Leave the Box Behind by Jennie

Leave the Box Behind by Jennie - October 2018 Scholarship Essay

The concept of being “conditioned” to think or behave a certain way means that however you grew up influences your life, especially your perception of the world. Say someone lives in a home with parents who became speech pathologists and who raised their kids to look forward to a job in the medical field as well. The kids will be inclined to believe that he or she was meant to be a speech pathologist or a doctor of some sort. In another family, the children grew up hearing their parents fight with each other regularly about dishes and laundry, etc., so the kids developed a habit to fight with people over petty things as well. Conditioning has a huge impact on people’s lives. It fits everything into a box. It can define one’s social habits and goals for their life. Conditioning may even aid someone in defining oneself, for better or worse. Many may never break free of the bondage of conditioning, or “the box”, for as long as they live. To me, thinking outside of the box means to question ideas that you have been conditioned to believe and to imagine/take alternate courses of action.
I live in Oklahoma. People define Oklahoma as the land of the waving wheat (I’m even named after the crop) where tornadoes - which, by the way, Oklahomans sit on their porches to marvel at half of the time - ravage the city of Moore. People think of Oklahomans as people who say “y’all” and “fixin’ to” all the time (which we do). The general public does not, however, imagine us as movie stars, music producers, or presidents. When I traveled with my school marching band to the civic center two years ago to perform with the Philharmonic, we got our own dressing rooms, snacks, and special uniforms for the event. I felt like a celebrity! I spoke to one of my friends in the grade above me about performing professionally at the civic center one day or maybe even on TV since “all this jazz” was making me believe in my potential success as a musician a little bit more. I remember exactly what she said in response: “Well, good luck. I’ll never be talented enough to perform here.” As a teenager who loved to sit in my bedroom most nights and watch motivational YouTube videos, I couldn’t believe she said that! To me, it sounded more like her decision than an evaluation of her skills. What I realize now, though, is that so many people feel like they “could never do this” or they “could never be that”. I realize now more than ever that many of my friends with whom I’ve grown up have been conditioned to think that their place of birth (or the success of their ancestors) has predisposed them to be engineers, teachers, or plumbers. What if they want to be an actor in New York one day? Oh, they could never be that. But wait, yes they can! Let the world behold the first generation millionaire/the US President/ the CEO of a company/ the New York Actor/ the founder of a record-breaking nonprofit organization! To think outside of the box means to put aside where you were born, how much you have accomplished with your life up to this point, or what people think of you and instead act in disregard to all of those things. Thinking outside the box means working hard to be an actor, the president, an entrepreneur, etc. because that’s what you believe you are capable of.