Inspiration

For the Scotland summer program I am applying to, I had to write an essay about the person or people who inspire me. I thought that it might be fun to post it here, too. I haven't spoken much about why I decided to homeschool. Though it was an undertaking that excited me because of my fascination with education, it was a decision that became necessary when my sister got sick, so that my mom could return to work part-time. I do talk about my educational philosophy in this essay, for anyone who is interested. I hope that you enjoy it, and if you have any questions about the people I mention or my decision to homeschool or any number of things, don't hesitate to ask.

I was riding in a car the first time that I read John Holt’s name, written in small print with the word “by” placed in front of it. His essay “School is Bad for Children” was the first in an anthology that was assigned for an online college class I was taking. I had brought the book along on a three-hour trip, planning to skim through all of the essays in anticipation for the first day of class. Instead, I read “School is Bad for Children” from its first word to its last, pausing only to read entire paragraphs aloud to my mom and to laugh quietly at the joy of discovering Holt.

In the course of a single essay, Holt had changed the way that I looked at the educational system and at myself as a student. He had taught me the names for concepts that I already understood on an inherent level, had convinced me that my love of learning was more important than test scores and report cards and was precious enough that I needed to listen to it, follow it, and encourage it to thrive and prosper, rather than letting it wilt in a classroom while a teacher read from a textbook. 

I believe that inspiration finds us when we need it. Sometimes it lies dormant for years, slowly rising inside of us, so that when faced with an important decision, we will suddenly know what to do. And sometimes inspiration first finds us in the process of trying to make that important decision. We open up a tab on our computer and see a photograph that shows us the kind of life we want to live. And we suddenly know what decision to make.

John Holt, for me, was the inspiration that lay dormant. When I read his essay in seventh grade, most of my classes were satisfying my curiosity and my love of learning. It was enough for me to understand what Holt was saying and feel passionately about it, without having to act in response to it. Then, earlier this year, I made what I consider to be my first Holt-prompted decision: I started homeschooling.

I had been considering the idea of homeschooling all school year, and I could have easily chosen not to act, if I hadn’t stumbled upon the blog of Nirrimi Hakanson, a nineteen-year-old Australian photographer who dropped out of high school at age sixteen to pursue her photography and ended up working on several national photography campaigns, traveling around the globe to take pictures. Nirrimi’s words, like Holt’s words years before, created a kind of stirring sensation in my bones. Her photographs, interspersed throughout her blog entries, are characterized by their simplicity and happiness. She tries to capture the essence of childhood, and in the process she conveys what it means to really be living. My life was different than her photographs, characterized by hours spent in my bedroom working on research papers, not rain-dampened backyards and laughter. But I believed enough in the way that Nirrimi was living her life—out of intrinsic, rather than extrinsic motivations—that I took the first step in living my own.

I will always feel thankful for the people who inspire me by teaching me what is important and how much is possible. Most recently, two authors, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss, have captured me with their words. I have listened to their interviews and pored over their passages. In one breath, they make me want to write, and they make me never want to write again.

In a lecture given at Princeton University, Foer mentioned that he was inspired to become a writer, in part, by the artwork of Joseph Cornell. “I liked the idea of devoting my life to trying to make somebody else feel the way that his art made me feel,” Foer said. Listening to a recording of the lecture on my computer, I understood the overarching and enduring impact that one Cornell box or one photograph or one essay can have on the world. What if no one had inspired Cornell to create his artwork? Then Foer may not have become a writer, and I may have never been sitting on my bed, listening to his lecture, wanting him to know that he makes me feel the way that Cornell’s art made him feel. 

(Photo here)