Education In Life by Ryan

Education In Life by Ryan - August 2022 Scholarship Essay

Preface: I believe my education does not solely consist of lecture materials and textbooks from an educational institution like my college or previous schools, especially for my major. To fully maximize a degree in business education, I believe, should include real world experiences to apply the business concepts and principles learned in a lecture. Thus, I believe these “real world experiences” should hold equal in magnitude, if not more, in my overall education goals. I should be able to apply the materials learned from my degree into real life AND also utilize real world experiences to better understand the business concepts learned in a classroom.

In 2020, during the height of my pandemic my family faced a major problem.

Although I have been in entrepreneur settings all my life, the first experience that pushed
me to pursue a major in business in hopes to start my own company one day, was when I worked
on reopening the restaurant during the Pandemic. The Lockdown in 2020 affected my restaurant
too as we closed business for three months. These three months were the longest break my dad
had ever taken in his life. However, towards the end he became restless sitting around at home,
he built a shed, started fixing things in the house that weren’t really broken, and overall finding
something to do. One day in June, he finally announced that we were going to finally reopen the
restaurant for business, but it wasn’t going to be as simple as turning on the open sign. Since, we
are in a Pandemic, my dad said we must take extra precautions to prevent the restaurant from
shutting down again. It was hard finding employees and thus we were extremely short-staffed
and if one person caught the virus, it would most likely spread to the small staff and force the
restaurant to shut down, but he had an idea.

When school was over, my father tasked me with helping him create the reopening plans
as a mock “summer internship.” My dad trusted me because I was familiar with the business
aspects as well as the customers in our area. For two weeks, my father and I worked at our plan
for reopening. First, he decided to switch to a take-out only restaurant for the time being. We
constructed a plexiglass wall with framing to completely separate the staff from the customers.
Then, he had to build a drawer system to hand customers their orders with zero contact. This was
not an easy task as gathering the resources were the most challenging part. Everyone at the time
had the same idea, thus there was a plexiglass shortage, and it was especially hard for us to find
as we required large sheets of plexiglass. I had to do some research and tracking online to finally
find a store four hours away where my father and I drove to get the supplies.

Next, I convinced my dad to transition to a Square POS System instead of the traditional
cash register. This would speed up the ordering process both in person and on the phone and
allows for an online menu to be incorporated onto our website. Then I setup an online ordering
system that automatically prints outs customer’s orders which cutdown on the phone traffic that
our small staff couldn’t keep up with. Finally, I taught myself how to use Facebook and Google
Business Ads to get the word out there and target specific areas in our community. I studied the
analytics of our Google Business profile and discovered that our pictures attracted the most
attention out of all the posts. With this information, I took pictures of our most popular dishes
and then asked my cousin, who was an expert in Adobe Photoshop, to create ads that will go on
Google Ads and Facebook Ads. The reopening ended up being a huge success.

Through this entire process, I recognized the importance of past bonds. I constantly asked
my older cousin and friends for help on using Adobe Photoshop and the modeling software for
the enclosure. My father was then able to turn to his construction friends for guidance on
physically building this enclosure. Overall, being able to turn toward friends who were experts in
certain fields for help made the reopening process much easier. I also loved the opportunity to
listen to customers’ opinions and think of ways to satisfy their needs. I treasure working under
my father’s guidance. We share a similar passion for discovering innovative ways to improve our
restaurant that I had grown up in.

I believe that these experiences are the most valuable lessons I can learn in business and
something that no textbook or professor can ever teach in a classroom. Although, a conventional
education is important, it is how the individual implement the principles and concepts learned in
a classroom that truly makes a college degree come to value.