Encouraging Independence by Anastazia

Encouraging Independence by Anastazia - July 2022 Scholarship Essay

My college experience has not gone exactly as I had planned. I graduated from high school in 2020, during the lock-downs from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new way of life imposed by COVID combined with changes in my personal life to completely upend my original plans of attending a university out-of-state. After a few weeks of planning how to continue my education, I enrolled in an online community college program. Shortly after that, I moved out on my own to begin life as an independent student.
Being an independent student means working full-time to pay the bills while also taking a full load of college courses. It means working overtime to afford tuition, and staying up late after work to study. It’s an exhausting routine, and leaves little time for much else. But during the last two years, I’ve come to realize that I appreciate my education far more for having worked to earn it than I would have if it was paid for me. When I earned my associates’ degree, it was immensely satisfying to know that I had achieved my goal on my own terms and with my own resources. Now that I’m studying for my bachelors’, I look forward to one day being able to say that I put myself through college.
In the future, I hope to see more programs and resources encouraging students to become self-supporting while still in college. This would include financial aid based on the student’s income rather than that of their family, so long as the student maintains full-time employment. Such financial aid programs would also benefit those students who did not have a choice in becoming independent - possibly either being orphaned or disowned - and may not have access to their parents’ financial information. I would also like to see programs in which students can use their skills from work to “test out” of related courses, speeding up their progress and reducing their expenses. As a hospital security officer, such a program would have greatly benefited me while I was studying criminal justice, as many of my courses were closely related to my duties on the job.
Supporting independent students isn’t just about financial aid. It’s about promoting the idea that every person - no matter their race, gender, sexuality, or background - has the ability to create opportunities for themselves. Independent students not only have the chance to continue their education, but to gain valuable experience in the workforce while doing so. I know that my work ethic has improved drastically since I began supporting myself, and I would like to see more students being able to develop their own work ethics and have the satisfaction of knowing that their education is something they earned.