Term+1+assignment+5+discursive+essay-+Risk+Taking

Hardly a day goes by without one hearing news of someone striking it big in his or her investments. This is only possible because they dared to dream. There is this quote, “risk your pride now and earn in the long run or don’t risk your pride now and not achieve anything.” There is also another quote by Cadet Maxim, “ Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.” These quotes have a common goal, to tell people the importance of taking risks and that taking more risks is good.

All of these are mostly true. People who take risks and become successful in life are known as entrepreneurs. Now, they do not become successful by taking every risk that presents itself. They only become successful by taking calculated risks. However, major risk takers such as Columbus reap great rewards. It is like a gamble.

In Chinese, there are these two words, “wei ji”. The term means that in any kind of danger or risk that you face, there is always an opportunity, whether or not it presents itself. Entrepreneurs succeed in life because they were able to choose the right risk to take. And from that choice, they are able to strike it rich. Let me give you an example. There are two people working in a company, Dick and Jane. Maybe for a law firm. They both face difficulties supporting their family. The first person, Jane being a risk taker decides to set up her own company, becoming a self-employed worker. She invites her friend, Dick to join her. Afraid of failing, Dick turned down her invitation. After a period of five years, Jane has a successful and well-established company and faces no difficulties supporting her family, while Dick is still working in the company and still face difficulties in supporting his family. In today’s profit driven society, risk taking separates the successful people, the not-so successful people and the unsuccessful people. Most youngsters nowadays aspire to be successful in their life, so they take the risk and set up their own company. Risk taking is necessary to be successful in life if you are talking about it in a career sense.

Risk taking also spreads its tentacles in the medical field. If doctors do not dare to try out new surgeries, test out new medicines, will we ever find a cure for incurable diseases such as cancer? There will only be a very small chance that we will chance upon the cure of these diseases.

Even in the educational field, risk taking plays an important role. Let us think about it, where did our mathematical formulas derive from? Where did our teacher’s teaching methods come from? It all traces back to people in the past who dared to take risks. These people experimented, took the risk to improve their situation then. For example, teachers coming up with new methods to teach in an attempt to help students understand the subject more effectively. Mathematicians trying to discover new mathematical formulas to aid us in everyday calculations. Besides, we are taking risks everyday. When are on a plane, there is a one in five thousand chance of crashing. Foolish risks like gambling in casinos, investing a large sum of money without doing proper research and performing dangerous stunts would and will be avoided by the wise ones.

Benjamin Franklin also made a name for himself by taking a huge risk. He tried flying a kite with a key attached to it in a thunderstorm in an attempt to prove that electricity exists. He did not know how big the voltage would be, his aim was purely to prove that electricity existed. If he was not a risk taker, would we still have electricity in today’s world? Another great example would be Christopher Columbus. During his time, everyone with the exception of a few believed that the Earth was flat. They believed that if you were to travel out to sea, you would drop off the planet once you reached the end. Columbus thought differently. In an attempt to prove that the Earth wasn’t flat but spherical in shape, he travelled out to sea. He risked his political position and his life to prove that. He also found America in the process of it.

These examples I gave above show what risk-taking achieves. Now lets look at it from the other side of the coin, if there wasn’t any risk takers around, will the word entrepreneur exist? How many surgeries will be available today? Will America be English? Will I even be typing out this compo? Will the world still believe that Earth was the only thing in the universe and that the sun revolved around it? Will every species on Earth still be stuck in the water because the prehistoric water creatures never dared to step out of water? I might be wrong. But without taking the risk to find out if one’s ideas work, mankind would not be able to progress. Besides, there’s a saying, “you never know if you never try”

No matter in which period of life, one must always take risks to stand on new grounds and reach new boundaries and break new limits. Like how NASA is trying to make Mars a liveable planet. Thus, I agree that risk taking is necessary in order to achieve success and this is a fact that will never change.

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