Friday, January 13, 2012

Essay Frustrations

I am in the middle of applying to Grad School right now.  With my littlest going to Kindergarten next year (wow, that was odd to write) I am going back to school so that I can get a job where I work when they are at school and hopefully I can be as involved as I am now.  My undergraduate degree is in math, so I figured working at the local community college would work nicely.  I certainly don't want anything full time until they are significantly older, and my local campus to my knowledge doesn't have full time faculty.  I don't want to work in the local high school for a variety of reasons even though my original intent was to teach high school math.


My application is finished except for one thing: the scholarship essay.  I thought my application was due on February 1st, but I received an email that says I should turn in my application 10 days ahead of time.  So, I really have to work on it now.  500 words on the importance of graduate education to your career goals.   How can I say in 500 words that for a community college to look at my application, I need a master's degree?  I think that took 10 words.  I was thinking I could talk about why I wanted to teach at a community college, but that would not fit the topic at all.  I thought I could talk about why I don't want to teach in a high school, but that won't cut it either.  I guess I could talk about how the curriculum would better prepare me to teach at a community college, so if there are 10 classes I need to take, I guess that would be 30 words a class, with 100 for an introduction and a conclusion, right?


Then I wonder, how are they going to judge this essay?  Is it going to be on grammar and spelling?  Or is it going to be on my career choice?  They give no remarks about the judging at all.  Errr............there is a reason I am math major here - words and I don't get a long.  


Let's see, I just wrote 370 words.  I guess 500 is not so bad, I just would like an essay topic that is not so broad.

3 comments:

  1. It's really difficult to write an essay on a broad topic. I guess that's part of the test :).

    Good luck. Hey, I think you and words get along pretty well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the nice words. I will let you know ow it goes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi there!!! I'm happy to help you if you'd like. My son is a high school senior, piano performance major to be. He wrote 17 essays during his college application process. He's already been accepted to two honors programs, been offered an $8000/year renewable scholarship AND was selected as a finalist for a full-tuition scholarship at his "dream" school. (2700 applied for that scholarship). Please contact me -- kadawkins @ gmail dot com. I'd love to help point you in the right direction.

    I went to law school and wrote grant proposals. LOTS of writing for purpose experience :)

    ReplyDelete