What is your favorite
hobby?
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I
was convinced school wasn’t for me for the lon-
gest time. I often found myself looking out the
window, or wondering why was I studying a cer-
tain subject when I had no interest in it. Why do I
need to know what the earth’s core is like? Or what is
20% of 45? Eventually though I realized, School is a
necessity and wasn’t going anywhere even if I didn’t
like it. In fact, I needed it, if I wanted to build the kind
of future I wanted. This meant actually paying atten-
tion to something I did not enjoy.
This might sound completely banal, but the topics in
school can actually be interesting if one were to pay
the ‘right’ kind of attention. A lot was happening in
the sixth grade. The subjects such as Social Studies,
Geography, and Vocabulary seemed completely fo-
reign to me. It’s hard to study a subject you don’t like,
especially if you don’t understand it completely. More
often than not, the reason I found a topic boring was
because of my lack of comprehension.
I realized I could make a subject compelling if I really
wanted to—by looking at it in a different way.
My passion has always been to own a farm, I would
have lots of animals on this piece of land, with fruits
and vegetables I would harvest myself and live a
simple and rewarding life. Everything would be so-
lar powered, recycled, and super sustainable. But in
order to do all that, I should understand how to use
land, how to grow something from a seed, how to
sustain the earth, and make sure my animals stay
healthy. This is where those boring subjects came in.
Geography—a subject I absolutely dreaded becau-
se of how dull it was, suddenly made sense. One
day the teacher was talking about how simple it is to
grow something as long as the right environment was
provided. We were all tasked to fill mason jars with
cotton and set beans inside it. After setting our jars in
the classroom windows for sunlight and air, we were
tasked to make sure the cotton swab stayed damp
(not completely wet) for the beans’ nourishment. Just
a couple of days later, the bean began to sprout;
one could see the tiny green leaf poking out. A few
more days later, that small green leaf began to make
its way out of the cotton swab it was set in. Almost
two weeks later, there was a rich green colored leaf
protruding completely out of the jar, with three more
16 | ZEALOUSNESS MAGAZINE | Winter / Spring 2017