Learning From Mistakes: The Pact and The Gridiron Gang

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It is human nature for everybody to make mistakes. Some mistakes are as little as a typo that can simply be whited out and corrected. Some as big as infidelity in a relationship. Some mistakes are easily forgiven and others not so much. But there is one thing for sure, if mistakes are never made, a person will never know their true purpose in life. Now of course most mistakes you will have to pay for but, every great person has made some sort of mistake to get them where they are now. Every mistake in life is a lesson that contributes to making people successful.
The Pact is about three young men (Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt) growing up on the streets of Newark, New Jersey around the 1980’s and follows them up until their college graduation in the early 2000’s. They already had the odds against them because they were young and black and from the inner city. They were also being counted out because they were teenagers. Throughout the book all of them made a lot of stupid mistakes, some of them even life threatening but, had they not made them they wouldn't be the people they are today.
At age 6, George was hanging out with his older brother Garland and some of his friends, walking through the park playing around. His brother was at least 5 years older and and didn’t really want his younger brother hanging with him anyway so he instructed him not to do anything but sit when told to and not to speak at all. Garland and his friends decided to clean up the trashed park. They began to pick up the empty chip bags and soda bottles and things of the like. They then turned the corner to see a knocked over concrete slab. The slab was supposed to be a bench but it was just sitting in the middle of the park. George tryin...

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...t. Whether a person’s mistake lead them to realizing a life dream, or a true passion, or whether the mistake simply lead them to become a better person. Mistakes can all be used as a learning experience to achieve great things in one’s life.

Works Cited

Davis, Sampson, George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt, and Lisa Frazier-Paige. The Pact. New York: Riverhead, 2002. Print.
Estrem, Pauline. "Why Failure Is Good for Success." Thesis. N.d. (n.d.): n. pag. SUCCESS. Success Magazine, 2013. Web. 02 Jan. 2014
The Gridiron Gang. Dir. Phil Joanou. Perf. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Alvin " Xzibit" Joiner. Columbia Pictures, 2006. Film.
Jansen, Jan. A Collection of Mistakes Will Lead Us to Success. N.p.: n.p., 2013. Easy Branches. Web. 03 Jan. 2014
Wilson, Robert. "Bobby V On DJ Booth.net." Interview by DJ Z. DJ Booth.net. The DJ Booth LLC., 2012. Web. 02 Feb. 2014.

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