Investing in Me and a Better Future by Hannah

Investing in Me and a Better Future by Hannah - March 2023 Scholarship Essay

When I started school at Princeton University, coming from a small rural town, I feared I would not be able to keep up with the academic integrity and competitive nature of the prestigious research institution. My school didn't have AP classes, let alone teach us much about scholarly writing or literature or history or Latin or Greek or multivariable calculus or anything else that all of my classmates seemed to already know. I was enrolled in a pre-college program to help me learn to write by Princeton, which cemented in the thought that I was starting far behind all of my classmates. So when I got to college, I had strong insecurities and feelings of imposter syndrome as I started my classes.

Professor Mian was my first- and second-year advisor at Princeton. A member of the faculty working on global security policy, I recognized immediately how accomplished and esteemed Professor Mian was. When I expressed my nerves about classes, he reassured me and instead redirected me to talk about my interest in environmental work outside of the classroom. Professor Mian encouraged me to get involved and to meet new people outside of the classroom, as oftentimes those experiences can be even more educational than classwork and writing papers.

After the first few weeks of classes, we got lunch and I shared that my classes not only were accessible, but actually felt rather easy and under-stimulating. Despite my background at a rural underfunded public high school, I was able to both keep up and thrive in my coursework. When I asked for suggestions of environmental advocacy work I could do on campus, Professor Mian pushed me to get involved in the fossil fuel divestment movement at Princeton- essentially, an effort to end investments in the fossil fuel companies that are responsible for climate change. He connected me with the president of the Rockefeller Brother's Fund, a multi-billion-dollar trust that had previously divested from fossil fuels. This connection allowed me to host a panel with some other students working on divestment, and from there, we built a movement that successfully pushed Princeton to divest.

During my four years at Princeton, we held dozens of panels, wrote dozens of op-eds, created the second biggest petition in school history, held countless protests, and filed a legal complaint against Princeton. I learned about grassroots organizing and starting a movement, and I gained international recognition for my advocacy. I became an adept climate organizer, and now, I'm working to become a public interest lawyer so I can do this kind of work every day. Professor Mian invested and believed in me, and because of his support and reassurance, I have grown and learned far more than I ever learned in any of my classes.