Hi, my name is Nicholas lecky and I am 17 years old in the 12th grade about to graduate. I am trying to go to college in the fall semester later on in the year. I'm filling out scholarship applications before the school year is over and one of the questions that I keep coming across often on these scholarship applications is "How is your education going to benefit you, your family and your community? " There are several ways my education will benefit me. To start, if I continue to pursue my education past high school then I will be able to easily get further into my career studies when i'm in college and eventually I'll be able to achieve one of my goals and get a full career in cyber security. This choice of studies will benefit my family because it will be known by all my family that I was yet another person in my family to go to college after high school and actually complete and graduate. My family will also be proud to know that I got into the college of my choice after I worked and studied so hard for the past four years. This scholarship will also help my parents by aiding with the hefty school expense of college especially since I have a younger sister just heading into high school and eventually to college herself. My mother spent over 10 years paying for her own student loans and both she and my father are determined to not let my future be a slave to student loans. With that being said they have agreed to help me in every way they can to prevent me from accumulating thousands of dollars in student loans. My education will benefit my community because since we live in a time where technology is important and used on a daily we are faced with issues like scams and cyber threats that are becoming more common so a career in cyber security would be beneficial and essential to secure the growth of our digital world. With a career in cyber security, I would be able to help and protect people from issues like cyber threats and scams or if I choose to go further in the career I can eventually be higher up in the department and maybe work for an organization like the government. Another way my family can benefit from my education is if I use my education to get into cyber security and help anybody in my family that seems to have any type of problems with cyber threats, viruses, hacking or anything along that line I can easily help them out and save them a couple hundred bucks by using my new found skills. This career path will not only benefit me but will also benefit my family as well as my community near and far. I hope to someday be an asset to the government and my family in any and every way possible

Why did you choose to attend an HBCU? One of the main reasons I decided to go to an HBCU is because of how many people were telling me about how good of an experience it is to be at one for your years of college. When I started talking to my brother about college while college searching and he recommended some schools most of them were HBCU schools and he said he picked them because of how he felt I would enjoy the environment and because of how good of an opportunity it is to go to one of these schools. Out of all the schools my brother recommended they were all in state schools too so he felt like it would be smart to go to one of them anyway. At that time I was still deciding whether I wanted to go to an HBCU or a regular school but I ended up going on college visits later and it was while the schools were in session. While we were on the college visits we got to see the environment of the schools some of the buildings and even the dorm buildings and I did actually enjoy the college tour of the HBCU schools I went to in comparison to the regular college schools so that is why i decided to choose an in-state HBCU.

Earlier in life I ran into a tough obstacle, me breaking my finger during football in 10th grade. This obstacle was hard for me to overcome because of the hard work I had to put in for me to get back healthy and have it moving again, it required a lot of patience, practice and persistence for me to get it as close to normal as I could with physical therapy. When I lost mobility in my finger it was like being robbed of two important things too you because I couldn't play football till it healed and I couldn't even bend my finger like I was used to doing every day of my life normally. While I was regaining the ability to move my finger again I had to do physical therapy and the more I went there to work on my finger regularly every other day to get it back to how it was and the more I had a feel for physical therapy and was interested in it. After a long while of doing physical therapy, my finger started to bend more and more till it was bending close to normal. After my finger healed I could move it again and I started thinking about what I wanted to be in the future, physical therapy is the first thing that came to my mind and it was one thing that I considered doing when I started thinking about what I wanted to do for college. Physical therapy became helpful to me later on because it was one of the things that helped me get an idea of what I possibly would want to do when I started looking into college. After I decided that physical therapy is one thing that I wanted to look at when talking about college, I was convinced that it was something that I was going to be committed to. This obstacle helped me because it got me started thinking about my future and got me started on thinking about what my plans were for college. Me dealing with the obstacle of breaking my finger at first was tough but after I ended up putting in the time to overcome that first obstacle I used that and moved on to thinking about how I can use it in the future. When I thought about using it in the future I instantly began thinking about my college career and life after college. Me doing all that is what helped me get into thinking about my future and picking a college for me

My name is Nicholas Lecky and I am 1 of five children 4 boys and 1 girl. My parents Marie was born in Haiti and my Father Neville was born in Jamaica. My parents are hard-working individuals and as I can remember have always been. My parents moved here from Connecticut when I was only 3 months old. My mother moved here from Connecticut with an associates degree in nursing and was determined to get her bachelors degree in nursing so her options would not be limited. My mother began to attend South university to obtain her bachelors degree. I remember many nights my mother would come from a 12 hour shift and would stay up late doing homework, with no complaints about waking up early the next morning for work. My dad worked just as hard picking up overtime whenever he could to support his family. Hard work is a way of life in my family. My parents have always encouraged their children to work hard in school, go to college and get a degree in something they are passsionate about. Out of my older 3 siblings 2 of my brothers attended college, my oldest brother unfortunately did not finish college and my second joined the army and is currently working on a degree now. My 3rd brother did not attend college at all and that leaves my little sister. I can't say that I have made any impact on anyone but my goal is to make an impact on my little sister. As I leave high school to go to college she will be leaving middle schoolentering high school. I have been accepted at Clark Atlanta University and I plan on going there to get a degree in cyber security come fall. I know college life is much different from high school. I want to enjoy the experience that is ahead of me. The whole experience without ever forgetting I have a responsibility to my sister. I want to show my sister that any and everything is possible if you work hard and set your mind on a specific goal. I saw in my mother how hard work pays off. I want to be a role model for her just like my mom was to me. I hope I can show her that there will distractions and it is easy to get distracted but in order to play hard she has to work even harder.