The Journal

As a first-generation college student with no financial support from my family to pursue higher education, it would be easy to get riled up about the outrageous costs of college education today.

A few days ago, I spoke with a woman who is in her 80s. The cost of tuition and books for St. Louis University in her day was $150, an amount she easily paid with the $500 she made working during the summer. A man who attended the same university in the 1980s said tuition was about $3,000 for each semester, adding up for a grand total of around $24,000 for all four years. As we know, that's on the low-end for most private universities today.

While kids are growing up faster, parents and the government are running broke just as quick. While I wholly agree a server making barely $1,000 a month should not be denied adequate financial aid and the state's priorities at this time are aimed elsewhere, I do not want us to get hopeless about these types of things.

Just about every Webster University student I speak to is very involved in both the campus and the St. Louis community, and is in a variety of leadership positions. Many WU students take close to, or exactly, 18 credit hours per semester, myself included.

Gorloks, I am not unlike you. You may also be first-generation university students, without much money for tuition working to put yourselves through school. Our dreams are to study abroad, make good grades,and bring home more than just a diploma upon graduation, but rather, the tools and the desire to change something. The superman and superwoman mentality from the high school days has transferred to the college life, and though we've got bags under our eyes from trying to balance 50 million activities, we rise each morning and do it again with an unprecedented vigor, practicality and passion.

Right now, we cannot change the way the government spend its (or shall we say, our) money, whether we agree with it or not. By complaining and exhibiting outrage, we cannot change the fact that the recession has had an enormous impact on our wallets, no matter how much we'd rather it not. So while we cannot do everything, we can do something.

Applying for scholarships is a good first step. If we are working so hard to make the Dean's List and to be persons for others in our communities, then we should be aware that we're eligible for hosts of scholarship opportunities out there.

The secret? Apply.

There are many scholarship committees that, by the nature of the application process itself, weed out a good portion of potential recipients. When composing essays, requesting transcripts, and asking for letters of recommendation, it will be tedious and perhaps frustrating.

That's the point!

Much like college, scholarships are a reward and a privilege, but not a right. A mentor of mine put it this way: "If you apply for a scholarship worth $500 per se, you'll notice that, compared to the cost of tuition, $500 seems minimal. This can discourage you and tempt you to give up. But if you work on that application for one hour, and you are awarded that scholarship, you've just gotten paid $500 per hour. What jobs do you see doing that?"

Scholarships also look like a gold mine on a resume. I apply for two or three scholarships (at least) each semester. This is my fifth semester of college, and to date I've received almost a dozen prestigious scholarships through WU and a variety of other organizations and institutions. This is not to brag, but to inspire you.

Some may say, "Minorities or first-generation students have a higher chance of getting money." That is an understandable concern, but if I were a minority and first-generation college student but did nothing for my community, was not involved on campus, did not achieve high academic standards, or didn't have a passion to be an agent of change, would I get the scholarships?

No. You as WU students are doing exactly those things, regardless of your background or number of college grads from your family. Scholarship committees are looking for students with potential who, rather than concentrating on the lack of money and the hardships of getting through college, focus on the abundance of opportunities to take matters into their own hands and work both hard and smart.

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