Polishing Diamonds by Chelsea

Polishing Diamonds by Chelsea - October 2022 Scholarship Essay

I am both a cautionary tale and an aspirational one.

The only child of a single mother raised by a single mother, I have grit in my blood. Self-determinism is learned quickly when you are essentially raising yourself. My mother didn't finish high school, and I saw the struggle she went through to provide for us with a string of low-paying, physically draining work. To make ends meet, we often lived in a multi-generational household with my grandmother. The very definition of an iron lady, she raised two little girls by herself in the 1960s on a typist’s salary and drilled the value of educational opportunity into my head. I equated college with mobility— the golden ticket out. Now that I've been inching my way towards a bachelor's degree for the better part of two decades, it feels more like a culmination, proof that I wasn't wasting my time. This is a room in which I deserve to stand.
At 16 years old, I was legally emancipated and became my own provider. I left a high school that bored me to strike out on my own. While working full-time and living alone, I finished in the top 5% on the Nebraska State GED with an ACT score of 28. Cue 5 years of procrastination and hubris that led me to become a 22-year-old divorcee with a baby. I clawed and scraped my way through a staccato of community college semesters, with varying degrees of support and self-awareness. The first in my family to attend college, the academic work itself was not the most difficult aspect. That was reserved for all the other priorities I kept spinning like plates. Now that the tumult and frank confusion of my younger years has passed, I see so clearly that my grandmother had been right all along— I am meant to do more with this life. Furthermore, it is my responsibility to reach back and help pull others forward. With my degree, I plan to enrich and uplift others. I plan to complete a masters degree and begin in secondary education with an emphasis in polishing the diamonds buried in the community college sector. What could I have done with just one college professor who made a difference? I plan to give back much more than I'm given.

This endeavor is not without personal challenges. I am the only income earner for our family of four. Currently, I am employed as a community manager for a large property in Monmouth, a field that I have been in for over 10 years. My two daughters, now aged 17 and 9, necessitate our living off-campus. My husband, Cameron, is immunocompromised and has been our house manager since the pandemic began. It has not been safe for him to work with the public, especially considering the dismal vaccination rate in much of our state. Cameron has taken the lion’s share of homeschooling the children, nurturing our large vegetable garden, and putting fresh-caught fish on the dinner table. We have a simple life but we make it work. Because I don't have the means to finance my education on my own, I am relying on a combination of financial aid and student loans to bridge the gap that will open when my working hours are reduced to make time for my studies. Between clever rationing of supplies and time resources, I hope to minimize additional costs. A year’s worth of tuition and fees is equal to nearly 300 hours of my employment earnings, before factoring in books, supplies, transit, and living expenses.

When I said that I am a cautionary tale, I meant it. The bedlam of my twenties made way for excuses in my thirties and so much of my potential floated downstream. As a 39 year old with a lifetime of aimlessness to regret, I refuse to give up on my education. I’m focused, prepared, and passionate, with freight train motivation. I have become the kind of student I want to teach one day. Please be part of my changing story. I belong in this room.