My 2017: Achievements and Failures - Hard Work Pays Off

Hi steemit friends,

I saw this contest today, and thought it would be something really neat to participate in myself! It's a little different than the type of content that I'm used to posting, but it's good to switch things up from time to time!

Looking back on this year, I am realizing that a lot has taken place in my life in just this year alone! I'm going to talk about two of the main achievements that stand out the most to me, and one of the big failures that I've been dealing with.

In late April of 2017, I received some very great news! I found out that I was one of the 10 graduate students at my University who had been chosen to receive a very competitive scholarship for my Master of Science in Biology thesis project! Originally, I had been placed onto the waiting list and was pretty discouraged by this, but sure enough I eventually found out that I was a successful recipiant of the scholarship, allowing me to carry on with my project!

In 2017, I've been continuing to work on my Master of Science thesis project in Biology at the University of New Brunswick. I started my degree in September of 2016 and have made lots of progress since that point! Unfortunately since about June of 2017, I've encountered several roadblocks along the way that have really slowed down and halted the progress that I had been making in my thesis project. It has been incredibly frustrating at times, not knowing quite what is causing the issues to come up. Steemit has actually been a great place where I can go to distract myself briefly from the troubles at school. Hopefully things will start to turn around for my project in 2018! I have been working very hard to try and solve the issues, and have been making some progress, so hopefully all that work can pay off eventually and I will be able to get my project finished up! Keeping as optimistic an outlook as possible has been key! Have any of you been in frustrating situations like this at school or work?

Very recently, at the end of November 2017, my family was informed that we had been selected as the Grand Prize Winners of a local lottery draw in our area! This lottery takes place annually as a way to raise money for the local hospital in our hometown. The hospital foundation has a house constructed, people buy tickets for the house, and various other prizes, and all of the proceeds go toward helping the hospital purchase much needed equipment and offer much needed services to the community! We got the call on the night of the draw that our family had been selected as the Grand Prize Winners of this year's house, which is valued at a whopping 1 MILLION DOLLARS!!!!. Needless to say, we are still in quite a bit of shock about all of this, but it was something that we never expected would come true! I've attached a few pictures below of the newspaper article as well as some photos of our new house!

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With that, I would just like to express how grateful I am that this year has been as good as it has! There have been some frustrating portions along the way, but I think overall it has been very positive. It is very rare that we get to stop and reflect upon our lives; I'm very thankful that @anomadsoul initiated this contest because it has allowed me to take some time to reflect and really appreciate everything and everyone that I have! Thank you very much to anyone for reading this and have a very Happy New Year! Hopefully 2018 can be even better for us all here as a community on Steemit!

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**For details on this contest, check out @anomadsoul's post! Time is running out to participate, so get your entries in while you still can!

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