isaacrodd
Nov 6, 2010
Undergraduate / "There will ALWAYS be more to learn." - Mr. Holmes, important person, UT Austin [3]
I whipped this essay up in about an hour.
I just want to have to have the best essay I can possibly have, ya know?
Feedback, comments, critiques/constructive criticisms are GREATLY appreciated.
Prompt: Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you.
It was the first day of school of my eighth grade year. At that point in my life, I had a burning passion for classical music and the arts (not to imply that that passion has lessened with time). I, along with a select few of my peers, were selected to be in the Advanced Orchestra. I foolishly assumed that this class would be a mere walk in the park, however it turned out that the instructor would shed some light upon my ill-formed personality which forever changed my outlook on life.
From the day I began studying music and playing instruments, I was considered "gifted"; I learned how to read music, play music, and learn music faster than all the other kids. As time went on I realized all this attention stemmed from this "gift", yet I did absolutely nothing to earn it. The other students would go home and practice the excerpts we had to play for tests, or learn the mnemonics of reading the clefs, along with other time-consuming assignments. Since all of that came easy to me I felt no need to go after school for tutoring, practice for hours on end, or learn those silly-sounding mnemonics. Instead I received praise from my teachers for understanding the material so quickly and thoroughly, and I didn't bother to learn more than what was being taught. I was so confident in my abilities that it caused my ego to expand exponentially without me even noticing.
All in all, music was considered my forte, pun intended.
However, when I entered this Advanced Orchestra class, my teacher, Mrs. Adrian Holmes, popped the balloon of hot air that had expanded my cocky cranium.
We began the class reviewing all of the stuff we had learned in our previous years of music education. As soon as I mastered one topic, we quickly moved on to another, and another, and another. It was all a piece-of-cake to me, but I was not receiving the praise I'd craved and attained earlier in life. Not only that, but as the year progressed I actually had to practice for hours on end and recite those ridiculous sounding mnemonics to further understand the material, all without the extravagant praise and rewards I'd previously received. Then, one day after acing a playing test that took me weeks to practice for, Mrs. Holmes stated, "There will ALWAYS be more to learn.", and then she swiftly told me I had done a good job proceeded to begin a new unit.
This seemingly insignificant statement caused me to have an epiphany that forever rendered my lifestyle and ideology.
As I left class that day, I couldn't stop thinking about what she had said to me. I realized that the reason she didn't praise me as all my other teachers had because she wanted me to keep my head out of the clouds; she wanted to teach all of us in that class a lesson about balancing humility and confidence. All those years I assumed I was being classy and confident, not cantankerous and cocky. Mrs. Holmes made me realize that I am not as perfect as I thought I was; she taught that there will always be something else waiting to be discovered in the distance, and to never let your confidence cast a blanketing shadow over it.
Essentially, Mrs. Holmes made me realize that there will ALWAYS be material to be learned and that we are not perfect, yet we should always strive to be, and what better place to exemplify these traits than at UT Austin?
I whipped this essay up in about an hour.
I just want to have to have the best essay I can possibly have, ya know?
Feedback, comments, critiques/constructive criticisms are GREATLY appreciated.
Prompt: Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you.
It was the first day of school of my eighth grade year. At that point in my life, I had a burning passion for classical music and the arts (not to imply that that passion has lessened with time). I, along with a select few of my peers, were selected to be in the Advanced Orchestra. I foolishly assumed that this class would be a mere walk in the park, however it turned out that the instructor would shed some light upon my ill-formed personality which forever changed my outlook on life.
From the day I began studying music and playing instruments, I was considered "gifted"; I learned how to read music, play music, and learn music faster than all the other kids. As time went on I realized all this attention stemmed from this "gift", yet I did absolutely nothing to earn it. The other students would go home and practice the excerpts we had to play for tests, or learn the mnemonics of reading the clefs, along with other time-consuming assignments. Since all of that came easy to me I felt no need to go after school for tutoring, practice for hours on end, or learn those silly-sounding mnemonics. Instead I received praise from my teachers for understanding the material so quickly and thoroughly, and I didn't bother to learn more than what was being taught. I was so confident in my abilities that it caused my ego to expand exponentially without me even noticing.
All in all, music was considered my forte, pun intended.
However, when I entered this Advanced Orchestra class, my teacher, Mrs. Adrian Holmes, popped the balloon of hot air that had expanded my cocky cranium.
We began the class reviewing all of the stuff we had learned in our previous years of music education. As soon as I mastered one topic, we quickly moved on to another, and another, and another. It was all a piece-of-cake to me, but I was not receiving the praise I'd craved and attained earlier in life. Not only that, but as the year progressed I actually had to practice for hours on end and recite those ridiculous sounding mnemonics to further understand the material, all without the extravagant praise and rewards I'd previously received. Then, one day after acing a playing test that took me weeks to practice for, Mrs. Holmes stated, "There will ALWAYS be more to learn.", and then she swiftly told me I had done a good job proceeded to begin a new unit.
This seemingly insignificant statement caused me to have an epiphany that forever rendered my lifestyle and ideology.
As I left class that day, I couldn't stop thinking about what she had said to me. I realized that the reason she didn't praise me as all my other teachers had because she wanted me to keep my head out of the clouds; she wanted to teach all of us in that class a lesson about balancing humility and confidence. All those years I assumed I was being classy and confident, not cantankerous and cocky. Mrs. Holmes made me realize that I am not as perfect as I thought I was; she taught that there will always be something else waiting to be discovered in the distance, and to never let your confidence cast a blanketing shadow over it.
Essentially, Mrs. Holmes made me realize that there will ALWAYS be material to be learned and that we are not perfect, yet we should always strive to be, and what better place to exemplify these traits than at UT Austin?
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