Well hello everyone, for those that do not know me my name
is Jonathan Knight, I am 28 from a small town called Lisbon Maine in the US.
For the past three years, I have been going to Central Maine Community College
where I have completed two associate degrees. My first degree is in general
studies with a concentration in business. My second degree is business
hospitality management. During my three years at the college I have found my
love for not only expanding my knowledge, but everyone’s knowledge. I found the
joy in watching my classmate overcome their fears, for instance, their first
time speaking in front of class and they almost pass out. However, through
encouragement and growth watch them at the end of the semester be able to give
a ten-minute speech like they have been doing it all their life.
I also have loved showing high school students that
starting their college education is not as bad as they thought as well as more
affordable then they thought. I believe all students should be at least shown
that attending college in today’s age a lot easier than it has been in the past
in both financially, and in having the time to go. Let the students see how
achieving their dream is capable no matter your life situation.
In March of 2016 I was one of the recipients of the George
J. Mitchell Peace Scholarship which allows me to attend the spring semester at
Cork Institute of Technology in Cork Ireland. This scholarship is in honor of
former US Senator George Mitchell and his dedication and hard work in the
process of bringing peace to Northern Ireland. The scholarship is designed to
connect young American adults that show potential to be great leaders of their
community through their intellectual achievements, leadership, and a commitment
to community and public service.
I only have one week to go before my big adventure to the
great country of Ireland, where I will be spending the next five months; In
which I will be immersing myself in all aspects of the Irish culture. Though I
know I’m going to love it over there and have a fantastic time, the emotions
and the stress over the past nine months have sometimes been overwhelming. I’ve
had feelings of excitement, for the ability to go to another country; blessed
that I was accepted to receive this amazing opportunity; nervous of the unknows
of being in another country; scared of going outside my box; sad that I will be
away from my amazing little girl who will be turning nine while I’m over there;
and I would have to say being worried has been the biggest emotion that has
consumed me over the past nine months.
The worried feeling that has been sitting in the pit of my
stomach came on shortly after receiving the letter stating that I have been
chosen for the scholarship and once the reality of what receiving this
scholarship actually meant for me, for a couple reasons. The first, is that I
am one of the oldest recipients of this scholarship; which at first glance this
is not a big deal. That is until you look deeper of what that might entail. For
instance, having a child, owning a car with payments, owning a house, and
having a carrier job. The second reason for this worried feeling is that not
all things were made known during the application process and was only notified
about after I had already been awarded the scholarship. Which also doesn’t
sound bad when the application was saying everything is paid for; the flight
there and back, tuition, room and board, and even a monthly stipend. However,
there is more to traveling than just those expenses.
Being the age I am, I
have gone through a lot in life that would make this opportunity a little more
difficult than if I was a bit younger. For instance, I have a beautiful
eight-year-old daughter that I am going to miss tremendously. There is also the
fact that I own a car that I still have payments on, as well as owning a home
that I need to make payments on. Then there is also the situation of my Job.
I’m not saying that younger recipients do not have jobs or that the job they
are in are jobs that have a big career opportunity. I am just stating for me
there is a carrier opportunity with the job that I was in, which also allowed
me to have affordable health insurance.
The scholarship may give a
monthly stipend to cover cost while I am over in Ireland. However, that is only
enough to pay for essentials like food, laundry, and personal hygiene.
Therefore, I had to come up with the funds to be able to pay for all my
expenses back home. In which caused a lot of worry for me. That is a lot of
money to come up with, and was unsure to where this money was going to come
from. Though I was able to get this money with the help of my gramps. However,
I am not sure if it’s going to be enough to cover all my bills while I’m gone.
The company that I
worked for that will be un named, was not able to approve personal leave for
school for the amount of time that I am going to be gone. For that reason, I
had to put in my letter of resignation and was told I would have to re-apply
when I returned and was not garneted that I would be rehired. Also, if I was
rehired I would not retain the tenured ship that I had with the company prior
to leaving. Which means I lose out on the pay raises that I had received, the
vacation time that I would get, having to start back at the bottom of the totem
pole, as well as being classified as a “rehire” which means I would be put on
probation for the first year of being back. That gives the employer the right
to fire me for any reason they feel. Now I can see this being ok if I had left
for other reasons, however, for an education, that would better my life as well
as their company, made me a bit upset.
Having to leave my daughter for five months is definitely
the hardest part of this. She will be turning nine while I am over there. I did
not want to miss her birthday, so even though it cost a lot and is causing me
to be short handed to pay all of my bills while I’m gone, I will be flying back
to surprise her on her birthday.
Another struggle is that she is on the Autism spectrum.
Though she is high functioning she needs a strict schedule and this definitely
throws a wrench in her schedule. However, being in school for the past three years
has not created the best of schedules. Also in those three years, her mom had
also gone back to school thus making her schedule even more unpredictable.
However, during this time her mom and I have seen the most growth in her. When
I first started going back to school, she was in a lot of special assisted
classes, and now she is in none. Her mom and I feel this is directly due to her
having to grow and learn with us. This is also why I feel that me accepting
this great opportunity to study abroad she is going to grow even more during
this time.
The worry that came with not being disclosed everything
prior to applying and during the application was a lot to take in and wish that
it was disclosed before I received the scholarship. For instance, having to come
up with 3,000 euros was a bit shocking. They did ask during the interview
prosses that I would need to come up with some of my own money until the
stipend started coming in, that usually takes about a month. Which to me that
is ok and easy enough to do. However, needing the 3,000 euros to put in an
Irish bank account to show immigration that that if something happens you are
able to sustain yourself there, in my opinion should have been disclosed
beforehand. Luckily my gramps was able to help me out with this as well.
However, some people might not be able to afford this. Which is a problem when
they are looking at a scholarship that is an all-expense paid and is a perfect
candidate and receives the scholarship then has to tell them no because they
financially can’t afford to come up with that money.
Though there has been a lot of worry there has also been a
lot of feeling of being blessed and excitement. About three quarters of the way
through January 2016 I was approached by one of my professors. He asked me if I
knew the recipient of the 2015 George J. Mitchell Peace scholarship? Which I
did, her and I are great friends. And after a few mins talking about how she
was doing over in Ireland he asked me if I thought about applying for it. My
first response was I was not even close to being qualified to apply for the
scholarship. Specially knowing the previous recipients’ qualities. After
expressing this to him, he went on to name the reasons why he thought I was on
the top of his list, which was about ten students. He told me to take a day or
two to think about it. So, that night I looked into what I had to do in order
to apply, and informed my professor that I would like to apply. I later found
out that the deadline for everything was only two and a half weeks away. This
left me with little time to do everything needed. This is when the second bit
of doubt crossed my mind and wanted to just say no and not even try. However, I
thought about what my professor did and promised me. He came to me first above
the nine-other people on his list, and he promised to help me do anything
needed for applying for this. At this point, it would be too late for him to
ask the others on his list to apply. Therefore, I could not let him down by
giving up with the ability he had in me.
So, I pushed through that fear of only having a short time
to get everything together; finding references from people in my work life,
people I have worked with in my community and my professors; writing an essay
on why I should be the one to receive the scholarship; then the last one that I
over looked till only a couple days before the deadline was a copy of my
official college transcript.
When going to people whiling to be a reference for me, I
was getting from them that they might not be able to do it because there was so
little time for them to write a letter of recommendation in time. This caused
more stress because one, I was running out of time and two I was a full-time
student, president of the culinary club that I created and was the chairman on
multiple different comities at the school, and working full time. This made it
very hard to have free time to get things pulled together. However, I was able
to get the number of people to writer the letters for me.
Then it came down to writing the paper and the getting a
copy of my transcript, which at the time I was not aware that I needed that.
So, I started slowly working on my essay trying to figure out what I wanted to
say. Well, it’s about three days till its due and I finally see that I need a
copy of my official transcript. I thought, no problem its Friday and the
academic office can print it off for me. Yeah, I thought wrong, they have to
order it and it takes about five business days to receive it. This cause
another reason to just give up and say no. My thoughts went as far as my
professor would not know if I didn’t send in the application, I could just tell
him I didn’t get the scholarship. However, the thought of what he did coming to
me first made me push on. I found out that I could download a copy of my
official transcript of the schools’ website. This made me happy.
Here it was Monday, the day that the application was due
and again I piss read that it had to be mailed in and received by Monday not
postmarked. That same feeling kicked in and I really started stressing out
because my essay wasn’t even done yet. By the time, I was done stressing that I
didn’t make it in time it was about 8pm. At this point I said to myself I will
still send the application in the mail the next day. I then went on the website
to see where I need to send it and there was another thing that I over looked.
This, however, was a good thing that I over looked. It was that I was able to
email my application as long as they received it before midnight. So now I’m rushing
to finish my essay and get it edited before I send it. well, around 11pm I
finally had everything done and pulled together and I emailed the application.
What a relief that it was done.
Now that the stress of getting the application in was gone,
I was just a waiting game at that point. Not thinking that I was even qualified
enough to even receive the scholarship, I put it in the back of my mind. I
start hearing some professors saying that they heard no matter how good Central
Maine Community College’s candidate was that they were most likely not going to
receive the scholarship due to the previous year’s recipient came from the
Central Maine Community College. When I heard this it actually gave me some
relieve that I won’t have to go through the rest of the application process of
going through interviews with members of the scholarship board.
Then to my surprise I received an email to set up a date to
have my interview. That is when I thought they must give everyone that applies
to the scholarship an interview. Yeah, I later find out that I was wrong about
that. Now my mind is thinking that is this right? Did they email the right
person? Then I thought about what the people that wrote the reference letters
about me said. Thinking they must have wrote something really good for me to
get this far. So, I went and asked everyone if I could get a copy of the letter
they sent, and started reading them. For the most part they were what I was
expecting them to say except for one, and this is probably the one that was the
most important. This letter came from the dean of students. When I read what,
he had written about what I was doing and had done for the college, that was
the first time that I was able to step back and see how much I was doing at
Central Maine Community College.
It came time for my interview with the board members of the
scholarship. I was so nervous knowing that they were going to be drilling me
with question. I was afraid I would not answer them correctly. Every time they
asked me a question it felt like my mind went blank and when I actually said
something I thought I just gave the same response to the previous question. It
was nice when during the questions, they told me they had to call the dean of
students to make sure that the letter that came from him was really from him,
this gave me a laugh and made me feel really good. Thinking that it must have
been such a great letter that they wanted to make sure I didn’t write it.
At this point it came down to the very last question. They
asked me “in 30 seconds tell us why you should receive this scholarship verses
other applicants?”. I feel for most people that this is one question that would
make people nervous. Not being able to plan ahead or know what is the “right”
thing to say. However, for me this is the one question that I felt good about.
The first thing that came to mind was the elevator speech that I learned back
in public speaking class whom the professor just happened to be the same one
that approached me to apply for the scholarship. The elevator speech is a quick
30 second speech that, how he put it, “you are stuck in an elevator with the
CEO of your dream job. You are both in the elevator for the next 30 seconds and
there is no way that he can’t not listen to you. So, you have 30 seconds to
pitch why you would be one of his/her next employees. I was able to use this to
give my elevator speech to the board members. When I was done, I felt like it
was a good response when I see a big smile on the board members faces and the
response of that was really good or close to that, I can’t remember the exact
response. However, it made me feel good about what I told them.
They told me that they will be taking the next few weeks to
go over all the applicants and make a decision then. A couple days later I get
a letter in the mail from the scholarship board. Knowing that they were not
going to have the recipients for a couple more weeks I thought for sure that
this was the letter saying something along the lines of “thank you for
applying, however, you are not quite what we are looking for as a recipient of
the George J. Michell Peace scholarship.”. Instead it read “congratulations….”
the rest was all a blur. My mind was in shock that I received the scholarship.
The first thing I did was message the professor that encouraged me to apply for
the scholarship thanking him for everything he did during the application
prosses. Fast forward past
the weekend telling family and close friends, I bring the letter to school
personally thanking all the faculty that wrote the recommendation letters and
showing them that I was one of the 2016 recipients.
I brought that letter everywhere constantly reading every
word closely, making sure I was reading it correctly. I even asked others to
read it to me just to make sure. It still had not clicked in that I was
actually going to Ireland on a full ride scholarship, till I received my
passport in the mail. That is when the overwhelming of feeling blessed flowed
through me. I had to sit down for a good hour thinking how amazing this
opportunity is.
So now it comes down to the final days before I leave.
Getting everything pulled together. Got people to watch over my house to make
sure nothing happens, got all my luggage ready, have all my bills set up to
automatically be paid that way I don’t have to worry about having someone pay
them for me. Got a schedule to be able to Skype with
my beautiful daughter daily.
It’s amazing all the little things that you don’t think of
till you force yourself to make a list of everything you do and use every day,
to make sure you don’t forget anything. Then have to compare it to if it would
be cheaper to buy it here in the states and put it in your luggage or buy it in
Ireland. For instance, toothpaste going to need more than one for five months,
and it’s cheaper here in the states and only a few oz. so doesn’t add much
weight to your luggage. The same with an extra toothbrush, deodorant, shampoo
(luckily being a guy a 20-oz. bottle will last all five months), and other
bathroom stuff. All cheaper to buy here and bring with me.
I still need have things I’m trying to pull together before
I leave that are slowly coming together. However, I feel that I am running out
of time and won’t be able to get it all done in time. However, that is not
going to stop the 17th from coming so I better get a move on.
The next time you hear from me I will be in the beautiful
country of Ireland!
