You're Not Alone - The Importance of Collaboration in High School
By Path Mentor D.S., a recent graduate from Columbia University majored in Biomedical Engineering • Columbia Egleston Scholar (Originally Posted on October 4, 2019)
There is for sure one thing in common you hold with a lot of the top students in your high school (amongst the other obvious ones like you are all human go to the same high school, and other small obvious things), you all probably want to go to a good college!
Now, what does this mean throughout your high school career? It means that you can work with others towards mutually beneficial tasks. Now, this can range from a variety of things. For example, the most obvious is working on common assignments (in an allowed way), studying together for a test (if that helps you), or even proofreading essays that you will write for admission to college. But, have you ever thought about seeing what mutual interests these high achievers have with you that can turn into a beautiful extra-curricular project or passion?
For example, in high school I was always fascinated with finance and the stock market. By speaking to a friend of mine about his interests and what his parents did, I realized that he also shared the same interest in finance and the stock market with me. We would speak about this topic every so often, and eventually we came to the realization that this mutual interest might also be shared amongst others in our friend group and even school. This led to us recruiting other friends that we found to have this similar interest, and altogether, we started a finance club on campus where we would provide both educational content as well as projects and other competitions to promote financial literacy.
Now, the first thing in this process is to introspectively evaluate yourself and what you are interested in. This will generate a list for you that would be what you are most passionate or interested in. After this, your top priority will be in trying to find these mutually interested people that you can work with. However, you also have to be open to the possibility of other things that you would possibly be interested in working on with someone else. This second list would be things that you would be willing to try that you do not dislike or find boring. For you, this would be a secondary priority that could come up when you talk to people about what they find interesting.
Following that, you need to understand the environment and an unmet need or opening that could allow you to work on this mutual interest. This could be the equivalent of checking if there are any clubs at your school that work on this already or looking at any organizations in your city that have relevant work or projects. Once you have evaluated the current landscape, then you have to start planning how to go about being successful in your project.
You can start working on finding people to explore an interest with both concurrently with understanding the landscape of an interest. You can also try to look at the landscape before finding people to work with, but you might run the risk of not finding people who share the same interests amongst the people that you might know or be comfortable working with. Remember to evaluate the size of the project to figure out if it is something that can be done alone.
Remember, you cannot do everything alone. You might be able to handle a project, but it becomes exponentially better to have friends to work on something with to cover your weaknesses with their strengths. This is where you can expand on your leadership skills and experience and develop how you work with others toward a common goal.
