Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy!

I believe in taking chances, making mistakes, and getting messy. All throughout elementary school, science teachers loved showing us episodes of The Magic School Bus. It was intended to help us learn lessons and stay interested, but let's be honest, they would show us it because it was the only thing to keep us quiet for an extended amount of time. While that may have been the case, I did take a lesson from the show that the science teachers may not have been expecting. "Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy," is the legendary quote from the legendary Ms. Frizzle. She taught me that the only way to learn was to take chances, make mistakes, and perhaps get messy. This is the lesson that stuck with me.

After 8th grade, I was planning on quitting band. It had lost it's interest to me. The only reason I stayed in 8th grade was so I could go on the trip to Carowinds- after that, I was 100% sure that I was quitting. But I took a chance and I decided to stay in band. My whole reasoning behind it was "Well, I need something to do in high school besides work!" That was true. I didn't do much else in my freshman year besides band. So, I stayed in band. That year, my freshman year, band had begun to gain some of its appeal back, but it wasn't enough to keep me away from possibility of quitting. Marching band was fun, as was concert band but I just wanted something else to do. I wanted to quit, but yet again I stayed.

Sophomore year of band was much better than freshman year. I knew what I was doing and I liked band. The appeal was back. I made mistakes, but I knew how to pick myself back up from them. I found out what made band so irritating my freshman year, and I distanced myself from them. Long story short, I am in my junior year, 3rd year of marching band, and I am now the section leader. I never thought I'd get to this point. I often think about how I was going to quit and now I have a leadership position. If I hadn't taken the chance, if I hadn't made the mistake, if I hadn't gotten messy, I would have never gotten to this point. 

So to my science teachers who showed me The Magic School Bus and Ms. Frizzle who said the iconic quote, I thank you. And I will always "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!"

What Does It Mean To Say We Know Something?

When I say I know something, I mean that something has told me a claim and that I am aware of its possible or definite existence in this world. Knowing, to me, is not whether something is a fact, it is just whether or not one is aware of a substance. Knowing and believing are one and the same. To say that believing something is not the same as knowing something, would be absurd. You could even go as far as to say that knowing something is rare and most things that we are aware of are just beliefs. To many people, you cannot truly know something, until you can prove it. There are people on the other side of the world; that is something that I know, because I could go to the other side of the world and see the people and recognize that they are existing. We believe that certain history has happened. We have no 100% proof that anything we have ever learned in the past, hasn’t been fabricated. We simply believe in what we have been told by authoritative figures. Now, no one is going around and saying that The War of 1812 didn’t happen because we cannot prove it, but we do not possess technology that gives us the ability to travel back in time to witness every single event. We both know and believe that past events happened.
Another point, is that much of what we know is only because others have told us about it. As a child, many of our parents told us that a big man named Santa climbs through our chimneys (whether or not we had one) every year on December 24 and gives us presents based on how good we act throughout the year. As children, we were certain that he was real. We had no way of proving that he was real, but we simply believed. If your parent had never told you about that magical gift-giving man, you would not have known of him,up to a certain point in your life. Much of what we know is because we have faith in certain people. When people with authority, such as your parents, teachers, grandparents, government, etc., make statements, we will usually believe them. What we know is dictated by what they choose to make us aware of. If your parent wanted to tell you that instead of Santa, it was a giant magical helicopter that dropped gifts under your tree every Christmas Eve, you would believe it, therefore you would know it. A good percentage of what you know is based on your faith in knowledge of authoritative figures.What we know, is what we are aware of and what we are aware of is what we have been told.