At Scholarship Essay Workshop, Students Tackle Self-Identity

Spread throughout the room on a brisk, early Saturday morning, Migrant Education Program students sit in front of laptops and thin notebooks. Poised with pens in hand and fingers above keys, the students find themselves surrounded by brightly colored paper, each page describing a different component of a successful personal essay.

It is day two of the Northwest Region-Brockport Migrant Education Program’s annual Scholarship Essay Workshop – a three-day opportunity offered by the Adolescent Outreach Program (AOP) to 11th and 12th grade students who are in the process of applying to college, or who think they may be interested in doing so in the future.

“To write a successful essay, students really have to pick apart and examine their own story,” says Casey Rampe, a former AOP Coordinator who returns yearly to support with the writing process. “The process of unpacking these pieces, laying them out, and crafting them into a coherent essay is powerful.”

In preparing for college, it is not uncommon for students across the U.S. to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars in tutoring and coaching fees. Yet this puts less economically privileged students at a stark disadvantage in the application pool.

The Migrant Education Program’s workshop, however, is free. This year, it is made up of high school juniors – those who were forward thinking about the process, motivated to get their essays underway far before the pressures of senior year begin.

Although the workshop is advertised as a way to garner financial support for college through scholarships, some students attend – through the guidance of their Migrant Educators - more with the intent of learning how to tell their personal stories in a manner that isn’t always taught in class. The three days of writing intensives begin with exposing students to the work of other youths and professionals (including that of Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented journalist, acclaimed essays from students at Hamilton College, and successful essays from past Migrant Education Program participants) who have had past experiences with migration. .

“Writing anecdotal short stories about myself was definitely something new to me,” one student comments. “Past English teachers have steered me away from it because it’s more ‘first-person’ than we usually write.”

Digging deep to express one’s identity on paper is an arduous, emotional process. Another student sits, staring distantly at his pale pink paper. He appears stuck, lost in thought with his fist against his forehead and with a blank page in front of him.

“I don’t understand this question and what I’m supposed to write,” he mumbles, referring to a prompt intended to inspire students to express their pasts assisting community and family members. The question read, “How has this kind of experience shaped your interests and goals for the future?”

Rampe taps the student on the shoulder and pulls him aside to work in a more private setting – offering him a quieter, more personal workspace. Through conversation, she hopes to guide him in the writing process.

These counseling-like dialogues with staff illuminate that this “confusion” is primarily a loss for how to process, and express, difficult experiences and goals.

Questions prompted in scholarship personal statements can be difficult for teens to answer – regardless of immigration status and family history.

“Being able to [write] in a supportive group of caring adults seems almost therapeutic at times,” Rampe says. “Even after emotional sessions, students have reported feeling happy, grateful, relieved, and proud.”

By: Danielle Douglas, Adolescent Outreach Program Coordinator, Brockport Migrant Education Program