Advice for a Young Student by Mason

Advice for a Young Student by Mason - April 2021 Scholarship Essay

Five years ago at this very moment, I was in seventh grade. I was a smart student with his eyes set on the ultimate goal of college. While I was confident in what I wanted to do with my life, I was nowhere near prepared for the long, bumpy road ahead of me. If I could give myself from five years ago any advice, it would be to stay strong and determined and to always look at things optimistically.

At the end of eighth grade, I was preparing to go to high school. However, my situation was different than most of my friends’; I would be going to a high school two towns over instead of the one I was zoned for. Making this decision was extremely difficult as it forced me to weigh my academics against my friends. The school I chose offered a rigorous computer science course that the other school did not offer. This course would help advance me further in my desired career more than anything else offered to me could. In the end, I chose the academics over my existing friends. The resulting events were hard to get through; at this new school, I had no friends and finding my way around was difficult. In the end, though, because I was strong and determined, I made friends better than the ones I had before and found where I fit in at school. I wish I had been more confident at the beginning of that school year, but the struggle I experienced helped define me as a person.

In my sophomore year, I felt like I had finally achieved a sense of comfort that would never leave. I was quickly proven wrong when the Category 5 Hurricane Michael unexpectedly ravaged the Gulf Coast. For a week, my family and I had to evacuate to Alabama. That week was particularly nerve-wracking because I did not know what had happened to my house and what to expect coming home. Fortunately, our living situation had not been disrupted and I was able to return to school after a short break. When school came back in session, I found myself becoming lazy and not doing work as I should have. This taught me a lesson when I saw my grades begin to slip. To combat this, I started keeping careful track of my homework and doing specific amounts of studying every night. I wish I had been more determined before this point, as I made a poor grade on my trigonometry exam and it affected my GPA. In the end, however, my study habits and my work ethic were strengthened because of this incident.

The next year, it was easy to feel like nothing could throw me off of my goals again. This, of course, was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the relaxed stay-at-home workload and environment that was necessary during this period of time, my work ethic began to slip again. While the work became increasingly easier towards the end of the school year, I found that I was more reluctant to do work. This paired with the inability to see my friends every day led me to become unmotivated and upset. However, with the news that exams would still continue, I realized that I would have to study. This event helped me to regain my determination and I began studying, as I knew these tests would impact my future. I ultimately passed all my exams and learned another important lesson about strength and determination through examining my future outcomes.

In conclusion, it was only possible to maintain the grades and determination I did through a positive outlook. It was important to retain the outlook that I did because it helped me to remember that things are not always bad, and that things will get better if I put in the work that I should. I would give this advice to myself five years ago because it is critical in the struggles and experiences I faced, and ultimately helped to shape my future as a whole.