How I Found The One by Samantha

How I Found The One by Samantha - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

I decided to go back to school for accounting a week ago. The light bulb moment came to me while I was watching YouTube videos about free-lancing. It mentioned accountant as an option, and I realized that could be me. Ironically, a few years ago, if somebody told me that accounting was their study of choice, my reaction was, “Why on earth would you want to do that?” with a facial expression that screamed, “You are crazy!” Accounting? That sounded extremely boring and honestly, lame. I imagined an uninteresting lonely person who sat at a computer cranking numbers all day. That wasn’t exactly something I aspired to be.
Twenty years prior, when I was six, I wanted to be an art teacher. That sounded awesome to me! I loved all sorts of art, and my art teacher was really cool. I was good at drawing and making things. It seemed like a good fit for me. Of course, I had a limited idea on what career choices were available. There was teacher, doctor, lawyer, fire fighter, police officer. My ideas didn’t stretch out much further than that and by the time I was 18 I still didn’t have a clue. Art teacher sounded like it was good, but it never felt right. I knew it wasn’t THE ONE for me, I just didn’t know what was.
When I was graduating high school and moving onto college, I didn’t believe that everything and anything was available to me. I was very limited in what I thought I could do and what I thought I had to do. I knew I had to go college and I knew we didn’t have a lot of money for it. I choose to go to Western Connecticut State University, where I could commute to, while still living at home. This was the safe choice. WCSU did not have my major of choice, art education. I decided to major in elementary education with a focus on psychology. This choice was random. I do not know why I would pick that. Thinking about it now, it doesn’t make sense at all. I don’t enjoy psychology classes nor do enjoy children. I just picked it to pick something, because that is what I had to do. After a meeting with a school counselor, I changed my major to elementary education in mathematics. She saw my class grades and my test scores, and knew it would be a good fit. I guess it was kind of obvious but it just didn’t sound fun.
I was all ways good at math, even when I was six. My best subject was math. It was always an easy A, something I didn’t have to put a lot of effort into. I never dreaded math, like students around me. Math was always a class that I was excited to attend. Even though, I knew this on the surface, it wasn’t something I registered in my mind or identified with until I became an adult.
I didn’t realize my natural talent until after I dropped out of college and spent half a decade working in the restaurant industry. As a manager at Panera Bread, I was creating charts that explained our costs in inventory, our sales and our waste. I loved counting on inventory night, another task that my peers hated. It hit me then, I LOVE MATH and in addition I love business. I was handling one tiny part of accounting while at Panera, without realizing I was doing so. Inventory is one of many accounts a business has. I recently found this out in researching accounting. During my time there, I just knew that I had to buy ingredients, make them into recipes, sell them, evaluate waste and usage, and then predict what we would do in the future. These are all factors in accounting, a career I originally thought was boring and weird.
Although it has been a longer journey then I hoped, I finally realized what career path I was excited to go down. Through hard work in school and in restaurants, I learned a lot about myself. I finally realized that accounting is interesting and that I can have anything I want. I believe that everything is available to me, I just have to reach out and grab it. Within a week of realizing that accounting is THE ONE, I found a school I want to go to, I applied to it and to FAFSA. I filled out all necessary forms to get my credits transferred. I talked to admissions and the financial office. I’ve researched and applied to scholarships. Now I am ready and determined to finish my degree and become an accountant. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the right choice for me.