4th Good Experience

Getting Scholarships

Going into my senior year of high school I honestly had no idea what I was dong. I remember spending time at my friend Amy’s house over the summer with my usual group of friends: Skyler who knew he was going to be an engineer, Riley who was Skyler’s best friend and was also planning on attending Washington State University, Annie who’s entire family had graduated from the same university for generations, Isaac who had picked engineering as a major as well years before, Amy who was already practically recruited on a volleyball scholarship to Northwest Nazarene University (like all of her siblings), and of course my boyfriend Trevor who was studying to become a pastor. All of these people seemed like they knew how to get scholarships, how to pay for college, and how to pick not only a school but it seemed like a profession also before they were even ready to start their final year of high school.
Maybe out of sheer desperation I decided that I was going to take a college and career course for seniors, taught by one of my favorite teachers: Mrs. Lambertson. Going into the class I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I certainly had no idea what we would be covering, but I knew that I needed help, and fast. I showed up that first day to my college and career class with my number two pencil sharpened and my college ruled paper ready. But I didn’t take any notes that day. Instead Mrs. Lambertson passed us out these cute red folders and we began to curiously look inside them. The notebooks were not full of rules, equations, and exercises like in my other classes, but they in place contained pieces of paper instructing me how to do real activities that would help me on my way to entering college, and finding scholarships!
It was amazing that semester at school learning about all of the opportunities open to me through college, and the more I learned about myself the more I realized that there were literally hundreds of individual scholarships that I could find. I was given the information by Mrs. Lambertson that would assist me in my goal of entering and paying for college. I was given information that had the ability to change my future, to change the course of my entire life! It was amazing, and I’ll never forget how elated I felt during the process of learning that took place in that class. The more I learned the more college looked like a viable and even completely manageable option.
There was something else I learned about myself during the course of my senior year. I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted to study in college, and I wouldn’t know for several years still. I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to attend college like Amy or Riley, or who my roommate would be like Skyler. But I did discover one thing: I was very good at getting scholarships. I wrote dozens of scholarship essays and continually received feedback from foundations and sponsors that I was being considered as a scholar for many different organizations.
The new scholarships that I was eligible for continued to pour in. Organization after organization began to open up in front of me. That was the easy part. The harder part was finishing the application process. On top of attempting to finish my senior year of high school, being a leader on the cheer squad, a social life, church activity, and homework, I was filling out scholarship applications day and night. I worked harder on those applications than I had ever worked before in my life! When I wasn’t writing an essay for one foundation I was doing hundreds of pages of paperwork for other scholarships that I was being considered for. It was a season of late, late nights, and 6AM mornings, of constant stress and continued elation, and of both frustration and excitement. I made it my goal that year to make finding scholarships a full time job, and although I still didn’t know where I was going, I knew I wanted to go as a scholar.
Finally after months and months of tedious and tiring work everything paid off. I finally applied to Central Washington University in the late spring and eagerly awaited not only the acceptance letter that I was sure I would receive, but the financial aid award letter that I was so scared to receive. The day finally came after graduation that I got a letter in the mail. My boyfriend and I decided to hang out that evening, and we went to a Safeway where we had spent many late nights together in the café which was open late filling out applications and working on those same scholarships together that I was so eager to hear back about. We sat down together and we opened the envelope that contained my financial aid award letter. Inside was a packet of papers that Itemized and specified the tuition for Central Washing University as well as the financial aid I was eligible to receive. We read carefully through the document to make sure that I understood it correctly and we finally came to a comprehension of it. I was scholarshipped one hundred percent for the following year of school. Not only was I scholarshipped fully but I was even scholarshipped for the price of all of the cost of living expenses estimated by the school for the entire year. My hard work had paid off, and I had never been more proud of myself. Through learning my strengths and applying myself I had found my own path, and it was a path that I am thankful for and proud of to this day.

Me with one of my scholarship benefactors

Me at a scholarship event