Pursuing Knowledge Now and Then by Antonia

Pursuing Knowledge Now and Then by Antonia - March 2025 Scholarship Essay

My little girl dreams of years past would lead me to believe that in 10 years’ time, I’ll be living in a Manhattan high-rise apartment with 1-3 roommates, working a decently steady 9-5 job under a whip-smart SHE-EO with whom I have a special bond and who lets me get away with cool perks at the workplace. The rent is high – it’s New York, after all – and it’s difficult to make ends meet every month, but we still do. It’s all worth it for the adventures we have every weekend, exploring the city and becoming lifelong sisters. Whatever the scenario, I have always had a glamorous, idealized version of my mid-20s that involves little to no financial or social conflict.

However, a more logical and wise part of me knows that real life does not always work out so glamorously or conveniently. There are hardships and confusion, and possible lows that I haven’t felt thus far. I want to stay pragmatic, so I choose to base my “10-Year Plan” on reality, which means applying my current education to my life then. The future is uncertain, but the present is not, so what I can do while I wait is to take advantage of what I have now.

Currently, I attend an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, which is a globally recognized, academically rigorous program that offers a more challenging curriculum to prepare students for further education. Participating in the full diploma IB route requires my entire course load to be IB classes starting junior year, consisting of internal assessments, a 4000 word extended essay, and lots of exams. A unique, mandatory IB-specific course is Theory of Knowledge. TOK, as we call it, is a philosophical course in which we inquire about the outside world. Through socratic seminars, open class discussions, and jigsaw assignments, we discuss how to apply knowledge to everyday real life. My recent internal assessment for TOK was a paper called The Exhibition, and the question I had to answer backed up by three artifacts with real world context was, “What constraints are there on the pursuit of knowledge?” From this course I am learning imperative lessons about perspective, culture, and types of knowledge, but most importantly, discernment. In TOK, there is an emphasis on questioning everything, and I believe this skill that I’m developing every day in Mr. S’s Room 336 will still remain with me 10 years from now and serve me well – no matter what I’m doing, I will remember how to dive deeper and find the root of an issue, or question its presence in context with a type of knowledge. I will ask myself, “Does this stem from historical knowledge backed up by past events, or would it be considered cultural knowledge that is up to interpretation?”

The IB program also loves to connect things – themes, world issues, and anthropological key concepts as well, if one is enrolled in IB Social and Cultural Anthropology as I am. In Anthro, we have not only spent the semester and a half learning about Triqui migrant farmworkers and the traditions of the Amish people, but we have also been able to conduct our own anthropological fieldwork in a field of choice. I immersed myself in the culture of a poetry slam, taking notes without interacting with anyone (the rules of Part 1 of the fieldwork), then returning to the same place in participant observation for Part 2 and connecting the culture of the field to an anthropological key concept (mine was identity). The internal assessment later down the road will require us to connect one of our studied ethnographic material to an anthropological key concept (e.g. power, identity, culture), an area of inquiry (e.g. the body, belonging, conflict) and a real world issue, interlinking all of these together. Not only am I learning how to question principles and ideas with a healthy, investigative skepticism, but I am gaining experience in weaving different concepts together to prove the unity in all things.

In my 10-year plan, I am going to let my life take me where it wants me to go. I do not know yet what I plan to study in college, but the IB program has certainly opened up my eyes to many challenging perspectives, ways of knowing, and applicable analytical skills helpful in any major and in any career path. Through it, I have also learned what I perhaps don’t want to pursue, and that in itself is a valuable learning experience. While spending the next few years determining what out there is truly for me, I can continue learning critical lifelong lessons from courses such as 20th Century World History or Higher Level Language and Literature, and the real gift is knowing I will be using these indispensable inquiry skills no matter what field of study or work I end up pursuing. What I gain from the opportunities presented by the IB program will continually cater to my life, including 10 years from now, and for that I am very grateful - grateful and extremely excited.