Scholarship / Fulbright Scholarship Essay: Masters in Education [3]

Prompt: Please write a clear and detailed description of your academic objectives and the reasons why you wish to pursue them. Discuss your goals both in terms of your field of study in general and within your specific area of specialization. Describe the type of program you wish to pursue and how it relates to your academic and professional background and your objectives for the future.

Essay Draft:

Legacy. The one word I keep coming back to every time I find myself lost and figuring out what I should be doing. "What do I want my legacy to be?", a question I found myself asking quite a lot, particularly in the last few months, when I found my life turned on its head. Having lost my anchor and guiding compass in life, I felt directionless. But I always knew that simply riding the tides to see where it led was never an option. I am my mother's daughter, after all, her legacy.

If there was one thing that was always emphasized in my upbringing, it was education. Not having had the opportunity to complete her higher education, my mother's one goal was to make sure that I had the best education I could get. Be it enrolling me in a private school, which as a single mother would not have been the easiest, or walking me to my tuition classes every day when it came to my education, there were no compromises. It is thanks to that education that I am where I am today. At 27, running a recruitment based startup I co-founded, living independently, and hoping to create impact with what I do.

I discovered my passion for youth empowerment and education through my work with the global youth organization, AIESEC. It was through those experiences, that I was able to witness the direct impact of my work on the Bahraini youth and realized that what I found most fulfilling was empowering young people in my community. Upon graduation, I worked within research and publishing, but in those three years, I felt very disconnected from my work and yearned to go back to doing work that would create a direct impact. I decided to pursue my passion and earned a diploma in learning and development, which eventually led me to co-found Majra.me, a startup that aims to connect young people to meaningful careers. Through Majra, I got to put my passion to work. Today, I can proudly say that I have contributed towards providing employment opportunities for over 250 young people in my country. However, this impact feels minimal compared to what I believe is the potential of the youth today- not just in Bahrain but globally.

My favorite part of what I do is getting to getting to work with young job seekers, understanding their challenges and helping them navigate through the job hunting phase, which could be a very confusing and frustrating journey. On the other end, one of our everyday struggles involves finding the candidates with specific talent and skills for the many up and coming industries in the country. Working closely with educational institutions, students, graduates, and hiring bodies gave me insight into the existing disconnect within the ecosystem. There is a huge gap between the pace at which industries are evolving, along with their talent needs and the educational systems which are unable to keep up with the changing pace of the market needs.

It is through this struggle that I realized what role I'd like to play within this ecosystem, and the one instance that clarified it to me beyond any doubt was when while tutoring my little cousin in 7th grade computer studies, I realized that it was exactly what I had been taught when I was her age. In over a decade, technology had evolved beyond imagination, and yet children at schools were being taught the same irrelevant curriculums.

This is when my internal north start pointed me towards education, the constant theme in my life and the legacy that I would want to leave. I genuinely believe in educational equity, and how it could lead to stronger and more sustainable societies and economies. There is no denying the economic significance of educational development. This is why the next logical personal and professional step for me is to pursue my Masters in Educational Leadership and Policy. This is the foundation that I need to work towards creating a lasting impact and change through policy development and innovation within the existing educational systems, as well as the employment industry, as the two could never be independent of each other. My ambition is to drive change through reforming, and rebuilding educational systems to help provide a strong base for every young person, giving them the tools to shape their legacies.