Thinking Outside the Box Leads to Success by Drew

Thinking Outside the Box Leads to Success by Drew - October 2018 Scholarship Essay

Throughout our lives, we often hear the phrase “think outside the box” from our parents, teachers, peers, professors, etc in order to better our success on a particular task. Thinking outside the box essentially means to think of something out of the norm, something that others would never think of, something creative. Thinking outside the box isn’t an easy task and often people struggle with bringing out their creativity.

From when I was in kindergarten up until now, my sophomore year of college, people have always been telling me to think outside the box. Thinking outside the box means to think of something out of the norm or something very creative. Often times when a teacher gives a school project such as for example, re-creating a portion of a book by acting something out, writing a poem, etc, many students want to pick the easiest option and don’t want to get creative and ultimately it ends up being the same presentation given over and over again. To think outside the box would mean to choose something that nobody else would think of and to spice it up and make it your own piece of creativity.

Instead of continuing to talk about what it means to me, I’m going to give examples on how I have thought outside the box in the past. I love to get creative, because without creativity the world would be very boring and everyone and everything would be too similar. We need more things in this world that are different from everything else. When I played tennis in high school, each year we had to design a float for the homecoming parade. This was by far one of my favorite things to do as it required lots of creative thinking. During my senior year, the theme was “back in time” and many sports teams decorated their floats with peace signs and little things like that representing the past decades. However, I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing. This year I was the creative outlet, suggesting we buy records and write our names on them and our positions on the team and put them up around the float. We also went to a junkyard and found the front of an old truck and put that on our float. It was one of the craziest floats in the parade and it was all due to us thinking outside the box.

Another example where I thought outside the box was during my previous job. I’ve done factory work for the past two years and my jobs in particular have been a lot more mental than physical. During my first factory job, I worked by myself for most of the time and I always made sure to notify my boss of new ideas that I had to make the job process more efficient. As an 18 year old girl at the time, a lot of people didn’t quite value my opinion and expected me to do the job exactly how I was taught, but I wasn’t afraid of thinking of and presenting new processes and ways to make things move alone more quickly and efficiently and because of that, I received high praise from my boss and many other co-workers.

Thinking outside the box is the major key to success. If you choose the creative route, you’re more likely to be noticed. For school projects or essays, thinking outside the box can help lead you to that “A”. A college or university may choose you based on the creativity you bring to your essays. You could even get a promotion at work or simply just praise from your boss or supervisors for thinking of a creative solution to a problem. Thinking outside the box has given me lots of success in my life and I will continue to use my creativity to succeed in the remainder of college, vet school and my future job.