Many of the students at Penn State are tasked with “living a life with honors.” This may include Paterno Fellows, Millennium Scholars, Schreyer Honors College Students, and even the entire Penn State population in general. At face value, living a life with honors may be misconstrued as just getting good grades, or choosing to study a lot, or getting all your work done on time. However, there is more to honors than just being studious. Honors is a way of living life. Living a life with honors means living with scholarship, leadership, service, and character.

The first ideology the is necessary to living with honors is scholarship. Scholarship is the concept that people originally consider when thinking of honors. At its core, scholarship means performing well in classes. It means being prepared for classes and tests and knowing the material necessary to be successful. Scholarship is necessary to learn and to become a better student. It allows you to better your mind and to be prepared to enter the field of your choice for a career. To live with honors, embracing scholarship is a complete necessity.

The next necessity to living a life with honors is leadership. Leaders make the world turn, and leaders need to be present in any facet of life. Anywhere you go, whether it is a sports team, or a club, or a job, there needs to be a leader. Leadership is a quality that is constantly sought out and will help any person advance in their given field. To live with honors, it is expected to show leadership and be able to take control of a situation when necessary.

An important part of someone’s life that lives with honors is service. Service means helping others when they are unable to help themselves. When someone is better off and is fortunate in their life, it is their responsibility to provide help for others that are not as fortunate. This is not done as a method of personal gain. Instead, service allows someone to volunteer to make someone else’s life easier, because that is the right thing to do. A person living with honors uses service to help spread joy and happiness to others that may need it.

The final aspect of living a life with honors is character. Character is arguably the most important of these pillars, and is absolutely essential to have every single day. To have character means to always do the right thing, even if it doesn’t benefit you.  Someone with character must have integrity; that means being disciplined, respectful of others, and following the rules. If a person doesn’t display character on a daily basis, it is impossible for them to live their life with honors. Character is what makes someone a good person that people want to be around, rather than just a good student or good at what they do.

Going through everyday life with scholarship, leadership, service, and character in mind allows someone to live their life with honors. These four ideals make someone a better person and improve their own lives as well as those around them. Living a life with honors should not be a chore; it should be something to look forward to. Anyone can live their life with honors, and the more people that choose to do so, the better off we will be as a society.