Hashtags by Hannah

Hashtags by Hannah - March 2023 Scholarship Essay

Often when it comes to education, students feel as if what they are learning will not benefit them in real life. I myself often wondered if the quizzes I take, lectures I sit through, and knowledge I try to store away will ever be needed in a real-life scenario. It became easy for me to fall into a steady rhythm of drowning out my teachers, completing my work, and moving on. However, while I was learning I was not gaining anything, I was making no connection with the material or my teachers. That is until I had Professor Floyd, who helped me engage with my work and use it to inspire the activities of my everyday life. She opened my eyes to the usefulness of what we were learning and how the lessons could be applied to most any situation. She did this through the use of her hashtags.
I was reluctant to accept Professor Floyd’s teaching methods at first. She was different from the bland professors I was used to having and pushed the class to interact. She would do anything to keep our attention, from pulling up YouTube videos related to our content to motivational rapping for our class. I at first, was one of the ones who did not appreciate the efforts she put in to inspire us to do our best work. I could not understand why instead of focusing on the lecture she spent most of the class inspiring us to be better people, I was so focused on the grade and English work that I did not understand that in doing so she was teaching the material. The one thing that truly stuck with me throughout her lectures were the hashtags she would use. Whenever she said something she would call “delicious” she would stop lecturing and have us write it down immediately. We would pause and take the time to analyze the words, relating them both to our material and to our daily lives. These hashtags kept me connected and engaged, the inspired me not only to better my learning, but to better my life. One of these that really stuck with me was “#After you have been trained, you have more opportunities”. In saying this she explained to us that people are not born with unlimited opportunities, but if you work towards what you desire and take the steps to get yourself to the place you need to be to obtain your goals the opportunities will start to show up. This gave me a drive to work harder at my schooling because unless I worked hard at it and trained myself mentally, I was not going to receive the help I need or make it into the colleges I desired. She taught me that success comes from hard work and that communication is key. She changed my perception of English by pushing me to dive deeper into my text and discover what the text is communicating to me instead of doing what she would call “getting lost in the sauce.” She helped me take what I am learning and apply it to my daily life, in a way I did not think was possible.
I will be forever in debt to Professor Floyd. She changed my way of thinking and inspired me to try harder in life. I often get lost in the sauce, when if I took the chance to pause analyze and communicate like she said I would find myself being a more successful learner. It is thanks to her that I finally settled on a career path as I one day hope to be a teacher like she is. I can only hope that one day others may find their own Professor Floyd to encourage them the way she did me.