What I Wanted To Be by Emma

What I Wanted To Be by Emma - March 2018 Scholarship Essay

When I was asked the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” when I was in second grade, I would have told you one of three things: a horse expert, a doctor, or an artist. If you would have told me that I have to go to “high school” or “college” I would most likely have been confused by the concept of these mysterious places that my life would eventually lead me to. However, if you told me that it was possible for me to learn everything about horses, everything about the human body, or know everything about how to paint, I would most likely have bursted with joy.
To explain this eerie subject of “college” and why someone like me, an eight-year-old with three missing teeth and a DK Publishers book about horses, should go. You could tell me that the plastic human body figurine with the organs I could take out and put back in could be real one day. That one day I might be able to see what the heart and the stomach and the brain actually look like, in real life. I might be skeptical, but I would really hang on when you told me that one day, I could help sick horses, and that being a “horse expert” is also called being a veterinarian. I would probably tell you about the doctor kit I have at home, and how I have a dog and two cats at home and, “could I help them, too?”
Explained well, this concept of “college” would allow me to be whatever I wanted to be, and allow me to learn everything there is to know about anything I wanted. I would be convinced, because I loved to learn. Essentially, explaining something as big and mysterious as college would require some inquiry and application. Find out what the second grader likes, and then tell them how it would be possible for them to one day do that, which would take a long time of learning and practice.
I am no longer in second grade. It is now a whole decade later and I have a plan to learn everything there is to know about psychology through getting my PhD in clinical psychology from graduate school one day. I have applied for college, and it’s still as mysterious and frightening as it once was, except now I am more prepared. I believed the people who told me that I could one day be anything, and now I have chosen what that things is.