A Shift in Perspective by Hannah

A Shift in Perspective by Hannah - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

Science and math were not always my focus. From the time I was six up until I was in sixth grade, I believed I was on my way to be a big shot chef. I disliked anything to do with science. Every year it seemed like all we learned about was volcanoes or the water cycle. So, I went with something I enjoyed -- cooking. My six-year-old self saw something meaningful in making food and having other people enjoy it. It was something simple that my simple six-year-old brain understood. As I grew up though, I realized I wanted to do something that was more meaningful to other people and to me personally.
Then when I went into seventh grade I was introduced to a new type of hand based science. I had a class where we would do a bunch of different scientific experiments. For instance, we had to make a boat of aluminum foil and see how many pennies we could get it to hold. This was a start for me. This class introduced me to a new hands-on scientific perspective. Not much was different though. Within the next year I continued my growing interest in science, but when asked at the end of eighth grade I wanted to be an interior decorator. I had a new enjoyment for creativity that also came with the aforementioned class, and it trumped my new scientific side.
When I got to high school things began to change for me academically. I became more focused on science classes than on art classes. It was my freshman year when I realized I would never have become a chef or an interior decorator because I was never shown what else the world had to offer me. In my first year of high school, I took a medical based class where we spent two semesters researching a made up woman trying to figure out how she died out of the blue. This class is what really pushed me into the field of science.
Within the next two years of this class, it became clear to me. I wanted to be a neurologist. Learning about the brain and how it works in high school finally showed me what I actually wanted to be when I grow up. I’m going to college this fall where I will major in neuroscience with a concentration because when I grow up I want to change people’s lives. I want to become something that is meaningful to me and science is something I can use in a personally meaningful way.