The Long Way Around by Sarah

The Long Way Around by Sarah - June 2013 Scholarship Essay

  What does attending college mean to me? I don’t think I have ever seen a more loaded question! An easier question would be what doesn’t it mean to me? But I digress since the question is what it is. I will be a returning student after three years so that is the place I will start. To begin I am 29 years old. I am considered a sophomore undergraduate. I am also two classes away from applying to the Nursing program at my community college.
   I graduated high school in 2002 with a 3.0 GPA. The next fall I happily paid my tuition fees to the community college near my home in Southern Maryland and declared myself a paralegal major. College, wow, what a change of life! A happy change really. No more having a teacher hold your hand through the year and no more letting the government dictate what you learned. My education was an open world and finally I would be the one in control. I love to learn, always have and I am certain always will. College meant opening your world, broadening your horizons, and becoming the person you were always meant to be. Well, at least it did to me.
  I went through all the things a freshman generally does, except the freshman 15. I did as well as an 18 year old could be expected especially working full time. I did well in most of my classes and some not as well but that is pretty normal. Over the next few years I went sporadically due to paying for classes myself. It came down to my last few semesters; I was so close to my associates. Then at 23 I moves to Mississippi and lost everything I had worked for. I was a paralegal major then and the community college in Mississippi did not accept most of my credits class for class. So there I was after 5 years of hard work left with, let’s just be honest, disappointment. I just couldn’t bring myself to start over nor could I really afford to. So I decided to wait and work. I always knew I would go back, and I did.
  In 2009 I started to work for a company that paid for college upfront, but only if you declared a specific major. So I returned to a classroom as a newly declared Logistics Technology major. I did well and during my first semester received a 4.0 GPA and a 3.0 GPA during my second, but it just wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life, but neither was becoming a paralegal any longer. I had changed as a person. I had become older and a little more knowledgeable in the world. So again I put my education on hold for continuing in the work force.
  In the years until now I have kept my days filled. I have worked within my community to give back. I was a member of the Ladies Auxiliary at the American legion; I also helped as I could with other charitable projects. I also became involved with AMBUCS. Our main focus is to provide therapeutic bikes to Veterans. I met my husband and was welcomed into a new family whom I could not imagine my life without anymore. But something was always missing. I still had the bone deep need to have a career and to complete college.
  I had during this time thought many times about what I would do when I went back to school. I had relinquished my adolescent view of the world and went into this decision as an adult with a whole variety of experiences under my belt. I had also had had a job working with people with special needs. I loved that job and the people and families I worked with. During this time I cared for these individuals as well as was given a whole new perspective of the world around me. I looked around me through the eyes of the people I worked with. They became my friends, and the relationships I formed with them will always be a memory I treasure. I also got to see some things that hurt my heart. The looks someone with a disability like Down’s syndrome receives and sometimes even how they are treated is something that I wish I could single handedly change. I also had an experience with a local nurse at a local hospital. My client was treated with utter disregard and absolutely no tolerance of his inability to communicate or understand what they were trying to do. It made me so angry that a health professional could ever act in such a manner. It was the beginning of the path to my choice to become a nurse. I decided I wanted to help people. I want to take care of them and do so in such a way that though they may not be feeling their best they never felt disregarded or treated as less deserving of basic human compassion. I can do that; I can change my little piece of the world.
  So we come full circle to what attending college means to me. It means life. It means love. It means sharing my life everyday with people whom life is their top priority. It means helping others while displaying love and kindness. It means passion, and also it means compassion. Going back to school means the rest of my life doing something I am passionate about. It means making the world a better place for everyone including myself.