Keep Going by Camille

Keep Going by Camille - December 2024 Scholarship Essay

College can be quite the challenge. Balancing the workload, extracurricular activities, and a social life, requires a great deal of time management. I am no stranger to academic challenges that college inevitably bring. However, one academic challenge does stand out among the rest.

My Senior year of college I was enrolled in the Geotechnical Engineering II course. In this course, all of our assignments were group projects. I was assigned to a group with two other classmates. Geotechnical Engineering is a very difficult course. Relying on other people’s work ethics and participation only added stress on an already stressful class. Throughout the semester the professor assigned about 5 different projects. As each project was assigned, my group partners were contributing less and less. I was forced to figure out the assignments without the help of my team. Because of this, I sought out support on the projects from the professor directly. After almost every class I was in his office for office hours to go through any questions I had on the assignment. While I was really good at formatting the project report, the technical work was the hardest part. While I was stressed about not doing well on the projects, he assured me that I am going in the right direction and that I should not give up. This taught me that while learning the material is important, the effort that I put forth was being taken into account. My professor saw my dedication to the work and noticed that I was no longer getting the support of my team. My grades on the first couple of projects were not the best, but I did see improvement as the semester progressed.

This academic challenge was important for me to go through during my time in college. It solidified for me the importance of perseverance, that your best does not have to be perfect, and to show up even when life gets hard.