Bold Acts by Corrin

Bold Acts by Corrin - March 2021 Scholarship Essay

What happens to a wasted idea, a thrown away plan? It can feel like winding up all this energy, only for it to fizzle out into the air. I’ve thought of this every time I’ve contemplated going back to school, focusing on all of the years I wasted and therefore all of the wonderful things I could have achieved. I’ll be 27 this year and I figured, maybe it’s too late for me and those big, beautiful and glorious dreams and maybe they could never have been accomplished anyways. Then, I stumbled across this quote, “I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They’re really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action.” The woman who wrote this was the first black female astronaut, earned ten doctorates, founded multiple companies and programs and is none other than Mae Jemison.

Astronaut, engineer, and doctor are just a few of Jemison’s titles that only came because of her unyielding spirit, dedication to education and effort to reach her goals. Initially as I learned more about her, I felt that the only way she accomplished those goals was because she started at such a young age, starting college at Stanford at only 16! I figured, well I surely can’t accomplish as much as she has, as I’m only beginning to pursue my life goals at basically 30! Interestingly enough, the more I researched her, the more inspired I felt. Throughout her life, she seemed to keep making steps forward, and that seemed doable to me. I could enroll in one class after another, and so on making gradual progress. It would be slow, for sure, but then she indirectly gave me another push in her written words stating, “What we find is that you have a goal that is very, very far out, and you approach it in little steps, you start to get there faster. Your mind opens up the possibilities.” How true that statement was, because the moment I started looking up courses, classes and degrees I started to really envision my life in the future. I realized that 10 years would pass by anyways and even with these little steps now, I could look back as 37 nearing 40 and either be happy that I took those steps or look back still contemplating if I should even begin.

Beginnings. Like Jemison, I would be a first. She was the first black woman in space, and I would be the first person in my family to graduate college for five generations. I would be the first with a technical computer skill, and the first to simply change their career 10 years after it has already started. It doesn’t seem that someone like me should even be in a room with other intellectuals who work at progressing technology and actively shape our future, but I want to be that person. Jemison notably stated, “Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations,” and she really did embody that! I’m sure there were those who felt she wasn’t qualified or didn’t even have the right to be considered for space missions because of who she was, and she stepped right over those assumptions into the 1992 STS-47 space craft that orbited the earth!

One of things I admire about Mae Jemison is that she didn’t hold back and only attempt one thing. I have always had so many dreams, and goals of different varieties: to become a writer, to learn to code, to be fluent in five languages and to draw and create. I have had some opportunities as well, but my own fear of inadequacies or social pressure has made me take a step back and sometimes not take a step at all. I had to make the decision to not think about what could happen but instead act with courage and confidence. I like to think that if I spoke to Jemison, she would say as she once did, “Timidity does not inspire bold acts.” She could speak from life experience as she worked in Cambodian refugee camps, Peace Corps in Liberia and even left this planet, something that will always be remarkable! I want to be so bold that when I look back on my life, it can be as colorful and daring as Jemison has been.

So, back when I stumbled across that initial quote about ideas and energy, it made me pause, and finally realize… because of these ideas, I’ve had an abundance of energy inside of me all along. I haven’t wasted it or thrown it all out into the atmosphere untapped and lost forever like the last blows from a balloon, but they’ve just been stored, waiting for me to put them into action. I can step by step, work toward my end goal and the possibilities will unfold as I go. Whatever those possibilities entail from my pursuit of creative literature to the computer sciences, the only limits will be the ones that I put on myself. Whether I am feeling motivated or have maybe stumbled here and there, I can look to Mae Carol Jemison, remember to not limit myself, take one step at a time, be bold and accept that 27 and beginning college is the perfect place for me to start!