Frank McCourt and I: Unlikely Success Stories by Josie

Frank McCourt and I: Unlikely Success Stories by Josie - April 2014 Scholarship Essay

As the daughter of a high-school English teacher, I have always held education in the highest respect. Literature has always pervaded my life: I would skim through well-worn copies of my father’s classics with interest as a child, although I didn’t gather the courage to begin reading them seriously until middle school, when I braved Animal Farm one day after class. Since then, I have harbored an insatiable love of literature, reading Eugene O’Neill’s dark Modernist dramas, the girly-girl Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and everything in between. Along with a love of literature, I’ve also developed a love and appreciation for teaching itself, which I’ve decided to pursue in college and beyond. Teaching is the best way I can show my thanks and honor the adults who have shaped my life and future career, as well as an opportunity to share and pass down the knowledge I’ve gained to future students.

A character that has influenced me, therefore, is himself a teacher who has done exactly that: in addition, he’s a writer, a profession that’s always been close to my heart. Although not fictional, Frank McCourt, author of his memoirs Angela’s Ashes, ‘Tis, and Teacher Man, has been extremely inspiring and influential to me as the “main character” in his stories. Over the course of the books, McCourt rises from an impoverished home in Limerick, Ireland to attend and graduate from New York University, eventually becoming an English teacher at Stuyvesant High School and a Pulitzer-Prize-winning author: the ultimate success story. McCourt’s recollections of his life have been instrumental in shaping my future, not only as a future English teacher, but as an inspiration to every high-achieving, low-income student daunted by the prospect of student loans and potential failure.

“Now I think it is time to give myself credit for at least one virtue: doggedness,” writes McCourt in the introduction to Teacher Man. “Not as glamorous as ambition or talent…but still the one thing that got me through the days and nights.” Like McCourt, doggedness has been my saving grace during a process full of vicissitudes. In September, the fall of my senior year, I applied to the QuestBridge National College Match program in the hopes of a full-ride scholarship to any one of eight schools. I reached the finalist round; my fees for the Questbridge partner college were waived. My parents and I celebrated. A few weeks later, I was notified that I had not received the Match scholarship. I sighed, shrugged, and began the arduous process of applying to every school to which I had received a free application: in total, I applied to over twenty colleges, each with carefully thought-out short-answer responses and painstakingly labored-over tax forms. April came: I was waitlisted, I was denied, I was waitlisted, I was—finally—accepted to an amazing small liberal-arts school. The financial aid award came soon afterwards: it was, unfortunately, not so amazing. It’s been a long and arduous process, but I’m happy to say I don’t regret a moment of it. Like Frank McCourt, I believe my determination will help me succeed in the long run, and that my search for scholarships and an affordable education will come through.

“Find what you love and do it,” McCourt concludes in the final chapter of Teacher Man. Of all the messages and themes in McCourt’s memoirs, this is the one I’ve taken to heart. I am one of those lucky individuals who has found what they love. I can unhesitatingly see myself at the head of a classroom years from now, although it’s certainly not an easy goal. After all, as McCourt states in regard to his own unlikely success: “F. Scott Fitzgerald said that in American lives there are no second acts. He simply did not live long enough.”