From Desks to Dreams by Elaine

From Desks to Dreams by Elaine - June 2024 Scholarship Essay

Is it particularly enjoyable to sit at a desk for hours on end? Well, not exactly. Whether it's a desk in the comfort of your own room or the typical blue plastic desk chairs with tables attached only fitting for the right arm, there is a transition of beneficial factors between my environment and the academic rigor of school.

For me, the structure of formal education itself was borderline cruel, especially during high school where it gives the challenge of placement into new rigorous AP/IB classes, having to wake up extremely early, the pressure to do tons of extracurriculars, and then doing it all on insufficient amounts of sleep each day are deemed the wondrous elements of the high school experience.

However, in my free time, I immerse myself in activities such as reading baking recipes, searching for new craft ideas, looking into inspirations for personal graphic designs, watching tutorial videos on how to implement new editing techniques and more. Taking part in the learning of these activities stood conversely to the often text-driven curriculum of school.

But mentioning all these pursuits are to say that they are part of my informal education, which played a role to my academic success by providing inspiration and intrinsic motivation to run on. While academic success can be summed up through studying and efficient time management to achieve high marks, my informal education has given me great understanding on the potential and meaning behind accumulating any type of knowledge in the first place. In other words, even if the subjects I took didn’t seem to be very exciting from its challenges, (e.g AP Psychology, AP US History and much more) they would now be seen in my eyes as possible pathways to embark. Though mainly, it gave me the momentum to put effort into my studies rather than take the easiest way out of high school. Even more so, informal education has also created the way for future academic success on my part, as it has influenced my choices for higher education to pursue a field of radio, television, and film production. Without it, I couldn’t have ever felt so fulfilled in achieving academic success in the first place. Henceforth, in summary, my informal education complimented my formal education as a role to academic success by enriching it with curiosity and a passion for learning that school itself couldn’t do alone.