A "Hole" in One!!!!

            I remember yelling at my Mom, very annoyed, “It just won’t work, Mom!” I was attempting one of various recipes to exhibit at the county fair. Making bagels was one of the most challenging and difficult foods I’ve ever made. After the first time I was determined to make this breakfast bread look the way I wanted it to.

            In my opinion, the only problem when making homemade bagels is that there usually is a missing signature piece to the bagel, the hole. The first time when I tried the bagel recipe I stretched and stretched the bread, trying to make sure it would stay in that shape. No matter how much I pulled, and stretched, I could never win that tug of war. I was so frustrated my bagels didn’t look like the ones people brought at Kwik Star! For this task I had to really screw on my thinking cap for a light bulb to click. After many cumbersome trials I didn’t surrender. I found out that if I stuck wooden dowels that had been soaked in water for twenty four plus hours, and individually wrapped in pieces of tin foil that were pulled out just at the right time of the boiling, baking, and broiling procedure the bagels came out with an almost perfect hole!

            I felt like this was a time when I did my best because I never gave up. I always tried my hardest while making 4-H projects because it was so important to me to do well. When I finally figured out how to make a hole in my bagels I felt a sense of accomplishment and relief. I tried that recipe so many times, (not to mention, took hours!) and wanted a great end product that looked good. I felt a sense of relief because I finally had a project completed that I could use for the county fair.

            This experience was just a step in my life. I can say that it was not a that important of a time where it made a huge impact, but it did make an impact on my life. Now that I have experienced a time in my life when I have accomplished a somewhat challenging task I know now that I can be persistent with challenging classes, projects, etc… and still be successful. This is especially common with the fact that I am now in college. 4-H was something that was very important to me from elementary school all the way through high school. I have now replaced   4-H with college. I see college as a very important time in my life, and I want to be successful.

            From making a bagels from a recipe I learned to never give up. When running into problems in this recipe persistence and patience was key. This concept not only applies to baking, but in everyday life as well. As Winston Churchill once said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” I believe this quote is very similar to my life in college, and the problems I have encountered and might encounter in college.