The Challenge To Be Inspired by Drue

The Challenge To Be Inspired by Drue - October 2019 Scholarship Essay

For the past three years, I was an average English student. This may seem like no big deal, but after my junior year English class, my opinion to be average changed. My teacher, Mr.Swearengen, opened my eyes to look beyond high school. Swearengen felt it was his job to make sure his students understand life is not about book reports, tests, and rubrics. Life is about thinking outside the box, adapting to your surroundings, and being creative.
In one of the most unpredictable moments of the class, he challenged the students and me to make their own rubrics for the first project of the year. The task was to create a speech on what we wanted to do when we grew up. This was the first time I ever experienced a situation where I was in control of the full process, nothing to rely on. Crazy to say an assignment like this one took so long to show up in my life, but it did, and I did not take it lightly. I was spiraling trying to figure out what was right or wrong. I tried to ask questions except he would turn me down with the same type of responses, "how do you feel it should go" or "what do you want to say." This confused me because I could not understand how to be successful without knowing what points were needed. It wasn't until after all the hard work I put into the speech that I realized why he had us figure out the project ourselves. Swearengen wasn't trying to grade us on how well our speech was delivered. He graded us on whether we took on the challenge and adapted, or gave up because someone was not holding our hand throughout the process. So I had to ask myself if I was right or wrong and this was a difficult part of the task. I needed to go through that discomfort to better improve my work. In the end, I was additionally proud of my product because of the amount of effort I put in. The uniqueness of everyone’s assignment made it easier for me to see first hand which were successful and which needed improvement. These insights would later help improve my future projects.
Swearengen’s teaching style gave me a reason to believe I could be creative, and rely on myself. Although, saying Swearengen was my inspiration is not what he would want. He would want me to say I inspired myself, he just gave me the challenge to do so. As for now my success is being in an honors English class with an "A", and enjoying to create, but what Swearengen’s encouragement has taught makes me feel more confident in myself to succeed later.