Personal Philosophy

Personal Philosophy

“Nobody has ever gotten a scholarship that they did not apply for” - FIRST. While this may seem like just another ploy by an advertising department to lure in students, it has always rung true in my mind. Every year FIRST makes us watch their scholarship video at every robotics regional that we attend, and every year I ignore most of the video. However, I never ignore this one line. It was the only line in that whole video that caught my attention because it held true for so much more than educational scholarships. One thing that I have noticed is that we must seize every opportunity that we can, we cannot wait for God or luck to intervene and get work done for us.

I do not think that there a single person who has ever lived who does not regret missing out on an opportunity. While you may not be able to pinpoint a certain time in your life, I can guarantee that everyone has missed out one at least one opportunity. I know myself that the longer I think about this, the longer the list gets. One regret that I have is not indulging myself in a musical education. When I was in elementary school, my mom made me start going to a cranky old lady to learn how to play the piano. In elementary school, I only played sports, and did not particularly enjoy music. As time progressed, and my laziness fought against the old lady, I was given a convenient excuse to leave, she died. My first teacher died at the age of 92. For years after that, I joined multiple sports teams, clubs, and camps, and developed an interest in math and building. After about 2 years, my mom started to urge me again to try and continue my piano education.

I started taking lessons from another classically-trained old woman in Sunnyvale. This time my teacher was more forgiving and allowed me to reschedule lessons according to my school and sports. On a side note, this is where I met Steven Newman and Rujuta, who were both her students at the time and whom I would meet later in high school. After about eight months with this new teacher, the strains of school, and I stopped with this teacher too. Since then, I have not pursued any further musical education.

However, as time went on, my passion for music only grew. I started to listen to more and more music. I started to listen to and enjoy all different sorts of music, from trap to R&B to classical orchestral music. I also enjoyed listening to our school’s band and their field shows, and listen to music all the time now. Every time I used to listen to the power of the band, I would regret not joining band in sixth grade when I regarded band members as a coalition of nerds.

The moral of this story is simple, yet complicated when presented in the context of life. We must take every opportunity that we get. And while we have all heard this from counselors and we have all heard from our parents, and is almost as cliche as “Actions speak louder than words”; taking every opportunity that you get is possibly the most helpful advice any person can give to a student. While I am unsure about a lot of things, such as the structure of quarks(a real thing), I do know this for sure.