Ordinarily Beautiful by Maggie

Ordinarily Beautiful by Maggie - November 2018 Scholarship Essay

High school is made up of a million tiny moments, which then become memories. Some moments that you want to hold on to forever, and some you wish you could take back. Through my four years of high school, I have learned that most days are somewhere in between. There are a lot of ordinary days. The only way to truly make the most of this time of character growth and learning, is to pick out the best parts of everyday. In a heavy moment concluding a light hearted television series, Pam Beasley said “There’s a lot of beauty in the ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?” I believe that this is extremely true, especially in my own high school experience.
High school is designed to help each student to grow into the functional members of society that we will soon be. Each class has a different purpose, something new to teach us. I realized at the beginning of my senior year the most beautifully ordinary detail that I had overlooked up until this point. High school is like a puzzle. Every piece, or class, fits together and works to make us successful and well educated. I began to see how biology and sociology fit together, and how William Shakespeare affected today’s government. The way that every detail of the mundane routine we all feel stuck in, is actually a fundamental and beautiful part of who we are. A high school class schedule is one of the most common, ordinary things, and yet it is so beautiful.
Everyday we walk by hundreds of different people in the hallway. Constantly surrounded by social groups and people we recognize. At lunch time, everyone shuffles their way to a designated spot where we are joined by our friends and we lament and celebrate the highs and lows of our days. Each class eventually holds familiar faces, many of which we grow to enjoy seeing. Never again will community be so readily available as it is in high school. Relationships thrive because of proximity and commonalities, and many of each are readily provided in high school. The overwhelming opportunity for relationship is easily one of the most beautiful things about high school.
Many aspects of high school are not so glamorous, and can even be challenging at times. However, high school is the days that we will look back and miss in twenty years, and wish that we had paid more attention to the ordinary things. My senior yearbook quote speaks directly to the beauty in the ordinary things, because after all, “Isn’t that the point?”