Society's Life Lessons by Katelyn

Katelynof Pell City's entry into Varsity Tutor's October 2013 scholarship contest

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Katelyn of Pell City, AL
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Society's Life Lessons by Katelyn - October 2013 Scholarship Essay

Of all the valuable life skills obtained throughout childhood, only a handful are gained in the classroom. Often, adolescents rely on experiences in their everyday lives to shape their ideas of life skills. In my life, the hardest lesson to learn happened at the ripe age of fourteen. This lesson was one that every teenager has to learn at one point in his or her life; people often reject and ridicule what they do not understand. This valuable life lesson has been a building block for many other lessons I have had to learn in my life.
When I was fourteen years old, my family got the shock of a lifetime when my brother was diagnosed with a rare form of skin cancer, Well-Differentiated Squamous Cell Carcinoma. He was only sixteen years old at the time, so he was merely a sophomore in high school. Our family travelled to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, 12 hours away, so my brother could have an operation to rid him of cancer. Because the cancer was located in his sinus cavity, two thirds of the pallet in the roof of his mouth was removed and he was required to wear a device in order to do normal functions many take for granted, such as eating properly, talking, and even breathing correctly. When we returned home, he went back to school and made a valiant attempt to go back to normal as quickly as possible. But due to his device, this was not what happened.
As young adults, our views are shaped by those of society, who often rejects anyone who is deemed “different.” When students found out that my brother had cancer, they began distancing themselves from him, leaving him isolated at one of the most critical points in his life. I could not understand why this was happening, or why anyone would laugh when my brother couldn’t eat the same way as they did. I had to learn that these kids were not trying to be cruel; they just did not understand the situation my brother was in. Society has warped our minds, and these views of isolating people who are not like us have taken over. This lesson was very difficult for me to learn, but it was necessary to learn because I now am aware at just how much we are affected by the views of others.

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