Rebekah Jones

Tronfeld West & Durrett Scholarship Winner 2017
Ms. Jones with attorneys Jay Tronfeld, Elizabeth West, and John Newby.

Name: Rebekah Jones

Currently Enrolled: Dinwiddie High School

Essay: My academic goals are equally as ambitious as my career goals. Currently, I am ranked fourth in my school out of 316 students, and my goal for the remainder of this year is to retain the grades that have placed me in the top five. As far as college is concerned, I am striving to obtain my bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders in order to obtain my master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology to become a speech therapist. For both universities that I have applied to, I have also applied and been accepted to each university’s Honors Colleges in hopes to augment my education. Ever since my younger sister and great-grandmother received speech therapy, I have been inspired by the impact these therapists can have on families. Because of this, I aspire to be a successful speech therapist and work with both children and adults to enhance speech and other issues such as swallowing.

I will be attending James Madison University’s Honors College in order to augment my education and create opportunities for myself that may be unavailable if I was not participating in the Honors College. I will be minoring in either Spanish or Special Education to create even more opportunities for myself in my future career of Speech-Language Pathology. Possessing multiple skills will allow me to be a marketable employee upon completion of graduate school. The in-depth education that I will receive as a member of the Honors College will be influential in furthering me in my goal of becoming a speech therapist.

To ensure success at JMU and in their Honors College, I have been pushing myself to be as successful as I can be in high school. My goals for college are to push myself to the utmost of my ability in order to become admitted to a well-respected graduate school to complete my training as speech therapist. After graduating from graduate school, I hope to obtain a job in either a hospital or rehabilitation center. Peering into the future twenty years from now, I hope to have started a family and potentially adjust my job from working at a hospital to working in a school. My sister received her speech therapy in the school system, so I would like the opportunity to help young kids like my sister was helped. That would also provide me flexibility in my schedule, as I will have a family to provide for and take care of.

I anticipate that there will obstacles that I will have to overcome in order to achieve the goals I have set for myself. One profound obstacle will be the financial obligation that will be placed upon me during my six years of college. Because of the mass amount of student loans that I will be accumulating, I will most likely have to have a part-time job to ease the financial burden off of my family. Because I am in the Honors College, my workload will be greater than most college student’s. Time management will be an obstacle I will have to overcome if I do seek a part-time job. I want to be as involved on campus as possible, so balancing a job, extracurriculars, and my academics will be essential to my collegiate success. In high school, I have learned methods of balancing my academics, extracurriculars, and dance classes, as well as occasionally babysitting. For college, I will have to make time for each of the activities I want to participate in.