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We are excited to announce the June 2026 Financial Goals Scholarship winner is Jace! Congratulations!
"My name is Jace Roman, and I'm deeply grateful to be selected as a winner of the 1st Financial Bank USA Financial Goals Scholarship. As a Health Professions student at Temple University on the pre-med track, I spend my days building toward a career in medicine, whether that's interning in radiation oncology at Temple University Hospital, working to launch a chapter of the Brain Exercise Initiative for seniors facing Alzheimer's and dementia, or studying for the classes that will eventually carry me into medical school. This scholarship alleviates real financial pressure and frees me to focus on the work that brought me to Temple in the first place. I'm forever grateful to 1st Financial Bank USA for investing in students who are trying to build something meaningful with their education." - Jace R.
Many college expenses can be planned for, like tuition, housing, and textbooks. However, at any time, unexpected financial emergencies can disrupt your budget and peace of mind. In his essay, Jace shares a financial emergency he experienced in college and how he worked through it.
"My laptop died in the middle of finals week of my sophomore year. I was in the library at Temple, three days out from a biochemistry exam, and the screen froze on a page of practice problems. I restarted it. It came back on for about four minutes, then died again. By the third reboot it would not turn on at all. I sat there for a few minutes pretending to keep working so the people around me would not see my face.
I am pre-med at Temple University. I row in the stroke seat for our Division I men's crew team as an unfunded walk-on, which means I cover my own gear and travel costs. I work at Target to pay for housing and the rest of my living expenses. My parents help where they can, but my mother is a stage three breast cancer survivor and the medical bills from her treatment are still part of our family's reality. A new laptop was not a line item in anyone's budget that week.
What I felt first was panic, which turned pretty quickly into the cold, focused kind of stress that I have learned to use as fuel. I had four finals coming up and no functional computer. The library laptop loan program was already booked solid because every other student in my situation had gotten there first. I borrowed a friend's laptop for the biochem exam prep, picked up two extra shifts at Target over the following two weeks, sold a pair of headphones I barely used, and made it through finals on a rotating set of borrowed machines. After the semester ended, I had enough saved to buy a refurbished laptop that has held up since.
The piece I learned from that week was that financial emergencies in college are rarely about the dollar amount. They are about the timing. A four hundred dollar problem in July is annoying. The same four hundred dollar problem during finals week, when you cannot drop a shift and cannot miss a study session, is a different kind of pressure. The skill is keeping your head while you build the workaround. You ask for the help you need. You pick up the shifts you can. You stop pretending the problem will fix itself.
I also learned that asking is not the weakness I used to think it was. The friends who lent me their laptops were not waiting for me to grovel. They wanted to help. As an unfunded walk-on athlete and a first-generation medical student in the making, I am going to need to keep asking for help for a long time. That week taught me how. It is the same skill that will get me through medical school applications, the MCAT, and the long stretch of training in front of me. You name the problem, you do the work, and you let people in close enough to help.”
Established in the year 1910, 1st Financial Bank USA (1FBUSA) provides quality community banking services in South Dakota, credit card and other financial services to college students and college graduates, and construction lending to builders, developers, and investors from coast to coast. 1FBUSA will award a $2,000 scholarship to a new winner each month. View full rules and eligibility at 1fbusascholarship.com.
