Ron's Clothes Weren't Golden, But His Advice Was by Charles

Ron's Clothes Weren't Golden, But His Advice Was by Charles - September 2014 Scholarship Essay

No matter who you are or what you like doing, college can be an amazing experience. But how can we make college such a good experience, how do we have fun but also excel academically? Like Ronald Weasley once said to Hermione Granger, you “need to sort out [your] priorities.” Priorities are the things in life that we determine are important and what’s less important – they are the things that we do now versus waiting until 2:00 AM to do. Once we figure out what our priorities are we can truly buckle down and do everything that we want to do.

People often complain of the problem of not having enough time in the day, but this is merely a product of not knowing what we want to do. We flitter back and forth between meaningless activity to homework to television, and complain that “there’s just too much homework.” We need to sit down and really figure out what’s important to us. Trying to figure out what is important to us will force us to acknowledge what it is we actually want to do in our lives, overall and in the day to day. This will make people more clear-headed and less wishy-washy about what their day is going to be like. Priorities make people determined; they are not just “living” anymore but they are goal-oriented and have manageable steps to achieve their goals.

After self-reflection will come a better understanding of how to manage our time. For example, let’s say Adam is going to school but also likes playing video games and volunteering. If he focuses on the essentials (getting good grades), the secondary goals (volunteering), and tertiary goals (video games), he can organize his schedule around the two set time goals. If Adam knows that if he gets his homework done right after classes, he can still make it to his volunteer work and go to sleep at a normal time – there’s no sane reason why he wouldn’t. He should constantly be thinking of the repercussions of his actions: He can sleep after class for 2 hours, but that means that he’ll have to miss volunteering unless he wants to put his grades (and sleep) in jeopardy. Having one’s priorities set out forces one to work hard in the allotted time in order that one can still make everything else that is considered a goal.

Not only does having one’s priorities set make one more determined but it also shows other people what a passionate person looks like. People crave authenticity, they want to see people who are excited about their life and are doing steps to make it the best they can have. If Adam works extremely hard in the time he has and still has time for volunteering and sleep, people will see what a joyful person he is. They will notice how happy he is with his life because he’s accomplishing the goals that he set for himself. This is even more visible in college classes when you see the person who seems to “have it all together”, because they know what they want and strive to get it.

College is a time where it can be the greatest years of one’s life (yet), but students need to know that they just need to set their priorities straight if they want to succeed. One can party, game, socialize, volunteer, and still succeed academically but we need to have discipline. We can’t have everything if we don’t work for it!