My name is Aiden Hargis, I am a 16-year-old early graduate of Eldorado High School. For the sake of the sensitive material in this essay, I’d like to request that it not be used for anything except decision-making for this scholarship. If having it viewed by the public is necessary for this scholarship, I will respectfully rescind my admission here. For most of my life, like many kids, I have lived between two households. In my mom's household I have had a kind and caring mother, who always looked out for me, and made sure I had everything I needed to succeed, which has included a safe space to grow, reflect, and thrive. In my dad’s household, I had a distant father who rarely showed his support for me because of his own personal struggles. For the last few years I’ve been struggling with my relationship with my dad and his emotionally abusive behaviors, which included anger and an abundance of criticism. Last year he got into an accident while picking me up from school. He had a medical episode and ran into a house with me in the car. That day changed everything. The car was totaled and I was, luckily, uninjured, but my dad was taken to a hospital, then put in hospice, then put back in a hospital. We learned soon after that that he had cirrhosis of the liver and needed a transplant, but he wasn’t healthy enough to get one. This was the first time we learned that he had been excessively drinking, and it was shocking for me but everything started to make sense. My dad said he would try to get better so he could get a transplant, but with time it was clear to me that he wasn’t, every time I saw him after that he looked worse and worse, some days he wouldn’t even be awake when I was there. Earlier this year he was put into a hospice center because of how advanced his cirrhosis had gotten. We also found out that his alcoholism had continued, despite knowing what it would do to him. At this time I had started to live with my mom exclusively and money was tighter. As a teacher and a single mom money has never been a thing of abundance. But my mom always made sure things were taken care of, using her free time to find ways to earn more money, creative ways to stretch what we had, and still find ways to make sure we experience life to its fullest. Recently my dad passed away, leaving me and my mom in the same difficult situation, but with more things to deal with. Despite this I managed to graduate a year ahead of schedule, thanks in no small part to the support of my mom, and even managed to get accepted to New Mexico Tech. I hope to help my mom out with the financial piece of this by reducing the cost of my college experience as much as possible while still getting an excellent education, which is non-negotiable in both her and my eyes. I know that people's choices are complex, but I feel like mine is fairly simple: I want a good education, a good job, and to be a man who makes good choices and helps people when I can by raising them up as often as possible. Your scholarship would help set me on that path. Thank you for your consideration.