An Ambitious Vision by Erin

An Ambitious Vision by Erin - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

If I explained to 6-year-old me what I’m studying to be right now, I believe she would frown, scrunch up her nose, and before running off to go play in the dirt, say “But that’s so boring!” I would beg to disagree, but it may just be a little hard to explain to a 6-year-old what exactly a geological engineer does.

6-year-old me wanted to be a mailwoman. To her, the idea of walking around outside all day, delivering mail to people, and getting to know some of the customers, sounded quite exciting. She admired them for their perseverance in delivering the mail, and for their courage to walk past any dogs (6-year-old me was quite afraid of dogs). This admiration continued up through grade school, as I often saw the mailwoman make her rounds next to my school, and always waved to her. I admit, even now, I think I would enjoy being a mailwoman. However, education changed my career aspirations over time.

Around fourth and fifth grade, I decided I wanted to be a biologist instead. The natural world captivated me, and after doing different class projects on various animals, I knew I had to doing something to help the environment. While being a biologist was my goal at that point, I realize that school was cultivating my love for other subjects. By then, I was reading almost constantly (I was even told that I read too much). More importantly though, it was while we were learning about the Revolutionary War in fifth grade that I discovered my great love for history. I hadn’t realized it until then, but I could never get enough of history, especially when it involved dinosaurs. This is especially important to note.

In middle school, I finally figured out at least part of what I wanted to be when I grew up—a writer. As soon as I began completing creative writing assignments, I knew I was going to be a writer someday. This feeling has not changed even today. However, I also knew writing was not all I was going to do. In middle school, I didn’t have anything specific that I wanted to be (besides a writer of course), but I was keeping my mind open to possibilities. I loved almost all my classes—English, math, music, religion, history. However, there was one class that I would dread—science. I despised it. In my previous science classes, we had talked about all sorts of subjects. It was all very general, and I honestly didn’t pay too much attention. With this new science teacher, we were challenged,, and I think I just didn’t like being challenged. Yet, I appreciate it now. It was in this class that I encountered in detail the subject Earth Science. I grudgingly admitted to myself that Earth Science was a little interesting, and a seed of desire to know more about the subject was planted in the back of my mind.

My next phase in life, high school, is where I considered all sorts of occupations. I knew only two things: I was going to be a writer, and I could be whatever I wanted to be. I wanted something in addition to the writing. My problem was I liked too many subjects to decide on one career path. I really liked Earth Science by that point, especially when we talked about dinosaurs, but I couldn’t decide on an occupation yet. One day, as I was trying to pick a job to write about for a class assignment, I thought to myself, “Isn’t there some kind of job that deals with dinosaurs?” My love for them had expanded over the years, beginning with Jurassic Park, and increased with every dinosaur museum trip made. I figured if I like dinosaurs so much, why not see if there’s a job that has anything to do with them? I looked up my question, and in just a few seconds, I had my answer: a paleontologist. The more I read about paleontologists, the more I got excited about the job. However, this assignment I was doing required me to interview a paleontologist. Being a paleontologist is not exactly a popular occupation since it’s such a difficult field to get into. I tried looking online, but I was getting nowhere. Finally, I asked my English teacher for help, and I’ll always be grateful for what she did. She, being excited that I was considering this occupation, put me in contact with a paleontologist! The paleontologist was a wonderful lady, and I learned so much from her about the job and the field. After the interview, I was pretty sure that being a paleontologist was the job for me, and I have my teacher to thank for helping me figure that out!

Since then, being a paleontologist has been my career goal, although it has become a distant one right now. I have decided to take a less direct, but more practical route to get there, as that I am majoring in geological engineering, and minoring in geology. I enjoy these fields, but I want to get back to paleontology someday. I hope to enter graduate school for paleontology once I’m more financially stable after graduating college. I know it’s ambitious, and some would consider it a long shot, but I have education to thank for making me such an optimistic, curious, well-rounded, history-loving person.