Annual Robert Jordan Memorial Scholarship
Renamed after the passing of our favourite author, Robert Jordan, the Annual Scholarship here at TarValon.Net is open to all fans of the Wheel of Time series.
Contents
Winners of past Scholarships
2009 - Troy Valthaven
The ideals of being a true Servant of All are ones that I have learned to appreciate and embrace throughout my life. For twelve years I collected canned goods for the local food bank with my family, friends and neighbors. I have tutored and babysat children while their parents worked in the next room to study for their GED. I have done yard work for my elderly neighbors. Even now, as I am working to complete my degree, I am helping the local, underfunded band programs to get more instruments for their students. Community service is something that has shaped who I am over the course of my life and I don’t plan on letting that spirit die once I have left university.
When I graduate I will become a high school science teacher in 12th most impoverished state in the USA. While I was still in high school, I instinctively knew that education was my future; it combined so much of who I am and what is important to me. I can’t think of a greater service to the community on all levels than to help the young people of the time to greater understand the world and their place in it. Yes, I could have chosen to become a doctor treat the sick or I could have chosen to become a writer and touched the minds and hearts of my readers. But instead I chose the life of a teacher, being able to help influence and nurture the next generation to go out and help their fellow man. My students will travel down all walks of life into my classroom and leave through just as many separate paths. But if even one of my students each year goes on to do bigger and better things for the world, those are thirty five individuals that will learn to serve their community, their country and the global community.
But I don’t intend to limit myself simply to the strict confines of the academic classroom. One of the most enjoyable times of my personal high school career was participating in the Interact program. Interact is a Rotary Club sponsored service group through which I gained leadership experience while serving my community. I hope to either institute such a program or else work to support a similar program in any school I end up teaching in. It is through a program such as this that I hope to help students in my school gain opportunities to help improve their community.
Being a Servant of All is something that has been a part of my life even before I picked up the Eye of the World for the first time. My service has shaped me in the past, continues to play a role in my present and will continue as a part of my life for years to come. I feel that my education will help me to become a greater Servant of All through the lives of the students who pass through my classroom and move on out into the world. Thank you all for your consideration and for volunteering to make this most difficult decision.
2008 - Elbereth Gailbridhil
The world relies on so many people every day without ever realising it. These are the people I consider to be servants of all, the type of person I aim to be. We extol our doctors and nurses for saving our lives, yet the chemists who developed the drugs the nurses administered upon us are not similarly praised. Neither are the physicists responsible for the medical equipment used to diagnose us. And both the chemist and the physicist could not do their work without mathematics; nor could the doctor or the nurse. Mathematics sits at the foundation of all we see and use in our daily lives, from the calculus used to determine how to build your house, to the discrete mathematics upon which your computer runs.
As a mathematics and computer science student intending to become a professor, my research underpins the basis of our future. The role of mathematics and computer science in society is something that I felt best about during a workshop on the use of computer science in humanitarian work. This database research is being directly used to determine when and where to deploy aid in crises, and volunteers in places of need. This software was written with the same tools I am currently learning about.
Another important application of the subjects I study is in medicine: with so many drugs and ailments to know, doctors are increasingly reliant on computerised databases to find information in time to save lives. To find this information quickly in a giant array of data, fast search algorithms are necessary. My research has been in this area. In order to speed up searches, these arrays must first be sorted; thus, having fast sorting algorithms is imperative. I have been spending my free time studying a fast sorting algorithm and trying to optimise its speed. The more I learn about mathematics and computer science, the more tools I gain to work on projects like these.
The algorithms I study are not only important to doctors; everybody can benefit from computer science research, like in searches of Google or Wikipedia. Inventions like these have become ubiquitous in our lives, like mass-produced literature and general literacy. And for us as a culture to accept and responsibly use these new tools, we must be able to understand them. From voting machines to online banking, the public is increasingly faced with issues where knowledge of computer science is crucial to making informed decisions. This is part of why I wish to become a computer science educator.
Teaching is a role I find highly rewarding. I am passionate about what I learn and it matters a lot to me to be able to impart this onto others. Educators are an important group of servants of all: behind every great inventor or doctor are the instructors who contributed to their greatness. With the education I am pursuing, I look forward to playing a part in this cycle.
2006 - Valena Dalmere
We grow up under our parents’ wing being pampered by those who wish to serve. We may not think of it in that context at the time, for we think in terms of these services as those who want to generate a business for profit. Perhaps this perception is influenced by our education, especially Social Studies which name these people as entrepreneurs; those who wish to risk their existing money to generate a larger income by establishing a successful business. We may think that the profit motive is the key desire that fuels them, and that in many cases may very well be so.
However if the time is taken to look at these businesses, we may see a connection that is shared between them. Whether it is the waiter that brings you your midday meal, or the scientist who thrives to find a cure for a disease, we can see a root function that exists. They wish to serve. There are many who may not have this pure intention, but there is also a counterbalance of a workforce who truly wishes it, and work to help others as it is their only intention. Doctors, nurses, and dentists are a few of these examples as they are professions in which the individual must enter knowing they are to serve others.
Graduation marks a great shifting point in our life time. Not only do we get introduced into the reality of the real world, but we come to a point in our life where it becomes our time to further our education and bring our own services into the world. It is a cycle, the human race functions on services given and received as we are all educated on different levels and are not capable of doing absolutely everything for ourselves.
I have chosen to enter into the field of general sciences, an option that has a major impact in our health related society. It’s an area with a broad view in different aspects, and it is also accompanied by gray areas, allowing us to dive in head first, experimenting, learning, and improving. This one aspect is what has attracted me the most. You hear everyday about diseases, the incurable ones which may have claimed a life and also miracles that have happened with advances in technology. What a great service this would provide to the community if a cure for cancer was found, if an organ could be re-grown (now like the tooth which can be re-grown with ultrasound vibrations), or even if the cure for the common cold or other viruses could be found. If I could have any impact on those parts, any influence in creating advancements for the world, that would be my greatest achievement of all, which is improving lives and bringing hope. Serving others as so many professions do. Although that is a desire of my own, in which I hope to exceed in my undergraduate year, I do have plans on entering into the dental field, which has been an ultimate goal of mine since grade four. My inspiration came from the work done on my own teeth, which has been quite a few years involving a retainer, getting a tooth extracted and pulled to its desired position, followed by almost four years of braces. It has been a long process, but in the end I think it will turn out to look great. That is what I want to do, it’s an image factor that also carries out a function, to give people confidence if they do not like the way their teeth may be or for personal health. It also holds a field of experimentation, all human beings are different and therefore dental situations that may come forth are not all going to be completed by the textbook. It holds an element of challenge which allows me to problem solve in order to figure out different situations and complete them to my satisfaction. It is a profession that is based on serving the public, to be a servant to those who need the required attention and also to help repay the services to those who have done so for us in the past. This is what I want, it has been a dream, and now I have the opportunity to go for it.
To serve is something we can’t ignore. I hope that I can be of service to others in any way possible. I love working with people, I have done so ever since I began working at my local swimming pool as a lifeguard. I love to work hard, enjoy challenges, and especially like to try to fill in the blanks where there are gray areas in science. I hope to improve the world in any way I can, although it may seem impossible, it could still happen with my whole heart dedicated to it. To add in new ideas, to add a different way of thinking. If that is all I can do then so be it, however if I could be of some service then I know I have done my part.
