More Than Just a Class by Samuel

More Than Just a Class by Samuel - August 2017 Scholarship Essay

College students are seen as the future leaders, inventors, and educators of the world. We all go into college looking to achieve our dreams of success and wish to make an impact on the world. However many students are so focused on keeping up their GPA or having fun with friends, that their overall health and quality of life declines. I would want to educate students on Health and Wellness to help minimize this.
Health and Wellness to me is more than just an academic class. It’s critical knowledge to take with you for the rest of your life. This could include topics such as exercise, nutrition, sexuality, relationships, mental health, and many other things. It’s such a wide and diverse class, that we could discuss every aspect of a person's daily life and break it down on how positive it was to their quality of life. Did they really need to skip lunch just to binge watch more Netflix? Was that party worth drinking so much and missing out on sleep? There are so many life lessons that could be taught here!
Many millennials that I know struggle a lot with their mental health. They are stressed out and feeling depressed. Why? There are many factors, while some of these are out of their control, not all of them are. In my class, I’d want to highlight that they have a say in what they want to do with their lives. They have the choice to either empower themselves or let others drag them down. It can be the peers they hang out with or the way they treat their bodies when alone. Even though the topics of what you eat or how you think or what you do might not seem that important, in the grand scheme of things it can really shape a person’s life. By making one small positive change in your life you can feel the freedom it gives you. And maybe with that, they will want to continue the trend and keep making changes in all areas of their lives. With my guidance, I can show them all the little things they can do, that when added together can boost their overall happiness and success.
The passion I have for this idea of helping others discover their own happiness and strength comes from my own journey of trying to reshape my life. I was overweight, tired, stressed and depressed. I felt like I had no future. No chance to live the life I wanted. But I discovered that with just making tiny changes: eating better foods, waking up earlier, surrounding myself with positive people, I could take back that control over my life. Every step of the way I would share my new found knowledge with my friends, wanting to help them feel as good as I finally felt. Giving someone the support they needed to find themselves, was so rewarding. But now this would be on a bigger scale. To think I could help empower the future leaders of our world would simply be amazing.
It takes a strong mind and body to be successful. But no one teaches us how to take care of and love ourselves. I want to give my students information that could save them the struggle of trying to learn this the hard way. They will know how to be happy healthy adults in society. Students need a good resource such as Health and Wellness to educate them on what they can do to better themselves, and I’d like to give that to them.