My Goals by Jounte

My Goals by Jounte - August 2022 Scholarship Essay

I grew up in a small beach town in New Jersey for a majority of my life. The only activities available for kids growing up was going to the beach and the mall. Because of this many kids tended to get involved with the wrong crowd and many had no dreams or clues for what they wanted to do with their life when they got older. And I was one of them, for many years I had no direction or passion for anything in my life. I would wake up, go to school , do my homework and go to sleep. That was my cycle and the same for my friends and most likely others in my grade.

The only career options that I learned in school were the medical field, law, and engineering. I always knew that none of those resonated with me nor was I interested. It wasn’t until my sophomore year in high school when I was required to take an art class and I chose intro into art. It changed my life. I started drawing at any moment I could get like lunch and even when I got home every night. It was very clear to me that art was my passion and something that I wanted to pursue, however I always knew art had a negative stigmatism around it, for example “ Artists don’t make money, it’s not a real career”. Because of that stigmatism I decided that I would give up my hopes of going to school to be an artist and instead I would go for pre med.

When I graduated high school it was in the peak of Covid and I decided to take a gap year. That gap year I decided to take my art more seriously and learn more about the art community for fun. I was amazed when I would meet people in many different fields of art from animation to sculpture and even jewelry making. I was slowly getting attention for my paintings and jewelry, I couldn’t even keep up with orders. I’ve had the opportunity to paint murals, go to vendor fairs and sell custom bags. I was making more money with my art rather than The full-time job I was working. One year became two years of being an artist and I was loving every second of it. My sister had to move to Minnesota and I took the trip with her to help get her settled in. It was our first time in Minnesota so we walked around nearby shops by her apartment and stumbled upon an arts center. You can learn every form of art there from glassmaking to digital painting to photography. I’ve never seen anything like that before and I was amazed to see people of all ages taking classes.

After that moment I decided I wanted to go back to school for Art so I can open my own community art/career center. My goal for my upcoming years in university is to be as engaged with my school as much as possible to learn as much about different forms of art as I possibly can . I want to continue working in building my business to be even bigger and learn how to properly run it by taking different business/marketing classes. It’s going to help me obtain my dream business of opening a center where people of all ages can learn about different careers that they didn’t even know existed and also be provided with resources to learn about steps to obtaining jobs in that field. It is imperative that kids have a place to be able to learn different skills and help them find their passion. This will prevent people from going into careers they don’t like and improving quality of life. I was very fortunate enough to learn my life passion at a very young age in school but that’s not the same for everyone. Not every career option is taught at school so many kids believe they have a very limited list. I recently started an online blog where I talk about different career opportunities in lesser-known fields and how to run a business as a teenager. It’s small but it’s a start to my goal of opening the center. Every community deserves a center where people can unite and celebrate passions.