One Step at a Time by Erika

One Step at a Time by Erika - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

In my freshman year of high school, I had an elderly woman for an art teacher who loved art and all its aspects. Since I was infatuated with the ideas of creating art and loved to draw, I of course dubbed this teacher as my favorite as the year progressed before she retired. This teacher taught me what art really is, and encouraged me to pursue my interests and to essentially live and breathe my dreams through art. At one point, my art teacher observed me struggling with a certain project as I tried tackling it from several different angles, but to no avail.

“In art, you need to feel the piece. That’s the best way to create something special, since it comes from what’s inside,” she said as she came alongside me.

Taking her words to heart, I decided to scrap the piece and create something that I actually felt rather than something I wanted to paste on paper and call a project before the deadline. From then on, whenever I had issues with a problem, I’d try to flow with it, much as my creativity depended on that flow to create that certain project for art class. Four years later, I can relate this creator’s block moment as being kin to life in general, where in order to better solve something that’s eluding you, you have to actually get down and flow with the piece. Even at the young age of eighteen, I’ve already had several moments where I had to sit down and just flow with something without overstressing or overthinking it, because sometimes you just have to relax and wait for things to calm. Granted, there’s still work to do, but rather than rushing everything head on and trying to just get it done, a better method could be to quit worrying and simply let come whatever may.

Life’s journey may be harder than expected to traverse and experience, but it holds as many beneficial and benevolent surprises as much as it holds crippling or unfortunate ones. Only time will tell how things will turn out, and patience is key to allowing things to heal over or settle. We can tackle the vast majority of our problems, as can be seen by the art project, but occasionally it’s okay to relax and simply live. Simply existing can take away many of our problems, and taking the time to appreciate our individual pieces and solve a problem with our heads above the water works wonders. My art teacher may have been just referring to the art project in general, but she also meant so much more. She knew things could get difficult, and that you just had to step back from a problem and let your subconscious take control. Because although we may just want to succumb to the panic and let it take us, we just have to calm our senses and roll with it. Internally, deep down somewhere, we know what we’re doing, we just have to let our inner conscious take control and help us solve things through actually living and experiencing the problem. As simple as the experience was for me, it impacted me in more ways than I could imagine, and has even shaped my way of thinking to take things steps at a time in order to truly feel what I’m doing to give my best without overthinking or overstressing the event.