My Journey Here

I am greatly enjoying my freshman year at Boise State University, but getting here was not an easy journey. It took lots of hard work to get to where I am now. I grew up in a small town in Minnesota and spent my whole life there up until about four months ago. I wanted to move to Boise since I was a junior in high school because I loved the BSU campus and I wanted to be closer to my brother and his children. So I applied for BSU the summer of my junior year and was accepted in November of my senior year. I was ecstatic to be accepted to my dream school. The only problem? The cost. I couldn’t afford the high cost of out-of-state tuition so I applied for many scholarships, the most important one being the GEM. The GEM scholarship requires a GPA of 3.6 or higher and an ACT score of 26 to waive your out-of-state fees as a student at BSU. I had a GPA of 3.9 in high school so that wasn't a problem, but I had gotten an ACT score of 25 and there was no time to retake it. I applied anyway and was sadly declined. My hopes were crushed by one measly ACT point, but I decided I was going to move out to Boise anyway and get a job to gain residency and attend BSU in the fall of 2014. I told my brother the news and he insisted that I fill out the appeal for special consideration for the GEM and give it one last chance. I was tentative to try again to get my hopes up only to get crushed again, but with much encouragement from my family I ended up filling it out in a last effort to go to my dream school. I wrote a 3 page essay on why I deserved to attend BSU, got 5 letters of recommendation, and sent in both my high school transcripts and a long list of all my extracurricular activities. I crossed my fingers and prayed as I sent it all in. The weeks that passed were torture and I was starting to come to terms with the fact that I'd still have to wait a year to attend college. About one month later I looked at my email and saw one labeled "Scholarship Special Consideration." I held my breath as I opened the link, it read: "The Scholarship Committee at Boise State received your appeal for special consideration to receive a Gem Scholarship. Congratulations! Your appeal has been approved!" It was easily one of the best moments in my life and taught me a lot about how hard work can really pay off. So here I am at BSU living on campus and having the time of my life finding myself and figuring how to be independent. And I'm loving every second of it.