India Kinamore Memorial Scholarship

Success is something that I believe is heavily rooted in the American dream. Being all too familiar with the concept as a first-generation American, wanting to achieve success can be difficult. I don't want my parent's hard work or my grandparents' hard work to go to waste. As the oldest child, the oldest grandchild, granddaughter, and only granddaughter on my mom's side, everyone wants to see you succeed. Being in a position that not everyone is lucky enough to be in makes you view differently. Not to mention the internal pressure of perfectionism. If one has asked me a year or maybe even a couple of months ago, what is success? My answer would have been something along the lines of achieving all my dreams and goals, going to college, landing a dream job in my goal career, having a family, and being married. But once I achieved all those things, what would help me measure success then? I do believe that, yes, all those wonderful things could be my future success they don't define my success. Success is progress. I have to be able to accept myself where I am before I can push myself towards my goals. Having the goals is great but recognizing my everyday success is important too. Sometimes, success may look like getting up and making my bed in the morning. Or simply getting ready in the morning. However other days, it might be narrowing down my college search or applying for new scholarships. Or making the time for friends and family to deepen relationships. Celebrating those daily successes is what helps me achieve that weekly, monthly, annual, and lifetime success. All these bricks, short-term successes, create the beautiful building of my life's success. Success in its meaning is a reflective process. You can't have success without acknowledging where you have been. My success in school for example can't be acknowledged until you consider how for me to get to my senior year of high school, I had to finish elemnteray school. For me to be where I am, I had to move from Indiana and then skip a grade. And after skipping a grade, I had to continue to push myself and challenge myself. I had to get over slacking, procrastination, and taking zeros for assignments. To get to a point where I pushed myself to work hard, complete outside-of-class work, and turn in assignments for late points if I wasn't able to get them in on time. If I didn't learn to evolve, I wouldn't be at the point where I am now that I get every single assignment in. I might still deal with procrastination, but I now have to the dedication to overcome that barrier and have learned how much every point counts. I hope that with this scholarship I will be able to continue this growth. To me, my growth is success because I have come so far and know I still have far to go. I am so proud that I have even been able to make it to the point that I am today and can't wait to see the heights to which college will take me.