What do you plan on majoring in when you get to college and why did you choose that major? by Danielle

What do you plan on majoring in when you get to college and why did you choose that major? by Danielle - April 2025 Scholarship Essay

I am a first-generation college student who is the descendant of sharecroppers that was as recent as 1980; I am the eldest of three siblings and the first person in my family to have an interest in the arts/humanities. I enjoy reading, visiting museums, or watching shows/podcasts that would brighten my knowledge of the world. I have my associate's in the liberal arts and my bachelor's in the Arts, and I am currently working on my Master's. Right now, I am in a program at The Johns Hopkins University for Museum Studies. I plan to eventually work towards a PhD. I currently work as an intern at an archive for the county I live in. As a child, when I would watch educational shows about archeologists or paleontologists, I never saw a person who looked like me in those fields.

I always saw middle-aged caucasian men who were always digging in the ground, never an African American woman with brown eyes and 4c hair like me. I want to show children, especially girls, that there is someone who looks like you who is doing something that is considered male-dominated and lacks representation. I am not saying that there aren't African American historians, archeologists, or paleontologists who are also female, It is just not something I see very often or at all. In my sources, I often noticed that I was the only African American in the course, and it made me feel small, but I knew that this was important because I needed to not only preserve my history but be an inspiration for someone like me.

The way I plan on having a positive impact on not just my community but the world is by being a source of representation and by bringing hard and deliberately ignored topics to the surface that will spark discussion and hopefully change, I currently believe that black history is being erased and forgotten and there are being as "uncomfortable." Black history is the history of America, and I refuse to let that go without a fight. I plan on pushing for uncomfortable truths to be spoken and unheard voices to be heard again. Whether it be through exhibits, articles, or blog posts, I will not let that die. Our history books have been wrong, and we are currently rewriting them once more as people begin to uncover hard truths that were once concealed, but it is up to us to uncover the truth.