Gifted and Talented by Savannah

Savannah's entry into Varsity Tutor's July 2022 scholarship contest

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Gifted and Talented by Savannah - July 2022 Scholarship Essay

Education has been all I have known for the past fourteen years. Education is familiar and remains the same. As a future educator, I hope change is coming within this field. Familiar is comforting and easy; however, if we continue this path of sameness as educators, when will the awaited change in our world come? Before the dark days of college, learning was not a challenge for me. Throughout gradeschool, I was labeled as 'gifted and talented.' Everything in class simply came easy to me. I barely studied, enjoyed the classes, and rarely had to dig deep for an A. My dream was always to get a higher education and to become something big. For the longest time I was certain my name would start with "Dr." and end with something like "Ph.D." I participated in every school orginization imaginable and placed myself on nearly every leadership team. My mind was set on college and getting every scholarship I could get my hands on senior year. However, I was blindsided by the reality of college. College scholarships become less exciting to apply to when you reach the stage of burnout. No teacher prepares you for your first year of college. The year of the question, "Is this what I really want?" When I first stepped foot onto my college campus, I truly believed I knew who I was. Now, a college sophomore, I've realized I don't know the first thing about myself. I went from planning to one day to become a doctor of psychology to wanting to be an agriculture science teacher. I went from 100% perfect attendance to skipping class for two months. I completely lost the gifted and talented girl I once was. I had to step back and realize that academic validaiton is that who I truly am. I now know that two letters in front of my name is not the key to my happiness. The key to happiness and success is pursueing what you truly want in life. I've found that I dream of being an insperational teacher like ones I've had before. I've decided I want to change the "gifted and talented" burnout. My hope for educational change is a change in the importance of ranking and scoring. I hope that one day, no more students view their rank and see their value. I feel if we keep this system in place, we continue standstill in our field. If educators were to focus more on education and building up students, instead of their letter grade, we would create more sound adults. First year college students would begin focusing on what they're passionate about rather than what will create the most recgonition. This way, we would have doctors who cared about quality of care rather than a their pay; or teachers who loved what they do, because it made a difference. This change all starts with the education children recieve from elementary school. America was once a country of dreams, let us now give that reality back to the 'gifted and talented' and 'the ordinary' boys and girls.

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