This post is part of a series by my students at Mississippi Governor’s School. As a final project, they were challenged with creating an idea that could be used on a massive scale to help others live the good life.
Philosophy is my life. Before I took this class, I would always ask “Why?” or “How?” but I did not realize critical thinking was a field of study. The great philosopher Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This class has challenged me to dive even deeper into every day experiences. But what does all this knowledge mean if I don’t do anything with it? Nothing. So what am I to do with it? Maybe I can become the next philosophical super hero and solve the world’s problems.
The problem I am most passionate about solving is low self-esteem in girls. To solve this problem, I am relying on the domino effect by I setting a positive example for other girls to follow: I will not criticize my appearance, criticize others’ appearances, or get my worth from my appearance. I will affirm everyone, including myself, we are beautiful and we are not what we look like or what we accomplish. I also plan to create a Facebook page where there would be encouragement and acceptance for girls with low self-esteem. The Facebook page would do this in a number of ways: I would post affirmations; family members and friends of girls with low self-esteem could find advice on how to help girls with low self-esteem; girls who at one time had low self-esteem and now have adequate self-esteem could share their stories; low self-esteem girls could communicate and encourage each other; and links could be posted to a website where users would vote on the best affirmations, stories, and advice and it would be posted there.
