About Me: Goals & Plans by Daniel

About Me: Goals & Plans by Daniel - August 2024 Scholarship Essay

My name is Daniel Olson. I am about to start my 3rd year at SMSU. I grew up in Northern Minnesota. When home, I live with my parents and my younger sister. I am the first in my family to attend a university. I enjoy running, basketball, camping, hunting, and hiking. My goal is to become a history teacher and hopefully, a basketball and track/cross country coach. I plan to achieve this by attending Southwest Minnesota State University and pursuing my degree in 5-12 social studies education while having a minor in coaching. While I am attending SMSU I will compete in their track and cross country programs. This fall I was an Orientation Leader on campus for Gold Rush weekend. .
My hope is that during my time at SMSU I will learn about education, interacting with students, and how to provide the best education that I am able to provide once I graduate and get a job. I really do believe that you can best serve your community by being a part of it and helping those you can. I have always liked helping people, and the way that I have found best suits me is through educating others academically and encouraging them along with educating them through athletics. I love to see kids succeed and feel proud of themselves.
I feel like I deserve this scholarship, because I have always worked hard at school and sports. I was honored to finish at the top of my graduating class. I have been a Varsity level athlete since I was in eighth grade. I am confident that being a 3 sport athlete has helped me learn how to balance life priorities, academics, and athletics. I have always tried to help kids that are younger than me both academically and in the sports that I have been in with them. During my senior year I started a tutoring group for some of the 7th/8th grades student athletes who were having a hard time balancing school and athletics. I helped them with their homework and helped them with study and organizational tips. For me, this really helped to confirm the course of study I am planning to take.

As a future teacher, I am really hoping to not have a lot of student loan debt once I get into the teaching/coaching field. For this reason, I have worked really hard at applying for as many scholarships as I can. This scholarship would definitely help me to work towards my ultimate goal of zero student loan debt while an undergraduate. I really figure that if I don’t have to worry about paying off that debt, that I will have more time to put into youth coaching when I am out of college.