What Do You Want? by Zion

What Do You Want? by Zion - July 2025 Scholarship Essay

If I could give one piece of advice to my past self, it would be to get involved. Throughout most of high school, I spent most any time I had either studying or working on homework, which, while it did benefit me, as I graduated with a 4.1 and an advanced diploma, I had no idea of what I actually liked to do, and only just started to figure that out in my senior year. I love video games, movies, art, music, dance, to a certain degree, etc. I enjoy creative things, but I also enjoy logical things as well, such as riddles and puzzles. I’m not big on managing other people or things, but instead working on a simple set of tasks with a clear enough set of instructions or boundaries. Regardless, I wish I had gotten more involved in clubs and the like at school so that I could at least say I tried to find what I wanted to do. By the time I graduated, I’d already roughly figured out what I wanted to major in in college, and past that, what I probably will end up doing as a career; however, I don’t think simply watching movies or playing video games alone will be enough of a hobby for me, and I don’t want that to be it. So, I have started actually looking into potentially writing down my own stories and ideas, at least as a start as I figure out what I want to do. You can figure out your major while you’re in college, and there’s enough scholarship, grant, and loan money out there to get into any college with the right grades, achievements, and extracurriculars, but that emptiness I felt whenever somebody asked me what I liked to do, and my response amounted to, “watching other people do things that I want to do,” is something that I personally need to rectify as soon as possible. I don’t want to watch people do things, I want to do them myself.