Day after day, you wake up before sunrise, groggy and irate after getting virtually no sleep and knowing that you have a long day of note taking, reading, and presenting ahead of you. When your alarm goes off and wakes you up, your first thought is something along the lines of “I hate school. Why am I awake? I just want to sleep. I really hate school.”

That’s the mindset of the majority of students in the United States these days. Everyone in this country has educational opportunities, and people are simply used to it. Being so accustomed to free public education, students have stopped thinking about how lucky they are to have the chance to pursue an education, therefore becoming ungrateful for their education.

A good education is something that people around the world wish for, and they are lucky if they get it. Prime example: Malala Yousafzai. A young girl living in Pakistan, Malala dreamed of getting an education and becoming a politician so she could help her whole country. But when she was 10, the Taliban invaded her town, declaring that, among other things, girls were banned from attending school. But that didn’t stop her. She continued to go to school, where her father was the principal, for the next five years with her friends. She knew that what she was doing could get her killed, but she preferred the idea of speaking up, and getting an education rather than staying silent, even if it meant she could die.  She just wanted to learn.

Then when she was 15, she was found by the Taliban. On her way home from school on October 9, 2012, Malala was shot in the head for being a girl who went to school.

After being rushed to a British hospital, she was in a coma for a week. But she woke up, and she survived. She was extremely lucky to have lived after attaining what should have been a fatal wound. But maybe she isn’t the only lucky one.

Fast forward one year after the attack, and Malala is out of her week long coma and recovered. Now she is speaking up about her struggle. She is using what she went through to reach out to young girls, students, and even politicians. She spoke to President Obama about stopping terrorism and also met with the Queen of England. And her dream of being a politician has only intensified since she was attacked; more specifically, she wants to be prime minister of Pakistan.

Malala’s story serves to show how good students in the United States have it. Just think about it. If you were a girl living in the Middle East, you might not even be getting an education. And if you were able to go to school, the quality of education you could receive wouldn’t be remotely close to the quality of education you get in the U.S. Hearing of Malala’s bravery and determination to get an education should make you think about the things you have that, when she was in her early teens, she wished she had. And hopefully next time you wake up for school, you’ll be happy that you have a whole world of opportunities ahead of you, and that you don’t have to risk your life to get the education that so many people can only dream of.