Bold Legacy Scholarship

While visiting my great-grandmother’s headstone a couple of years back, I noticed a petite yet marvelous bench around the memorial garden’s edge. “Sit down and stay awhile,” its plaque offered affectionately. Intrigued, I learned the seat was dedicated to a kind-hearted, scholarly young adult whose life was regrettably cut short. Though we’d never met, I felt touched by the inviting granite slab and found solace in knowing that his legacy tangibly lives on. As I consider my image today, I dream of being known, being remembered. I wish to serve the world an invaluable gift: to make a scientific breakthrough, compose a breathtaking piece of literature, develop a technology that conveniences everyday life, and spread laughter and positivity through video and art, among other things. On a more personal level, I aspire to make friends and family smile and spread equality. Moreover, I aim to boost others through selflessness, compassion, and acceptance. I regularly compliment others and share with them, too, whether it’s advice and knowledge or a thoughtful gift. In the same regard, I hope one day to earn the finances to give back to the community; to fund environmental and human rights projects, feed tables, support local businesses, and clothe those in need. Such efforts don’t seek my glorification but rather yield warm fuzzy feelings inside. I feel empowered and driven to write my legacy to validate our generation and prove its invincible future. Some say villainous actions are the most infamous, but my footprint is to overturn that notion. As an avid family genealogist, discovering ancestors and relatives who were doctors, local heroes, veterans, and refugees has been inspirational. Hence, honoring them has become my lifelong mission. I can only strive to amount to their successes, perhaps having a petite bench of my own erected one day.

The world that we live in is extremely flawed. My generation did not ask for this life. A life where workers wearing down their bodies performing minimum wage jobs still do not know if they will have food on the table for their children the next day. A life where ice caps are melting and a deadly pandemic is blazing uncontrolled, disproportionately affecting poor people of color. A life where you could be shot and killed for being black by the very people who were meant to serve and protect the public. A life where you are afraid to hold your same-sex partner’s hand in public because you might be physically and verbally attacked. A life where you are unprotected by the institutions that are supposed to provide “liberty and justice for all.” The legacy that I will leave will be one that uses policy to improve the lives of the public so that we, and our children, will have a better future and begin to fix the one that was handed to us against our will. As a policy director of non-profit organization, I will address the issues and barriers that plague marginalized groups: low-income communities, the LGBTQIA+ community, communities of color, and the disabled. I will force these issues to be addressed by raising awareness and mobilizing to influence social policy. My legacy will be advocacy and by the time I am gone, I will have opened society's eyes to the importance of equality.