831 Legacy Scholarship

My name is Aiden Hargis, I am a 16-year-old early graduate of Eldorado High School. For the sake of the sensitive material in this essay, I’d like to request that it not be used for anything except decision-making for this scholarship. If having it viewed by the public is necessary for this scholarship, I will respectfully rescind my admission here. For most of my life, like many kids, I have lived between two households. In my mom's household I have had a kind and caring mother, who always looked out for me, and made sure I had everything I needed to succeed, which has included a safe space to grow, reflect, and thrive. In my dad’s household, I had a distant father who rarely showed his support for me because of his own personal struggles. For the last few years I’ve been struggling with my relationship with my dad and his emotionally abusive behaviors, which included anger and an abundance of criticism. Last year he got into an accident while picking me up from school. He had a medical episode and ran into a house with me in the car. That day changed everything. The car was totaled and I was, luckily, uninjured, but my dad was taken to a hospital, then put in hospice, then put back in a hospital. We learned soon after that that he had cirrhosis of the liver and needed a transplant, but he wasn’t healthy enough to get one. This was the first time we learned that he had been excessively drinking, and it was shocking for me but everything started to make sense. My dad said he would try to get better so he could get a transplant, but with time it was clear to me that he wasn’t, every time I saw him after that he looked worse and worse, some days he wouldn’t even be awake when I was there. Earlier this year he was put into a hospice center because of how advanced his cirrhosis had gotten. We also found out that his alcoholism had continued, despite knowing what it would do to him. At this time I had started to live with my mom exclusively and money was tighter. As a teacher and a single mom money has never been a thing of abundance. But my mom always made sure things were taken care of, using her free time to find ways to earn more money, creative ways to stretch what we had, and still find ways to make sure we experience life to its fullest. Recently my dad passed away, leaving me and my mom in the same difficult situation, but with more things to deal with. Despite this I managed to graduate a year ahead of schedule, thanks in no small part to the support of my mom, and even managed to get accepted to New Mexico Tech. I hope to help my mom out with the financial piece of this by reducing the cost of my college experience as much as possible while still getting an excellent education, which is non-negotiable in both her and my eyes. I know that people's choices are complex, but I feel like mine is fairly simple: I want a good education, a good job, and to be a man who makes good choices and helps people when I can by raising them up as often as possible. Your scholarship would help set me on that path. Thank you for your consideration.

Hello, my name is Cora Gunderson. I am a middle child who lives in New Mexico and is hoping to go to a college that can support my ambitious dreams of studying Marine Biology. Because I live in a desert, my childhood dream of living by the ocean and researching the animals hidden in the depths could not become a reality without me going to a college along the coast. After long hours of researching, I finally found a college that would achieve my goals and give me a great place to learn and thrive. Western Washington University in Bellingham is a small college right on the water where I can research to my heart's content. There was only one problem standing in my way, the outrageous tuition of going to an out-of-state school right out of high school. My parents have always supported my career decisions and knew that at some point I would have to leave New Mexico. They knew the price of school so they saved money, but life happens and sometimes those saving have to go to more important things. My older brother struggled in High school and didn't get a whole lot of money when he started college. paying for his tuition was a lot more than what my parents expected so they tapped into my and my little sister's saving to educate him. All this with little help from scholarships and FASFA. I am going to go to Western Washington University, but with only a couple of months left before I move, I still have no way to pay without taking out student loans as an 18-year-old. My parents are not giving me much, Fasfa doesn't recognize me due to my parents both having paying jobs, and I can't find a job to pay for school since I don't have much work experience in the first place. So I turned to scholarships in hopes that my grades and extracurriculars could be enough to raise some money. Any amount of money helps. Scholarships like these that recognize school is expensive and can always be paid for are the most helpful for families like mine that don't get any help from the federal government. My parents have to send three kids to college and barely was able to pay for the first. I am grateful my parents are willing to send me to an out-of-state university. I am trying my best to raise funds by myself so they don't have to worry about helping me, also so there is money left over for my little sister to get an education as well. I have ambition, and my dreams are big, too big for my family to pay for. I am relying on scholarships to be able to follow my dreams. No amount of money should stop anyone from following their dreams and there is no way it's going to stop me.