Educational_Opportunities

Educational Opportunities Attending a highly selective private school has truly provided me with an exceptional foundation. Looking back on my education thus far, with so many resources and opportunities, I wish that I would have taken more of an initiative in pursuing my education. The Bishop’s School has blessed me with educational opportunities, including knowledgeable teachers who motivate and teach students through lectures, and conversations outside of the classroom, incorporating their own real life experiences into their lessons. Guided by my teachers’ passions, I am now able to see and benefit from investing myself personally in my academics as it feeds the flame for further desire to learn. One of the most important factors in preparing myself for college has been teaching myself to become interested in learning. While this may come easier to some in my setting, reaching this goal has been one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of high school. Bishop’s has also taught me how to balance my life. In my early high school years I was primarily concerned with building rich friendships and schoolwork became secondary to that effort. I felt that talking to my friend about something important in their lives was more important than finishing a piece of homework. Looking back, I think that my attention to my social life proved to be both positive and negative: I realized that I was a compassionate friend who cared about other people, but by default, compromised my schoolwork. One thing was inescapable at my small, competitive school- pressure to be successful. It was after taking US Social History at the end of sophomore year and the cathartic feeling I experienced that I realized that school has the ability to interest me and hold that interest. That class was the first elective I took, and it was one of the first classes that I forced myself to strive to do well in, which then pushed me to take more classes that were similar. By junior year it hit me that I needed and wanted to focus on school – I was learning to create a balance in my life between school and life. It was not that I was now ignoring certain activities that I had attended to before, but more as if but more as if I was opening blinders that I had created for myself, not realizing they existed. I began to take classes I wanted to take, I began to get excited to go to class and absorb knowledge. I did not attend class because I had to – I went to class because I wanted to. I began to take an active role in pursuing my education- inside and outside of school. To help myself and keep on a pro-active path I enrolled in summer school to help maintain a balance. This opened up time for me to try new classes that continued to spark my interest. I started actively participating in the classroom. I started working with a tutor, which help me recognize that teachers were a resource instead of a nuisance. I began visiting my teachers after school to understand and reinforce lessons. Beyond campus I took a summer internship in my junior and senior years at the Helen Woodward Animal Center, a non-profit organization. There I got to extend my education through real-life experience. My high school preparation has provided a strong foundation on which I hope to build upon in the future. I will never again wait to appreciate the educational opportunities that life offers. Bibliography: