Shifting Away From The Numbers by Saarah

Shifting Away From The Numbers by Saarah - August 2025 Scholarship Essay

My aspirations for this upcoming school year are unorthodox. For this upcoming school year, I aspire to put less of an emphasis on achieving perfect grades, and instead to focus on actually understanding the material that we are learning in class. To understand why this has become my goal, it is necessary to understand the background on how I have approached school for the past 10 years.
My entire academic life has consisted of a hard focus on my grades. From elementary school, up until just last year, I approached school under the goal of doing everything as perfectly as possible. Getting perfect grades was never something to celebrate, it just became what was expected. A portion of it obviously stemmed from the expectations my parents had put on me, but I feel that in my case, the majority of the expectations placed on me came from my own brain and my own resolve to produce my best work at all times. Through these expectations, I developed anxious habits wherein I would obsessively write down every single activity we did in every class period to ensure that I never forgot a single task that I needed to complete before the next school day, as to avoid receiving marks on my grade for turning in assignments late. This obsessive habit led me to never miss a single assignment, but it also caused me to burn out by the end of my sophomore year. I burned out in the sense that I developed a deep hatred for anything related to school. However, my fear of my grades dropping caused me to push through the burn out to maintain my high standard of grades no matter how much I was struggling. This led to one of the most difficult periods of time for me in high school, yet I left it still with high grades. I maintained a near perfect GPA through middle school and high school for my efforts, but it put me in a place where I prioritized the numbers next to my name more than the education and information buildup in my brain. I can recall in many cases situations where I struggled to understand concepts we were learning in class, so I simply memorized the answers and created my own tricks to get the solutions simply to score high on the tests. Rather than pushing to understand the class material, I memorized only what I needed for the tests, and forgot the material as soon as the unit was over. I understand now that this method is not the way that I should be going about my education, and is the reason that my aspirations for this next academic year are unconventional.
Rather than focusing on grades, I aspire to spend my senior year of high school emphasizing the actual understanding of the material and going into each class prioritizing my education over the numbers. I have chosen classes for this upcoming year that align with what I want to do for my career. With classes like Physics, Engineering Science, and Calculus, I need to make an effort to actually understand the material as it will emulate what I will be learning when I major in Mechanical Engineering for my Undergrad, and achieve my dream of working on the actual Mars Rovers. By shifting my goals away from achieving high grades and towards learning as much as I possibly can, I will be able to prepare for my future in a much more effective way.
My dream for the future is what will motivate me to achieve this goal of mine. I understand now that practical knowledge is what will get me closer to working on the Mars Rovers over the grades that I get. Taking classes that directly relate to what I want to do with my career will provide me constant reminders and motivation to truly understand the material and expand my knowledge base authentically. By keeping my dream at the forefront of my brain, I know that I will be able to achieve my aspiration for this school year. By walking into this school year with a different mindset, I will be able to make this positive and healthy change in my academic lifestyle. I am excited to make the most of this school year.