Cindy Atwell of Corning wants to be a music teacher so she can help other people “to see the bright, optimistic aspect of lifetime.”
Somehow, the East High School senior has managed to come across the very good in her own life even when points were going bad. And in her 18 many years, there has been lots of that.
“I have faced quite a few obstacles in my life,” she wrote in an essay with her entry for the 2010 Carolyn Matthews Memorial Scholarship. “Neglect and abuse have led to my placement by Social Services with my mother, my father, a foster home and, currently, my grandmother … .
“In the final two years, I had surgery on my knee, I was removed from my father’s home, and then my mother’s house, and I had been bitten by a rabid cat!”
As a result of it all, she wrote, “I have refused to let these challenges discourage me. I try to be an example to my younger siblings, so they will have a similar attitude.”
The essay helped Atwell win the $1,200 Matthews scholarship. She was a single of 20 nominees from schools in the Twin Tiers.
Atwell said she was “ecstatic” when she observed out she’d won.
That exact same day she learned that she had also won three other scholarships (of her total of eight), but she stated in the Matthews prize, “I knew that it was a prestigious award, and I had been quite excited.”
Carolyn Matthews was a copy editor and page designer with this newspaper. She wrote an award-winning series of columns about her experiences with cancer just before she died in the illness in 1994 at the age of 29.
Her colleagues at the newspaper established the scholarship in her memory. It is administered by the Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning along with the Finger Lakes.
On its website, the foundation (communityfund) identifies the criteria for selection as “involvement in college and community service activities, character and academic record.”
Being eligible, students must be nominated by a college guidance counselor.
Atwell’s nominating letter was written by Patrick Hourihan, who known as her “an outstanding young woman” and “a true survivor of a really dysfunctional household.”
Atwell has found that applying for scholarships has helped her open up about her past.
“It’s not something that I typically share, due to the fact commonly remorse outcomes from it,” she claimed. “Sympathy may be the final point I need because I’ve come to accept what’s happened, and it is produced me who I am nowadays.”
Atwell had to transfer from Addison to East before her junior year and has taken a total load of tough college-level International Baccalaureate courses the past two years — “an amazing workload,” according to Hourihan.
“She will graduate with higher honors near the top 10 percent of an academically talented group of college-bound students,” he wrote.
Atwell has assisted support her loved ones as a result of her part-time job, has volunteered in university and community actions, was active in university sports just before the knee injury that essential surgery, and is an accomplished musician.
She has played the flute in Steuben’s All-County Band since 10th grade and has received scholarships towards the nationally recognized Signature Music Camp at Ithaca University for six straight summers.
Last year, she organized a benefit concert that raised $2,612 to help other local students attend the camp.
Atwell lives with her grandmother, Patricia Putnam. She has 1 total sister, Samantha Atwell, a sophomore at Addison, and “multiple half-siblings.”
She claimed she will be the first in her spouse and children to attend college when she heads off to Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester. She plans to main in music education having a focus on the flute.
“One in the main factors I plan to get a degree in music education would be to have the opportunity to teach others to determine the vibrant, positive part of lifetime,” she wrote in her essay.
Atwell intends to continue seeing “the vibrant, positive side,” as well, but she’s learned that existence has its dark part.
“Without obstacles,” she claimed, “I do not know what existence would be.”