I try to dip my feet into every aspect of life. I think it is very easy to be good at one thing, however, to be very good at multiple things is far more impressive to me. I truthfully believe in the Leonardo Da Vinci lifestyle where he truly embraced and excelled in so many aspects, making him one of the most impressive person to ever walk the earth. I believe there are skills that anyone can achieve with enough effort. This can apply to school, I believe education systems are set up so that anyone who puts in enough effort can have great success. I think it is far harder to have great success academically and be striving in other areas of life. I think a lot of people today are very one dimensional and oppose other slides of what they do. For example, sometimes sports players tend to be anti art, music, and theater and students heavily involved in the arts tend to be against the sports. I think this is completely the wrong mindset and that everything has its pros and cons. The person who involves themselves in more activities can learn to appreciate the skills that come from those activities. The more well rounded you become as a person the more you start to appreciate things you took for granted. For example after taking an art class my freshman year I began to appreciate lighting very much. Dealing with lighting every clase, I learned how to observe how lighting affects objects. I began to appreciate lighting and compositions outside of class. It could be as simple as the reflection of a light post on a mailbox, but I learned to appreciate the beauty behind it more. Just taking this class made me see the beauty in things I would normally look past. With being well rounded you also learn to appreciate people’s skills more. For example now that I have been playing guitar for around 9 months now I have somewhat of an understanding of the difficulty of songs. Songs that seemed simple to me before I started learning ended up being extremely difficult. When I see someone play a song such as Snow by the Red Hot Chili Peppers I can now appreciate that the 3 minute video of them playing is an accumulation of 100s if not 1,000s’ of hours of effort. It is an entirely different level of appreciation of someone and their skills if you yourself try those. The same could be said about athletics. When you see someone end up on sportscenter top 10 for jumping 40 inches in the air and making a save you can have an understanding of what went into that play. That 10 second play was an accumulation of years of weightlifting, practicing sports specific drills, and mastering one’s skills. I think being well rounded is great and I think that everyone should strive to be as well rounded as possible. Personally I strive every day to be better rounded as an individual.
