Songs can create many emotions in us. Through lyrics and notes, music can lift people out of depression, create outlets for frustration or anger, and in my case, greatly improve my life. The song "Migraine" by Twenty-One Pilots gave me the message I needed to challenge my greatest issues, and that I feel applies to everyone: it's okay to not be okay. Going through anxiety and depression from a young age, I often felt like my emotions and experiences were isolated. I thought that I was alone in my feelings, causing me to feel unnatural from the world around me. The first time I listened to "Migraine", I was overcome with emotion. Listening to the lyrics, it was like someone had taken all of my experiences and emotions and created a song about them. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I wasn't alone in the world. The message of the song shook me even more. The lyrics of "Migraine" don't sugarcoat the symptoms of mental illness, but they don't degrade them either. Unlike many songs, it doesn't call you weak or bad for having these feelings; it just tells you they happen and that you can get past them. Instead of being shamed for my struggles, I understood that they were normal and there was nothing bad about having them. It gave me the courage to face them head-on and ask for help instead of shying away. For anyone experiencing problems with mental illness, I hope you can gain the same lesson from "Migraine" that I did. I hope you realize that you don't always have to feel good, and there is nothing wrong with that.

As an autistic person, I have often struggled with subjective things. When reading various novels or documents in English or History class, my mind will become confused with how someone can say one thing and mean something entirely different. It's hard for me to comprehend that someone isn't being literal. This is why math draws me in so much. To my brain, math is simple and natural. Instead of using fancy language or diversion techniques that I have to scope out to know what's going on, a math problem states precisely what I need to find or do. Math has strict rules that cannot be broken or changed. If a problem tells me that x is equal to five, I can know with absolute certainty that x is equal to five. If the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus states that the integral from a to b of f'(x) is equal to f(b) - f(a), I can trust that information with absolute certainty. The direct approach that math and its problems take makes something that can be so difficult for others into something exciting and even fun for me. This directness also allows me to see the world differently. While others see the beauty of the world in flowers and color, I see it in the way you can use F = ma in order to calculate exactly how fast a sled accelerates down a hill just by how hard you push it. I see how equations like Bernoulli's Principle have allowed us to achieve new technology that allow us to fly in the air. I see the perfectness in the way that energy will always balance out. Math allows me to take all of the confusion and overload that comes from our world and turn it into something solid and steady. It shows me that even if the people on our planet are not always straightforward, our planet's physical rules will always be the same. Math, by a lot of people, is described as too complicated and is often avoided as much as possible in everyday life. For me though, math is a sanctuary from a world that seems determined to trick and confuse me. Math is a grounding tool that I can rely on when I just need something straightforward to do. To put it very simply, math can control not only our natural world, but helps to control my world as well.

Math is the key to everything. Whether it's using algebra concepts in order to find the horizontal velocity of an object traveling through the air or turning my real-world problems into data sets in order to find solutions to them, math is able to bring order to a world that I feel can be very chaotic. Math is the only thing that can both solve the mysteries of the universe and solve a financial crisis at the same time. In simple terms, without math, we would know practically nothing. One reason I love learning math is that it is direct in how it works. As someone who struggles when topics become subjective and blurred, I can lean back on math and its strict rules and ideas. Instead of wondering whether the writer of the problem has a secret meaning in the words they are using, I can rely on the fact that math has regulations to what can be true and that there is no room for interpretation. If a problem tells me that x is equal to nine, I am able to believe it with absolute certainty, because that is what math says it is. The other reason I love learning math is simple: it's fun. As I've progressed through higher math classes like algebra and calculus, and the problems have gained more complexity and steps, math has become like a puzzle to me, something that is irresistible to solve. As the solutions have gotten more complicated and taken longer to achieve, the desire to find the right answer has grown and grown, and the sense of accomplishment that comes when you do find that answer has grown right along with it. Instead of getting frustrated or tired of having to do more work, I feel excited and happy to feel my brain work logically and to understand a little bit more about how the world works around me. Instead of being a chore, math is a game. I believe that through math skills, I and many others can master the universe. Some may use statistics to predict when the stock market will crash so that hard-working people don't lose all of their money. Others may use algebra concepts in order to understand how things like mass and atmosphere affect planets outside of our solar system. No matter what though, if something big is happening in the world, it is using some type of math. That is why math is so important in our world. Through math, we can achieve anything.

When I was five years old, I dreamed of roaming the stars. Any adult that asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” would be told that I was going to be the first woman on Mars. As I grew older, my dreams of what to do in life changed, but the excitement that space gave me never diminished. As a middle schooler, my passion for space turned to science-fiction. The ideas of supernovas light-years away, planets made of fire and ice, and extraterrestrial creatures fascinated me. Even if it wasn’t technically real science, the stories from Doctor Who and The X-Files fueled my passion for exploring the unknown universe and discovering what has yet to be discovered. In high school, I was given the tools to actually do the discovering. Instead of just dreaming about how spaceships travel into the far depths of the universe, I have learned how to calculate their motion by taking AP Physics. I have learned to use derivatives in AP Calculus in order to understand velocity and acceleration. I can study the range of habitability of exoplanets through a senior capstone project. Instead of just dreaming about space, I can understand it. And all I want to do now is go even further. Today, at seventeen years old, I dream of being an astrophysicist and of exploring the universe and learning more about how it functions. I plan to do this by attending a four year university, where I will major in astronomy and physics, and then move on to graduate school to obtain a doctorate in astrophysics. I know it will be a long and hard journey to get there, but when I am finally able to look into the stars, it will be worth it.