand this phrase. We all strive to have love in our lives in one way or another. Love can be beautiful and exciting and everything the movies tell you it is, but love can also be hard and exhausting. It can keep you up at night. Love is doing not only what is easy but also what is hard for people you love. Then your love is kind, because when you have love for someone or something, you will do anything for what you love. When you are willing to do difficult things for the sake of someone else, your love is kind. I am an athlete and have always been one of my school’s top performers. I go to a small public school in western Nebraska. We do not have hundreds of students wanting to play sports. We do not hold tryouts to make the team. I have played sports with a teammate who is a grade below me in school. He has some intellectual challenges and spends most of his day in the special-education room, but he has always loved to play sports and is very athletic. On our junior-high football team, I was the quarterback. He was the running back. He always had difficulty remembering the plays and which direction to go because he struggled with knowing his left from his right. I could see that my teammates and coaches were frustrated, and I realized that I needed to find a way to help him be successful without pointing out his weaknesses to anyone else. I got him two shoestrings—one yellow and one blue—for his cleats to help him remember his directions. Whenever we broke the huddle, you would have seen me talking to him one-on-one to make sure he knew what his expectation was each time. All I had to say was blue for plays to the right and yellow for plays to the left. I have had plenty of personal athletic achievements throughout my career, but my biggest success was helping a teammate do what he loves to do against all odds. It wasn’t always easy to put in the extra effort for him, but I always acted with patience, love, and kindness. I still go to school and play sports with this teammate. I have watched him grow tremendously from the beginner who didn’t know his left from his right into the athlete he is today. My act, taken out of love and kindness, is by far the accomplishment of my athletic career I treasure the most. I plan to go to college to become an elementary school teacher. I have been a teacher’s aide in the first-grade room at my school for the past two years and have discovered a passion for teaching young children. I will use love and kindness to help our youth advance intellectually, personally, and emotionally. I want to do everything in my power to set my students up for success. Our youth are the future, and I want to help mold them into the people that our world needs them to be. Each child, no matter his or her situation, deserves love and kindness; I want nothing more than to give that to them. I want to make a difference. Teaching young children and giving them the love and kindness they all deserve is the way I plan to make my contribution.