Scholarship Essay

I recently submitted this to be eligible for a scholarship and decided it would also be good to use as unique content for my blog . Let me know what you think, or if you think there's anyway I can improve it.

So there I was, sitting at my laptop for the 3^rd night in a row trying to think of a winning idea that would be able to earn me a scholarship. Most of the time I don't have a problem writing, ideas usually come flowing to me in floods of information and I can usually arrange them into a pretty well written essay effortlessly.

Then why was I having such a difficult time choosing a topic? It's not because I didn't have ideas, but rather I had too many ideas and couldn't choose which one would be best. I wanted to write an essay portraying all my best qualities, my understanding of the world, the universe and my willingness to strive the extra mile to accomplish my goals and succeed. Easier said than done.

I considered writing about my own personal philosophical views on the world, God, the universe and significance of life, but then realized that a paper like that, no matter how well written, would never show how I am as a person or the traits and qualifications which would deem me worthy of a scholarship. I considered writing about personal experiences but quickly realized they wouldn't be able to accurately describe how I felt or thought about achievement or my own philosophical views.

So I did what most people do when they're faced with something that isn't easy to do and procrastinated. Yep, and I put it off for 3 whole days before deciding enough was enough and got down to work and decided to write exactly what was in my head at the time and just let the ideas flow.

I recently moved back to the US after spending 5 years in a foreign country to begin my college education. My plan was to find a place to live, find a job, start studying and then just flourish from there. Easy enough plan, right?

It seemed simple enough, and I figured as long as I still had the desire I could do whatever I put my mind to. Unfortunately, my "plan" was no where near as easy as I'd expected it to be. I faced problem after problem and trial after trial. Getting an apartment and looking for a job was a nightmare, primarily due to the economic crisis, and secondly because of the fact that I had no credit, no qualifications, no experience and most importantly – no money! (Well ok I wasn't broke and living on the streets but I was in a terrible financial situation). To make matters worse, my mom, who was practically my only hope left in the world to help me make something of myself, got fired. My dad hadn't had a job in years and even though he had tried to launch some of his own business ventures in the past, most of them were unsuccessful. Both of my parents were still abroad so I was completely isolated from any form of security, should anything happen.

Feeling increasingly pressurized, and more and more alone with each passing day, I realized how I had pretty much been in a safe bubble my whole life, and now that I was outside my protective bubble for the first time, I couldn’t rely on anyone else to take care of my essential survival needs. I decided it was time to man up and rise to meet the challenges I was faced with.

I managed to find an apartment and a roommate. I didn’t (and still don't) have a car which made my options for finding a job even more limited than they already were, but after continuous, non-stop searching for about 5 months, finally landed a part-time job. The job still wasn't enough to make ends meet at the end of each month, what with rent and bills and the like, but it was definitely a starting point. I enrolled myself in a nearby community college and began attending prerequisite classes in the hope that I would be able to transfer to a better, bigger university in the future to obtain a degree.

Six months have passed since I left my family, friends and life as I knew it behind, to travel halfway across the world to continue my quest for a higher education. I've had life changing experiences in this short amount of time, learnt so much and have become a much more open minded individual. I would really like to continue this journey of self realization and winning a scholarship would definitely assist me in staying on track with my studies, and relieve me of so many pressures associated with living and going to college.

I am the kind of person who is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve my goals. I just hope that you can help me actualize my potential by granting me this scholarship.

Yours sincerely, Zakariya Hadjali

A little bit about myself, and how I plan to make money online.

If you'd like to learn to make money online then please read this article.

Making money online. Not an easy thing to do. Thankfully, I haven't been scammed by any dodgy websites ... yet. This is mainly because I haven't given away a credit card number (not that I have one to give away, and I don't have one for good reason). With so many scams and fake promises of becoming a millionaire overnight, how can you be sure of anything??

Alright I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. I was born in Philadelphia, Nov 1990. Since then I've lived in many different countries and cities. My family and I moved around a lot within Pennsylvania for the first 8 years of my life. After that, we moved to England on a kind of a spur of the moment thing. Yea I know, weird right? Buying a new phone can be considered a spur of the moment thing. Leaving family, friends and your whole lifestyle behind just for heck's sake probably seems like madness, but it's what we did. And we did it 4 or 5 more times after that.

Lets fast forward a couple of years. I was in high school in Abu Dhabi, UAE. By this time I'd lived at various locations across the U.S., England, France, Dubai and now Abu Dhabi. I liked Abu Dhabi the most by far. However, I was close to graduating and still had no idea about where I'd be going to college. My parents thought it best to go study in the US becaues the education system here is far superior than how it was back in ol' Emirates.

So with not much in terms of cash or belongings, I caught a flight to America. Again, there was not much planning and it was more of a spur of the moment thing. My plan was to get a job, start studying and start living. Simple, right? Far from it, I had to go through so much shit to get settled. I'm not gonna go into detail cuz otherwise this blog would just go on forever and I would be no where nearer to the whole point behind this blog then when I first started it. But to sum it up, lets just say Guantanomo Bay would be a walk in the park after what I had to go through. (Ok it wasn't that bad, but you get my point!)

The economy sucked, it took me 3 months of hardcore searching and applying to everywhere and anywhere before I finally landed a part time, work-study job on campus. The money I'm getting still isn't enough to make ends meet each month, but at least it's a start. The entire time I was searching for jobs online, I was bombarded with offers and promises from millions of websites about easy ways to make cash, most of them complete bullshit of course. Despite all this however, I still had hope that there might still be a way for average, ordinary people to legitamitely make money online. Whether or not there is, that still remains to be seen but I'm definitely making the effort.

Throughout all my research on internet marketing and advertising, I realized a couple of basic things.
1. You got to crawl before you can walk, you got to walk before you can run; if a website claims that you will be able to make thousands a day or become a millionaire overnight, it's most likely lying. If it wasn't wouldn't everybody be doing it??
2. If a site wants to charge you to work, it's probably a scam. If you got a real job would they ask you for your credit card number before you started working?
3. Nothing is free (except this blog :P). True, there are many sites giving away "free" products, but they always come at a price.
4. Almost all information can be obtained freely on the internet. If a company is charging you for information whether its a e-book or guide of some sort try to find it someplace else first.
5. Before you ever give away your personal information, make sure the site you are using can be trusted. And by that, I mean read reviews from real people who have already used the product or service in question, don't blindly believe fake testimonials on the websites home page.

So what's the point I'm trying to get across? If you want money you gotta work for it. Whether in real life or working from home. There's no easy way to get money quick. How will this help you make money online? The same way another blog is helping me to get started. I'll keep whoever is reading updated on all my trial and errors and personal experience. I'm still only starting out and hopefully this is the beginning of a long, lucrative, profitable industry. At the moment I'm still pretty sceptical on whether or not this will work and I don't expect to start making money straight away. But I am hoping this making money online works in the long run.

Thanks for reading and I'd appreciate any feedback or comments from anybody else who has either succeeded or failed at trying to make money online or anybody else for that matter.

Oh and for anybody else who's interested in learning how to use blogs to make money online, here's the link to the tutorial provided by Grizzly, an awesome blogger! http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/2007/02/blogger-basics-making-money-online.html
Enjoy and good luck!

Just starting out to make money online

Ok I'll keep it simple and to the point as this is just my first blog. I'm just starting out, hoping to use this blog as a way to make money online. Whether it will work or not, that's anybody's guess. But heck it's free and it's worth a shot, so why not? I'm using the advice of another blogger to set up and get started and hope I can flourish in this making money online business. If this does work out, I'll begin posting alot more and also let anybody who takes the time to read this how to start out and begin their own money making blog. Fingers crossed, lets hope it works.