Follow your passion! by Aleia

Follow your passion! by Aleia - March 2017 Scholarship Essay

If I were to give speech to a school wide audience it would be about following your true passion. Growing up I always recited movie lines and paid close attention to how movies were made. A normal routine for me was to watch “the making of” a film after watching it on DVD, as well as the “director’s cut”. At the time, I did not know that this was not something that everyone did my age, or even older than me. I simply knew that it was something that I enjoyed. While in the 6th grade, I started to take the narratives that I had written in school, and begin to write them into scripts. My mom was fascinated at this because no one ever told me to do this or how to do it. It was simply something in me that wanted to tell stories and wanted to bring smiles to people’s faces.
As I grew up, life begin to steer me into other paths and ideas of careers as I wanted to do something that was more “normal”, or not so far fetch. I changed my mind to take on a medical major. Although I knew in the back of mind I enjoyed telling stories, I set that hobby to the side. As time went on, I begin to lose family members every few years to ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This is very rare to an African-American family, and rare disease in itself. 90% of its patients are Caucasian. After the passing of my Aunt Sherri in 2014, I was finally fed up with losing people and feeling lost; this was the 4th person in my family to pass from this horrible illness. I had to go back and find myself and reevaluate my life spiritually and mentally. What did I decide to do? What God told me to. I decided to write. I said I was going to get the pain out and share this story with the world. I wrote the screenplay entitled “4 Voices Unheard” within 1 year, all while going to school and keeping my grades up. Recently I switched my major to Interdisciplinary Studies and I have decided to pursue my true passion. Do not let anyone or anything steer you from what you really love and want to do in life. No matter what, stick to your craft.