What does Thinking Outside the Box really mean? by Arlene

What does Thinking Outside the Box really mean? by Arlene - October 2018 Scholarship Essay

My generation is expected to think outside the box, but when I look around at the people I go to school with and others my age, I see only about 5% of them that do.

To understand what I mean, I first have to define what I believe the box is. In school, students are taught to follow directions, memorize historical dates, people and events, perform calculations correctly and regurgitate all of this information in a methodical, controlled way. This, of course, is to get students to learn the material being taught and to master proven techniques and calculations, which is important. Students can go through school doing well by buckling down, studying and doing well on tests and projects. That is the box. But do students know how to solve problems that have not been solved before?

Can people take the knowledge that they have learned look at problems in different ways so that they can achieve success? Some of the world’s greatest minds didn’t have a formal education. Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller and, of course, Steve Jobs. All of these men were either dropouts or did poorly in school. What they all had in common was the ability to look past the formal education that they were stuck in, look at things differently and figure out how to make a change in the fields they were interested in.

Thinking outside the box is a frightening concept. It means to go against everything you have learned and done before and being courageous enough to take a chance on something that is not the norm, not what is expected and finding out that there are solutions out there waiting to be found – outside the box.