Students need skills to become successful. Interaction with other people is a great way to get those skills. Unfortunately, some students don’t take advantage of one of the most social times of their lives, high school, to build these skills.
Short-term, sports, clubs and electives are among the first to be affected. These are organizations that are highly dependent on the student body to form them. The students who are a part of them invest time into recruiting and including the general student body. Best of all, they are an easy way for students to get involved with each other in various activities.
Unfortunately, common objections may label these organizations as too much work, uninteresting, not worth the extra effort or simply a waste of time.
Contrary to this belief, talking to people and learning how to effectively communicate is an extremely valuable skill, one that a basic involvement in an activity would essentially develop. What’s more, conversation and interaction builds on itself. Simply put, the more people someone knows, the more people to help them out. The potential to learn, gain experience and improve by simply talking to different people is massive.
Even if a student were to completely reject an activity and hate it with every ounce of their waking energy, they would have at least learned what they do not like. The point is, any setback or put-down from a peer can be seen as a stepping stone to a lesson, no matter how basic that lesson is.
Low self-esteem can also be an issue, especially among the young people of today. When encountering a struggle in life, someone who thinks poorly will have a much harder time reaching their goals. For example, no such doubtful or self-deprecating thoughts invaded the mind behind the “World Record Egg.”
Even though no one would say that egg pictures are more popular than celebrity pictures, a picture of an egg nonetheless went the distance and became the most liked image on Instagram, a giant digital social platform with over one billion active monthly users as of June 2018 according to statista.com.
An egg and a dream were able to overpower countless celebrities of all levels of fame across a significant portion of the internet. Granted, an egg reaching ultimate fame was no simple coincidence. The egg was posted using the account, “@world_record_egg.” The effort behind the movement was conscious, deliberate and focused. The user @world_record_egg did not log onto Instagram to share sandwich recipes or vacation selfies.
Setting aside what capitalizing on the sheer scale of networking that is social media can accomplish, students can harness a similar energy within their own lives with the magic of willpower. To practice a skill and get better, a person has to want to practice and get better. One of the most beneficial and easiest places to start on that journey is with other people.
Meanwhile, in today’s era of high college tuition and crippling student loans, university-bound students need all the financial help they can get. Scholarships can help take a bite out of the student debt pie.
In many cases, an application is all that stands in the way of a student and a piece of the millions of dollars in scholarship money that is given away every year in the United States. Unfortunately, the average college-bound student doesn’t apply for any. All the while, a school-issued laptop would struggle to load a full list of all of the different scholarships potentially available to students.
Just like with participation in sports, clubs, classes and that infamous egg, the willpower to get up and get active is critical to student success.