Helping Students Help Students

by Araceli
(Melrose Park, Illinois, U.S)

My dream job may not seem exciting at first, but as passionate as I am about it, I feel as if everyday will be a rewarding and exciting experience. I would love to work at a college as the departmental director of outreach services. Educational leadership is a topic that has always intrigued me. I have read so much about educational inequality in my current classes and nothing has roused my emotions as strongly as reading about certain kids receiving different education. This is not fair and I intend to make this right by trying to reach as many kids as I can. In order to do this well, I know that I will have to go to graduate school in educational administration. I am planning on going to Penn State which has the number one education department in the U.S. I know that this is a difficult goal, but I am fully ready to make the sacrifices in order to be a good candidate for them. I am involving myself a lot in my current undergraduate school even if it means that my last semester there I will not get a chance to rest and party. I tutor for a lower-income grade school and collaborate with the program coordinator, and I am planning on taking on more responsibilities in order to have a good project on my resume when it comes time to apply to Penn State. I am also planning on moving to Pennsylvania and applying for outreach programs there so that I can get to know the area and so that I can save money by getting in state tuition.

If I do manage to get into Penn State, I really feel as if I am going to get a good education and therefore be more helpful to the students that I want to mentor. It is my dream to connect high school kids who may not have thought about going to college and continuing their education to college students who may have thought the same thing. I think this will benefit both students if they communicate with each other because the university student will realize how important it is to give back to the community and the high school student will have a resource and a wealth of information from their mentor. I’d like to be able to connect a lot of students and single-handedly raise minority attendance in four year colleges.