How Not to Win A Scholarship

First and foremost, I'd like to thank you for providing me an opportunity for this scholarship presentation. Secondly, as I lead into my narrative essay, I'd also wish to extend a hearty "thank you" for entertaining my paper, and considering it as worthy of the scholarship. I suppose you've read many essays in which the author lists his or her many scholastic, social, and civic accomplishments. While it may be fitting of a typical narrative, I've decided on writing the would be antithesis of the typified essay.

To answer the prompting question in which I'm asked of the merits on which this scholarship should be awarded me, I'll take the unorthodox approach. Surely it befits this situation to mention the watershed accomplishments of my young life, and that I will do, but I felt it important to differentiate myself from the other applicants. It seems certain that most whom applied find their families in financial need of assistance. While I'm no exception, there are of course mitigating circumstances. With younger siblings finalizing their entry into the DC class of '09, and myself entering a world of exorbitant college tuitions and living expenses, their skins of the family tuition funds have been thoroughly stretched.

Sitting thick in the lower middle class brackets, my family struggled through thirty four combined years of private schooling (for my brother, sister, and myself), the certainty of quality education seemed too precious to sacrifice. Despite financial struggles (my father's self-employed drywall/plaster repair business depends heavily on the state of the national and local economies, which have roller-coastered through our schooling tenures), my parents paid me the greatest favor I could ever receive. Raised in a Catholic environment with involved, aware parents, who instilled in me a keen sense of right and wrong, it's hard to fathom a deserving reparation for such sacrifice. Following the birth of my twin brother and sister, my father dedicated his time to raising his children the proper way. With my mom returning to work, my dad spent the first five years of my sibling's lives teaching, guiding, and enjoying every second he spent with us. While the financial consequences of raising three children on one otherwise supplemental income can still be felt, there comes a point when numbers, dollars, and cents take a definitive backseat to personal and moral development. My dad knew that point, and took a potentially disastrous risk to place his children on the right side of such a line. Again, reparations for a sacrifice of that magnitude are hard to fathom.

My mother, who's worked two jobs simultaneously, a career of overtime, and took the management position at Moylan Station (rivaling that of Grand Central), has worked tirelessly to ensure opportunities that she may not have had, and that others would envy. Though intangible and extremely easy to take for granted, the efforts put forth for my siblings and me have been with us since birth. Teaching us appreciation (though sometimes hardnosed, we'd always come around) of the chances we'll inherit, my mother's devoted herself to the upbringing of respectable, wholesome, and grateful people. Searching the confines of my memory, and consulting my siblings, we're hard pressed to remember my mom never being there to set us straight. As campy and cliché as it may sound, it's the utter truth. Establishing the strongest sense of trust in her children, the respect my mom shows us as individuals (not the wayward stereotypes society unduly deems us) I've simply not witnessed within the families of my friends and peers. It's a trust so deeply rooted, so strongly embedded within all of us, that we'd never dare think of breaking it. Have her efforts paid off? If the answer can be found written on my conscience, let it be read. Yes.

The search for reparation, for a worthy return of the blessings bestowed me by my parents, I've come across this scholarship opportunity. In teaching me the value of not only education, but of experience, development, and appreciation of privileges unknown to some, my parents have molded and set a path narrow and long, but laden with bright, guiding lights. Those lights, seeped in advice, trust, and love, have shown me through childhood and lead towards college. Yes, college, the gateway to adulthood - to the materialization of the man my parents know I can be - is fast approaching, and I anxiously await its arrival. Perhaps the most fitting way to express my gratitude is to someday repay the costs they've endured for my sake. Perhaps it's flying them to exotic places, buying them exotic cars, and lavishing them in materialistic goods that surely they'd accept. But, some yearning feeling tells me otherwise. How can I repay my parents? Not through money and extravagance. I can repay my parents by showing them that the hours, months, years, and tears they've spent and shed have gone toward something, they've gone towards their children, they've gone towards me. They've gone towards the formation of a man simply hoping to be half the parent they've been. Yes, I realize now that I beseech this scholarship opportunity not for myself - but for them.

I can only pray to deserve it as much.