What is success? It is getting a well-paying job, starting and scaling a profitable business or buying a big, beautiful house- for some. In my family, it was getting married, and my parents wanted me to be successful. Like many others in southern Kazakhstan, where we lived prior to moving to the United States, my parents believed that a girl brings honor to the family by getting married. It seemed almost natural when I started dating a guy at seventeen.
Everything seemed perfect, and everyone expected us to get married when I finished high school. But one day, an event happened which made me reconsider my future- I won the science fair. There were hundreds of other students who had their parents and college professors help them, but my project, which had absolutely no funding and was made from objects found at my house, turned out to be better. With construction paper glued to a Dollar-Tree posterboard, it looked like it stood no chance against the professionally designed and printed looming towers with 3-D printed props and lab equipment which obviously didn’t come from the school’s chemistry labs. When I heard the announcement, I was genuinely surprised. That day, many people came up to me to tell me that I had a very bright future and one judge even told me I should consider applying to Harvard and MIT. I had proved that you do not need money or ties to be successful- but was that success?
That day I started questioning my plans. What if there another path to success? What if I could go to college?
But every time I mentioned college to my boyfriend, he tried to change the topic. “Girls don’t need to go to college” he said. My parents reminded me that college is very expensive, as they looked at me skeptically. I was faced with a choice: will I settle down like the rest of the girls in my family, or will I choose the unknown, rocky path of a first-generation college student?
Today, one year later, I am still confused about what success really is. As an immigrant who came to America with close to nothing, I never thought I could have the opportunity to go to college, and I am still scared about what will come and how I will get through it all by myself. But there is one thing that I know for sure: I will NOT settle down. I understand that it will be a very difficult road, but I know for sure that despite everything I will persevere and keep going because I want to be able to define my own success. Although I do not know exactly what job I want yet, I know that I want to make a difference and inspire others, like I was once inspired at the science fair. I want people to know that they define their own success, and no one can tell them how to live and what to do. It does not matter what your parents did and how they want you to live because this is your life, and you deserve to make your own choices. This scholarship will help me come one step closer to finishing college and proving that we can define our own success.
