How Education has Shaped Who I am Today by Olivia

How Education has Shaped Who I am Today by Olivia - December 2014 Scholarship Essay

My background as a Rush-Henrietta student has affected me greatly throughout my high-school career, and I couldn't have asked to be a part of a better high-school community. Throughout my middle school years up until now, I have been offered opportunities of academically challenging courses and student leadership. By taking advantage of these opportunities, I have been able to increase my potential each year and keep pushing myself to give my best effort no matter what, not allowing any time to slack off and allow distractions to get in my way. However, challenges and tough work came along, such as determining activities that would benefit whatever organization we were working with, and then motivating my peers to also engage in that activity. Thankfully, I have been blessed to have several outstanding teachers and mentors to help me whenever their help was needed. I am so glad to have had those opportunities for they helped to see the greater good of helping others rather than simply yourself.

I was honored to be selected as a student representative in the District’s Leadership Forum, as well as the student selected to sit in on some Administrator applicant interviews. Those opportunities gave me a mature insight into the benefits of academically challenging myself so as to take a higher road and role in my future. I was able to see from the “inside” how another person took a similar role and was now in a position of leadership themself, even to the point of leading an entire school district and in some cases, a building full of 500 challenging teenagers.

The educational opportunities that were offered and I have taken through the Rush-Henrietta School District have also aided me to be a competitive and competent applicant at excellent colleges in our area. This has been particularly important at Nazareth College, where my major is Occupational Therapy. This is a newly accredited program at Nazareth, so they had a limited number of openings for the program and were very critical in their selection of applicants. Thanks to the Advancement Placement classes, Honor's classes, SAT prep classes, extracurricular opportunities and the hard work of highly qualified and caring teachers, I was among those selected for this very limited opportunity. I am so thankful to Rush-Henrietta for preparing me so well, even when I wasn't sure which direction my career after high school would go. Since being enrolled at Nazareth, I have made the Dean’s List three times and was selected to meet with the New York State Education Department Accreditation Board when they visited Nazareth with the intent of granting the OT program accreditation.

Challenges in my family, specifically life-long health issues of close family members, has inspired me to pursue a career in helping others. My long-term professional aspirations are to obtain a Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy and use this degree for employment to assist the elderly as well as young people, the disabled and injured, basically wherever else this skill is needed.

I have worked hard to take challenging courses and achieve good grades in order to qualify for good schools to achieve my academic and career goals. My mother, the head of our household, has also worked hard to motivate me in this direction; yet, she has been impacted by the current state of the economy, causing it to be difficult to save for and now fund college costs. This scholarship is needed so much to reach the goals we have set and worked so hard to qualify for.

Thank you so much for this opportunity to be considered for this scholarship, and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need additional information.