An adventure to Deutschland (Germany) by Gilberto

An adventure to Deutschland (Germany) by Gilberto - December 2024 Scholarship Essay

A challenging academic experience I’ve faced has to be when I decided to play professional academy soccer in Germany while also attending to my high school classes online through a US school.

The It was August 2020 when I arrived in Germany. My first year there was splendid, I had signed with a professional academy within five months at being at my international academy but the only concern from me and my parents were how was I going to do school. During that time the Covid was starting to hit the European countries heavily so we didn’t know what was the best way to do schooling whether it be an international school in Germany or online school. After long thought we decided on online school but the only problem was we didn’t know how many classes I should take for the year with all the madness from the pandemic so I ended only taking two classes, Math and English.

While I was in Germany for my second year, I was very behind in the amount credits I needed to graduate on time with the rest of my class in the US. This meant that I had to take extra classes (nine to be exact) for me to stay on track to graduate on time. It was so difficult having to do an extra load of academic classes while training twice a day and focusing on my potential professional soccer career while also trying to learn German and and experience the beautiful culture of Germany. This was all very hard and I ended up having to have my counselor help me plan out a weekly schedule so I could fit all of my required activities in one day.

Luckily through this heavy amount of planning and perseverance, I was able to graduate in January of 2024. Me and my family were very with the work ethics and actions that I took to be able to graduate and I am very thankful that this very challenging experience happened to me because I got to experience and learn so much both about myself and the world.

In conclusion because of this very challenging experience and adventure, I learned very valuable characteristics and qualities such as leadership, time management skills, planning and executing, and taking accountability and responsibility for my actions which helped to shape me into the man I am today and gave me a real head-start compared to other kids in the US who not only get out of high-school unprepared for the real world but also don’t have a real overall view of the world and the difficult cultures and environments that make countries so unique and different. I feel this is a major problem with Americans today because most last a real world view and are often so arrogant in what they think they know about the rest of the world even though they have never been there.