Our 2019 $1000 Mental Health Field Scholarship winner is Abigail Schescke of Kearney. Abigail is a senior at Kearney High School and plans on majoring in Psychology at Dordt College in Iowa this fall. She is ranked #12 in a class of 332 and has a GPA of 4.33. Abigail holds a job and volunteers at various organizations around town including Kearney Area Children's Museum and the Kearney Public Library. Abigail has been on mission trips to Mexico and Haiti. Abigail participates in Cross Country and Drug and Alcohol Free Youth. She is a member of the National Honor Society and is active in her church.
In her application, Abigail writes about why she wants to study psychology:
Psychologists are the hostage negotiators of the mind. When a struggling person is trapped by their thoughts or emotions, psychologists become the mediator. They help people acknowledge that just because an emotion has grown to feel life-size, it does not have to rule their lives. Psychologists help people understand that they are in control of how they act, despite how they feel.
It is for this reason that I desire to become a psychologist. I want to help people renew their minds, to show them that they do not have to surrender to every thought, feeling, or emotion. I want to build people up by providing them with an understanding of how the mind works, empowering them to take control of its direction. In doing so, I hope to diminish the stigma surrounding mental health and disorders of the mind, replacing it with a sense of mutual understanding, companionship, and encouragement. Our world does not need more psychologists who lay their patients down and tritely ask, “How does that make you feel?” Feelings are subjective; people are enduring. I want to become a psychologist to help people embrace the mind-bending truth that they do not have to surrender to negativity or despair, instead they can put down their facade, living as the worthy, lovely human beings that they are.