As I sit here, I ponder on how to outline the most important essay I may ever have to write in my life. This essay that I’m forced to terms with and compose may be the reason I get accepted into Ursuline College. I may also make a huge mistake on the way I write this essay and it will be the reason I don’t get accepted into Ursuline College. My head is exploding with questions, “What can I possibly write to give this reader no choice but to except me? How can I, Dominique, pick and choose my best thoughts to put down on paper so that when I read it aloud to myself I can envision a reader’s jaw drop down in awe?” With each passing minute the worry I had the minute before just rolls off my shoulders. I have come to the conclusion that I can’t make you except me, but I will tell you right now that with this essay I’m going to try my very best. Trying my best and giving it my all is really all I can do. The rest is up to you, kind reader. With that said, I hope you are able to sit back, kick your feet up for a moment, and enjoy reading my stripped bare, most honestly written essay.

“Just do your best. I know the best you can do will always be great.” My mother would say this to me every moment I hung my head down low because I was so worried about a test, a performance, or anything else. Hearing this every time I was feeling worried it became one of my personal values. It is always very important for a child to know that as long as you do your absolute best, what is there to be worried about? I have applied this value to absolutely every test I have ever taken, every stage I ever walked out on, and every set of eyes I looked in to tell the truth. It may not seem like it to adults, but when I child does something bad, it takes a lot of guts to own up to what that child did. Doing your best to be completely honest is another value I hold close to myself. If there were only lies in this world the human population would cease to exist, that’s my theory anyway. Without the truth more people would be in jail, more relationships would fail causing reproduction to slow, and the government would fall apart. Yes, everyone lies, but there is always some truth to every lie and always another truth to counteract that lie. Honesty is an important key to help keep this world together.

The community has always been a large portion of my life. My very first act of kindness towards my community was when I asked my mother if could volunteer at an animal shelter. I was especially excited because I was only twelve years old and researched the volunteering idea all on my own. After leaving the Rescue Village animal shelter on that crisp, October Sunday afternoon, I was officially a volunteer. My mother also became a volunteer because being only fourteen I had to have a parent go with me, you have to be at least 16 to go on your own. My mother and I have been volunteering there through the Parent-and-me project every Sunday morning at 8:00 am for the past five years. One year I volunteered so much I received a Gold medal award and pin for being only fifteen at the time and volunteering over 500 hours. Along with my volunteering hours, I raised over five hundred dollars all on my own for Rescue Village’s Woofstock event. Rescue Village is not the only place I help save and care for animals. The house in which I live in is its very own special type of shelter. My mother started saving feline leukemia positive cats because shelters will just put them down once the test comes back positive. Along with my mother, I help her take care of these cats and slowly find permanent homes for them. I feed them, change their litter boxes, and occasionally take them to the veterinarian if no one else can. Being a volunteer at Rescue Village and helping save my very own little collection of cats has really molded me to the helpful, caring, animal loving person I am today. I am now one of few leading voices against animal cruelty. Saving animals has given me the courage to make animal cruelty my topic for any discussion or debate. A short time after raising money for Rescue Village I was selected to participate in a student ambassador program called People-to-People. This program selects students from schools all across the country who demonstrates responsibility, good grades, and most importantly, leadership skills. The program was established by President Eisenhower to send kids around the world, learn about different cultures, and enhance leadership skills. On my trip I went to various cities in Australia for sixteen days. In Australia, I learned new skills and learned how to enhance skills I thought I had already perfected. This trip taught me how to become more independent, how to become not only a good leader, but a respected one, and I even learned how to get along with so many different personalities, religions, and life-styles. This trip is one of the most significant learning experience of my life. When I came back I was so much more independent and ten times more stronger. My mind-set took the role of a leader and I my thought process of situations completely changed. Finally my, personally, most valuable act of leadership began in the summer before my junior year. My boyfriend and I discovered we were going to have a baby boy when I was already eighteen weeks pregnant. The struggles and the reticule I endured by random students and even my so called friends made me into the strong woman I am today. Simply by writing this essay I set an example by beating the odds. Only 37% of teen moms’ graduate high school and of those 37%, only 46% go on to college. By having my son, graduating high school, and going on to college I am inspiring other teen moms to set higher goals for themselves. Taking a leading position, for my senior search project I want to travel to different high schools and speak about abstinence and how important it really is. Some say I have it easy because I still have my boyfriend and the support of both our families, but my friend doesn’t even have a home because her mother is so disappointed. Even though senior search is much further in the future, I am helping all the teen moms I know of in my community. One of them is a girl I absolutely couldn’t stand, but after I found out she was pregnant I leant out a helping hand for her to take. Now we are best friends and we help each other out a lot. I hope by starting small, I’ll be able to build myself up to traveling the country and speaking up about the extreme importance of abstinence.

My leadership qualities come from a combination of my life experiences and my values. I am who I am today because of the things that have happened in my life. I am proud of myself, take school seriously, I am well disciplined, and I am the hardest worker you will ever meet. Ursuline is where I belong and where my future will spread its’ wings. Thank you for your time.