Justin Velarde

IB English HL

Wolfe Period 4

24 May, 2018

Scholarship

1. Although I have worked very hard on many projects throughout my high school career,

the project that I take the most pride in is the Extended Essay that I completed for IB.

This essay, a 4,000 word research paper, required months of dedication and was a

constant struggle. I take particular pride in this assignment because I was able to pursue

a cause that is very important to me and is a somewhat uncomfortable topic within our

society with the concept of Transgender Rights. This topic is uncomfortable in the sense

that there still isn’t widespread social acceptance for these individuals and they are often

subject to rampant discrimination or bullying. In the case of gay individuals, a much more

expansive degree of acceptance has grown in the past 10 years and the legalization of

same sex marriage in 2015. Therefore, I wanted to address a social issue from a group

that often faces complete ostracization. I believe that we have an obligation to fight for

the acceptance of marginalized groups and help contribute to a more egalitarian society.

2. Overall, my grades from each category of class have remained the same over the past

four years. My stronger subjects have been Social Studies courses and English over the

past four years. AP Human Geography and my history classes have increased my

cultural awareness, bettered my ability to make arguments, and taught me collaborate

with others in order to contribute to a greater good. My time spent in English courses has

made me into an articulate speaker and writer that is able to present information with
 enthusiasm and understanding of the tasks that need to be completed. In math and

science courses, which I can consider to be weaker academic areas of mine, has taught

me the value of deferring to other people’s judgement and asking for help when

approaching lab activity and difficult problems. This greatly contributed to my growth as a

teammate over the past four years. In Spanish, since I was often not allowed to speak in

english, a safety net was removed from me that forced me to work outside of my comfort

zone because I was unable to fall back on my strength as a speaker. Overall, my

experiences in these core classes made me into a more well-rounded person.

3. One of my main problems that I hope to improve on is my ability to address academic

challenges that I face rather than avoid them. As evidenced by my transcript, there were

no real areas in which I improved in terms of actual grades. This stems from my

tendency to avoid problems rather than face them head on. I would often find myself

working into the late hours of the night because of this pattern of procrastination.

Because of this, I was never really able to improve in areas of weakness like math and

science. Moving forward in college, I hope to address these areas of weakness and

understand the importance of improving in areas that aren’t necessarily my passion.

Moreover, I hope to have more self awareness of my strengths in weakness. I took on

the workload of IB for no other reason than it was the most rigorous academic path on

campus. To an extent, this decreased my performance levels in areas that I’m

passionate about and negatively affected my pursuit of extracurricular activities. I deeply

regret that I was unable to perform as well as I could have in cross country and Track

because of this decision I made. With all things considered, the main lesson that I will

carry with me to help me grow is to understand that everything that I do has a purpose.

This means that I should continue to explore my areas of weakness and become a more
 well rounded person. However, I should also be mindful of the type person I am and put

all of my efforts into pursuing my passions.

4. Great Oak has prepared me for my next step at UCSD in many ways. I mentioned earlier

that I am somewhat regretful because of my decision to take on a workload that may not

have been conducive to the ambitions that I wanted to pursue. However, this does not

mean that I think my time in the International Baccalaureate program was a complete

failure. Overall, my time in the program allowed me to work with intelligent people and

made me into a more well rounded person. I can confidently state that I am prepared for

college because of both the successes and failures that I faced during my time at Great

Oak. Furthermore, this process of growth that I went through during my four years

provided me with a taste of what life is like and the troubles that I will face throughout my

life. Because of this, I am extremely grateful for the people at Great Oak and hope to

carry the failures and successes with me for whatever problem i face in the future.