Scholarship / Students seek assistance from scholarship programs in order to mitigate their cost of attendance [5]

Submit a one page personal statement explaining why this scholarship is important to you as well as career goals

I'm not finished but would appreciate criticism on what I have now. Thank you in advance:

Grace D. Dreher Memorial Scholarship

With a college education getting increasingly expensive, each year it proves more imperative for a student to seek assistance from scholarship programs such as this in order to mitigate their overall cost of attendance. The winning of this scholarship is important to me because I realize financial strain I'm about to embark in, and any gift that can help offset the cost of attending my first choice school would be a blessing.

Upon matriculating to college, I plan to double major in chemistry and philosophy. Although I love chemistry as subject and excell academically in my chemistry courses, philosophy is what excites me. In my leisure time one can often find me curled up in a corner catching up on my independent study of philosophical subjects such as Kant's morality, Nietzsche's nihilism, or Ayn Rand's objectivism. I often ruminate on age old philosophical questions like "To what extent can human happiness be achieved?", "What real meaning exists in one's temperol life?", and "Does God exist?". A philosophical approach is often applicable to most things in life and a degree in philosophy will help me develop more refined critical thinking skills needed for the future.

Chemistry is the pragmatic constituant of my double major. Indeed, chemistry is a subject that over the last three years of my education I have grown a fondness to. I delight in performing fastidiously conducted titrations experiments, I take pleasure in learning about complex wave theory, and enjoy when I understanding the properties concerning the smallest parts of matter in our known universe- the atom.

Scholarship / As HCl (hydrochloric acid) singes my flesh, a gleam of satisfaction bounces off my face; SCHOLARSHIP [3]

This is an essay for a scholarship. It has 2 sections that answer the same question. The first is about my love for chemistry and the reason why I excel in it. The second is about my love for Spanish and the reason why I excell in it.

CRITISM IS ACCEPTED:D

Discuss the subjects in which you excel or have excelled. To what factors do you attribute your success?

BY SADE BENJAMIN

On a lab table in Mrs. Hakim's spirited chemistry classroom, a once equanimous test tube filled with a clear solution of Lead Nitrate quickly transforms into a garish chartreuse bisque upon the arrival of Potassium Iodide. At another station, the systematic "drip-drip-dropping" of an unknown solution into a beaker, containing distilled water and phenolphthalein, signals the beginning of a titration experiment. At my lab station, as HCl (hydrochloric acid) singes my flesh, a gleam of satisfaction bounces off my face. I am swiftly ushered to the "watering hole" (sink) by my altruistic (law suit fearing) professor and start to run water over my chemical burn. Although incessant twinges of pain pinch my arm over the 15 minute bath, my mind dozes elsewhere- thoughts of how this corrosive substance is a component of my digestive fluid baffles me and why my mother thought to apply a substance (whose contents contain a chemical with similar properties to that of HCl) to my head in hopes to make my hair more manageable strikes me as indubitably absurd. Never the less, I have complete and utter adulation for the field- I absolutely adore chemistry!

My unbounded love for chemistry undoutably stems from the fact that it's a subject I excel in. I enjoy learning about the various properties of the smallest particles in the universe, inter/intramolecular interactions, thermodynamics, etc. I delight in the pragmatism of the field- unlike mathematics (to an extent), business, or any arbitrary scholastic "busy work" subject, I can see the practical need for at least a rudimentary understanding for all things chemical, especially in our modern age where chemicals are laced in every facet of our exsistence (food, pharmaceuticals, environment, etc). From the knowledge I've attained from my two years of chemistry, I have been able to create my own personal hygiene products that have pH's similar the human hair and skin (around 4.5-5). It's not a particularly amazing feat (I'm confident any fool with half his wits could perform the task) but without the exposure to that information through educational means I would have never realized the promising potential I have in the subject.