Light by Maxwell

Light by Maxwell - February 2019 Scholarship Essay

My story begins with a couple from New York driving to Massachusetts to meet their adopted new born son. Both U-Mass Amherst graduates, and I was the second child in the family. This was in 1991, a lot of technology was being introduced for the first time, something that had not surrounded children growing up before. Gen-X and Millennial are sometimes used these days to identify these possible cause and effect behaviors of the immersion into new technology. This introduced a unique new audience to the educational field. I found it a bit like swimming upstream, current is growth (equal and opposite), rocks are human interaction (friendly or foe), debris or mud clouding clarity about the effects of the technology.

Graduating high school not knowing where I wanted to study, my education lapsed. I began to whelm myself with the burdens or life and my indiscriminate nature or work led me to working in kitchens and moral lacking places. I am not saying all minimum wage jobs are horrible, I began to think of my future. During this time, quickly realizing positions like these would not support my hope to buy my fiancé a house and support a loving family. Then for a while I began to save money, year after year, knowing that with classes come living expenses and my desire for education cleared a path to financial freedom. Last year I enrolled in classes, knowing it would take some time to get my feet settled and complete the transition from work to school. Budgeting everything from grocery supplies to trash pick-up to make sure that getting to class and my study texts are paid. Skill I now see may very well have been taken for granted, I now understand that nobody wants to do them, but they are necessary in the pursuit of excellence in education.

In looking to my future, I want to be a student of engineering, my passions draw me toward mechanical/civil, but every day I continue to find that I can keep all my enjoyment from these and more with the study of computer system engineering. Studying is what I've commit to and the opportunities provided by Holyoke Community College have taught me that in a serious pursuit of education, there are people who care more about my well-being than anywhere else.