Through Your Eyes by Kathy

Through Your Eyes by Kathy - May 2015 Scholarship Essay

Every single person has their own talent or skill, one that makes them unique in their own being. Whether that talent be in the arts or in the sciences, taking the time to look around at others remarkable personalities, can reveal to you your own exceptional being. The question at hand is how your peers have taught you a lesson or skill in the world of academics, but that is just the surface of this question. How do you define something as objective as education? You may take the routine route and define it as a systematic and fixed experience, or you may take the definition that few regard. Education is subjectively, an enlightening experience in one's life. In some, it may be through textbooks or through the school system. For others, such as myself, it may be through one’s kin. It is foolish to believe that everything worth knowing may be taught in a textbook, and I am here to prove the utmost honesty of that statement.

The lesson that I have learned through my peers is understanding. What exactly is understanding? The ability to feel sympathetically towards others, or to have good insight or judgment. The standard definition may easily be found in any dictionary or textbook, but reading about it, and feeling it is completely different. To feel compassion towards others is a skill acquired not innate. I have been privileged to grow up in a society where racial equality is fought for, where different religions are accepted not discriminated, and where we fight for what we believe in. Whether the ends justify the means. This lesson has been taught through those around me, by the everyday things that they do. Whether they excel in science, or master the arts, I am introduced to a different kind of beauty in every single person I meet. But most importantly, my peers have taught me to apply understanding not only to others, but most importantly to myself. Having spent the last sixteen years of my life feeling inadequate because of our school system, I have finally realized that I have a talent. A talent to inspire others, one that invokes emotion from them. I tell you this, I am not a jack of all trades, but what I can do, I master with not only my mind but with my heart. Government, public speaking, history- all subjects that I am constantly put down for excelling in, because they are not the norm. But because of my friends around me, who inspire me to break those boundaries and live my own individual life.

There is beauty in every single walk of life, in every talent and in every individual friend of mine. They just all express it in a completely different manners- but that is what makes them so great. Seeing and understanding that every little idiosyncrasy that my friends possess is what makes them so individual and alive is what inspires me to move forward. To look at the world as something beautiful, waiting to be explored, not feared. Whether the lesson I learned was one that is traditional or not, I am here to tell you that it means something. Something that can never be learned through mass media or printed text. It is a lesson that takes a whole lifetime to learn, one that is never meant to be mastered. One that fuels my curiosity every single day for more, and as the great Steve Jobs had once said- “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”