Opportunity, Opportunity, Opportunity by Ashley

Opportunity, Opportunity, Opportunity by Ashley - January 2018 Scholarship Essay

If I had to chose one word to describe why I want to attend college, it would be opportunity. Options are limited without a college education, but once you dive into the college experience so many more doors are opened. College is a time for new experiences and finding out what kind of person you truly are. It is a time for taking chances and having fun, but most importantly, it is a time for educating yourself. However, in order to accomplish any of the above, you must have the initiative to make it happen by taking a hold of the opportunity given and making the best of it.
First and foremost, college offers the opportunity of education. There are only so many jobs you can get without a college education, and even fewer than that without job experience. Don't get me wrong, any job you can get is nothing to sneeze at, especial for someone of my age, but I don't feel like flipping burgers my whole life. College isn't the time for settling for a minimum wage job. It is the time for dreaming big and doing your best to make those dreams happen. It is the time to find out what you love and go for it. So I will take college as an opportunity and sit through eight long years of study so that I can do what I love, but the larger paycheck that comes from a PhD doesn't hurt either.
College also offers an opportunity for community. I believe that college is one of the few places on this planet that allows people to find great opportunities for making friends. Allow me to elaborate, if you put enough people with the same interests in one room, give them deadlines and stressful tests, and then set them loose, they are bound to find a group of people that they can get along with. People really aren't all that different, its just easier to recognize when a group of people are able to talk with fervor on the same subject. Deadlines simply act as a catalyst for conversations to occur as students form study groups or, in the worst case, stressfully attempt to do all the work they've been needing to do for weeks in a day or two by asking friends and possibly Google for help (by the way that's not me, but I've seen it happen).
Lastly, college offers the opportunity of fun. There will be the opportunity for one's youth to be enjoyed to the fullest. During college, you reach the drinking age and can be legally married, which may be a rather dangerous combination, but I digress. It is a time when you can make poor choices while you are young and can spring back from mistakes. Yay! Seriously though, if common sense is used (Late teen to early twenty somethings have so much of that, no worries. Our prefrontal cortexes are definitely fully developed...not.) college can be a lot of fun and will grow you as a person. It is a time for lessons to be learned, both positive and negative, and a time for personal growth.
To sum up, college is a time when young persons can make the most of their youth and set themselves up for a better future. Or not, it really depends on whether or not you take advantage of it. But that's where the opportunity comes in. If you take the bull by the horns then you'll either be impaled or you'll rise victorious, a young matador. I know that college is just something I'll have to go for, and with strength and determination to take every opportunity I'm given and milk it for all its worth, rewards will come my way.