The Path to the Unknown by Kayla

The Path to the Unknown by Kayla - January 2016 Scholarship Essay

New Years is a time to celebrate the past year and to welcome one with a fresh, new start. Most resolutions that come with this time revolve around losing weight, exercising more often, or saving quality time for you to relax or to follow a dream. My personal goal is not what may be considered the “typical” resolution, as I have chosen to focus on learning something new each day. This discovery cannot be some fact that I learned in my regular school classes, as that would be too basic and familiar. I instead am focusing on researching outside of the classroom, maybe on a topic that interest me such as global warming and dance; I might reach outside of my comfort zone, though and find something completely new to me such as Indian culture or different oceanic species. The limit does not exist, I realized throughout my first few days of this new resolution.
It might be thought that this is a neat idea but it does not really do anything for me health wise, academically, socially, etcetera. I would need to refute this with a simple statement though: the unknown can only hurt you if you are unaware of its existence. This leads to the belief that yes, it does not help me in one area of my life, but instead it does so in all aspects. One day, a goal of mine might be learning how many calories one should burn to remain on a healthy diet, which I can now answer with the fact that it varies depending on your height and weight but ultimately you should be able to figure out the amount that you should burn by taking your weight and multiplying it by ten. Another goal of mine might be to make a new friend and learn about their life, as that would be consistent with the idea of learning something new. And academically, well, this may all be considered helpful throughout the future. Every little quote memorized or fact stored away might become useful. Maybe I will learn a new fact that I can use to open an essay’s introduction with, or I can know the extra credit answer without having to look it up. Altogether though, isn’t all of this knowledge really considered useful when it comes to school? Not only does this broaden my worldviews, but it also keeps my brain flowing, so to speak. The knowledge does not end nor begin, it just flows. This increases my intake of new information and helps me to hold an interest in learning, and isn’t that important, to not just go through redundant routines with hard tests and too much homework, but to understand why the information is important and to find a new love for learning. Therefore, I am already finding that my resolution will help me advance in my academics throughout this 2016 school year and will provide a fresh intake on old or new ideas.