A Path to Inspiration by Haley

A Path to Inspiration by Haley - October 2024 Scholarship Essay

After my father passed away in July of 2023, I felt lost and alone in the world. I had just graduated highschool a month prior and felt like my entire world came crashing down. I was now bearing the responsibility of helping my grandmother raise my four younger siblings and trying to keep our household in order. We got the unfortunate news that my father's house was being foreclosed on earlier this year. I felt like my family and life was falling apart. I knew I had to make a change in my life. I knew college would be a new chapter in my life and allow me to discover new things about myself and bring me closer to those around me.
First, it came to deciding what I wanted to study. I have always been passionate about theatre and acting, but I felt as though that was not something I could realistically turn into a career for myself. I have always been passionate about helping people and my community so I started researching areas of interest and quickly fell in love with the study of criminal justice and criminology. Most criminals come from a broken background just to be thrown into the broken justice system. I want to help fix this broken system. I believe that if people were equipped with the right mental health resources and the basic proper daily life resources before they decide to commit a heinous crime, they most likely would not commit the crime. I want to understand the kind of mindset an individual has to be in to carry out an act of crime. I started researching possible careers in the criminal justice field and stumbled upon the work of forensic psychologists and criminologists. As a criminologist, I would be able to professionally study criminal behavior and research the social factors that influence the behavior. This would help me create solutions to crimes that occur in my community. As a forensic psychologist, I would be able to study a person in-depth to evaluate their mental state and how deeply complex their trauma is. I would be able to help current and former imprisoned criminals have the means to live a normal life. I would be able to help repeat offenders get to the root of their problems to prevent further reoffending. I could even help a young person who has been around a life of crime and poverty their whole life change their life around. These were things I did not know I was interested in before I started looking into college. I am now a first year student at Guilford College majoring in Criminal Justice. The realization that my degree would allow me to help society’s most vulnerable gave me purpose and place in the world. I now have the opportunity to not only better myself by furthering my education, but to also use my education to better my community and those who are struggling. Having these new opportunities to make a difference in some way, no matter how small, is a huge benefit to not only myself, but to my community.
Another benefit to gaining my degree is being able to not only help those in my community, but also getting a chance to connect and build relationships with people within my community. I previously did not have a very stable support system. I felt alone and isolated in my life. Being in college and taking all sorts of different classes has connected me with various different kinds of people that I most likely would have never met without college. I have made a lot of friends who come from extremely different backgrounds than I. I go to school with people all over the United States and even some that are from out of the country. It has been interesting to realize that even though we are different in many ways, we are also extremely alike in many ways. I have also been able to connect with my professors and with professionals that work within the criminal justice system. Building all these different connections with people has made me more open minded and empathetic of those around me. I also feel like bettering my connections with people in my community has given me the confidence and motivation to reach out to people when I need help or support. In a way, I have been able to build my own community within my community and having support around me is a huge benefit.
Getting my degree is a huge personal achievement for me. Gaining college experience has helped me grow as a person, but it has also grown my connections with those around me. I feel like it has given me the motivation and drive to plan for my future and has given me much needed stability in my life. I would be the first person in my family to graduate college and it certainly has not been easy for me to get to this point. I hope that by achieving my career and personal goals, I can show my younger siblings and those that are on the fence about getting their degree, that success is possible through hardships. College has broadened my horizons significantly and if I am able to change one person’s life that is the only benefit I need to continue pursuing my degree.