The lessons they did not teach you by Kabrien

The lessons they did not teach you by Kabrien - June 2024 Scholarship Essay

Most people think learning only takes place in classrooms. As they include themselves in various extracurricular activities, they soon learn just how mistaken they were. I have learned a great deal in life in places others consider unorthodox or informal.

One of the settings that has been most influential to me has to be the basketball court. While playing sports on various teams and having different roles on each, I was taught to be adaptable to any situation. Sometimes the team would call for me to shoot, others it would call for me to pass. Regardless of the role, I was expected to perform at a high level. This taught me integrity and pride. In just these two instances alone, I was taught something that a professor standing in front of the room had not. Adaptability, integrity, and pride are hard to learn without experiences backing them. Basketball provided that backing, which, in turn, taught me valuable lessons a classroom could not.

Taking the lessons I learned on the basketball court and transitioning them into the classroom granted me significant success in my academic life. When transferring from school to school, I had to adapt to a number of things including different environments, different teaching methods, and different rules/regulations I was not used to. Since I had previously learned how to be adaptable, I was able to make a seamless transition each time I transferred schools. I was able to blend into my environment and make friends, which made focusing on my academics very easy.

Also, having integrity and taking pride in my work made being the new kid on the block less intimidating. When students are new to schools they tend to slip in their school work and teachers do not yet know what to expect. However, having integrity and taking pride in my education helped me keep my grades up even when teachers might have looked over me for being new. Despite attending four different schools throughout my high school experience, I was able to maintain at least a 3.5 GPA across all four years. Nevertheless, none of that would have been possible without first learning how to adapt to new situations, while still showing integrity, and having pride in my work.