My time by Paola

My time by Paola - March 2020 Scholarship Essay

I just graduated high school a few months back in May 2020. It's my freshman year at Sam Houston State University about an hour away from my home in Houston, Texas. I started watching a TV show named Criminal Minds about a group of extraordinarily talented criminal profilers solving all kinds of insane criminal cases everyday, inspiring my dream to become an FBI agent just like them when I was 16.
I'm sitting around on campus working on an assignment for my criminology course, and I think about a few months back in high school. It's just crazy about how quick it was and how relieved I was when I got a scholarship to pay my tuition here. My parents never would have been able to pay even half of the cost. During those first few months of college, I start thinking about taking the naturalization test to get my US citizenship, and get a job to pay the rest of my expenses at Sam Houston State. In the next three years, I take in the freedom, being my own, the diversity of the environment, as the "college experience" until it's 2024 and I'm done with college. When I was in high school I complained a lot, especially senior year and asked myself how I'd survive but here I am. I'm 22 years old and I'm officially a Sam Houston State Alumni. I can't believe I got through the first crucial phase of my life. I have my degrees in psychology and criminology. Finally, I can happily say I'm ready to defend myself in life. I was really worried back in freshman year of college about my citizenship status, with it being one of the only things in my way of applying for the FBI, but I got it too. After graduating from Sam Houston State, I go back home and visit my family for a little while before leaving to find where to jump into my career. To be a special criminal profiler agent for the FBI, now that I graduated college and got the necessary degrees, I'm going on to be a police officer for two years before I can apply to the FBI academy. I'm tense and anxious because being a police officer I'm gonna have to be out a lot more and witnessing lots of unsettling and life-threatening ocurrences. Nonetheless, I'm willing to do everything I can to reach my dream. After my 2 years of being a police officer, I don't bother getting excited just yet because I need an initial five to seven years of investigative experience in the FBI. It's 2027 and I take those next five years as taking all the additional training that I can get suggested, because I honestly have no idea what other part of the field I want to practice in during the meantime. I'm sure I will have my physical training, study forensics, human behavior, crime scene analysis, interview skills, and many more of the like.
After my 5 years of training to move up to be a criminal profiler, my career has officially taken off and I couldn't be happier. It's finally the moment I only imagined 10 years back. If it was possible for me, an undocumented girl from an extremely unsuccessful, mysoginistic, poor background could become a professional in the United States and break the pattern of failed lifestyles in my family, everything is possible.