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The MyBookBuyer.com Textbooks For a Year Scholarship Winners
Thanks to all the students who participated in our biannual Textbooks for a Year Scholarship Essay contest and congratulations to our winners!
About the Winner: Jean Roosevelt Joinvil
My name is Jean Joinvil, a Delaware resident who attends the University of Delaware. I was born in Haiti and raised in a family of six. I originally spoke Creole and learned French in school. I came to the United States in 2003, at the age of twelve. Not only did I find the U.S. very magnificent and new, but not being fluent in English, quickly discovered that school would be a big challenge. Despite the challenges, I set bigger short and long term academic goals to become a top tier student.
With my innate desire to lead and solve problems, I partake in various community services on school campus and summer programs. As a college student, I believe that community service is essential in advancing a country's common good and civic virtue. Two notable volunteering events I served were The United Service Organization food drive for troops and the Environmental Project GPS/Storm Water Management. My academic goal is to become a Physical Therapist, as I will attend graduate school upon completion of my undergraduate degree in Exercise Science. Furthermore, I enjoy reading and playing sports such as soccer, basketball and ultimate Frisbee.
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Success Through Hard Work: As one of the world's most renowned neurosurgeons, Dr. Benjamin Carson has inspired me tremendously. With the encouragement acquired from his mother and teachers, Dr. Carson was able to overcome many obstacles and turn challenges into triumphs. Dr. Ben Carson's life struggles and his accomplishments hereafter has taught me to believe that an individual's success in life depends on his hard work and perseverance, rather than on the individual's family background, social status, or ethnic group. Thus, based on my own experience and those of others I have been honored to share, I believe that regardless of where an individual comes from, it is the decisions that he/she makes that determine the destination of life.
At the age of eight, Ben Carson's parents were divorced. With only the support of his mother, Carson had no sense of direction as he was confused and troublesome. Consequently, Carson's grades steadily declined until he ranked at the bottom of his class. Being the son of a single mother living in a tough urban neighborhood, Carson lacked the will and motivation to excel academically. Acknowledging her son's troubled upbringing and poor performance in school, Carson's mother enforced him to read, excel in classrooms and find purpose. Despite struggling with illness, Carson's mother worked tirelessly to ensure Carson stayed away from the perilous neighborhood and focus on reading books. Hence, Carson graduated high school with honors and attended Yale University.
I was born and raised in Haiti, a country with an ineffective educational system. Similarly to Carson, I was not education oriented and lacked the motivation to learn. When I entered the U.S. eight years ago, I encountered many obstacles in my effort to learn English. As a result, my grades drastically suffered and I underperformed academically. Similarly to Carson's mother, my parents have no higher than a sixth grade education. Nonetheless, I have found courage from my parents who frequently work multiple jobs to provide for the family. My first priority in life is education, for I believe with a superior education I can lead a positive lifestyle and effectively contribute in the community.
As a college sophomore, I live by the words and wisdom of Dr. Ben Carson daily. He emphasizes THINK BIG as a successful process to achieve one's goals in life. Carson believed that God also has a pivotal role in his life because "If we acknowledge our need for God, he will help us". Upon reading Gifted Hands in high school, I became inspired as I witnessed Carson's first separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head, a twenty-two hour surgery that included a surgical plan Carson and his team initiated. Carson's marvelous hand and eye coordination and reasoning skills made him an exceptional surgeon. He serves as my role model for he makes believe that the impossible is within reach. Everything Dr. Ben Carson has taught me sums up in a simple creed-- one can achieve success through hard work, dedication, and commitment. Engraved in my being, those lessons are the foundation of my scholastic aspirations.
About the Winner:
Erin Sanchez
I was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. I am one of four children and stuck in the middle. I have two older siblings and one younger sibling. My older brother has special needs, and it has had a huge impact on my life. I am one-fourth Mexican and three-fourths white. Being a mixture of extremely different cultures placed me in weird positions at times, but I embrace my differing cultural background. I was in a program in high school called International Baccalaureate, which is an elite program for those who wish to go beyond what AP and CP programs can do for them. I have always been hard working and reach beyond what is expected of me. Some of my hobbies include knitting, listening to music, and reading. I am a complete bibliophile and can not go a day without reading my favorite novels. I will be attending the University of Northern Colorado, in Greeley and will be majoring in Chemistry with a Focus on Pre-health. I desire to become a Pharmacist.
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America was once the shining star to the West, a beacon of hope and a safe-haven for those seeking it. But today, America is spiraling into a whirlpool of disaster. Day by day we seem to be tinkering on the edge of collapse, getting closer to the bottom. We were in the same place once, when we thought nothing else could go wrong. The economy plummeted, and the stock market crashed. The roaring 20's were over, in came the Great Depressions. Americans had no hope for Herbert Hoover, and even called their shantytowns, "Hoovervilles". While it was not the fault of Hoover, most Americans felt it was. Americans lost their sparkle, their shine, their luminescence and were beginning to spiral into darkness. The economic situation in America and all over the world is quite similar to the beginning stages of the Great Depression. Soon, we will hit rock bottom if nothing is done, and soon.
I believe that Franklin D. Roosevelt can pull America out of this raging river that is sweeping us away in its tides. He can be out man of the hour. When elected in 1933, he immediately began creating social domestic plans in order to pull America out of our hole. For example, within days of his inauguration, FDR created the Emergency Banking Act. This act alone was able to reopen one-third of all Federal Reserve banks and $1 billion in currency flowed into them within one month. Despite the dire situation FDR was placed into, he fought through it and came out the victor. Many Conservatives disagreed with FDR's New Deal and in 1934, the Du Pont family formed the American Liberty League which directly attacked the New Deal saying the policies were, "dictatorial" and "attacked free enterprise." But despite this political opponents, FDR was still about to design these plans and initiate them with haste. FDR created programs that still exist today, such as Social Security and welfare. Without these programs in place then and now, Americans would not survive. The Great Depression affect the entire world, especially Europe and the USA. However, the one difference between Europe and America is that we had FDR to help us out of the mess we were in. FDR was an amazing President who held no fear of his opponents. He had plans and he got them passed and initiated with no wasting time. America needs another President like FDR to pull us out the mess we are currently drowning in.
Just recently, the US government almost shut down due to disagreements on budget cuts in April of 2011. I do not believe something like this would have ever happened if FDR were President once more. In dire consequences, such as these, fighting in disagreement can not occur. Things need to change here in America, and I believe FDR could bring that change about. He worked for every one of his three terms trying to better America and make it more economically and socially sound. Even when the New Deal did not go as planned, FDR made it work. For example, when the US Court System was striking down every one of his plans, he overhauled them. While this may have seemed like a move only done by a “power hungry leader”, it was a necessary move in order to get his plans initiated. Many Presidents today fear they will be ridiculed or impeached because not everyone liked their ideas of actions. But the job of the President is not the please his/her citizens; his/her job is to do what is best for the country and its people. Sometimes the best for the country and its people does not always please them, but it has to be done. I believe that FDR had this understanding and this is why I believe he could mend the gapping wounds on the chest of America.
FDR once said, “One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment... If it doesn't turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.” I believe that America is a situation that we can no longer just sit in. We must do something in order to get it right once more. FDR I believe could be the saving grace that America so desperately needs.
About the Winner: Jessica Gresko
My name is Jessica Gresko, and I am a student at Georgetown University studying for a master's degree in the study of law. The program I am in is for journalists who want to report on courts, and I work as a reporter during the day. I have been a journalist for five years and have worked in my home state of California as well as in Miami and Washington, D.C. I have covered stories that have taken me everywhere from inside prisons to onboard a hurricane hunter plane flying into the center of a storm. Outside of work and school I like to read non-fiction books, to play games like pool and Scrabble and to bake. My specialty is banana chocolate chip bread. I have also written two history books for children.
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Reading “Three Cups of Tea,” a nonfiction book about an American who makes it his mission to build and run schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, has convinced me that education is much more important than health care, at least in this part of the world.
Three Cups of Tea begins in 1993 when climber Greg Mortenson attempts to scale K2, the world's second highest mountain. But Mortenson never makes it to the top, and on his way down the mountain he gets lost, winding up in a village called Korphe in Pakistan. The people in Korphe help Mortenson regain his strength, and to show his gratitude he volunteers to build the village a school. The promise changes his life. Through building the school, Mortenson comes to understand the need for education in this area of the world and sees the benefits education brings. He decides to keep building. To date, Mortenson has constructed more than 130 schools in this part of the world, schools that have educated nearly 60,000 students.
Mortenson explains that in Pakistan and Afghanistan the importance of education goes beyond having a smarter or happier or wealthier population. These are givens. Building schools and educating young people in this part of the world, I learned, has the power to do even more: to reduce terrorism and to empower women, lifting society as a whole. That's power health care just doesn't have.
One of the most compelling arguments Mortenson makes for the importance of education in Pakistan and Afghanistan is its power to combat terrorism. As he explains, rural Pakistan is a breeding ground for anti-American terrorists. Because the country's public schools are poorly funded, a second education system has grown up: religious schools called madrassas. At a madrassa, students are offered free room and board and an education, but the education is often an indoctrination into an extremist branch of Islam that promotes terrorism. For poor parents, madrassas are usually the only education option. With an alternate good source of education, however, these students don't take the same path. “When we increase literacy, we substantially reduce terrorism,” Mortenson explains. Reducing terrorism, in turn, makes Pakistan and the rest of the world a safer and more peaceful place.
Mortenson's terrorism argument on its own might be compelling enough to suggest that education is more important than health care in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But Mortenson's work also shows how educating women can be particularly transformative and important. He explains that once girls get just a fifth-grade education, “everything changes.” Women start becoming leaders in the community and pass on what they've learned to their children. Teach a young girl there about the importance of basic hygiene and it's a lesson that stays with her, leading both her and her children to be healthier overall. Teach a young girl that her thoughts are as important as a young boy's, and she starts to have more self confidence and self worth. Teach a young girl how to do math and she can manage her household's finances or even to start her own business.
The fact that education can have such an important and powerful effect in this part of the world does not mean health care is unimportant. Mortenson himself is a nurse by training, and health care comes up frequently in his book. One of the first women graduates of a Mortenson-built school goes on to study to become a doctor, and Mortenson at times buys medicine for villages where he is building a school. Without Mortenson's assistance as a nurse, one Pakistani woman mentioned in the book would have died in childbirth. But that is just the issue, while health care tends to help individuals, education can uplift a whole society. That is why, even though he understands the importance of medicine, Mortenson doesn't make it his life's work to build hospitals or set up medical training for rural villages. He chooses schools.
Ultimately, the message I took away from Three Cups of Tea is that health care can save a life, but only education can better the life of an entire population.
Fall 2010 Runners Up:
 Jamie-Kate Osman University of Delaware |
 Anne Lacher College of St. Benedict |
About the Winner: Danielle Goetter
My name is Danielle Goetter, and I am currently a junior at Georgetown University majoring in International Health, a program that combines public health and international development.
Though I am originally from a small, one-stoplight town in woodsy Connecticut, living in Washington, D.C. has opened up numerous opportunities for me. I am very interested in languages, and have been able to use study abroad and independent travel opportunities to hone my Spanish, Swahili and Bengali skills.
On campus, I serve as a Resident Assistant in Darnall Hall, an infamous freshman residence hall on our campus. I also teach Sunday School to high school students at a nearby parish, and babysit as often as possible for local families.
I wrote my essay about The Poisonwood Bible, given to me by my sister and ultimately a formative piece in my desire to live and work in underserved areas throughout the world.
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I picked up “The Poisonwood Bible” as a distraction from the monotony of the long, summer days spent in my neighbors’ backyards, watching their small children dart in and out of oaken tree trunks and plastic playhouses. I was immediately drawn into the thick plot by the strong female voices of the Price women, imagining my own sisters and I narrating the many moves own family in a slow march to the east coast. Yet Kingsolver’s female cast followed their male figurehead on a far more exotic journey than our own, plunging deep into the heart of the African continent.
Until I read “The Poisonwood Bible”, Africa seemed distant and intangible. Our textbooks in school showed women wrapped in bright patterns and men with sharpened spears, their faces set stonily. African lifestyles and cultures were so minimally described and broadly interpreted that it seemed too unreal to comprehend. I dutifully sketched maps of the region and copied notes about colonialism, imposed borders and civil wars in my social studies classes, learning only so far as was necessary to ace my next exam.
Reading “The Poisonwood Bible” illuminated these history lessons in a new way. The culture clash of character Nathan Price’s die-hard Christianity with the long-seated traditions of tribal life demonstrated the personal, individual ways in which colonialism impacted the African continent and it’s many, varied people. The minister’s unrelenting efforts to impose his beliefs are contrasted by his wife and daughters’ development, and their immersion and eventual understanding of the local people. His efforts to convert the local tribe were both passionate and pathetic, nearly a how not to manual.
The plot, characters and themes of “The Poisonwood Bible” buzzed in my head during the last humid weeks of August, and I began my junior year of high school with an unrelenting desire to build on the lessons conveyed by author Barbara Kingsolver. Our school’s Model United Nations club had once possessed only a handful of members, but with my new found passion and a team of like-minded friends, we expanded the club exponentially. Our meetings provided an opportunity to discuss international relations, political issues abroad and social injustices that created poverty cycles. My first resolution in Model UN addressed malaria control, the disease which tearfully destroyed my favorite character in “The Poisonwood Bible”.
My positive experience in Model UN, and multiple re-readings of “The Poisonwood Bible”, was the launch-pad for my application to Georgetown University. Intrigued by the school’s unique and innovative International Health major, and drawn by its reputation of foreign service and a commitment social justice, I submitted my application. As a current junior in the International Health major, I am often challenged to develop hypothetical public health initiatives or policy changes for countries struggling without educational systems, sanitation infrastructure or the ability to manage an HIV epidemic. These projects are preparation for my future goal of international health consulting, with firms such as the Futures Group or multilateral organizations like UNAIDS.
Yet I truly believe my preparation for both my studies and my future work began in the first chapters of “The Poisonwood Bible”. Cultural sensitivity and adaptation to one’s surroundings are essential when designing and implementing a public health initiative in another country. I would take my cues from the young Price women, observing the social structure around me and working within it to provide my services. Taking my cue from Adah’s character, I have already begun to study Swahili – a dominate language in eastern Africa – in order to more fully engage with local people when implementing international health programs.
Each community has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and an unwillingness to discover and address these will lead to diplomatic failure. I hope to continually apply the lessons learned by every member of the Price family to my future work on the African continent. “The Poisonwood Bible” was not only an intriguing novel, but it encouraged me to discover my own interests and develop an attitude of curiosity and open-mindedness when approaching a culture different than my own.
Spring 2010 Runners Up:
 Jacob Bailey Huntingdon College Major: English |
 Marjetta Geerling Spalding University Master of Fine Arts Candidate |
 Megan Mackinnon Sacramento City College Double Major: Psychology & Criminal Justice |
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