Opportunity Stolen, Opportunity Given by Joslyn

Opportunity Stolen, Opportunity Given by Joslyn - October 2019 Scholarship Essay

My mom, though she wasn’t the smartest or most academically competitive girl in high school, has been the most inspiring person in my life school-wise. She barely passed high school and never took a concurrent or AP class; she was the stereotypical ‘blonde cheerleader’. However, she dedicated herself to make up for that lack of ‘advantage’ that so many students shed sweat, blood, and tears to achieve while in college. With so little algebra under her belt and science being more of a pain to existence than an intriguing subject, she struggled her way to earning a Bachelor’s degree. Fast forward to today, her hard work has led to her owning a limited-scope operator teaching company, a successful 16-yr. career in radiography, and what she brags to be her greatest achievement: me. Her school system’s lack of care and her family moving every 2 years for her father’s Air Force stationing gave her multiple disadvantages in terms of consistent and well-founded education. She made sure that that would never be the case for me; even if it meant driving out of the district, even if it meant talking to teachers, talking to principals, my mother has taken every opportunity she could so I could get the education she never got, a better chance for success. She has been there for every school event I was in, tried her best to be at every speech tournament I had, and has been my shoulder to cry on and vent to when school got tough. Now, I can say with the utmost certainty that thanks to her efforts, I am confident in entering the ‘real’ world as an above-average educated woman. With multiple AP classes, dual-enrollment classes, and countless job and academic opportunities under my belt, I feel more prepared to handle the world than I have ever been. And I have my mom to thank for this. So, while my mom wasn’t the smartest, or the most competitive, she is the hardest-working person I have ever met and has worked herself half to death to make sure I was the smartest that I could be.