Growing Up on American Soil by Connor

Growing Up on American Soil by Connor - November 2017 Scholarship Essay

Augustine of Hippo, a great philosopher of his time, once said “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” I, too, think in this same fashion and that is why I believe that studying abroad would heighten my education.
All my life I have known this soil around me. Growing up in my torn, dirt-covered sneakers, I’ve walked this soil my whole life. I have known only what America has given me. I know McDonalds fries and the film of salt it leaves on my taste buds. I know the peculiar lingo of the American tongue and all the strange words that comes with it. I know the story of the brave man Atticus Finch, the story of the poor Lenni Small, and of the misunderstood Elphaba. This American life is all I’ve ever known. This isn’t a terrible thing but it is a limited way in which I can grow.
For one to grow is for one to experience new life. To see things outside of your comfortable, banal existence. That is exactly what traveling abroad will offer. I need to replace my old shoes with new ones. To walk in new soil that I have never before been able to seep into.
The time I spend in college is when I will grow, in ever single aspect, the most. I am doing myself a terrible injustice by staying in a place I have become comfortable with. Studying abroad would enhance my education because I would be tasting new foods made with spices and herbs that I could have never tasted before. I will see smiles from a new people who have histories upon histories to tell. I will listen to stories of old and new about lands that I’ve never gazed upon before. I will feel, with my clammy palms, the hands of new friendships that will form. I will read books and crack their newly textured spines. All of these things, these wonderful things, will teach me about my world but most importantly will teach me about myself.
Oxford in Oxford, Britain is a university that shows the inner intellectual workings of the young writers minds. They are an institution driven by their unwavering stance that learning, from all aspects, is of vital importance especially when it comes to writing. Passion, for me is English Literature an area in which I would like to grow and view the American way in which we study the fine language which I find is somewhat limiting. I am a writer, born from the pages of novels. I want to know, not just from this one singular view but from a different cultural view on the art of crafting words. Oxford and many, many other great universities can offer me a new, refined taste for this art that is writing.
My brain, that soft tissue, will be able to grow further utilizing this scholarship than it ever would if I chose to stay on my comfortable American soil. I need to investigate and explore the world in order to grow. Learning is to live outside of that which we know. I used to believe that America could teach me all that I needed to know but now I yearn for more than that which I call home. As Anaïs Nin, the French-born novelist, once said “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”