Essay for the future

By Martin Costa Rueda

Hello, my name is Martin Costa, I am a 17 years old international student taking the
Leaving Certificate, I consider myself an outgoing person with a great interest in
literature, music and sport as well as related activities.
Since I was a child, I cultivated a passion for books thanks to my parents, who always
instilled in me the importance of these. I am an only child from a working-middle-class
family, so my parents never had as much time as they would have liked to spend with
me, although they always took my education very seriously, recommending books,
movies, and games to develop my imagination, my vocabulary and also the way of
understanding people and the world. That soon made me want to know more
countries, many different people and travel
My grandmother Julia, who is now dead, used to tell me stories every night. I think I've
learned to read well thanks to her. I always asked him to retell me the same story he
had just read me. Later, I spent much of my childhood reading stories to myself. I
started with children's books, then I moved on to fantasy, I read the entire Harry Potter
series. Then I continued with literature from different genres, including that of some
Irish authors such as Bram Stoker's Dracula or the stories of The Centerville Ghost and
the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I feel like reading Gulliver's
Travels by Jonathan Swift in its original language as well.
I also liked 18th and 19th century novels like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen or A
Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Moby Dick by Herman Melville as well as science
fiction (although I haven't been able to finish the Dune saga yet), mysteries of Hercule
Poirot, by Agatha Christie, or the adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan
Doyle. As I write this essay, I realize that almost all of my writers wrote in English.
Since I don't have siblings and my cousins live in Madrid, for me these writers and
above all, the characters they created were my childhood and youth companions at
home.
To this day, the stories that I am most passionate about are historical novels, those
that tell of past empires, and great historical figures such as Alexander the Great, Julius
Caesar or Scipio the African, figures that today are reduced to comedies or movies.
very sensationalists that do not do them justice, that is mentioned, others only appear
in games for children that do not reflect well what they were in their time in a deeper
sense. One thing that I really like about Dublin are the museums, especially the history
ones. I am not only interested in the great history, so to speak, but also the one that
you can learn walking the streets, the people, their trades, their origins and their
traditions.
My parents always gave everything for me and my future, but it was not always all
right, there were moments that surpassed me mentally, this is where music was crucial
for me, I have always been a rather restless, curious person, wanting to know Perhaps
thinking of many plans and too many things at the same time with a great desire to
start living, that's why I think it was so easy for me to study in a foreign country. From
these years in Ireland I only have happy memories, wonderful experiences and friends.
For me, music is the tool to concentrate, it doesn't matter what I'm doing, if I can listen
to music, my mind focuses, any kind of music works for me, from symphonies by
Beethoven or Mozart, to songs by Bob Marley. Although other times when I needed to
express how I felt, music was also the solution for this, because a few years ago, I
began to write music at first, I did it more as poetry that I asked my literature teacher
to correct me, to record in studies today my songs just to see the results of my own
work. Music is a constant in my life, it is my liberation) and I feel lucky to be able to
express myself in English as well, although it is already a universal language by itself.
Likewise, I am a person with a great passion and determination for sport, throughout
my life I have been practicing activities such as tennis, soccer or cycling. Once in a
nature park in the Netherlands I cycled more than 20 kilometers seeing animals in the
wild and that was a very happy day.
When I've played as a team, I've always done it by supporting the group and
demanding as much of myself as possible. I have been federated for more than 7
years. One season I topped the scorer list.
I have also learned to progress as a person through sport. For example, when I was
little, I practiced fencing, starting from scratch together with two friends. I think I did
not have patience or maturity; I did not pay attention to the teacher and I ended up
leaving this sport very soon, my friends continued with it. Only four years ago, I
decided to return to fencing so as not to leave without really trying, without giving it
my all, as they say, I spoke with my old coach and even without having trained during
that time, I decided to one day be able to have a good level and compete with my
friends who started with me, to be able to show myself and my coach that I knew how
to learn little by little. It was a tough year, with constant training, but based on effort,
my coach told me that I could compete in the qualifiers for the national championship
even if I hadn't been back for a short time. I think it was a surprise for everyone and
my coach was happy because despite everything, with a lot of effort, and why not say
it, a bit of luck, I managed to qualify and compete with my childhood friends.
For more than ten years I have been part of a Scout group in Valencia, my city. I
remember that from the first day I have learned a lot about people, the world and
what is important in life. With the monitors and my colleagues, we have carried out
numerous social activities to help the community, whether in collaboration with
associations for homeless people, collecting food and clothing for these people, or
participating in reforestation projects, to make our city and the world a cleaner,
greener and safer place for everyone
In my Scout group, we were about a hundred people, also little by little like a big
family, from when we were little, we organized solidarity breakfasts for those most in
need. One night we did not sleep going through the streets to give something hot to
the homeless.
Another activity was the annual food drive, one year we managed to collect more than
100 kilograms of food and meals! It is just a gesture for all those people who have not
been so lucky but we will continue to do everything we can for them and the world.
We have camped in the open air, we have taken care of the mountains, we have
cleaned beaches, we have played and sang together. All these years I have been rising
in the group along with my friends, we started out as the youngest and now we are
almost the oldest. It is nice that they teach you and also teach.
Regarding my objectives for the future, I have always wanted to be able to do
something that not only affects me, but something that affects others for the better,
something to leave a mark, I want to study law and economics as well as subjects
related to policy. Both law and politics are due to the fact that if something is clear to
me, it is that in order to make significant changes, you need both, to be there, to
debate, to fight for ideas, to have technical knowledge and ideals: to want and also to
be able to build something. I have always considered that one of my greatest virtues is
my ability to listen and debate, to transmit ideas and opinions, which is why I believe
that these two careers with different professional options are the ones that best suit
my way of being.
On the other hand, my interest in knowing a lot about economics is basically to acquire
financial and management knowledge to help people to do things, to move around the
world, for example, between Ireland and Spain.
I believe that in the society in which we live, many people lose opportunities or are
deceived because they do not know how to manage their domestic or business
economy. For example, by trusting in scams designed to deceive honest workers, many
have ended up with numerous financial debts, either due to non-payment of
mortgages, fraudulent loans, or squandering an inheritance in a short time due to not
knowing how to use that economic capital. I would like to learn economics so that
there are better opportunities, more wealth and that this is achieved while respecting
the planet and without so much inequality.
These years in Ireland have been great for me, the truth is that I adapted very quickly, I
admired the landscape and the people, the harmony that existed in small cities,
agriculture and also the modernity of Cork or Dublin.
I adapted very quickly, almost the first day. Everyone tells me that I am learning very
fast. Now, my student interests are also related to my plans for the future and what
my working life will be like. My goal is to be able to move between Spain and Ireland
and even New York and establish myself in a country that facilitates the conditions for
entrepreneurship, to grow and develop my career in it, a country like Ireland. I know
that I will study hard and that my dream will be among the countries that I already
want. He appreciated the differences between one and the other, my own
grandfather, he worked in Spain until he was almost eighty years old as a freelancer in
a small tailoring business, he had very long hours and some streaks of bad luck but he
could not have savings, until he my mother and my aunt were able to scale enough
labor speaking, to be able to retire him with dignity. This is also a reason why I want to
go into politics in the distant future, to try to find solutions to these problems that
affect our society and older people so much, although thankfully less so in Ireland than
in the rest of Europe.
Regarding work experience in the strict sense, it is rather scarce because I am 17 years
old and everything, I have done in social work has been voluntary (in the environment
and with people in need), but when I have been able to, I have been a private teacher
for younger students, in subjects like Philosophy, English or History, this always in my
own country obviously.
For me, being able to study at Trinity is fulfilling all the wishes that I have mentioned
above, not only because it will allow me to make my way in the best future, but
because of its library, its campus, its history and its tradition, everything that in the
bottom appreciate more.
Fortunately, I have had practically no economic difficulties in my life, but if I have been
able to see how people from my old neighborhood or boys with whom I grew up as a
child, as former classmates, have not been as lucky as me. My neighborhood in Spain is
a very particular place, it's beautiful because it has many cultural or religious social
classes intermingled with each other, which is normally something wonderful and that
gives it a unique charm that sets Ruzafa apart (Ruzafa is a multicultural neighborhood
from the city of Valencia, with many people from very different countries) from the
rest of the city, but in some cases this also reveals the economic and social gaps
between people, since I have visited classmates who had to share a room with his
mother, because there was no more space in the house, that his grandmother had to
climb 8 floors of stairs, because a building with an elevator was out of his reach, as a
child I did not understand that I was privileged, because of my study room , for my new
console at Christmas, and many other things, but now I do understand it, now I do
have that experience and vision to understand it, and I want to do something to
change people's lives so, after all, that was the motto of my Scout group: leave the
world better than we found it when we arrived.