Changing Dreams by Daysha

Changing Dreams by Daysha - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

From the beginning of my life I knew I wanted a career in science. At the age of six years old my lifetime dream was to become an astronaut. I spent my entire childhood watching every space documentary I could get my hands on. I went to every space camp. My goal was to be the first human to make alien contact. Although my dream was farfetched, at 6 years old I was confident that one day it would be me on tv shaking hands with the president after making a new discovery. When I told friends and family my dream job, they laughed, but that never stopped me from going for it.
As time went on and I entered high school my hobbies were seen as weird and I stopped following that dream. I continued to watch documentaries and read up on the latest space technology, but only a few friends knew about it. I had a teacher who once told me I could never do it because I was a girl and a family member who told me black people especially black woman cannot do science. I grew to hate science.
Once it was time for college, I had made the decision to not follow science, although it was my dream because I let those people persuade me into another career path, translation. I went off to Old Dominion University convincing myself that a major in international studies and a minor in Asian history was what I needed to have a fulfilled life because I was not smart enough for the science field. My schedule required me to take any science class of my choosing and my heart stopped when I saw they offered a freshman level Astronomical Physics class. This class was what kept me going through that year. On the last day of the semester I had a breakdown, I knew this major was not where I needed to be. I packed up my stuff and came back home to my local community college.
At my community college, I had an amazing chemistry and physics teacher who worked with me and helped me realize where I belonged. Although I was amazing at physics, I was even better at chemistry and loved it. During this time, I got to shadow at several facilities in the science field along with a couple of hospital laboratory’s and that’s where I found my place. From the moment I laid eyes on that medical laboratory, I knew I had found my place. Since finding my dream career I have graduated from my local community college and will be attending Jefferson College of Health Sciences to major in Medical Laboratory Science. My education up until this point has thrown me in several different ways, but in the end, I still ended up in the STEM field which as a child meant so much to me.