Education is the Apple of a Writer's Eye by Andin

Education is the Apple of a Writer's Eye by Andin - July 2019 Scholarship Essay

When I was in elementary school, education never felt like a chore; it was an engaging way of life that provoked my curiosity of the world. I grew very fond of books, in which I would dive into alternate universes with whimsical characters and outlandish creatures. I loved reading dictionaries and practicing my times tables on flashcards. I especially enjoyed the times that I was taken out of class to participate in my school’s gifted program. My teacher and I would spend a lot of time teasing our brains with puzzles and riddles or creating our own inventions and contraptions.

Sixth grade was the first year that I was given a choice to continue taking honors courses. However, my mother made the decision for me to continue, no matter what I wanted. She had always instilled in me that I could become anything I wanted to be through the power of education. She urged me to take every opportunity to elevate myself in life. As I grew older, I pressured myself to be better. I first started to struggle with this perfection in middle school. It was then when I started to realize two things. First, I realized that I couldn’t just rely on my natural intellect to pass my courses anymore; I needed to spend more time studying. Second, I began to realize that I didn’t have a passion to be a doctor or an engineer like the other honor students; I fell madly in love with creative writing and I knew I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. I loved daydreaming fictional stories in history class about how the historical figures would adjust to today's society. I also imagined a lot of modern versions of the stories that I had read in my English classes.

I lived in trepidation during high school because I didn’t know what I would do after. I knew that I wanted to go to college, but I was afraid to throw thousands of dollars down the drain for an English degree. Some of my relatives were disappointed that I wanted to pick a career with such limited options. The idea of missing out on well-paid job opportunities in the law, math, and science fields for the sake of Shakespeare felt absurd. I decided to save thousands by going to community college first, so that I could discover a cookie cutter career mold that I could fit into.

Despite all my efforts to evade the writing career path, it was all I could ever think about. I wanted to create stories like the ones that I spent my entire adolescence reading. I decided to transfer to Rutgers University-Camden after community college because of their free tuition program for low-income students. It was there where I officially declared myself as an English and Digital Studies major. I decided that it was the best route to take if I wanted to develop my knowledge and skills as a storyteller. Great writers have an eclectic taste of literature and many inspirations to draw from. For instance, in the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain discusses controversial aspects of morality without taking a formal stance on any of it. This is especially intriguing to me because I’ve always wanted to write a story centered around the morality of cultural appropriation, creating a discussion about the issue without conveying a biased agenda. I'd also like to rewrite modern versions of historical events and classic literature. I believe it will allow students to become more interested in these subjects like it did for me when I was a child.

I am returning to Rutgers this fall to start my senior year. I can’t wait to walk across the graduation stage one year from now to obtain my degrees. A college degree seems like a golden ticket of possibilities and I feel like I am about to catch the runaway train to the destination of my dreams. I’ve already started writing for my school newspaper and a couple of websites, and in the fall, I’ll be an editor for the Greater Philadelphia online encyclopedia. I hope these experiences will elevate me to a position where I can pitch my creative writing story ideas too. My journey sometimes felt narrow and intimidating, but when I followed my passion, I felt the most at peace. The thing about having a passion for education is that my hunger for knowledge will never fully be satisfied. This is especially an advantage to have as a writer because there will always be a world left unexplored or unexposed and a story that needs to be told. I want to know as much as there is to know about anything, and even will go as far as getting my master’s degree in any subject. All in all, my passion for education is the reason why I fell in love writing and it is what ignites my desire to keep creating.