One Million Starts With One...Be the One by Jackson

One Million Starts With One...Be the One by Jackson - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

Jackson Zammit
Varsity Tutors

If roles were to be reversed, which subject would I teach and why? Although there are many options, to me, there is only one clear choice. I would love to teach civics. I would choose civics because it comes closest to the teaching of life’s morals, dignity, duties, and respect. There are multiple reasons why I would decide to teach civics, but I can break it down into about three. One would be because I, as well as many other people, have witnessed an ongoing issue in upcoming generation’s behavior and respectful or disrespectful actions, and I would love to be the change I want to see. Another is because there has been unnecessarily too much division in this world lately, actually for a while now. I would love to teach reasons why we should unite, rather than teach reasons we should divide. The final reason is because I simply enjoyed the learning of the subject, and felt as if I grasped it in a different way than others would.
For a while now, I have been very aware of what has been going on in this world. In school, in public, wherever I am I have witnessed kids, even some adults have a ridiculous issue in their behavior towards one another. It truly is a shame in my eyes, because growing up, with one older brother and two younger brothers, I felt as if I had a few objectives. To me, those were to provide a positive influence and role model for my younger brothers to look up to, and to play the wonderful games of baseball, basketball, and football with them. My ideology on the principles and life and behavior is what I count as one of the biggest blessings I have been provided with. I love showing my brothers the right way to act, greet, and treat others with correct mannerisms whether you know them personally or don’t even know them at all. Respect and manners have always been the two most important basic principles in life. And I would love to impact young minds and lives with the knowledge and stance I have on the ideas of respect and mannerism.
In the world today, division is perhaps not at an all-time high, but it is more prevalent than it should be. Due to many unfortunate events in the past years and current year, there has been a clear separation between groups of people. To me, that seems unacceptable. We as a country and we as a society have gone through too many times and fought for too much for there to be such a division in society. I feel as if there are multiple ways to teach and provide young minds of ways to unite as humans, unite as mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, brothers and sisters, men and women rather than provide the unacceptable issues and put center focus on reasons and ways to divide. I would absolutely love to show kids, young men, and women, by setting an example, how we can unite and take on the world and fix these issues in unison, rather than fight and divide in separate parties or cultures.
When I was in middle school and I began learning the subject of civics, I didn’t necessarily think that I would enjoy the learning of civics, of the duties as a civilian. But weeks in, people in my class would blow off the class and not pay any attention and then it hit me that I wanted to pay attention and grasp the concept of a citizen. What necessarily is a “good” citizen? To me, a good citizen is one who cares for one another, one who knows of their surroundings and approaches them correctly. A good citizen is one who respects everyone, whether they show respect or not, it is your job to prove yourself as a good citizen, a well-mannered and respectful man or woman. As I previously said, I believe that it is one of my biggest blessings in life to have this vision and concept of ideal behavior. If I could affect the minds of young men and women in a positive manner, a life-changing manner, I would achieve the greatest goal in life, and that is to simply make the world a better place.
I firmly believe that I could have written this essay about other subjects because I find interest, well besides math, in all subjects. I could have written about anatomy because I believe all athletes and everybody should know about their body. I could have written about history because it’s very important to know about not only our countries, but the world’s history. I could have very possibly written about economics and government because as one gradually becomes an adult, they should very well be prepared for what is coming ahead of them. Although, I came to the conclusion that in this day and age, civics came closest to touching the minds and hearts of the upcoming generation. I know I would be affecting a small sample of a generation, but one million starts with one. I’ll end on one of my favorite quotes from Isaiah Thomas, “If all I’m remembered for was being a great athlete, then I’ve done a bad job with the rest of my life.”