BeYOUtiful by Sherry

BeYOUtiful by Sherry - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

“BeYOUtiful”. This word has become a trademark all over America. Be You. Be anything you want. Don’t allow yourself to be labeled unless you want to. Don’t give people power over you. Just be you, because you are good enough.

When I was in fourth grade, I didn’t have very high self-esteem. I was chubby, didn’t have very many friends and I was very smart. Sometimes I thought that being smart was the reason I didn’t have any friends. Everyone talked to me, but mostly just to get answers to homework or for help on an assignment. I wasn’t in the groups playing on the playground, I wasn’t invited to the birthday parties and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be smart anymore. So I stopped. I stopped doing the homework. I stopped raising my hand to answer the questions and I stopped helping others with their work. You know what happened? I had even less friends. Students were mad at me for not helping them when they needed it. They were mad at me for pretending to be something that I wasn’t. My self-esteem went even lower. Being smart wasn’t cool, but not being smart wasn’t either.
One day, while I was walking around the playground alone like I always did, my teacher came out and started walking with me. He asked me why I had stopped doing my homework, stopped helping in the classroom and turned shy. I explained my situation of being “too smart” and he laughed at me. That was not the reaction I was looking for. However, I am glad he did laugh. It was a laughable situation. Why would there be a problem with being too smart? After a full recess of talking, I learned the most valuable thing I could have. I learned to be myself. I learned to answer the questions when I knew them, to finish my assignments at my own rate and to do the extra credit if I wanted to. I learned to hang out with other people at recess and not walk around waiting for someone to ask me to join their game. I learned that being smart is a blessing and I could use it to help others or be selfish with it, but regardless, that is who I am. I learned not to allow others to have power over me and I learned never again to change who I was because of someone else. But the most important thing I learned, was that I am good enough anyway I choose to be because am beYOUtiful.