Research at Home and Abroad by Hannah

Research at Home and Abroad by Hannah - August 2024 Scholarship Essay

Despite the many challenges and hardships that students of my graduating class and I have all endured, I have finally made it to my senior year of college. To say that I have learned a lot would be an understatement, as it seems like I have been at least three different people in the past 5 years. I have loved majoring in English and minoring in Media Studies/Communication, because interacting with other stories - historical and contemporary - have formed an empathetic foundation for me in my career goals. I just transferred out of community college last year, and was accepted to a prestigious 4-year university to finish out my bachelor's degree.
This year is going to be very different than my previous years of school, though, as I am in the process of moving onto my campus to spend my last year in a college apartment with a friend of mine. After being a commuter student for my first three years of college, it was a hard, and almost terrifying, decision. However, I made the choice based on my goals that I have entering the next year.
This past spring, I was accepted to my university's research program, and will be researching the effect of traumatic news on consumers. As a writer on the college newspaper, and a scholar of the written word and media, this topic was incredibly interesting to me. I am hoping to spend this upcoming year being engaged with my community of readers and classmates, both in and out of the classroom. In addition to the research program, an application to a nationally competitive scholarship, such as the Fulbright, is required for all students participating. I am intending to apply for a research grant to receive the funding to write my novel over the Secret War of Laos, and it is a work that I have been writing for a year, now.
I have high hopes for this upcoming year, and know how much work it will take. However, I love learning and providing for my education, and to take my learning from the classroom to a lab, or even a foreign country, is a goal that I am determined to spend my first year out of the house reaching for.