This is a reprint of the essay I submitted to be reviewed by several scholarship opportunities. I successfully acquired enough financial support to meet my needs for the semester. I put this out for research and as an example of a successful scholarship essay.
I Am Working Toward a Career in Industrial Electrical Technology
By: Joshua D. Register
By maintaining the old we learn the principles on which to create the new.
The key word to any goal is why. The answer for me, why I am working toward an associates degree in Industrial Electrical Technology is my family. When I was laid off in November of 2010 we were devastated. I went from close to 42k a year to 16k in fourteen days with an eight-month-old baby and a lifestyle based on around 50k a year. If not for my wife’s encouragement, attitude, devotion, and willingness to sacrifice, I would have stayed in bed feeling worthless till everything else came crashing down around me.
Following the depression that comes with sudden, unexpected unemployment, I searched for work in southern Missouri. After being denied anything near my previous pay grade due to lack of education we moved to Tennessee where after eight months of scraping, a way was made for our family to come to Kansas City.
This journey since November has taught me many things. To keep it brief I will only tell you two. One is that stable jobs are a thing of the past. Two is this, stability in the new market comes from what a person’s knowledge, quality of work, and skillsets are worth in the marketplace.
Electricity has fascinated me since I was old enough to put a fork in a socket. Every moment of our lives we are surrounded by a force of nature that people once thought was used by God to punish the wicked in the form of lightning. Even from ancient times it was used for electroplating in the form of the clay Bagdad Batteries. Without building on what those in the past have discovered, even something as simple as regulating temperatures for most manufacturing would be much more difficult.
Though Edison was not the first to discover electricity, its uses could not have been better found out and the groundwork laid for our modern civilization than by him and people like Alexander Graham Bell. How they would marvel now at how we use electricity to transmit and process information and the advances in power collection and generation.
Now with the push for cheaper, greener energy a whole new avenue is emerging for electrical innovations. I go to school now to learn a skill that has broad applications in todays market, and that shows projected growth of 12% over the next several years just on the construction side. The growth is tremendous when you account for electric drive technology, wind, solar energy, and maintenance and engineering applications.
These are the whys that I have for pursuing this degree and career. I do hope my drive to succeed, passion for the subject, and goals for the future have come across to you the reader. To close I must say, without a strong why, great drive to succeed, setting achievable goals toward a larger goal, and being surrounded by people of encouragement and good work ethic, any good thing is nearly impossible. As for me, with all these things, I cannot help but succeed.
Thank you for your consideration for this scholarship.