Something Truly Worth Learning by Hannah

Something Truly Worth Learning by Hannah - June 2016 Scholarship Essay

“You’re so self disciplined”, “don't worry so much”, “don't be so hard on yourself,”...these fall under a long list of similar phrases that have been said to me throughout my life, or perhaps, more accurately, my academic life. When it comes to things such as due dates, papers, or projects, I feel the strong desire to excel in any academic setting. And, for the most part, I've been successful at doing so. Two years ago, when all of my hard work in preparation to become a Rotary Youth Exchange Student (those countless essays, never ending forms, and several, quite terrifying, interviews) all finally appeared worth it, and I had been accepted to study abroad my Junior year of high school, I did not, or perhaps could not, foresee the upcoming, inexplicable challenges that could only be understood by experiencing them for oneself. Those academic, and those not.
When I entered the strange, new school, in the strange, new country of Austria at the tender age of sixteen, the realization of the obstacles that lay before me seemed to hit me like a tidal wave as I sat down beside my new classmates. These people, who, despite having shared a similar age group, might as well had been from a different planet. They wore unfamiliar clothing, and spoke in a tongue I could, if I was lucky, pick out a mere word or two from an entire conversation. It was, in that moment, I realized I would struggle in this particular academic setting. In the weeks, even months to come, I would sit and stare agape in complete, mental exhaustion from trying to understand what the professor was saying to the class. I would type relentlessly into my translator, hoping for some sort of understanding that I could grasp, just trying to keep up. I wouldn’t excel at every assignment handed to me, I wouldn’t know the answers to the questions asked, as I did back home. In fact, there wouldn’t be an assignment I could successfully complete for several months, let alone excel at. It is this that challenged me the most, academically. To learn to be okay with the fact that I would no longer be at the top; I would be, quite understandably, at the bottom. I would be the foreigner. And to learn and accept the beauty of being an outsider, of learning and not just understanding, was a lesson of which, I soon became aware, that I desperately needed to learn. As time progressed, and I soon began to hesitantly welcome this new-way of being, I started to see a change in not only myself, but in the world around me, as well. This world, the entirety of our life, is a journey of learning. You will not always be the best of the best, nor should you. To be foreign, to not understand, to be scared, to be vulnerable, to be lost and confused and homesick...that is to live. What good can come from never learning something new, or constantly sticking inside the box of one’s comfort zone? To never let your guard down, and to never accept the fact that sometimes, you will, in fact, be last...you sometimes must be a beginner, a trainee, a novice….a young, grasshopper in the school of life! One must be these things in life, in the hopes of ever learning something truly valuable, something truly worth learning.