Roger Boston Scholarship

I have always been fascinated by technology. As a child, I would puzzle over old circuit boards to try to understand how and why they worked. I would take apart old clocks and phones and try to put them back together again (with varying degrees of success.) I always wanted to understand how a cell phone could transmit audio from all around the world, or how a camera could capture a hyper-realistic image. Eventually, this curiosity turned into a passion. I began to repair old devices, such as our family laptop. Our laptop is a 16 year old Dell Latitude D620, and I just couldn't bear to see it go. By replacing the laptop's failed hard-drive and upgrading the ram, I have been able to continue to use this laptop for school. This experience was very rewarding, and I wish to continue to do this type of work by assisting people with their technology. Assisting people is actually one of my favorite parts of my current job as a gardener II. At the Washington Park Botanical Garden, I enjoy teaching people about horticulture. I often answer questions that patrons or other workers might have about plants as I work outside in the flower beds. Outside of my duties as a gardener, I enjoy solving problems at work. I especially enjoyed troubleshooting printer issues for my manager. Thus, I would use this scholarship to continue in my pursuit of knowledge. I plan to do this by achieving a computer science degree at Lincoln Land Community College. My main focus is cybersecurity, with minor focuses in networking and criminal law. I have had an excellent experience so far, and I am excited at the prospect of continuing my education. I appreciate the personal attention that I receive at my college, as well as the care that is put into each course. I especially appreciated the computer programming course that I took last semester. Last semester, one of my favorite courses was my Programming Concepts class. I really enjoyed learning about how modern websites, applications, and games are actually created. I particularly appreciated my Commodore 64 lab. It was fascinating to see how programming (as well as computing as a whole) has evolved over time. This class also helped to reinforce some of the programming concepts that I had learned in more modern programming languages, like Java and C++. I am excited to continue in my pursuit of a computer science degree. Your generosity would allow me to continue to go to school full time for the spring semester. This would allow me to complete my degree faster, start my career sooner, and spend more time with my family. My family is very important to me, so I would consider any aid to be an incredible blessing. Thank you for your time, consideration, and generosity!