It Is All About Finding Your Passion by Alana

It Is All About Finding Your Passion by Alana - April 2015 Scholarship Essay

For me, the purpose of education is to give oneself a sense of belongingness. As humans we have an inherent desire to feel as though we belong, that we fit in and are accepted by our peers. We want to feel as though we are a part of something, something that is greater than all of us. And maybe that is what education is; something greater than all of its counterparts. But without all of the essential individuals that are involved in education in all of its vast fields, there would be no education. It only exists because we insist upon it, because we place a significant value in education. If this value was not placed upon education, it would cease to exist in the minds of human beings. It is not the term education that carries a significant purpose in the lives of individuals, but the immense sense of community that it evokes. The sheer mass of people that commit their lives to furthering education, just so that a young child who they have never met in their life, can have a better future.

It seems the purpose of education is to give teachers, students and parents; a network in which they can communicate and grow together. As the new kid at school it was very apparent that I did not belong there, not just because I came from entirely different circumstances, but that I myself was not trying to fit in. Mostly because I had no idea how to, I was in a foreign place clueless to this environment. So this continued for days, eating lunches at my own table, breathing a sigh of relief upon the sound of the final school bell, marking the end of the day. That is until I discovered the very thing that I hope will one day be the basis of my future, psychology class. It took a couple days for any actual learning to start, I swear ice breaker games are a teachers initial way of asserting their dominance. But alas once the learning finally started I was mesmerized, I looked forward to class each day. It was not because I had friends to sit by, because I did not. But because I was fascinated with the curriculum, I felt personally connected with what we were learning. And to this day that is the class that I have ever felt most comfortable in, despite my apparent lack of friends I felt a sense of belongingness. The education I was receiving was a way for me to find myself and through this I also found that I no longer cared about being the new kid, only about furthering my education.

I would like to think that this happens to a lot of kids, that they might not feel as though they belong until they find their passion. The truly tremendous thing about education is that these passions can and are often entirely different from each other. But that because of the vast network that is education a child is allowed to pursue this passion wholeheartedly, turning it into something that they had never thought possible. You see, the purpose of education is not solely to provide a better education for children, although this is often what it does whether intentional or not. No, I believe that the most important and significant purpose of education is to provide children with a vast well of knowledge, from which they can determine what is important to them and what they want to pursue. I know that I will forever be grateful to every single individual who made it possible for me to pursue my interest in psychology and I know that it is the incredible concept and ideal of education that made it all possible for me. Just as it does for countless other individuals.