Pre-Nursing Scholarship Essay

As a child, I watched the sky with wide eyes each time an airplane flew overhead. My imagination ran wild as I pictured these huge machines that could take a person from one place to the next in barely no time at all. The machines were interesting to me, of course, but what really sparked my curiosity were the people traveling in them. “Where are they going,” I would wonder, “What will they do there?” Little did I know that became one of these travelers, gazing out of the plane window with the same wide-eyed excitement for the adventures that lie ahead. Growing up in a poverty stricken area with three siblings and a disabled mother does not provide many opportunities to get out of town. Thankfully, the generosity of certain well-off community members allowed me to leave the country twice during my high school career. I traveled to Campeche, Mexico, in order to improve my Spanish skills while assisting in repairs to a local orphanage. During this week my love for the Spanish language grew more than I ever dreamed it could. I was also chosen to have the once in a lifetime experience of traveling across China to visit historical sites and monuments in Shanghai, Xi’an, and Beijing.

It is important that I immerse myself in Hispanic culture so that I may fully understand the dynamics of the Spanish language. This is why the Semester in Spain program fits my academic and personal goals perfectly. Living with a homestay family provides an entirely different perspective than staying in an environment with other English speakers or living by myself. It would make an incredible difference in my language abilities to live amongst Spanish speakers for an entire