LA Kids for Change Scholarship

My name is Gamaliel Pitkapaasi and I am an eighteen year old former foster child. I have had to overcome many adversities throughout my whole life. I was born with Cerebral Palsy and I have had to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even though I have these disabilities and experiences, I have never let them get in the way of what I wanted to accomplish. I’ve done well in school for my whole school career. When I was young, because of my disabilities, my school districts assumed that I needed to be in special classrooms. I had to prove to them that I was just as smart as my typical peers. I became the first disabled person to wrestle for my middle school and for my high school. Almost every year since then I have won an Honors Award for high academics – all As and Bs. I’ve had to deal with mental health my whole life. I had to go through the foster care system multiple times. I want to help people that are going through similar trauma issues. I really like the high school Sociology class I took. That got me even more interested in Psychology than I already was. I want to work in the area of Trauma Psychology. I’d like to work for one of the veterans’ hospitals and I would like to be there for abused children. I think I’ll be good at it because I can understand where they’re coming from, unlike a person that hasn’t gone through that type of trauma. I also would like to work in Forensics, figuring out if people are mentally competent to stand trial. There is a very high correlation between being a foster child multiple times and being involved in the juvenile justice system. I want to make sure these young people get the treatment they need so they don’t keep repeating the same behaviors. Most criminals commit crimes because they went through abuse as children. Many of them repeat their parents’ behaviors. A lot of them take out their anger from their parents on people around them, because they never learned how to cope with having a very short fuse. I want to help them learn to better control their emotions and be better contributors to society. I want to work with juveniles from the foster care system, to put them on the right path. Without higher education degrees, I can't learn how to be able to help the abused children, the former foster children, the veterans and those accused of committing crimes who need to be in the mental health system. I'm hoping to go to college to get my Bachelors' degree in Psychology, then I'm planning to go to graduate school to get my PhD in Trauma Psychology.