Love of Learning = Lifelong Success by Zoe

Love of Learning = Lifelong Success by Zoe - December 2017 Scholarship Essay

My ultimate strategy for acing a school project is to enjoy doing it. Do you remember being a kid, watching or doing something that you were truly interested in? Do you remember the obsession of needing to know everything about a subject, like dinosaurs or butterflies or how and why clouds float? That childlike feeling is the purest form of curiosity. In my opinion, it is what constitutes the key to success. When doing a school project, it probably feels pretty boring to you. That is because you are aware that it is assigned, enforced and graded. I ask you to suspend that reality because that sort of stressful atmosphere isn’t conducive to being curious or creative. Instead, think about the subject you are being asked to research or report on and start asking yourself questions and searching for answers. Eventually, you’ll be excited about the subject and you’ll want to share the information you’ve found with peers or your teacher.

When I approach a subject that I have to do an assignment on, I try to first look for the parts about it that peak my interest. Even if I dislike a subject, thinking globally helps me find something about it that can be enjoyable, because all subjects are interconnected. For example, I don’t enjoy the process of doing the math, however, the complex concept of how it applies to outer space and the laws of time and gravity are incredibly enticing to me. Perhaps you hate science but love history, so research the Enlightenment and the who, the how and the why to each advancement and discovery. If you hate English, you may still be able to enjoy finding the Latin roots to vocabulary words. Even if you can’t use the information you are interested in, you have tricked yourself into learning what is pertinent to the project and the class.

The key to enjoying the process of creating a project is to allow yourself to relax and have the time to explore rather than trying to get it over with as fast as possible. Essentially, geeking out over a topic is the best way to produce materials that a teacher or peer will also be able to be interested in and persuaded by. If you like what you are teaching yourself, you are much more likely to understand the subject and to produce results that you can explain in a fluent manner and present in a way that shows that you have a firm grasp of what you’ve written or constructed. Interest is the best way to ensure that you will get what you need to do finished without making it a product of suffering and stress.

Admittedly, it sometimes takes a good amount of creativity to make this approach work, but it becomes easier with time to allow curiosity to take over and do the project for you. In all parts of life, you must understand that nothing is truly dull if you have nurtured your ability to think deeper and ask questions. This strategy in itself makes projects a stimulating challenge, and excitement can be derived from finding something interesting where you never thought you would.