Do. Your. Work. by Jacob

Do. Your. Work. by Jacob - April 2021 Scholarship Essay

What advice would I have given myself five years ago? I would have told myself that no matter how heavy the workload, how busy I was with my job, or how much I just didn't want to do homework, that it would be worth it in the end. I would have told myself that my grades, while I don't see any benefit of having a 4.0 GPA now, could be used to help get scholarships to fund my education. And lastly, I would have told myself to be a little more adventurous, to get out and meet new people.
I was used to never studying and still getting A's in all of my classes. I was also used to procrastinating, pretty much because my classes were so easy that I could do all of my work the night before. This was relatively true through freshman year, but my sophomore year was a different story. I picked up two harder classes, and I struggled to find the motivation to do my work. This was due to some personal things going on at the time that I won't go into, but regardless, that would come back to bite me now. My junior year was more of the same: the lack of motivation still lingered around. To make matters worse, schools were shut down (along with everything else) due to a virus no one had seen before. Talk about trying to be motivated to do your work when you aren't even seeing your teachers.
Move on to my current year, my senior year. Schools were open but there were still many restrictions. I didn't really see a point in going back to school in person so I stayed online for the first semester. This was probably my biggest mistake of the year. Not having the motivation or schedule of my classes combined with missing valuable physical resources made it very difficult to do my work. I decided once the second semester started that I needed to go back to school, and since then I have been having no trouble keeping up with my work.
So after the last five years, I would tell myself that even though doing the work might be tiring at the time, I would ultimately feel better if I found the motivation and kept my grades where they should be.