The Most Important Lesson in High School by Sarah

The Most Important Lesson in High School by Sarah - November 2013 Scholarship Essay

High school is a time for learning, but a high school education entails far more than just academic growth, and in fact, the high school years mark the beginning of our evolution from childhood to adulthood. Those four short years bring SO many new ideas, relationships, and experiences that it is almost impossible to choose one point as the “Ah Ha!!” moment of entire ride, but the one thing that I did learn is this - I am the most important person in my life. I understand that this sounds arrogant and self centered, so please allow me to explain.

Throughout our lives we delegate the position of “most important person” to someone other than ourselves. Among the recipients of this honorary position are our parents, our teachers, our friends, and sometimes even our enemies. With this trust, we inherently grant rights and privileges to the delegated individual that we might not intend to surrender. When someone other than us is calling the shots in our lives, that someone becomes the most important person in our life.

As children, the most important person is our world is mom or dad. We trust them to choose everything, from the food that we eat to the clothes that we wear. As we grow into adolescence, we believe that we have broken those bonds, and that we are making our own choices, but we really are not, of course. Mom still gets us up, and still has to ask us to clean our room, or to do our homework, or to eat healthy foods. They pay our bills, tell us where to be and where not to be, get us to school, and in general, they are the most important person in our life.

Then we have teachers. They remind us to study, and to turn in homework and to take our jackets and umbrellas home after school. They tell us how and what to read, and what conclusions that we should come to when we are done reading. They tell us what to do on our computers, and they make sure that we are in the right place at the right time. We unconsciously make our teachers the most important person in our lives.

And of course our friends and our enemies are along for the ride. They determine who we should like, and who we should hate. They know who the best band is, what the best movie is, and what the best social networking site is. They tell us where to be (when we shouldn't be there) and where not to be (when we really SHOULD be there). And so we add our acquaintances to the ever-growing list of “most important persons in our life”.

Then, at some point in our life, a little light bulb comes on; for many of us, this happens (thankfully) in high school. We look ahead, and see that somewhere in the very near future, we have to become the person that is making all of these life decisions, and more. We realize that, however inherently correct our teachers, and our parents, and our friends and even our enemies were, we have moved towards a point in our lives that we need to become the most important person in our own life. And that turning point, that day that I said to myself – “I am the most important person in my life” – is the day that I finally felt like an adult.

In retrospect I probably did not even realize that this was not only one of the most valuable lessons in high school, but one of the most valuable lessons in my life to date. Six months into college, I know in my heart that had this lesson not been learned, I would really be in a world of hurt. If I had even gotten into the university that I am attending, my dorm room would be a disaster, I would be in trouble academically, I would be sleeping through my sports practices, and I would be having a miserable time with the whole experience. Instead, everything is going pretty good.

Are there other lessons that I learned in high school that are important in my current situation? Absolutely. I learned how to study, how to write a paper, and how to take tests. I learned where to be and where not to be, for the most part. I learned how to clean my room, and how to feed myself. I learned how to drive and how to take a bus and how to be when and where I was supposed to be. But the absolute most important lesson that I learned was not how to do all of these things, but how to do them all by myself and for myself. I learned how to be the most important person in my life.