10 Year Guesstimate by Avery

10 Year Guesstimate by Avery - March 2020 Scholarship Essay

Ten years from now I will be 27 years old. I will be laughing with my friends about how we’re all “coming up on the big three-zero.” But hopefully, I’ll be doing a lot more than simply laughing with friends. I don’t believe anyone has ever accurately predicted how the events of their life will play out over a ten-year span of time. Life is too unpredictable for such a prediction. However, I hope to make some logical guesses today as to how my life might look, one decade later.
Recently, I discovered that although I love making art, I love the freedom that creating provides me with. And I hold a tremendous grudge against anyone who attempts to tell me what to create, or when to create it. It was this realization that squandered any hopes I had for making a career out of art. As an effect, the Savannah College of Art and Design dropped from my number one choice to my number zero, and I was left to wonder: What do I want to do for the rest of my life? This question, while often thought of as one of the most difficult, is actually extremely simple to answer. The solution is another question: What have I consistently done throughout my entire life? For me, it was reading and writing. Now I simply had to apply those talents to the workplace.
As a graduating senior in 2020, I will be a college freshman in the fall. My first four years could simply be summed up as earning a bachelor’s degree in English or literature at the University of Florida but, in reality, those years will be so much more than that. They will be endless hours in the library, three cups of coffee deep at 2 AM. They will be thousands of new faces and hundreds of new friends. They will teach me how to be an adult, how to live on my own while my parents still provide me with the cushion to make mistakes. They will be the education I need to jumpstart the career I have been dreaming of. It is not enough to simply say the first four years will be “college at UF.” The first four years of my 10-year career plan will be as full of life as the past 17 have been.
As I thought more in-depth about my career search in English, I slowly began to align it with my love for teaching, and my talents for leadership. Although I express these qualities in atypical ways, I receive extreme satisfaction from helping others learn, and I would love to be able to combine both of these passions in the workplace. Ultimately, these discoveries led me to find that my goal is to become a college professor in whichever area of study I choose, whether it be literature or writing. But along with this decision comes extensive amounts of school. This will likely take another four years of higher education and graduate school, landing me in still more years of uncertainty.
When I finally complete this schooling, I hope to graduate with a position already secured, so I can move swiftly into my place of employment. I will spend the last two years of my 10-year “plan” settling into my career and preparing for a lifetime of teaching others, just like I was taught years ago. This plan, of course, excludes personal goals like marriage, starting a family, building incredible relationships, and everything in between. I’m almost scared to write this essay because this world is so unsure that I don’t want to put anything into writing but, with a little luck, I will read this essay in 10 years and marvel at its accuracy.