Passion by Makayla

Passion by Makayla - January 2018 Scholarship Essay

I have never had a favorite subject in school. Sometimes I would like certain teachers’ classes more than others, but I always liked language arts, math, science, history, and the extra curricular classes. This made it difficult for me to decide my answers to the typical senior year questions: “What do you want to do?” and “What is your major?”. At the beginning of the year, I considered myself lucky because I knew I wanted to be a doctor. However, I started having doubts a few months in. What if I wanted to an engineer instead? Or a lawyer? Or an artist? My problem was that I enjoyed every subject and activity I encountered. After my miniature crisis, I discovered that instead of trying to decipher what I enjoy I should be focusing on which problems I want to solve. My answer for that question was simple: I want to solve problems that change every day, and since every person is different that is possible for me in the medical field.
Now that I am set on pursuing a career in the medical field, I have even more questions to answer about myself. That is why I want to go to college. Once there, I can begin to figure out what I am passionate about. I want to find the part of the medical field that is enthralling to me because I want to be excited to get up for work every day when I get a job after college. I can enjoy every subject there is, but I need to find the thing that I could talk or read about for hours and never get bored. I already know that dentistry is not on my list of passions because no matter how hard I try I cannot find teeth fascinating. Neurology, on the other hand, I do find interesting because the brain and nerves affect every aspect of health.
Although I want to use my college experience to explore medical field possibilities, I also want to discover other passions in college as well. I love to paint, sing in choir, play chess, do karate, and write poems, so I know there are other passions out there that I will enjoy once I try them. It is important to me that I figure out my passions because once I know what they are I can work on getting better at them. I know I like neurology, painting, singing in choir, playing chess, doing karate, and writing poems, but during college I might find that I am passionate about another branch of medicine, sculpting, singing a capella, teaching karate, competing in chess tournaments, or performing poems.
I want to be passionate about what I do in life, and that includes everything from my future job to my future hobbies. Finding passions is crucial because passion is what allows people to express themselves and affect those around them, so the way I affect the world in the future is mostly determined by my passions. I want to be able to save lives, create art with meaning, make harmonies with other people, continue doing or teaching sports, challenge myself and others, and write about the world. These are very generalized interests, however, and I am hopeful that experiencing college will allow me to narrow down my goals and find my true passions.