Local Scholarship winner essays Date: Tuesday, June 29 @ 10:50:00 Topic The local winners of MAM’s local $200 scholarship awards, dedicated this year to the late Rod Vickers were Hillary Martin, Leah Cullen and Baiba Sedricks. Their essays are below: Hillary Martin’s essay I have always felt a close connection to animals, and I have dreamed of becoming a veterinarian since the second grade. I will be attending Kansas State University to major in Pre-Veterinary Medicine. KSU has an excellent Veterinary Medicine Program, and many opportunities to get involved. It is my goal to attend their Veterinary School and take advantage of the numerous activities available. In order to gain experience in the Veterinary field of work, I have volunteered in the Veterinary Clinic at Animal Haven, a No-Kill shelter located in Shawnee, Kansas for over 140 hours. During my time there, I have held a position similar to a Veterinary Technician, performing many tasks including holding the animals, preparing vaccine syringes, administering fluids, and assisting in the surgery room. The veterinarian at Animal Haven has continuously shared her remarkable knowledge with me. Learning about different suturing, surgery and treatment techniques has only strengthened my desire to become a veterinarian. I feel more and more privileged with every minute I am able to spend with the animals. For additional experience, I have shadowed seven different veterinary practices that treated both large and small animals. When I graduate, I plan to work as a veterinarian in an animal shelter, join an existing private practice, or start my own practice. I am hardworking, organized, responsible, and focused on academic success. These qualities have allowed me to attain a scholastic record that I am proud of and that will help me reach my goals. My GPA is 4.69 on a weighted scale for honors classes and 4.0 on a non-weighted scale. I am currently ranked 10th in my class of 413. I will strive to keep my ranking high for graduation and my straight A average. In order to prepare for the college workload, I have repeatedly challenged myself with Honors/AP Classes. I intend to maintain this pattern by enrolling in the KSU Honors Program and minoring in Leadership Studies. I will continue to do well academically in college. In order to extend my knowledge of Veterinary Medicine, I plan on joining the undergraduate Pre-Veterinary Medicine Club. The club offers various speakers who lecture on a range of veterinary topics, some of which include case studies. I am committed to bettering my community and always ready to help. I was inducted into the National Honor society my junior year by demonstrating excellence in Scholarship, Leadership, Service, and Character, and I have maintained my membership during my senior year. I achieved the Silver Level Presidential Service Award for volunteering 201 hours in service to the community from April 2008-March 2009, and I am on my way to achieving the Gold Level award for the April 2009-March 2010 year. I serve my school by working on the sets of the theatrical productions, and I have done this all four years of high school. During my junior and senior years, I served as Co-Head of the Scenic Design Crew. My veterinary experience, academic success, contributions to the community, and positive attitude confirm my belief that I will achieve my goals. I am confident I would make an outstanding addition and positive asset to the student body at KSU and to the field of Veterinary Medicine. Leah Cullen’s essay My entire life I have tried to find a job that I would love to wake up for every day. I used to think of being a psychologist or maybe even a surgeon, but then I found my true passion, which is nursing. My goal is to become a Registered Nurse by earning a Bachelor of Science-Registered Nurse degree. Why nursing, you might ask? First, I absolutely love working with people and I enjoy working as a team player to get tasks accomplished. Secondly, I find true fulfillment in helping others. I have been privileged to have numerous life experiences that have prepared me for my future in nursing and wish to return some of my good fortune through my career choice. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I have participated in numerous sports, mainly volleyball, where players have to work and give effort as a team to pull through to win. That experience has gotten me in the habit of surrounding myself with others to achieve a common goal. My role as a team player continued when I began to work with children. It was through the experience of working as an assistant teacher at a Montessori school as well as a swimming instructor that I realized I wanted to be part of a team working with children in my future career. I also have had the privilege of working for a renowned oncologist. I accompanied him on rounds and consults, as well as attending cancer support meetings with patients. I have also served as a research assistant for the book he is publishing on surviving cancer. Due to my work with this amazing doctor, I realized I wanted to specialize in working with cancer patients. It was through the jobs I have had working with children, and with cancer patients that I realized I loved both of these fields equally and I discovered my true passion, pediatric oncology. I have set my goals very high for my future in nursing and plan on meeting every single on of them. Academically I set my sights high in achieving the best overall grades. I took college courses in high school and I have gone to summer school the last two years in order to get more credits in my chosen field. Just as important as my academic pursuits, I plan to be hands-on ready as well in order to be prepared to begin my career as a registered nurse. In order to be ready I have dived right into my clinical work and I began a volunteer job. To be a successful nurse requires the right attitude. I have the right personality to deal compassionately with the people I will be helping. I believe I will succeed in achieving my goal to become a registered nurse as I always give 100 percent, whether it is in the classroom or as a volunteer working with patients. Graduating from nursing school will fulfill my dreams of helping others for the rest of my life. Baiba Sedricks’s essay Our diverse world needs teachers who are adaptable, aware and accomplished. An M.S. Ed. in Gifted Education and certification in ESL and Spanish will afford me the opportunity to continue to cultivate these characteristics as I prepare to become a secondary education teacher. I intend to facilitate all gifted, talented, and creative learners. Ultimately, I would like to work with an organization such as UNESCO in an educational sector. Experience showed me the way the world was, insight showed me the way it can be. My career path and personal philosophy were perceptively altered while working in a tiny mountain village in the hills outside of Hiroshima City. Internationalization and mutual understanding among people is fostered at a grass roots level, starting in nursery school. My Japanese students inspired me to pursue a graduate degree in education. My fascination with internal complexities drove me to work with gifted, talented, and creative students. My current course of study alerted me to the disparity in services provided. Last year I was compelled to add an ESL endorsement to my current course of study. I personally have witnessed the need for qualified, certified ESL teachers grow exponentially in my work at a local high school. Our foreign language teachers are now required to co-teach during the day. Many times I have been asked to assist students simply because of my parentage. I do not speak Yoruba, Burmese, or Russian; yet I am required to help students who do. As a future gifted education facilitator endorsed in Spanish, I will continue to be called upon to assist non-native English speakers. Thus, I need to be well prepared for the challenges that lie ahead in our multi-lingual classrooms. Additionally, despite a growing awareness of the needs to identify more English Language Learners (ELLs) in gifted education programs, the number of students indentified each year is not increasing at an appropriate rate. I have read about this topic extensively in my education courses. Now, I hope to be able to be an active participant in the changes that need to occur in our school districts. An endorsement in ESL will enable me to work closely with culturally and linguistically diverse students in an effective manner. I will then be able to use my background in gifted education to identify and assist culturally and linguistically diverse gifted students. I decided to start working with underserved and underrepresented students last year. I volunteered for two separate 300-hour service terms with AmeriCorps through a federal grant to support graduate students during their practicum. This experience gave me the opportunity to share my skills, knowledge, and passion both in and out of the classroom. I am especially proud of overseeing a series of service learning projects for gifted sophomores and juniors. As I encouraged cognitive and affective growth, I saw my students’ cultural perceptions change for the positive. I hope to continue to hone my skills in order to help others expand their way of thinking and viewing the world. Receiving the gift of an education degree will enable me to meet my professional and personal goals—to dismantle the conceptual walls that separate people. Promoting peace among nations through education can be a reality. It starts at home, in our neighborhood schools, regardless of one’s native language This article comes from Mid-America Mensa http://www.mamensa.org/ The URL for this story is: http://www.mamensa.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=125