Growth through a Working Students Eyes by Emma

Growth through a Working Students Eyes by Emma - August 2019 Scholarship Essay

As well as being a student majoring in psychology and criminal justice, I am also an equestrian. “The small house, backed by a cherry red barn with flat grasslands.” This is a vision that I’ve had since I could remember. I have been riding and competing with a variety of horses since I was five. When I was fifteen I got an amazing opportunity to travel to Marbella, Spain and train under a Grand Prix trainer named Mariapi. I spent three months there and I learned more than fifteen years of riding combined. Mariapi taught me the ins and outs of the jumping arena and how much work it takes to make it in the horse business. At the end of the visit, she mentioned to me that I could come back anytime and be her working student.
Since that summer ended, I have become a working student of an accomplished trainer. Stephanie Griffith has taught me everything there is to know about starting young horses off of the racetrack. I’ve learned how to build a bond through groundwork which is an exercise where the horse is loose and feeds off your body language. At the end of the exercise, the horse is supposed to recognize that you’re their partner and join up with you. For people who have never experienced this, it’s the purest form of connection. This working student opportunity has helped me broaden my abilities from riding experienced jumpers to working with young horses and starting them in new careers.
If I were able to take a gap year, I would definitely go back to Marbella to train under Mariapi again. I would love to be able to show her the greatness of groundwork and how it builds a completely different level of connection. In return, Mariapi mentioned that she would teach me more of the business side of owning a horse training ranch. Even though I’m going into a behavior profiling career, my end goal is to run my own stable and work with troubled rescue horses. So, I would take that year to learn all the skills I could to help me grow as a rider, make connections with others in the horse business, and learn what it takes to make things run smoothly in the horse world.
Overall, I would make the most out of taking a gap year by traveling to Spain to work with Mariapi. That experience would help jumpstart my stable owning career which is a dream I’ve always wanted. It would also get me that much closer to “the small house, backed by a cherry red barn with flat grasslands,” that I continue to envision.