Walk into my open-concept high school, and one of the first feature you will notice are the three words engraved in stone above the three main entrances; Academics, Athletics and Arts. The main entrance is crowned with the word "Academics," the gym entrance says "Athletics," and the auditorium entrance is topped with the word "Arts." The three words join to form a trident that Parkland High School wields in its never-ending quest to become the most successful school in the state of Pennsylvania.

During the four years I was there, Parkland was a premier educational facility. To prove that point I have to point no farther than the fact College Board awarded the title of Pennsylvania’s AP Districts of the Year to the Parkland School District for the 2014-2015 school year. Our athletic teams repeatedly won league, district and state gold medals. Name a sport and Parkland was probably represented on the statewide level. The artists take a backseat to nobody. The chorus, chorale, band, and orchestra were all heavily decorated with regional and state titles. The spring musicals consistently earned nominations and statuettes at the Freddy Awards, eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey’s high school version of the Tony Awards. The prowess of our visual artists were evident as they received impressive hauls of Scholastic Art Awards over the past years.

So how do we improve from here? How does this story not become the ultimate peaked in high school scenario? Maybe by peering a little deeper into the causes of our widespread success over the last four years, I may be able to point out some cues that can set not only the Parkland’s Class of 2016, but America’s Class of 2016 for an exponentially more successful next forty years.

I had the privilege of interacting with an extremely talented group of coaches and teachers during my time at 2700 Cedar Crest Boulevard. My football coaches poured their hearts into preparing us for each game (we played 53 of them in four years), and they also prepared us for the game of life. I also had teachers who genuinely cared for me as an individual; a hard feat considering the annual enrollment of 3200 plus. The best example of this came just last week. I stopped by to visit a former English teacher of mine. She asked me, “Where are you going to school Svetz?”

“Texas A&M, I’d go tomorrow if I could," I replied.

“That’s wonderful, but don’t rush these last few weeks of high school. Do something you enjoy, because after you go to school you might not get those opportunities again.” I didn’t stop into her room for advice, but I left having heard exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. I have no doubt the involvement of our educators was a pivotal impetus towards the repeated successes of our student body.

To be successful in the future, first we have to find mentors, role models, teachers, and coaches; professionals in their respective fields who are willing to help us succeed in the real world. We have to pick their brains and extract every bit of usable information they have gathered from years of experience. Then we must take that information, mesh it with our own individual core values, and personal experiences and use it to better our respective crafts.

I also had phenomenal teammates and classmates. From a young age competition in the classroom pushed me to be a better student. Projects became a game to see who could pull off the most effective wow factor. Kids cut up family heirlooms and manipulated cardboard in ways NASA couldn’t for the World History board game project. The most extreme case of points-reaching was a Prius commercial inserted into an Environmental Sciences project. On the football field, we broke every huddle with a chant of “We are Brothers Ya Ya.” In Shakespeare’s Henry V he wrote, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother.” I had brothers on the football team who not only shed their blood with my own, but would shed blood for me in the pursuit of a common goal.

We need to surround ourselves with people on similar missions. I could list a whole bunch of clichés here about lions and sheep, but at the root of it is simple. There is a reason elites surround themselves with elites. Competition put a man on the moon and without collaboration the plague would still be ripping through cities across the world.

A third and final factor is the easiest to point out but the most difficult to accomplish: hard work. There is no way to sugar coat it; Parkland’s success is not because we have different water than other schools in the area or because we have nicer facilities than other schools. Facilities and gear do not win titles. I could go on and on about the early morning summer practices the football team endured or the never ending weight lifting regimen, but I can honestly say I was never a part of the greatest example of hard work my school had to offer; the theatre department were the hardest working group of individuals I have seen in my short life. They begin developing their skills long before 9th grade and hone those skills relentlessly once they enter the building. The annual spring musical is the culmination of all this hard work. My friends would rehearse, rehearse and rehearse, increasing the number of days per week as the show grew closer to the point of complete immersion. In fact, these kids operated under such high levels of stress that many of them would leave show week and spend the next week sleeping and overcoming illnesses. I have great respect for anyone willing to sacrifice the uncountable number of hours for such a slight payback of five performances.

I believe hard work is the most important catalyst of success. There is nothing that the average person respects more than someone who is willing to work harder than the competition. Clichés are often overused because of their truthfulness, and nothing is more true than the fact that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

In the end it's simple; the mainstream media has driven home the narrative that millennials are the laziest, most disrespectful, and most absentminded generation the world has ever seen. I respectfully disagree. I believe that our generation will be remembered for the problems we solved; the lives we saved; and the changes we made. We will accomplish feats our parents couldn't even have dreamed of. However, none of this will be possible without mentors, teammates and competition, and most importantly hard work.