What does the Terry Scholarship Mean to you

On this week's blog, we begin exploring the question: "What exactly does the Terry Scholarship mean to you?" Terry's come from all over the great state of Texas. With so many unique backgrounds, our scholarships were attained in a large variety of ways. However, we all share one very great characteristic: gratitude. That brings us to this weeks Terry, Jack Clark, who explains his Terry scholarship as a way to break from the norms of his small hometown in order to achieve something great.

Jack Clark

My college experience is one that I think is very unique. I come from a small town of about 400 people everybody knows everybody who lives there. I come from a high school where the only thing that separates the high school from the elementary is a single hallway. I was in a graduating class of 13, so we were our own little family. Literally the whole town showed up to all the home basketball games, because we weren’t large enough to have football. Most of the students that graduate from Hartley generally go to work on a family farm or end up going to a small university. Needless to say, when I received the Terry Scholarship that gave me the opportunity to attend Texas Tech University, I thought it was going to be a big jump, because I was the first person in years to go to a University with a student population larger than 10,000 people. However, I soon realized that this was not near the transition I thought it would be. Right from the start, I began building friendships with fellow Terry Scholars, going to all of the Welcome Week events, football games, and just goofing around in the dorm. I found that the other Scholars share the same moral beliefs and educational goals as I do. We are more than just recipients of the same scholarship; we share something together that will last much longer than our time spent at Texas Tech University. Thanks to this great opportunity that the Terry Foundation has given all of us, we are able to pursue our educational goals, while making friendships that will last us the rest of our lives.

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