How I Proved to Myself I Could by Morgan

How I Proved to Myself I Could by Morgan - March 2014 Scholarship Essay

How exactly does an academic achievement impact someone? 'The Time I Aced That Test', 'My 4.0 GPA', or 'My Tutor Who Taught Me to do Long Division'. All of these would make lovely essays I'm sure, but when it gets down to it, do the really leave a lifelong impact? Is it something the writer will be telling their grandchild about? "Ah yes Jimmy, sit down on old grandpa's lap and I'll tell you about the time I studied all weekend to get a B+ on my final exam." While this could happen, it really isn't very likely. That's because things that we learn from books will never have as big of an impact as something that we have real life experience with. This is why we have dissections in biology, experiments in chemistry, even word problems in math to a certain extent. Do babies learn to speak from reading? No, at least not most babies. They learn from talking. This is why I'm not going to talk about my greatest academic achievement, but rather the one which has had the most impact on me.

This year, I'm studying abroad in Thailand as a foreign exchange student. It's a gap year, between high school and university. It wasn't particularly hard to get accepted into the program academically wise. Of course I had to go through a long application and many interviews to make sure I'd be a good match for the program, but as far as my grades, I only had to be in the top 50% of my class. I'm not doing so much studying here either. I mean, sure I'm learning a new language and I'm going to school, but because I've already graduated high school my grades here don't matter. I actually don't even get grades here. My school is a vocational school, where I learn things like flower making, fruit carving, and cooking. A lot of what I learn, I will never be able to use again in my life. When will I be able to speak Thai when I return to the US? What am I going to do with that recipe which calls for ingredients I can only get in southeast Asia? But that's not the point of me being here.

Before I arrived, I never thought that I'd be capable of speaking another language proficiently. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be able to keep up, and understand a class in a foreign language. It's been a huge esteem booster. In my opinion, that's what learning is all about. When you are learning about something you have a genuine interest in, and are able to do well in, it raises your self confidence through the roof. I feel happier than I ever was in the US because I know that I can. Just because I'm not learning the hardest subjects doesn't mean anything, I'm learning in another language, and that is a huge accomplishment in my books. I never could have learned the language, gotten this experience, if I only read about it, if I only studied it.

If we only read about what we're learning, and never apply it to our lives, we'll never truly enjoy getting an education. We'll never feel the true impact of what we're learning. For example, even though students in the US learn about the holocaust nearly every year in history, it still isn't real for many of us. We don't live close enough to where it happened, and the majority of students in the US don't know of any holocaust survivors to truly feel the impact. This isn't the case in European countries though. For the students over there, it's real. It has much more of an actual impact on them because it hit so close to home. They can go and visit the concentration camps, rather than just reading about them in books. Studying hard to get a good grade on a test feels great, but learning through experience feels so much better.