a guest post by Maya Shaughnessy
Maya is a freshman at Brookline High School who recently participated in a panel discussion sponsored by her school’s 21st Century Fund on “Taking care of yourself, your community, and the broader world in the digital age.” This forum brought together local thinkers in a provocative discussion moderated by reporter Carey Goldberg of WBUR. In this guest blog drawn from her remarks that evening, Maya reflects on the impact of personally meaningful experiences and explains how her outlook about her academics, life, and future has been positively altered.
Last May I had the opportunity to travel with my family to a remote village in Honduras as part of a medical and dental team. I worked in a “makeshift” pharmacy, handing out vitamins and medications to patients treated at the clinic we were operating.
Almost immediately, I started getting frequent visits by a group of children from the village. I suspect that they were motivated, in part, by the stickers that I had with me. After a few days of these visits, Diadi, a seven-year-old boy, and his siblings took me by the hand and brought me down a dirt path to their home. There, I was greeted by their mother, two older sisters, and baby brother. They took me outside to their backyard where two small mango trees stood. I looked on as Diadi picked several mangos, sat on the ground and began cutting them on a large leaf. The other children appeared with a handful of salt and sprinkled it all over the mangos. They told me, “Es para ti es una merienda,” meaning the mangoes were a snack just for me to enjoy.
I was taken by both their hospitality and generosity but quickly realized that I was empty-handed and had nothing to give in return. So, I returned to the clinic, grabbed a stack of paper, and quickly ran back to Diadi’s house. Completely out of breath, I started folding the paper as all of the children stood by watching. To their amazement, I made an airplane for each one of them. We began flying the airplanes around the house, and I was smiling as they shrieked with laughter.
As the sun began to set, I realized my family was probably wondering where I was. I knew that it was time to go back to my team. Just as I was about to leave, Diadi’s mother brought me into her kitchen and sat me down at a small wooden table, insisting that I eat some lychee. She proudly shared that this fruit was a delicacy. I knew very well that she had probably traveled hours by foot to a town called Mancala to acquire this precious fruit.
This exchange made a lasting impact on me. At that moment, I felt an incredible sense of connection and mutual respect. It didn’t matter that we came from two different countries, different cultures, and spoke a different language; there we were, celebrating our common humanity.
Fast-forward five months to the start of my first year of high school. I, like many freshmen, was obsessed with getting good grades and finding my place among my peers. I had officially joined the race to get into a “good” college. I focused on what I needed to know for tests: becoming familiar with the caste system in social studies, whether to use the preterite or imperfect tense in Spanish, and memorizing “SOH-CAH-TOA” in math. By winter, I felt like I was just going through the motions. I was overwhelmed and unhappy, and the weather certainly wasn’t cooperating. I thought to myself, “I’m only a freshman, and I already feel burned out.” My fond memories of Honduras, the excitement I felt about the work we were doing there, the connection I made with the people I met, and the sense of purpose and meaning… felt worlds away.
It was around this time that a teacher said to me, “Look at the big picture, Maya; find your passion, and the grades will follow.” I thought about his comment and was reminded again of my experience in Honduras. A few weeks later I went with a group of Brookline students to the UN for a day-long conference looking at maternal health issues in developing countries. After the conference, I started to feel more engaged and more present in my day-to-day learning. I saw how several organizations, like the UN Populations Fund and the HeForShe Campaign, were using social media to raise awareness about human rights and gender equality. I began to connect to topics that were important to me and experienced a strong desire to learn more about those issues. I saw how social media could be utilized to exchange ideas and collaborate with others globally, becoming a tool to accomplish good in the world. The following week I went on a visit to Lesley University, where my classmates and I worked with students from other schools to explore and find potential solutions to a range of complex problems facing a number of developing countries all over the world.
These pivotal experiences have led to a shift in the way I now think about my education. I’m beginning to see that education is not solely about personal achievement, such as acceptance to a college of my choice. Rather, I’ve come to realize that education is really about figuring out who I am and what my place is in the larger world, a process that requires exposure to meaningful experiences both in and out of the classroom. Learning opportunities like the work in Honduras and my participation in the conference at the UN have helped me grow while providing me with the inspiration for further learning and the desire to make a meaningful contribution to society in my life. These experiences have required me to take a risk and to step out of my comfort zone—a process that has helped me to define what learning and personal achievement really mean.