#AChance by Maggie

#AChance by Maggie - April 2018 Scholarship Essay

Education is such a big thing. To try to sum it up is, difficult. To capture all of what education means is no easy thing. But if I were to create a hashtag that could embody just what education means to me, it would be #AChance. It’s a chance for me not only to get a nice paying job and a nice house or car, but it’s a chance for me to learn so much about the world and other people. I’ve learned so much more than what’s learned in the textbooks. I’ve met amazing people I would’ve never crossed paths with. I’ve learned so many life lessons that I can apply to real world and my everyday life. And no, I’m not talking about the Pythagorean Theorem or Newton’s Laws of Motion. This is something so much bigger. It’s something I’ll actually use more than once in my lifetime.

Opportunity is something we all want. Without it, we would go nowhere. All of us are faced with multiple opportunities daily, big or small. Education is one of those big opportunities. Quite literally, it gives us the opportunity to survive in today’s world. Most jobs require at least a high school diploma, many more require at least a bachelor’s. It used to be much easier to get a job without a college degree. But now even jobs like a secretary or insurance clerk that didn’t used to require college, now do. A job is basically essential to make it in life. It’s the best and really only way to get income to buy, well anything. Whether we want to believe it or not, money is essential to living a comfortable life. That doesn’t mean it’s everything, or that it even brings happiness. But it is 100% necessary. And it’s very hard to get that without a job. And a job is very hard to get without an education.

Through school, I have met most, if not all of my friends. Most teenagers could probably say the same. School is where we make our first real friends, all by ourselves, without our parents being the ones bringing us together. Those friends come and go, and new ones come in. But regardless, those people become some of the most important in our lives, good or bad. I would’ve never met my best friend, easily one of the most important people in my life. I would’ve never gone through my first heartbreak, or my second. I would’ve never broken up with someone. I would’ve never been hurt. I would’ve never learned how to make new friends. I would’ve been incredibly lonely. I would’ve never learned how to open up to people. This is the part of education people forget about; the social part. It’s more than just overlooked, it’s not even conceived as an idea. But it’s one of the most important.

Besides being given incredible opportunities, education has taught me so many life lessons I may not have learned anywhere else. Most people feel education doesn’t matter because they’ll never use geometry or chemistry in their lives. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they never will use either of those ever again. But there’s more to those lessons than the circumference of a circle. The most important lessons are the ones not written out across the board for us to copy in our notes with cool pens and highlight in pretty colors. You have to read between the lines. Education teaches us how to work hard, and that there are rewards for doing so. In school, you get a good grade and, depending on your teacher or how old you are, maybe you get a sticker like the classic gold star or a good ole scratch and sniff. We are taught that if we don’t work hard, we fall short of the good grade or the cool sticker. In real life, that could be not getting the job or the car you really wanted. We are taught how to apply ourselves. We learn how to take our knowledge and put it to the test, literally. We learn how to work with others, even people we don’t like. This is huge in the real world. You are going to have to work with so many people, a lot of which you may not be a big fan of. Regardless of how you feel about people, you still have to get the project done to get that cool sticker. You learn how to manage your time, especially if you are someone who has a lot of extracurriculars and clubs. You learn how to fit that all into your schedule somehow, because you have to. And when things conflict, because that does happen sometimes, you learn how to compromise and prioritize to make everyone happy. I would’ve never learned these lessons sitting around at my house all day.

Without education, we wouldn’t have the obvious opportunities like getting a good job or making most of our friends. But the part everyone misses is the lessons we are taught. Not the specific parts about Periodic Tables and space, but the subliminal messages that aren’t thrown right in our face. The skills that these classes teach us to have. The skills we can take into the real world, that not only make us better people, but give us a chance to succeed. A chance to live our best life.