Samantha Ippolito graduated this year from Benjamin Cardozo High School and will be attending St. John’s University in the fall. In June, she was one of 10 NYJTL scholar athletes awarded a $5,000 Marian and Jacob K. Javits Foundation Public Service Scholarship. In this essay, Samantha explains why she wants to pursue a career in public service.
By Samantha Ippolito
I would like to pursue a career in public service related to education, specifically a school psychologist. I love teaching and helping children, therefore I am very interested in pursuing that as a career. Psychology is very important. I would like to use that knowledge to help children. Some children have problems at a young age and I would enjoy helping them through their problems rather than them growing. These issues could develop into mental issues if not treated properly.
I have always enjoyed caring for children. I have babysitting experience with two young children at once. One of those two children also had a mental disability, which made the task a little bit more difficult. I didn’t have much of a problem handling this type of situation using my knowledge of psychology by the Advanced Placement course I have previously taken. I knew this child was not much different than others. I was very careful at what I did or said around this particular child, just trying to understand him. His developmental delays made it harder to understand exactly what he wanted, but I managed to come to an understanding with him quite well. I feel that as a psychologist I could be doing more than just understanding children who may have any problems, but help them.
Along with my experience with babysitting, I have also volunteered for many years at NYJTL teaching young children tennis. When dealing with young children playing a competitive sport such as tennis, sometimes they take their anger out on the game or people round them. Besides that there are many incidences where children get into arguments and must be handled. You need to fully understand the child’s problem and with that help them through it. I would love to do this in the future as a career. Children who struggle in school because of outside problems just need to talk or work around the problem. Using psychology could help a lot in those cases.
Pursuing a career in public service related to education will be beneficial in many ways. I feel like with the proper training, I can accomplish a lot in this field. It will help me learn how to interact with children and understand them on a deeper level that will benefit them. It would be a great satisfaction in my life that I would pursue this career.