A Global Initiative by Sean

A Global Initiative by Sean - December 2016 Scholarship Essay

The school accomplishment I am most proud of is winning the Global Citizenship Award while at Brookdale Community College in 2011. There are several reasons why this award meant so much to me, as not only was I able to educate people on a cause that needed to be in the spotlight and that was special to me, but I learned more about myself in the process.
As I entered my first semester in college, I was incredibly nervous of one class – public speaking. I avoided presentations in high school, and dreaded them in college. My family urged me to get the class out of the way, so I took it during my first semester. I wanted it over with, and didn’t care about what grade I would get.
As I prepared for my first presentation, I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t stop shaking leading up to the speech. It was an introductory speech about me, and my goals and aspirations. I was willing to get a zero just to get it out of the way. Then, the day of the speech, I saw a video camera in the back of the room. I saw a whiteboard with numbers for students to write their names next to, and that would dictate the order of speeches. I never wrote my name, and just waited for my professor to call it out when everyone had gone. When he did, my fear tripled and, once the speech was over, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t feel relieved, but rather exhausted. I didn’t want to do it anymore, and was considering dropping out of the course.
It was then, though, that I found the topic for my next speech. Our task as students was to pick a cause or real-life event to educate our fellow students on. I was researching well-known topics when I came across a story about a community of citizens in Indonesia still struggling to survive after an earthquake and series of tsunamis struck countries hard along the Indian Ocean near Indonesia, India, and many countries nearby in 2004. Even Alaska felt shaking from this horrific disaster. So, as I did research into this natural disaster that killed more than 250,000 people across 14 countries, I finally found a reason to give a speech.
For days, I was no longer worried about giving my speech. Instead, I was worried about the people of Indonesia. I couldn’t believe that there were still people homeless and starving due to a disaster that occurred almost ten years earlier. I found stories of heroism, stories of tragedy, and stories of aid. However, the thing that troubled me most was that the aid seemed to stop. We, as a society, are creatures of the moment and don’t realize the effects disasters have for decades on end. Although billions in aid was given, humanitarians move on to newer disasters that inevitably arise, and so many people continue to be hurt. I knew my next speech topic immediately.
My speech would center around the effects still being felt by those impacted by the earthquake and tsunamis off the coast of Indonesia on December 26. Anyone could Google facts about the disaster, but stories needed to be told. There were people suffering that didn’t deserve to just be statistics. By telling a few stories, I would be able to tell everyone’s story, and that was enough for me.
As speech day approached, I didn’t feel nervous. It was the first time I wasn’t nervous about speaking in front of people. Instead, I felt excited. I had learned about so many brave people that were just looking for someone to be brave for them, and I wanted to share that with my classmates. If one classmate would be affected by the speech and donated, or told their friends about the disaster they may not even know happened, then it would be worth it. I walked into class on speech day, saw the video camera, and knew what to do. I walked up to the whiteboard and wrote my name to go first.
As I gave my speech, I saw the students listening to what I was saying. I focused on the stories of strength the Indonesian people and their neighbors showed in the face of tragedy. When I finished, everyone applauded, there was a silence in the room, and I knew I had done my job.
A few months later, I received an e-mail saying my professor had nominated me, and I was elected, to win a Global Citizenship Award for that very speech. The best part about the award, though, wasn’t the award itself, but the fact that, at the ceremony, I was able to share the story of the brave people off the coast of the Indian Ocean once again. I felt pride for the people I was talking about, and I knew that that the speech had been worth it.