Motivated to Learn

When I was around the age of four, I believed that the world used to be in black and white. I would watch movies that were shot in black and white and I would assume that was just how the world looked back then. The image of the world being black and white made me sad for the people who I thought had to live in a world without color. I finally realized that, infact, the world has always had color in it. The sky has always been blue and the grass has always been green. After I learned this fact, I was better able to understand the past and I was interested to learn about the world’s history and to discover more things that I didn’t even know existed.

As kindergarten approached, I became excited to start school and to learn more things that would change they way I looked at the world. I was eager to learn and I enjoyed the process of using my mind to think about new ideas. The feeling of being able to tell my parents all the fascinating new things that I had learned in a day was so captivating that I began to dream of the day when I would be able to teach something new to my parents that they hadn’t learned when they were in school. But as I grew older, I became less interested in learning new material and more interested in getting perfect grades. I realized that I was only listening to the teacher so I could get an “A” in the class, not for the satisfaction of learning something new.

The ability to learn is one of the greatest skills we have as humans. Humans are constantly learning new things that will broaden their mind and make them better prepared for the future. All of the technology we have in our world wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for our ability to learn. If people stop getting pleasure out of learning and start to see it as only an inconvenient part of school, nothing in our world will advance.

During the beginning of my freshman year in high school, I began to feel that same excitement to learn that I felt when I was in kindergarten. My main goal was to get good grades, but I was also interested to be able to learn more complex material than I had learned in middle school. I was excited to go to my classes and I was eager to use my mind. This year however, I don’t have that same desire to use my mind and to actually learn in school. I feel like I’m just going through the motions and not getting much out of my classes.

My goal for this school year is to start to become excited about my education like I was in kindergarten. Many children aren’t fortunate enough to receive an education, so I need to try to make the most of mine because I’m lucky to even be able to go to school. Being able to enjoy the learning process is a fundamental part of education. Without the joy to learn, school is about as captivating as a world in black and white.