Growth in Writing by Carter

Growth in Writing by Carter - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

An academic topic that, at first challenged, but later allowed me to grow as a problem solver and critical thinker was my senior year English research paper in high school. Before this I was always very strong in STEM related courses, and I had already decided to go to school for chemical engineering. At this time, I knew I was okay at English, but I never thought that I could excel at it.
While I was in this English course, I was simultaneously taking multiple AP STEM courses, so I had those pressures along with this large project that as assigned. Despite this, I wanted to put in as much effort as I could because I felt that I could do well on this through the encouragement and support of my instructor.
In the past I had struggled to be engaged with English courses and their material which mace my effort and overall performance worse. Through this class, however, I realized that what was missing this entire time was my interest. For this project we were allowed to write about any topic we were interested in and had to conduct a study for it. I chose the origins of humor in humans which I found very interesting which made this paper relatively easy for me. I put a lot of effort into it and ended up getting a perfect score on the paper.
Through this experience I found out about myself that I do have the ability to exceed in areas I once may have thought I was not strong in. I need to be engaged in some way to feel that. Whether it’s through challenging myself like I do in STEM or through enjoying what I am working on, I found that my success with problem solving gets better because of these factors.