When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.

The wall above my desk in my room at school this year.

Last year, when I was a freshman in college, I was very, very homesick. I spent the first couple of weeks just sad and unmotivated. I missed home and my family and my friends.

Then one day, my aunt sent me a quote: “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Theodore Roosevelt said that. I kept reading it over and over again. I kept remembering it in the couple days that followed.

Then it hit me: I should make a quote wall. I should gather quotes that inspire me and motivate me and hang them up in my dorm room.

So I did it. And I felt better. And that Theodore Roosevelt quote was right in the middle. Not only was I inspired every time I looked at them and read them, but they just made the room so much more cheerful. They turned the blank white wall above my desk into something colorful and bright and happy.