I once found myself in the middle of a catastrophe where I somehow wore a heavy boot without straps, as I experienced life through my parents’ lens. At seventeen years old, I found myself contemplating the tradeoff between getting a college education and the added stress it would have on my parents. I got emotional watching my dad, who was already worried about his declining health, and my mom, who was already working three shifts, working even harder to support my seven-year architecture education. Trying on my parents’ shoes, I wondered how they would manage to pay for their three children’s tuition. It was then that I felt true sympathy for them. Whenever I was ungrateful as a child, my dad would say, “You kids don’t understand struggle, and I hope God prevents you from understanding.” That experience made me truly understand the blood, sweat, and tears that go into earning money.
Before my move to the United States, I didn’t really understand the concept of struggle because my family was upper-middle-class. My father was a financial accountant for Nigeria Distilleries LTD, my mother was a freelance trader, and they owned farmlands and several catfish ponds. When we moved to the United States, my parents had to assign delegates to supervise the ponds and farmland, but they, unfortunately, did poor jobs. Although we had enough to get by, I still witnessed my parents’ frequent struggles due to Nigeria’s lack of financial stability. As a result, my parents leaned into advice that they got from fellow immigrants their age: They would receive a better “return on investment” for their children’s educations if they pushed us toward the medical field. I detested medicine as a field of study, so I strived to make sure that my college experience was as smooth for my parents as I hoped it would be for me. To become an architect as I hoped to be, I had to attend a reputable – and most likely expensive – school. Although UIC is relatively affordable, it is still very expensive to attend. This led to my search for scholarships.
At first, I was drawn to very competitive, high-award scholarships, but my applications were declined and there I was back to square one. The more rejection letters I got, the more I felt like I had disappointed my parents. To say that I was very excited when I was selected as the first recipient of the Generations Scholarship is an understatement. It just so happened that I got the news a few days before my birthday, so it felt like a birthday gift. It was the first time that I felt accomplished, not only academically, but internally. Unlike the other scholarships I applied for, whose winners had been decided before the judges even read the first sentence of their personal essays, the Generations Scholarship committee made me feel that my essay finally spoke for me. The Generations Scholarship was the first academic scholarship I won, and it was truly the first one that took my statement and personality into account. In addition to the money I received, the relationship that I have built with the donors is indescribably priceless. It is a relationship that I couldn’t have had with the people who fund most scholarships. Generations scholarship equipped me with the confidence and assurance to enroll in two degrees, Architecture and Real Estate. It reduces the burden on my tuition differentials and serves as an encouragement to succeed as more people are interested in my academic success.
