For most of my life, I have relied heavily on my parents. I think that most of us have the same experience when we are younger. As we age, we slowly start to rely on our parents less and less. This reaches a blowing point when I went away for college. Like most college students you do not think you need your parents until your funds start to run low. That is when you started to miss the security blanket that my parents provided. You do not TRULY realize all the stuff that they protected you from until you are close to your thirties or have a kid of your own. As of today I still rely on my parent's wisdom and experience. Independence comes at different ages for different people. Some of us due to the hardships of life we must become independent at a much earlier age. In my opinion, the true essence of independence is when someone is depending on you. I am about to move to D.C to attend law school. Looking for apartments has started to worry me. As the move-out date comes closer I am starting to realize that for the first time I am going to be alone. What impact it will have on me is yet to be decided but I am excited at the chance to dip my toe in the independent water.

During the pandemic, I was a burden by studying for my LSAT( Law school entrance exam) while trying to get my MBA. During this time it was very hard to try to stay positive. At times it got overwhelming. One thing that I learned during this period of my life is the power of positive thinking. Staying positive even when things get hard can help you through a tough time. My finals week and my LSAT were in the same week. Staying optimistic during this time was one of the main reasons that I was able to get through that very overwhelming period. I found myself dwelling on the fact that I had a lot to do. Also, I was worried about the future if I did not get the score that I wanted. Dwelling on these things was not in ANY way helping me. It took me a while to realize that in fact it was just bringing me down and crippling my studies. Having control over your thoughts and your mental space can make all the difference.

My dream life is connected directly to time. As I get older I have come to realize that I do not want to spend the rest of my days trading my time for money. My dream is to make my time my own. One of the things that are also very important to me is the ability to be able to uplift the people around me. I want to be able to help friends and family find good high-paying careers. I dream that the connections that I make during my legal career will be able to benefit the people in my life. One of my biggest dreams though is regarding my family. I dream that one day I will be able to help my older sisters pay off their student loan debt ( my eldest sister just finished nursing school, while my other is in her residency years at Pace University School of medicine ). My last dream is a rather common one. I would like the ability to allow my mother to retire early and go visit her mother back home in Nigeria. Dreams are dreams until they are not. I don't think that anything listed above is unattainable, it's up to me to take the steps daily to make my dreams a reality.

Mental health…is not a destination, but a process. It’s about how you drive, not where you’re going.” – Noam Shpancer, PhD. While the pandemic was going on I struggled with Mental Health. The struggles of being trapped in the house while also in school and trying to get into law school took a toll on me. There was a time last year when I had finals and then had to take my LSAT ( Law school entrance exam) in the same month. As you can imagine that had a corrading effect on my mental space. This was when my anxiety reached an all-time high. With help from my family and realizing the importance of taking breaks I was able to get through this hard time. Another thing that helped me was the quote " be where your feet are!".What I learned about myself was what I was stressing over most, which was the future. There is a limit to the amount you can control your future. You can plan and take steps to reach your goals but life can throw your plans in the trash. The world is unpredictable unforgiving and at times be crude. The ability to ADAPT was one of my biggest pandemic lessons. I did not take mental health as seriously as I should have. I used to consider myself someone that was very strong mentally. My bout with mental health made me realize that regardless of how strong you think you are or how strong you actually are anyone can crack under enough pressure. Most importantly it taught me to provide people with respect and grace. Some people might deal with the level of anxiety that I experienced every day. This forced me to rethink my stance on mental health. It did not just make me rethink my stance on mental health but the entire view of the world. Now when I see somebody going through things the first question I ask myself is " what is the state of their mental health?"

One way in which I try to positively impact the world is through my career. I have plans on becoming a lawyer. I want to use my legal degree to help impact the world for the better. There are three main areas that I would like to impact. The first is global warming. People do not take the crisis that our world is facing seriously enough. People are legit saying that it's not even a real problem. Holding people accountable is the first part of improving our world. The second and most important part of the part is holding big companies to their green deals. Also getting companies that do not have a green deal under contract. If we can get the biggest companies to take on the environmental challenges we are facing seriously, then we can save the lives of millions of people, and even more animals. Women's rights is another aspect in which I would like to make a change. I think that women are still underpaid in our society. Somehow men are still getting paid more to do the same job. We must look into these unfair practices. I would like to challenge the 1963 equal pay act. It has not worked to its full potential. Women are still not treated equally. The last way in which I would try to make a positive change is through a scholarship for minorities. When you get a scholarship it can change the way to view your ability to go to school. As much as we try to downplay it, money is critical to one's ability to have free time. In this regard that free time is used to be a full-time student.

Community is not just the people that live near you it is also the people that look like you and think like you. This is something that can be a good and a bad thing. A community is supposed to uplift each other and keep each other safe. A strong sense of unity can be a good thing in a community. It can also be a bad thing. That sense of exclusivity could lead to pushing new members of the community out when they arrive. A community is not a finite number of members. A community is a forever-growing unit that should represent the diversity that is displayed in American culture. Giving back to our community is critical to me. This summer I helped organize a protest to express frustration about injustice. I plan to use my J.D to help combat injustice in my own area. I grew up in Staten Island New York and saw plenty of instances in which police overstep their authority, or young minorities ( with no prior charges) were treated like career criminals. One of the most proactive ways I want to give back to my community is to take a large number of pro bono cases. I am of the belief that many people are doing more time than they should be doing simply because they could not afford an expansive lawyer. I have an aspiration to open up a law firm with the specific purpose of taking cases in the inner city ( in particular ones with young men and women). I am a Nigerian-born US citizen that grew up in New York. I studied Politics Economics and Law in my undergrad years as a way to choose a career path. I decided on law but before going into law school I wanted to get my MBA because I knew it would help me run my own business. Now I am about to start Law school at the University of the District of Columbia. I am not sure the exact type of law I want to go into but I am leaning toward big law with a focus on litigation. My family is a major motivator for me ( in particular I want to help pay my sister's student loans off). Thank you for taking the time to review my application and have a great day.

EQUALITY. I would mainly stand for undervalued groups. For example, equal pay for women is something that I would stand for. As a highly influential person, I would show people that from the bottom to the top of my company men and women who are doing the same work are getting paid the same. Bonuses are also a tricky way in which women are cheated out of equal pay. End-of-the-year bonuses must be given out based solely on performance. Another thing I would stand for is equal rights and opportunities for minorities and LGBTQ+ people. We are in a transitional time in which the civil rights of people can be further secured or regress back to worse times. Lastly, as an immigrant, I would want to make scholarships for people who have to go to school full time and cannot work. It can be extremely hard to take large time away from the workforce to learn new things. As an immigrant, you are more likely to be living check to check so taking a year or two off to go to school might seem impossible. I would like to help change that

My favorite hobby has and always will be playing video games. I think the best stories are told through the lens of a player. It is like being the main character in your own personal movie or TV show. The range of emotion from happiness/ excitement ( when you get passes a tough area or discover great loot) to sadness/ worry ( when a character you have grown fond of dies or the game's main story is coming to an end) is unmatched. Recently some of the games that I played are being turned into movies and TV shows. Like one of my favorite games ever is the smash Netflix series The Witcher. Uncharted is a Sony game that just hit the movie theaters, The last of Us and Ghost of Ghost of Tsushima are also being turned into movies and TV shows. We are entering into a time in which people are realizing that games are not just boss fights and button mashing. Some of the most compelling fictional characters of our time are coming from the video games space. One of the things I like most about video games is how unique each experience is to each game. The feeling each game envokes is different for each individual. My favorite type of game is open-world games. These are games that take anywhere from three to ten years to make. What piques my interest the most is world-building. The little details that make each world come to life is an experience I think we all should feel at least once. The main reason that I like video games is that it allows me to get away. The escape from my worldly issues has recently been one of the main reasons I have continued playing. Basketball is also one of my favorite hobbies. It keeps me healthy and it is something that I have been doing since my youth.

I want to use my J.D to help change things in my community. Before I do that I want to help change things in my own family. I want to achieve a level of generational wealth the likes of which my family has never seen before. Family is the most important factor in my life and one of my main motivators. I was born in Nigeria but my family moved to New York when I was only one year old. Coming from another country meant that we did not have a lot of money when we arrived. This has changed a tad bit. My parents through the power of education were able to pull our family out of poverty. My mother went into nursing and my father went into teaching. I saw the hard work my parents put in and the effect it had on our family. I want to pay that forward. That is the main reason that I want to work for a big law firm. I want my parents to be able to retire earlier. Moreover, I want them to not have to worry about money. Finical stress can take a toll on the strongest person. With me going into Law school and my older sister in medical school both of us will not be working while in school. It saddens me to think about the stress we are putting on our parents. My impact is exceedingly important to me. A job is just for making money a career should have a meaningful impact in some respect. I ponder over how I can make a positive impact on a daily basis. I think that we should all be thinking about ways in which we can make the world a better place for the generation behind us. This means taking environmental change seriously, actively fighting for women's rights ( in particular equal pay), and protecting the rights of minorities and LGBTQ+ communities. Even though the future is unknown we can still do things in the here and now to attempt to positively affect the world for the better. I want to try cases on a state and local level to help combat all of the issues stated above. We are in a transitional period in which massive waves can be made. If nothing is done then nothing will change. Personally, I want by the end of my legal career to have a few scholarships of my own. Scholarships that would help people like me have peace of mind while they are trying to focus on school. Thank you for taking the time to review my application and have a blessed day.

I think I am a good candidate because like you, I worked really hard to get where I am at. The energy and effort you play with on the court is the type of energy and effort I apply to my legal studies. I am a Nigerian-born citizen who moved to New York at a very young age. We moved to a very hard area and it took its toll on our family. I want to become a lawyer for an NBA team. I love the game of basketball ( favorite players being Kevin Durant, Kobe, John wall( very sad that he not playing), Nikola Jokic, and your teammate Jalen Green. I am applying for this scholarship because I will be going to law school full time. This means that I cannot work. I am worried that I will run out of funds in my first semester and that would snowball into bad grades. Your grades in law school dictate the types of jobs you get when you graduate. Thank you for taking the time to hear me out and I hope you have a productive off-season.

"I want to be the very best, that no one ever was". This is not something that I think I never experienced to anyone else. I want to be one of the best lawyers in history. That is my bold goal. I have given thought to how I can achieve this goal. One of my ideas revolves around police reform. I want to challenge the outdated law that is qualified immunity. The written version of the law sounds good on paper but the spirit of the law has been used to justify the death of far too many people. That type of immunity I think should be limited to world leaders because if they feard prosecution then they won't be able to do their job correctly. The opposite is true for police officers. I think they act far too freely with the lives of suspects because they believe they have immunity. Another way in which I want to be the best ever is to take a case to the Supreme court. A case that affects everyday Americans for the better. There is a very large range of cases and topics this could cover. Lastly is simply making a lot of money ad giving a lot of it away. People will always remember you if you were able to help them out in their lowest moments. Making scholarships is one of the things that I am most excited about.

I think that learning about stocks is very important. When we are young they teach us to trade our time for money. There are far more ways than just clocking in a shift and clocking out. I think teaching us in college the importance of putting money away into stocks, bonds, mutual funds. If we start doing this in our early 20s we won't have to work into our mid-60s. This is something that rich people do all the time but people in the middle and lower class think that they can't. Maybe at one point in history that was true but now; with apps like Vanguard and Robinhood, all you need is a bank card and access to the internet and you can grow your portfolio into something respectable. I can't mention stocks without mentioning risk management. No stock is guaranteed to make you money. Even the biggest companies at some point or another close their doors. Risk management is when you watch the stocks you are invested in case of any drastic shifts. Risk management can take less than twenty minutes a day on google or on your stock app. Managing your risk also teaches you how to watch the market and keep an eye on any other money-making opportunity. Passive income is a very important finical lesson that I wish I knew about sooner.

One thing that I love about myself is my hair. I love that length the thickness, I like it braided, and I also like it as an afro. As I step into the legal field, I am not too sure that the legal field loves my hair. One of my major worries is that I will be judged because of my hair. We have entered a space in which people are more widely accepting of others. This sadly does not mean we are in a completely inclusive space. I fear that in competitions ( like moot court or mock trial in which you have to compete in front of a judge) that I can be viewed in a negative light. Also, I am scared that if I go on a job interview later in my legal career I can also be judged on that. The worst part is I don't think people who don't like my hair will tell me anymore (because such comments can be rightfully viewed as inappropriate). Now I think they would just smile and tell me they will " call me". So as much as I love my hair I think I have some serious choices to make regarding it.

I want my legacy to be tangible. Similar to this website I want to help kids through college and other hard times. I want to leave an impactful scholarship behind to help make a difference in the lives of my community. Another way in which I want my legacy to be remembered as someone who fought for change. As a lawyer, all it takes is one big case for your name to be forever written in the history books. If I can use my J.D to help foster change through laws and statutes then my legacy would speak for itself. What is most important to me is family. I don't care if nobody ever knows my name or what I did but I want my family to achieve a level of wealth that was unseen before my time. The push for generation wealth starts today. As an immigrant from Nigeria, it would mean the world to me if my family became wealthy.

Many things make me happy. Watching basketball makes me happy ( especially when the nets, nuggets, or suns are wining). Playing video games makes me very happy( I love my Ps5 in particular open-world games). Traveling, fashion and family time all make me happy. One of the main things that make me happy is not having to think about money. I am about to start my first semester of law school. I am going to law school full time. This means that I will have no time to work. I am worried that a few months into my semester I am going to run out of money and then have to pick up a side job to make it by. This will spoil any happiness that I can experience in my first semester. That is why I am doing these applications. I just want a little bit of pocket cash so I don't have to think about money during the semester; because what currently brings me and my family the most joy is a high GPA. Thank you for your time and consideration.

There are plenty of reasons why I want to become a lawyer. As a child, I always romanticized the courts. The nice suits, the art in the courtroom, the jury, the judge, going free or going to jail, millions of dollars in fines, fees, and damages. All of it seemed so heroic to me. As I got older the romantic nature of the court faded and the crude and sometimes unjust truth of it all became clear to me. I don't want to paint the courts as some gorilla court that never gets it right, but they don't get it correct as much as they should. I initially wanted to do criminal defense. When we moved from Nigeria to New York we moved into a tough neighborhood. I saw a lot of things that made me question the system. For example over sentencing (in particular for first offenders), people going to jail for things they did not do, and police officers overstepping their reach. These things are still major motivations for me. In full transparency, I did not think I could commit to a career in public defense. By the time I finished law school, I would be well over 100 thousand dollars in student loan debt. It would take me close to ten years to pay that off on a public defender salary. This brings me to my next major motivator and that is my family. I have two older sisters one just finished nursing school ( St. Paul school of nursing) and the other is in her third year of medical school (Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University). One of the main reasons I changed the type of law I want to practice is that I want to pay off my sister's student loan debt. With law school around the corner, this has been something that I have been thinking about rather seriously. I do not want to spend all of my legal career helping rich people escape fines and convection from white-collar crimes. I would love to work at a firm that allows me to take some cases that are meaningful to me. I am of the opinion that a job is just for money but a career should have a purpose. I think we all share a similar purpose in the sense we should all be actively trying to make the world even by the slightest margins a better place than when we arrived. If we all keep that goal in mind I am sure the world would be far more kind to minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ communities.

I just want to start by thanking all parties involved in the making of this scholarship. Even if I don't win I am happy with the positive effect this scholarship is going to have. I am a Nigerian-born citizen that was raised in New York. I went to SUNY Old Westbury and got my undergraduate degree in Politics Economics and Law. I have always wanted to go into big business. Last year I finished my MBA program at Metropolitan school of New York. I persuade an MBA because I wanted to be a business owner/ manager. Another one of the main reasons I got an MBA was because I felt like without it as an African American man I would have been told I "can't ". The time I spent at the Metropolitan School of New York taught me a lot about how businesses work and the accounting behind it all. Currently, I work at the New York Law department in their litigation department. I am working at this job until I start law school. I want to become a ligation attorney for a big cooperate law firm. My first semester at the University of the District of Columbia is in the fall. I am of the opinion that we all have a duty to the generation behind us to at the very least attempt to make the world a better place. I aspire to work in a place in which I could hire and educate a large number of people. I believe diversity and inclusion are something when in respect to high-paying jobs have a lot of room to grow. Women are sadly still on the hunt for equal pay. LGBTQ+ people are let into the door but are not shown how to advance to the highest levels of the business world. Minorities in recent years have grown their wealth and influence but are still systemically restricted in many areas. The money that I would have used to pay for my loans can go to many different things. For me, family is of the utmost importance. One of the main reasons that I want to work for a lucrative cooperate firm is that I want to pay off my sister's student loans debt. This has been something that has been weighing on my mind when deciding what type of law I should pick. Also, I want to make enough money so that my mother can retire earlier. As stated I was born in Nigeria. I want to buy my mother first-class tickets to go see her mother before it is too late. I can go on for hours about what I would do with the money saved from this scholarship. Thank you again for the opportunity presented to me and my contemporaries. Regardless if I win or not this is an amazing scholarship that I hope one day I can emulate.

My future is currently coming in to picture. I have just been accepted into the University Of the District of Columbia School of Law. I want to become a lawyer that helps his people. Moreover, I want to ascend to a status that allows me to employ and educate a large number of people. I am of the theology that we all must do something no matter how big or small to make the world we live in a better place for the people behind us. This means helping women advance in the workplace, giving LGBTQ+ people a fair and equal opportunity, and giving minorities the chance to not just work but manage at the highest level. I live in New York but I am going to school in D.C. The move has me worried about my finances because I will be going to school full time and not working. I am doing a few of these applications because I want to have some money to get me through the semester. Thank you for taking the time to review and application and have a great day.

My experience getting my undergraduate degree initially was something to be excited about but later I realized it did not hold as much weight as I thought it would. I will never say getting my undergraduate degree is not a big deal. I am an immigrant from Nigeria. It meant so much at the time for my parents and me to complete that journey. It was not long after that the question was posed to me " what is next". This was a legit inquiry that had to be addressed. I knew before I went to college that I wanted to become a lawyer. Getting into law school on the other hand is not an easy thing to do. I started working at a law firm two months after I graduated. I thought going straight back into school was the best thing for me, but I realized gaining experience in the workforce could do wonders for me. Moreover, I wanted to pursue a master's because I decided that running or owning my own firm was in my future. Getting my MBA did not just help me learn more about how to run a business but it also helped bolster my law degree application. I decided to apply and go to law school this fall because I just finished my MBA program at the end of last year and did not want to take a break. One of the main reasons I went back to school was to get more respect in the workplace. I noticed once I started working in the legal space that I was not much different from any other worker at the job. Once you walk across that stage you kind of expect the world to treat you differently or the type of jobs you get to have more cachet but that is not always the case. The reality that my undergraduate degree does not magical push me into a new tax bracket was a tough pill to swallow. Reality can be harsh but it never cheats you out of a good lesson. When I finish law school I want to be a part of or open up one of the biggest law firms in the United States. I think lawyers are in a unique position to change the world around them. Lawyers can make changes through precedent, challenging and repeal of existing laws, and with the right angle maybe even a case before the nation's highest court. Regardless of what job you do, I feel like as a minority I have a duty to at least attempt to shape the world into a better mold for the generation behind me. It is not lost upon me that the libraries and freedom that I am afford came through the diligence of the people before me.