1. Explain your career aspirations and your educational plan to meet these goals.

My goal is to graduate from my universitys teacher education program; specifically, I intend to become an elementary school teacher. As a part of that, I am also working towards obtaining an ESOL endorsement. This scholarship can serve one of two purposes for me: it can alleviate some of my financial burden in attending a university, or it can enhance my university experience. Concerning the latter, this scholarship will allow me to take additional classes that I otherwise, due to financial constraints, would not pursue. Specifically, I am interested in enrolling in the 300-level Spanish course series. I value bilingualism, and I do hope to eventually become sufficiently versed in Spanish so that I may serve as a teacher of a bilingual classroom. [BILINGUAL TEACHER; STUDY SPANISH; TAKE MORE COURSES; SELF-STUDY; EVEN IF NOT BILINGUAL TEACHER IMMEDIATELY, CONTINUE TO HAVE THAT GOAL] 2. Describe a challenge or obstacle you faced in the last ten years. What did you learn about yourself from this experience? Given that the question prompt allows for a ten-year span, it seems appropriate that I share a problem that has continually presented itself to me throughout that duration, with particular concentration in these last few years. [CAT; LEARN ABOUT MYSELF = WILLING TO SPEND ANY AMOUNT ON CAT, BUT AM CHEAPSKATE WITH ALL OTHER PURCHASES; AND THAT I HAVE BEEN IGNORANT OF PROBLEMS IN MY FACE, THAT I HAVE BEEN OBLIVIOUS OR BLIND; I HAVE BECOME OR AM TRYING TO BECOME MORE SENSITIVE TO SUCH THINGS] 3. Describe a personal accomplishment and the strengths and skills you used to achieve it. 4. Explain how you have helped your family or made your community a better place to live. Please provide specific examples. Many organized efforts made by individuals or groups work towards the purpose of undoing the preventable damage caused by our own community. For instance, clean-up crews counter the littering done by our own kind; animal shelters care for animals whose parents procreated when our community members neglected to spay them; and [ADD ONE MORE EXAMPLE; MAYBE NIX SHELTERS] Perhaps the greatest contribution one can make to their community is in the form of prevention; that is, one can make a considerable difference simply through not perpetuating the growth of society's ills. After all, to give an illustration, it is less of a burden on resources to take precautionary steps to prevent a fire than it is to douse one that has already spread. My greatest contribution to my community, then, has not been in the form of a single benevolent act, but it has been in the conglomerated form of how I live my life. [ADD SPECIFIC EXAMPLES]