Getting an Education vs. Getting an Education by Brianna

Getting an Education vs. Getting an Education by Brianna - January 2016 Scholarship Essay

Many New Year’s resolutions revolve around weight loss, working out, and eating right, but my resolution is focused on my academics. Yes, I am still the 3.9 GPA student that I have always been, but I am still utilizing the same old memorizing-the-night-before-the-test method, and although I pass with flying colors, I most likely could not write you more than a paper’s worth of information that I actually learned in each class this past, my first, semester of college. Good grades have always satisfied my academic life; I get into the schools I love, programs I want, and classes I need, but I never truly feel like I am leaving my stuffy dorm room to do anything but “get an education;” I am not getting an education. However, my resolution for these upcoming semesters is to do the opposite. I will get an education, and not just the grades, because after these four years, my grades really will not matter, and I would have missed out on years of potential relevant information that could actually benefit me in my future.
How can I sift through the plethora of information given to me at one time to see what is really meaningful? My plan is to not search for the valuable. I have never really seen value in the introduction classes that I am forced to take because on the surface, I know the information, but there is more than just learning the information inside of the classroom. For example, I recently took a course focusing on Native American Indian Studies. I knew the information; it seemed basic. Native Americans were here first, and the settlers that came after destroyed their homes and took over their land with years of disrespect and cruelty to follow. Knowing the premise of the class, I zoned out, memorized, and passed the class with a near perfect score. However, after recently talking to a classmate from the class, I realized that I might have missed a major point that laid below the surface. She was going to a local pow-wow, and I was shocked. She looked at my disbelief and asked why I was so confused. Honestly, I did not know that pow-wows were local at all. She seemed hurt that I had missed our professors stories of how prevalent Native Americans are in our society and Great Lakes area. I felt guilty; had I really missed that much? I had passed with a better grade than my friend, anyway, but did it really matter if I missed as big of a fact as the influence of culture around me? This is when I decided that I would learn to learn for the sake of learning, not for a simple grade.
Although grades seem important, they really are just letters that stamp approval of further course selections. I am confident that in this next semester of college I will soak in my education to better myself as a human and fully experience what my institution has to offer. I will put down the notecards for a minute and instead connect with my teacher and classmates through discussion that allows me to learn the materials for what the class really is. I will stop looking at a seemingly simple course as rudimentary; I will take it for what it is worth and then some, because there is always a deeper meaning below the surface.