My Biggest Accomplishment by Marina

My Biggest Accomplishment by Marina - March 2014 Scholarship Essay

Throughout high school I have always valued getting good grades, and always doing the best I could to my ability. As well as maintaining my grades, I managed to always be doing at least one sport, and having one job as well. Keeping up with all of these can be fairly stressful, but having down time, or any time to myself was never something I have found to be relaxing. I prefer being busy, and keeping myself on my toes. With this being said, with as many things going on in my life, I am proud of myself for always keeping my grades up and never compromising them for the other activities going on in my life.

Currently I work two jobs, cheer on a competitive cheerleading squad, and maintain a 4.0 GPA as I have for six out of my eight high school semesters. I am very proud of this because it has not been easy. It was not until this year when I took a look back at my various academic awards, and my plethora of collected brochures from colleges who want me, when I realized I have a lot to be proud about. The State of Alaska has offered me free tuition for instate schools through a combination of two scholarships, the UA Scholars Program and Alaska Performance Scholarship, which I am fortunate enough to receive. Sadly, Alaska's schools do not offer what I want to go to school for, and the classes I could take would not be transferable when I am ready to transfer and go to dental school.

This has impacted me in many ways. First, I had already planned on staying in Alaska to get my undergrad out of the way for less money, but now I cannot. After looking into the schools in Alaska, it would be a waste of my time to try and accomplish any schooling here since most of my credits would have to be redone. I was not anticipating having to go out of state so soon for school. Another way in which this has impacted me is that when I started looking at schools I was clueless as to where I wanted to go. I was up for anything. It was such an amiable feeling knowing that there were colleges out there so persistent on getting me to apply for their school. I truly felt that all the long nights of studying and doing homework were clearing my future pathways.

Just as everyday has it’s ups and downs, I have experienced many ups and downs with where I want to go to college, how I will pay for it, and where I will end up when all this is said and done. The feeling I have is pure accomplishment for four straight years of hard work and dedication to my schooling, I only wish that every thing will work itself out in the least expensive way, even if my free instate tuition cannot be used, I am still proud of every thing I have accomplished.