A Course for Seminar by Cristian

A Course for Seminar by Cristian - September 2017 Scholarship Essay

An opportunity had arisen, in my freshman year I was alerted to a new course my school would be offering, AP Seminar; I quickly became aware of the fact that this class was an elective, would be the second year of the program, and only 8 schools offered such course in California, I readily accepted. The purpose of the course was simple: train students to accurately and reliably collect and employ data to effectively develop an argument. At the time we had to develop a group research project with a group essay, of which we were to stem off with an individual essay, alongside a presentation, and individually create a paper on another subject and perform a presentation on it.
The class at first glance appeared to be dedicated to various acronyms (E.G. SMART, RAVEN, RADCAB etc...), however, at closer inspection the class was offering methods to determine reliability and credibility of source material and only improved my work as a student. We held weekly socratic seminars on various topics we were told to investigate and to further our knowledge in; this experience broadened the scope of my perspective to various fields I had never considered interesting be it politics or electrochemistry. The new perspective I gained on less-frequently touched subjects has stimulated my curiosity and has propelled me to explore new topics with excitement.
As a part of the AP test, I was required to take part of the aforementioned group project; I typically had worked individually on every assignment in school, at cases convincing teachers to excuse me from being required to be part of groups in group assignments, however, this was required for an AP test, so no excuses were made. As part of the group I was forced to rely on others, a previously foreign feeling, this reliance would be tested as by habit I doubted the work of others and always researched their research. However, as time progressed my instincts were continually proven wrong as my partners were always correct in their research; this proved two-fold: the acronyms were proving useful as no one was utilizing faulty information and that I could trust my partners. The skill of trust has granted me the ability to not only allow myself to know others more, but to also explore new perspectives at my school that permitted me new methods of dealing with various aspects of life, be it coursework or communication.
With the AP Seminar class, I learned a variety of lessons: be it trust, a greater sense of curiosity, and a broadened perspective. All I learned would be applied in my future high school years and improve my literacy, grades, and communication; all from an elective.