It's All About Me by Makenna

It's All About Me by Makenna - December 2017 Scholarship Essay

Legs propped up on the table in front of me, I lean back in the library chair. A pen sits upon my bottom lip, not quite in, but not quite out, either. Before me lays a spread of school supplies: notecards, colored pens, papers, binders, a computer with twenty tabs open.... Ah, yes. This is the life, truly. There's simply nothing better than those hours contemplating a newly assigned project before putting it into action. Time is blissfully filled with ideas and connections and angles and options and...

Most of my peers hate projects. I'm more than aware of it, and I used to be the same way. Now, I find a certain comfort in them, in my surefire recipe for success. It's how I write essays. It's how I make presentations. It's how I give reports. My strategy never fails me, because my strategy is, well, me.

The first thing I do when I'm presented with a new project is read and reread the criteria. I consider that which is needed and that which the rubric does not account for. How much creativity I can get away with is directly connected to how loose the project's grading system is. That might seem like cheating or taking unfair advantage of the system, but what I've found is that teachers intentionally leave loopholes. They want to be surprised. They want to be engaged. They want individuality to shine through.

Once I've internalized the project details, I make two lists. The first contains twists that I can put on the project without violating the assignment. The second contains my recent interests. Ultimately, I choose an interest that connects with the project in some way and look at the project from that specific angle. As is such, I'm compelled to put time into the project and to take pride in my work.

In everything I do, my personal interests have at least a subtle impact on my work. In sophomore year, I had to teach a form of slang. Since I was interested in all things Sherlock Holmes, I did British slang in the Victorian era. In junior year, I was instructed to pick a poem and analyze it in a three-page paper. Since I was interested in the trials of Oscar Wilde, I chose Two Loves, a poem that was used against him in court. This year, in my online computer class, I was instructed to make a PowerPoint about pets. Seeing as we weren't being graded on information, my project featured several pets from the Star Trek universe. I also use the topic of LGBTQ representation in fictional media – something that I am very passionate about – for almost all persuasive and argumentative papers that I am assigned. All of the projects detailed were time consuming, but I wanted to work on them. When employing this method, I have never received a grade less that a ninety-six percent.

Interest in a school project makes all the difference in the world. Unfortunately, it's not always naturally there. In these cases, it is best to create some interest by considering those subjects that one enjoys.

This is the strategy that I employ, and it has not failed me yet.