Joshua L. Finney Perseverance and Resilience Scholarship

For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived with pain. Not the kind that fades with sleep or medication, but the kind that lingers quietly and cruelly, unseen by others yet all-consuming. For years, it haunted my body without explanation. Every day, I woke up already exhausted. I would try to smile, to keep up with my friends, to act like everything was okay. But deep down, I knew something was wrong. My head would pound so violently that it felt like the world was splitting in half. Sometimes I couldn’t feel one side of my body. I would get dizzy standing up, or feel my heart race just from walking across a room. No one could tell me why. Doctors ran tests. People told me it was anxiety. Some said I was just dramatic or lazy. I started to believe it myself. I began to isolate. I stopped talking about the pain because I was tired of not being believed. There were days I cried alone in bed, not because I thought I was dying, but because I didn’t know how to keep living like this. School became a battlefield. I pushed through classes, trying to focus while silently fighting waves of pain and nausea. I watched other students laugh, run, and plan their futures while I was just trying to survive the day. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I finally received answers. I was diagnosed with occipital neuralgia, POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), and hemiplegic migraines. I also learned that if the estrogen levels in my body were to spike too high, it could trigger a stroke. That moment was surreal. I wasn’t dying, but I was living every day on the edge of something dangerous. Even with a diagnosis, there wasn’t a cure, just new precautions, medications, and warnings. I didn’t feel safe in my own body anymore. That diagnosis changed everything. It didn’t fix me, but it gave me validation. For the first time, I had proof that my pain was real. But it also forced me to see the world differently. I couldn’t just dream like other teenagers. I had to plan around limits, prepare for flare-ups, and accept that my health might always stand between me and the life I imagined. And yet, through that sadness and fear, I found a kind of strength I didn’t know I had. I kept going. Even when I was too tired to sit through a full school day, even when my body ached with every step, even when I couldn’t join friends or go to events because I was recovering from another episode, I stayed. I studied. I showed up. My illness didn’t just test me physically. It reshaped my values. I learned to find joy in small victories, to advocate for myself in doctors’ offices and classrooms, and to be kinder to others because you never really know what someone else is carrying inside. I want to go to college not just for myself, but for the younger version of me who thought she might never make it this far. I want to build a future where students like me, students who are chronically ill, overlooked, or misunderstood, feel seen and supported. I’ve learned that illness doesn’t have to be the end of a dream. Sometimes, it becomes the beginning of a new purpose.