In just three days, two extremely talented National Football League quarterbacks will lead their teams to the Super Bowl with the opportunity to qualify as champions. The two quarterbacks are Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals and Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams. Both have gone through adversity professionally and personally to get to this point in their lives and one of them will fulfill a dream of winning the Super Bowl, the other will always pursue it.

Determination is a huge factor in accomplishing anything in life, but you also have to push through everything in between right off the bat. For these two men, it’s about winning a trophy bearing the last name of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi; however, for me, it was writing stories like this explaining my in-betweenness from the start.

It all started at an Atlanta Falcons job fair. Dressed on all fours with over 35 resumes to hand out to various organizations seeking employment in this industry, I was one of many like-minded students who just wanted to leave an impression at the fair. After a few months, I got a call to do an unpaid internship with the Knoxville Ice Bears as a GameDay Operations Associate. My excitement couldn’t be contained as I was going to work with a sports team, but that was just the beginning.

I was grateful for the opportunity, but I didn’t have a car and had never been to Tennessee in my life. I did some research and found a company called Megabus, which I would use to drive back and forth for the next three months until the end of the season. The trip from Atlanta to Knoxville was four hours each way, $12.50 round trip, and learning how to get around in a new city was amazing.

I paid for my own hotel and every weekend the Ice Bears would play a game or two, confirming that I was fine with working with a professional team. Saving money and budgeting was important to me as it was a dream of mine to be associated with the sport and with the support/help of my family it was made possible. I knew what it would take to pursue a dream, but after working this internship, I knew I wouldn’t want to pursue a GameDay Operations Associate position, but I learned a lot through this experience.

When the season ended, I wanted to pursue sportswriting as another passion. I joined my school magazine, writing articles and getting them published. I emailed 30 different publications inside Atlanta, hoping for the opportunity to expose and learn from my writing skills. From there my sportswriter took a chance on me and to this day I continue to work on my craft which led me here at the Marshall Independent.

Whether you’re Burrow, who suffered a horrible leg injury, replaced at quarterback at Ohio State to win the Heisman Trophy, become a college football national champion and play in his first Super Bowl or whether you’re Stafford , winless in the playoffs until this year as a 13-year veteran, having a wife undergoing brain surgery to also play in your first Super Bowl, adversity hits us all in different ways, but the way how you handle it shapes the character of who you will become.

Dreams without action are nothing more than a hopeful wish. Chasing dreams requires going through the in-between, in addition to being able to endure all the good, bad, and ugly that comes with it. Getting started is the honeymoon phase, but what you’ll wonder is how determined are you to do what you love? The part of what you like will vary for everyone, but the determination will not. Always chase your dreams.