My name is Alex, and I represent many identities. I am a nontraditional, working student, having recently graduated with my bachelors degree in Public Health, following an associates in Paralegal Studies. I am a parent, having obtained guardianship, and later adoption, of my niece at the start of the pandemic. As the child of teenage parents in West Virginia, I am a former high school dropout, a current first generation college graduate, and future first generation law student. I am also a paralegal, working with my local Legal Aid supporting free legal clinics serving impoverished public school families to help stabilize the lives of the children in their care. In my studies, job, and personal life, I have focused on how public and private policy impacts the health and education of children and families in rural America. My service to my family, from adopting my daughter to giving feedback on my little sister's scholarship applications, and my work, from providing legal information to clinic visitors to teaching assisting the freshman writing course at my university, have all been in singleminded pursuit of the democratization of education. I am passionate about this cause because I can see in my life, as well as the lives of so many of my friends and family, how inextricably linked education and health are in our country. Those with higher levels of education are not only more likely to earn more money over the course of their lives, they're more likely to live longer, less likely to experience Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs), and experience less sickness and disability than those who are not afforded the same opportunities. In Appalachia, as in so many other communities, those setbacks act as generational curses, depressing the futures of our children, as well. I plan to make a positive impact on the world through policy work. By leveraging my clinical and lived experiences, I plan to identify systemic pain points that function to entrench generational cycles of trauma and inequity. By drafting and advocating for public policy that promotes access to quality education and healthcare for rural American children, I hope to continue breaking generational cycles in even larger communities. In pursuit of this career, I have applied and been accepted to attend Penn State Dickinson School of Law in the fall. During my 2L year, I plan to apply for the dual MPH program with Penn State Medical in Hershey. The dual JD/MPH degree will allow me to combine my passion for health and educational equity with my aptitude for legal work to provide a higher level of service. My background affords me a unique perspective on the concepts of social determinants of health, access to education, and the legal field. Through service to my family, friends, and wider community, I have developed my skills as an advocate that I leverage every day to help individuals put out small fires. I want to bring those skills and perspective to the legal field to help inform better policies and practices, because I have experienced the transformative power of education. As my daughter and I prepare to move on to this next chapter of our lives, I look forward to advocating for the health and education of kids like us.

My six year old daughter and I have just about done everything together. Our adoption finalized during the last semester of my associates degree at the local community college, during which she attended student government functions, community service events, and board of governors committee meetings. We then toured my four-year university together, and over the next two years she listened intently to anatomy and psychology textbooks and lectures, and eventually helped me select the law school at which I will pursue a JD with (hopefully) a dual MPH. I hope that by involving her in these steps, I can teach her the value of self-improvement and determination. By involving her in my educational journey, breaking generational cycles, and fostering a love for learning, I hope to demonstrate these values and set a strong example for her future. Growing up in West Virginia, it is easy to become a statistic. My siblings and I faced housing instability, informal kinship care, hunger, and trauma. Because neither of my parents were college-educated, I never had access to the hidden curriculum that largely drives graduation rate disparity between first-gen and legacy students. At every juncture, I have faced and overcome financial, bureaucratic, and culture-related barriers. Overcoming these challenges has forced me to tap into my culture's determination and resilience by constantly leveraging my lived experiences to enhance what I learned in the classroom and move forward with better footing for my family. In my Public Health studies, I learned that children born to teen parents are less likely to finish high school and more likely to experience adverse outcomes. I also learned that children in foster and kinship care experience a significantly higher rate of Adverse Childhood Events, contributing to educational and health issues. Like me, my daughter's biological parents were teenagers, and we both spent significant time in the care of grandparents. Reflecting on my own journey through the lens of new words and perspectives, and experiencing the difficulty of overcoming those barriers, fueled my drive to break these cycles for her. Growing up, I fought against a cultural stigma against intellectualism. I am one of the 23% of West Virginians with a bachelor's degree. It is especially precious to me that my daughter is growing up comfortable in educational environments, because that is something I never experienced. Because of my background, I have never quite felt like I belong in higher education spaces. I have consistently fought against that feeling, but I want to make sure that she never has to wonder if her voice is worth raising. Some of my favorite memories in my educational journey were explaining anatomy to my daughter when she was five. I found that I learn best by teaching, and that she wants to be a "parumedik" when she grows up, which, as a Public Health nerd, absolutely sent me over the moon with pride. She is part of my routine. So much of our best time together is spent learning, whether it's building diagrams of diaphragms to answer her questions about hiccups, or reading her to sleep with a psychology textbook. Her insatiable thirst for knowledge makes me smarter. In conclusion, I seek to set a positive example for my daughter by overcoming adversity, involving her in my educational journey, and fostering her love for learning. I recognize that I received an awesome, life-saving gift through higher education, and I strive to pass that gift on to my daughter by raising her in educational spaces and with an intimate understanding of the importance of preservation and hard work. What better inheritance could I leave?

Hallie Chillag, my professor, mentor, and friend, has supported me in so many ways, and I know that without her, I would not be on my way to law school. From mentorship, to instruction, to encouragement, and more than a little bit of parenting, the scope of Hallie's impact on my and my daughter's lives is immeasurable. However, I will try to measure some of that impact here. It feels like forever since I first met Hallie, so much so that I had to look up my transcripts to remember that we met in her Introduction to Public Health course during my second semester at the University of Charleston. Halfway through my third semester, while taking her Appalachian Health and Wellness and Social Determinants of Health classes, I lost my job unexpectedly. Hallie proceeded to enthusiastically write recommendation letters for me, one of which led to a scholarship for enough money to let my daughter and me survive through the end of the semester. This meant that I could focus on my studies until I could work again in the summer. Her recommendation also helped me land a job as a legal aid paralegal, providing legal services to under-resourced public school families, where I just celebrated my 1-year anniversary. At one point, I was throwing around the idea that I might try to go to graduate school for a dual JD/MPH to pursue policy work and legal epidemiology. That goal was so outlandish that I asked to set up a one-on-one with Hallie to talk about logistics, hoping she would talk me out of it. Instead, when we first sat down she told me that, before we got started, she wanted to know if I had ever considered pursuing a JD/MPH? We discussed logistics, and she promised to guide me through the graduate school application process. She made good on that promise by reading and critiquing my application essay drafts, connecting me with professional resources, and writing recommendation letters. In no small part because of Hallie and her colleagues' support and guidance, I was offered admission to several law schools, including Penn State Dickinson where I will study in the fall. As a first generation college graduate, I have spent an enormous amount of time researching, studying, and correcting missteps over the course of my life. My academic record is spotty, and I had worried for years that I was either too stupid, or too unlucky, to make it out of the situations I found myself in. Because of this background, I can't help but be grateful for the resource I have found in Hallie. After a lifetime of being unnoticed, of keeping my head down and just getting the work done, Hallie has inspired me to speak up for myself and speak out about the things I care about. After years of artificially limiting my potential based on "where I came from", she has encouraged me to imagine myself as an equal, worthy of opportunity and outlandish dreams. Now, when I reflexively try to write off a win by saying "I am so very lucky," she will tell me, "You make your own luck," because she has taken the time and care to learn about me and my values. She understands my discomfort with success and gently nudges me toward self-confidence. I have, to this day, not met someone as loving, supportive, and passionate as Hallie Chillag, and I am so very lucky to call her my friend. I hope I can continue making her proud in this next chapter of my educational career.

My capstone project in my undergraduate Public Health degree was to design a Medical Legal Partnership, whose primary objective, other than providing immediate medical and legal relief, would be to improve the legal literacy of the community it serves. While this program was hypothetical, its development allowed me to explore the many reasons that legal education is so vital for a healthy community. Legal literacy, informed through community legal education, can help folks understand their rights and responsibilities before a legal conflict arises. This knowledge is also crucial in self-advocacy on issues like advanced directives, wills, and accessibility rights. Through my legal aid paralegal job, I enjoy daily opportunities to help my attorney reach folks with low levels of legal literacy, and to provide them with the information they need to navigate legal conflicts. Further, improving a community's legal literacy through a legal education can empower communities to navigate the resources available to them. An informed citizen will often share their knowledge and experience with other experiencing similar situations. I myself am an example of this, as I leverage my lived experiences with family law, public benefits, and health insurance law, to assist the legal aid attorney with whom I work to guide families through complicated beurocracies. A legal education also goes hand-in-hand with political activism. Individuals who understand how the law impacts their day to day lives are more likely to engage with those policies that create barriers to their good health and education. This engagement is vital for creating and sustaining changes that can affect all members of a group or community. One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008. The MHPAEA requires health insurance companies to cover mental health and addiction services at the same rate as those services would be covered if rendered for a non-mental health or addiction diagnosis. For example, under the MHPAEA, a specialist office visit to treat depression should be have the same copay as a specialist office visit for the flu. This law would not exist if not for dedicated activists and lobbyists who held lived experience with mental health or addiction, and who also held the level of legal education required to understand why mental health claims weren't covered. That same legal education also helped inform them of potential solutions. Ultimately, that is the work I want to do with my legal education. In the fall, I will be moving with my daughter to a whole new state to study the law. After my first year, I intend to apply for the dual MPH program with the school. Ultimately, I want to leverage that legal education, along with the credentials needed to practice law, to work either through drafting legislation, or through interpretation of administrative law, or through the judicial system, to improve or correct obstructive, unfair laws that create barriers to access good health and education in the US.

Often when I commisserate with other students about our respective challenges in college, they wonder how I manage my time, resources, and energy. I would be lying if I said those weren't all significant challenges. However, ten years of experience in raising my and others' children has taught me how to budget with very little, how to coordinate conflicting schedules, and how to ration my attention and energy so that the most important commitments in my life are taken care of first. The challenge that seems to surprise many non-parent students is the apparent lack of awareness on campus of students with children. Over the last four years, I have needed to forego meaningful activities on campus for networking and professional development because those co-curriculars are typically scheduled either around my daughter's bedtime or during my workday. Those events that are scheduled conveniently for working parents and nontraditional students typically are not child-friendly or are not clear in their marketing whether students like myself can attend with children in-tow. In response to this, during my time at a community college, before my daughter was old enough for elementary school, I chose to bring her with me to every event that didn't conflict with my work schedule. She sat in on Student Government meetings, induction ceremonies, and countless lectures and keynote speakers. By the time "we" graduated from the associate degree program, she was on a first-name basis with the faculty and staff, professors, and even the college's Board of Governors. In part, this decision was out of defiance. I felt that as an institution of higher learning intended to educate our diverse community of adult learners, most of whom have families, it was ridiculous that parents would need to question whether they needed to forego development opportunities simply because they were parents. In another part, it was out of understanding as a first-generation college student that exposing my daughter to these spaces from a young age has an immeasurable impact on her comfort in these same spaces when she grows up. Encouraging her to learn how these systems work, I hope, will put her on a path to education that is incredibly different from, and hopefully easier than, my own. Those defiances culminated in the opportunity to rewrite college-wide policy regarding children on campus. After my daughter's presence was argued about by faculty, the college president invited me to draft a proposal for a better policy. The experience of speaking with different stakeholders, from students with and without children, teachers, staff, and faculty, consulting peer schools' policies, and ultimately proposing my policy and gaining support from the president and dean, gave me a taste of what I could do if I manage to get myself in the right doors. As of my writing this application, I am packing up our home to move at the end of the semester in pursuit of a dual JD/MPH. I have managed to get all the pieces into place, including covered tuition, an affordable apartment in a walkable part of town, and a plan for childcare, in no small part because of the kind of grit, resilience, determination, and anticipatory planning that seem to be second nature in single parents. The only part left to resolve is the budget. While I am confident in my ability to figure it out and work, as I always have before, it would be extremely beneficial to my daughter and myself to reserve funding that allows us to spend a year in single-minded pursuit of study and settling. I have done very well in school so far, but I have never had the opportunity to see what I am capable of without the threat of financial ruin pushing me into long hours of work. During and after my pursuit of a JD/MPH, I will continue to work with and advocate for families like mine. I like to tell people that if you ever have a problem you do not know how to fix, your best bet is to put a single mom on the task. I want to help build spaces where not only do our kids have a fair shot at achieving educational success, but where single parents ourselves can speak about and influence the systems and policies that affect us. Earning this scholarship would bring that goal significantly closer to my reach.

There have been several times over the last few years that I have felt out of place as an older student. For example, last semester, part of my core curriculum for my Public Health degree was an exercise psychology class, where I spent sixteen weeks as the only person over twenty in a room full of student-athletes. Ten years ago, I probably would have fought back and made a big deal out of the fact that I wasn't interested in the sports management side of Public Health since my interest is in health law and public policy. However, after working in the "real world" for the last ten years, I am well-versed in making the best out of whatever position I find myself in. I have found that the ability to wait and see how I can turn things toward my benefit is a valuable one, and I believe that I wouldn't be nearly as good at it if not for ten years' experience in doing moderately unpleasant things in exchange for the ability to pay my bills and feed my family. Going back to school in my late twenties has had other benefits. I am more easily able to communicate with my professors and advisors because, while I am still younger than most of them, I am closer in age than my peer students. At the same time, as the former caregiver of a current high school senior, I am less rusty than many of my professors in teenage terminologies. There is also the benefit of having established positive work habits, like calendaring, prioritizing, budgeting, and problem-solving. My path to becoming a non-traditional student, in turn, heavily influences my future goals. While studying Public Health, I have had the opportunity to learn about the barriers that exist between educational attainment and families like mine. When I first tried college over ten years ago, I had no idea that college is often harder for first-generation students because we miss out on indirect education by parents familiar with the higher education system. I didn't know that kids from teen parents fared, on average, even worse. Over the course of this undergraduate degree, I have come to have a better understanding of some of the reasons for these inequalities. Through that understanding, I have developed a deep desire to not only prove that those invisible walls exist for no good reason but to aid in the ongoing fight to tear those same walls down for the next person. Because I am a nontraditional student, I often find myself in spaces, online and in real life, where I am surrounded by other people who also decided that age isn't a relevant factor, that hard things are only impossible if you stop trying, and that they would spread the information about how to succeed in this space as far as humanly possible. Every time I give some guidance or encouragement to another adult considering continuing their own education, I get to contribute to that group effort, and that is, frankly, the best part of all.

My dad and I moved out of our family home when I was ten years old. My brother and stepmother stayed in the house, while my dad went to look for an apartment for the two of us, and I went to live with my great grandparents. It wasn’t until twenty years later when my three-year-old niece (now daughter) moved in with me, that I learned there is a name for this all-too-common childhood experience: informal kinship care. Informal kinship care is a caregiving arrangement where a child is cared for by family members other than their parents without formal custody or guardianship agreements. Current research estimates that for every child in formal foster care, there are up to 25 chidlren in informal foster care. Even though this could mean that as many as one in five children in WV are living with relatives, the research into this phenomenon is infamously underdeveloped. Through my own experiences, observations of my family and friends, research in college, and working with school families in my job, I have learned that time in informal kinship care often comes hand in hand with instability, trauma, and challenges for caregivers and children alike. In my role as a paralegal, I regularly interview clients caring for their missing family members’ children. Meanwhile, for school, I have interviewed other adults like me who spent some or all of their childhood in the care of relatives. These conversations have taught me two things. First, that this experience is prolific for children in Appalachia, and second, that our legal and social services systems are not designed to allow these kids’ future success. Children in out of home care are much more likely to experience housing instability, food insecurity, exposure to violence, and abuse and neglect. All of these experiences, without significant intervention, can lead to educational challenges, mental health issues, and substance abuse. With interventions, kinship care can be almost as protective as never entering out of home care at all. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these families never receive those interventions, and many are even locked out of basic necessities like healthcare and food benefits because of red tape. I am currently in my final semester of undergraduate studies in Public Health and the University of Charleston. In the fall, my daughter and I will be moving to law school to pursue my dream of earning a dual Juris Doctorate and Master of Public Health. I want to continue learning how to both research the challenges and outcomes of this population, as well as how to write and advocate for policy change that acknowledges our existence. It has taken so much work, so many late nights and weekends, to bring my family to this point. I want to make the road a little easier for those who will walk this road after me.

When I first enrolled at my local community college, I lived with my partner and dog. By the time I started my second semester, I was joining Zoom classes with a two-year-old on my lap. A few months later, it was just the two of us, and a year later, she officially became my daughter through adoption. Getting through college has been a challenge, but I couldn't have done it without being a parent. In fact, I had tried several times to go back to college before she came along. When the nearly impossible challenges of being an independent, first generation college student came calling, I set my education aside in favor of surviving. That is, until I had two little eyes watching me every day. Over the last four years, my daughter has been to every college tour, every after-hours event, many inductions and ceremonies, and even a few lectures. She has served as an honorary member of the Student Government Association at our community college, made TikToks on our university's lawn, and listened to hours of textbooks to fall asleep at night. My favorite part of that story is the part where she helped me pick a law school. We made a game out of it. Every night, we would look up a different law school and add it to a spreadsheet. I had some necessary requirements: a solid dual JD/MPH program in a walkable city with good schools. My daughter had some other priorities, namely, a nearby Dunkin and access to boats. Soon, we started taking little jaunts to the schools closest to us. We scoped out potential neighborhoods, scoured for affordable housing and traced potential commutes. For further schools, we dropped in with Google Earth and wandered streets, watched travel vlogs, and looked up the elementary schools. We went on like this, recording our findings in our spreadsheet, until we looked at Portland, Maine. The University of Maine checked all of our boxes, including some that I didn't realize I had: for example a rural law clinic serving communities that look an awful lot like the ones in WV, KY, and NC I lived in while growing up. Meanwhile, at work I was working in rural legal clinics in school and was taking everything I learned in school and in researching UMaine along with me. I got the call at work. I had just gotten to the office after our first class back from winter break, and everything was chaos. I said, frustrated, to my boss as I moved to pick up my phone, "I don't know what happened, but today is not working out." It was the University of Maine, School of Law. We got in. On our way to the clinic that day, I cried laughing from joy for the first time since our adoption was finalized. When I told my daughter, she screamed with me and we stayed up late that night looking at pictures of sailboats, ski slopes, a children's museum and, of course, the elementary schools. Without my daughter, I fear I never would have met me. This version of me who is brave enough to ask for what they want; the version who is persistent enough to make it through ten years of turning a GED in to an MPH/JD. My hope is to use these experiences, research, and education in the work of promoting public policy that benefits families like ours. Both of us had difficult starts, but I hope that we can use that to help build a world where all kids get to grow up soft.

I actually have a few all-time favorites. For the longest time, I would have answered with Fullmetal Alchemist - I at one time had every manga ever published in the US, every supplemental art book and novel, and the show on DVD. If we're limiting this question to just anime, I'd probably still say the same, although on some days FLCL may take the cake because of its comical, punk-rock-anti-establishment vibes, but I'd argue that anime fandom encompasses more than just syndicated television; can one really, truly call themselves an Otaku (or weeb, for the young ones) without also having a favorite manga? Fullmetal Alchemist captivated me for years because of Arakawa's clean, highly detailed artwork, the sci-fi/historical fiction/ sci-fi fantasy fusion of its imagery and setting, and the deeply sophisticated character development established not just in the protagonists and antagonists, but even down to the supporting characters. Fullmetal was also the fandom that brought me fully into manga. Before FMA, I had read a few graphic novels and manga over the years - Kingdom Hearts and Gundam, to be specific - but I had never dove fully into a series the way I did with FMA. After that door was opened, though, there was no turning back. From Chobits to Kingdom Hearts, to one-off novels like Glass Wings to Western publications like Bizenghast, I devoured manga for years. To this day, the bookshelf on my wall holds my most beloved volumes, including the series Yotsuba-to!. Yotsuba-to is a series about Yotsuba, a formerly-unaccompanied minor who now lives with her adoptive father (although it's unclear in the novels if they're actually legally adopted) and learns about life from him and their neighbors. I fell in love with this series for so many reasons. Every time I read it, I laugh. As someone who has raised little girls before, it's very clear that the novels are inspired by a real-life four year old somehwere. Every novel also makes me cry, though. Just like anyone, I read these novels through the lens of my own life and culture; in the context of my life and the lives of the people around me, the concept of a child growing up with a loving, supportive, chosen family, who is healthy and happy and well-adjusted, is the ideal, ultimate achievement. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it, especially if you have childhood trauma.

There is no way to identify just one person who was the most supportive of my educational journey so far, because there is no way I would have made it this far without an entire village backing me up. My sister has been the biggest cheerleader of my life. For a semester, she picked my daughter up from school every afternoon while I was in class, and for the last three years, she has encouraged me through every rough patch and applauded me at every success. At the community college, I had help from countless folks, from the TANF coordinators who filled our trunk with food from the pantry during the pandemic, to the president of the college who was the first person in my life to question my assumption that my potential ended with an associates degree. From the administrators and professors who wrote recommendation letters and gave me advice, to my peer students who encouraged and supported my endeavors with student government and school policy. Throughout the last two years at the university, several people have stood up to support our family. For example, the summer after my first semester, my then-advisor helped me by writing letters of recommendation for scholarships, as well as by helping me find work to support my family. After she left the university, I met her successor who nonchalantly asked me, "You're going to grad school, right?" When I told her that there was no way I'd ever make it that far, she told me, completely straight-faced, "Oh if you want it you'll get in. You're weird. It's a good thing." Over the course of the last year she has not only offered support, written letters, and given job references, but she's also fundamentally changed how I see myself and my abilities. There are just too many people for me to owe gratitude to ever say it was just one person. There is the family friend who brought us the extra peanut butter, paper towels, and toilet paper whenever they went to the bulk outlet. There were the donors and volunteers who provided toys so my daughter could have a Christmas the year we were between jobs. There was the neighbor who helped mow our grass every few weeks. There are the employees at the daycare, the former coworkers who sent birthday money, my stepmother and therapist who counseled me through the scariest and most painful moments, and of course, my mother who watched my daughter whenever she was sick so I could work. "Thank you" doesn't begin to express the gratitude I feel every day, and I haven't for one day forgotten how very fortunate I am to be blessed by so many people, and to be surrounded by so many individuals who are willing and able to help without my ever even asking.

I am a first-generation, nontraditional student in West Virginia who is studying Public Health while working as a paralegal and raising my daughter as a single parent. After graduation, I hope to purse a dual JD/MPH to marry my fields of interest and prepare myself to work on policy issues affecting child welfare. My strongest area of interest in child welfare, in public policy and law as well as health and educational outcomes, is around children in informal kinship care. Informal kinship care refers to an off-the-books arrangement between a child's biological parents and another family member, where the family member will care for the child for a fixed or indeterminate amount of time. When I was a child, I spent time living with my great-grandparents while my father looked for housing for the two of us. At the time, I didn't realize that there was a word for this arrangement, but today we would have called it a "grandfamily". Fifteen years later, my niece was living with her grandmother until she moved in with me. As it turns out, the situation my daughter and I have both found ourselves in is not uncommon, however, there are many ways in which it shows just how much our system was designed without these families in mind. In my work right now while I finish my degree, I get to meet many of these caregivers, whether they're grandparents, aunts and uncles, family friends, siblings, or cousins, and help them navigate the systemic issues they face. From a lack of legal recognition - and therefore inequity in accessing the benefits of children's rights like education and healthcare, to the financial and social implications of raising someone else's child. There are many reasons why a child may end up in a kinship arrangement, ranging from positive causes like a parent pursuing their own education to challenging causes like my father seeking stable housing. However, one of the most devastating is when the parents are unable to care for their child because of the ongoing opioid crisis. The overdose crisis is a problem worldwide, and has become a central theme in Public Health focus in recent years. However, there is a massive subset of victims of the crisis that are largely absent from data and research about opioids: children whose families step up to care for them when worse comes to worst. By earning my MPH/JD, I hope to be able to not only provide a higher level of service to these children but also to learn the skills to perform substantial research and advocate for systemic change for their betterment. While I love that we are able to assist so many families in navigating a family law system that was not built to handle this kind of situation, I recognize that helping a family find stability does little to prevent another from taking its place in instability later on.

There are many hurting communities in West Virginia, but the one that I am most drawn to is children in informal kinship care. These are children who, for one reason or another, are not able to live with their biological parent(s), and so their family members have stepped up to raise and protect them. Much of the reason that this population is so important to me, is that my daughter and I were both members of grandfamilies, the title used to refer to these arrangements when grandparents are the caregivers, at different points in our lives. Before I adopted my daughter, she lived with her grandmother. They faced several issues, some personal, and some systemic. Even though WV has one of the highest per capita rates of kinship families in the country, it wasn't until recently that formal attention and evidence-based programs began surfacing to try to locate and help these families navigate the legal, social, technological, and mental health challenges associated with this kind of arrangement. Fifteen years ago, when I lived with my grandparents and great-grandparents while my father looked for housing for the two of us, few resources for families like ours even existed, and when they did, they tended to focus on mothers and victims of domestic violence. Even now, families with informal arrangements - those that are not reported to the child welfare or justice system, but rather are "off the books" agreements - are not only underresourced and ineligible for many programs, but due to the unofficial nature of the agreements, there is little to no data about their number or needs. In my current job, I assist an attorney in free civil legal clinics at Title I (low-income) schools in the southern WV region - one of the poorest, most under-resourced areas of the country. Because the child-rearing generation of these communities has been decimated by the opioid epidemic, every day we talk to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, family friends, and siblings who are raising someone else's child. I know from experience that being a caregiver in situations like this leads to a litany of challenges, from navigating a family law system that is frankly not designed for diverse families, to managing relationships with a loved one whom you love and desperately want to help, but who may not be a safe person to be around the child while they are battling addiction. I am honored to be able to provide technical assistance and experience to other families like mine, but very quickly after starting this job, looking at the numbers for grant reporting, and planning for statewide expansion, I realized that this service is a band-aid for the issues at large. We could write a thousand temporary care agreements this year granting individual children the ability to go to school and see a doctor, but next year a thousand more will step into their place. The solution must go deeper. When I finish my bachelor's degree, I plan on pursuing a dual MPH/JD so that I can combine a deep understanding of the legal system and policymaking process with the research and development skills necessary for public health programming and epidemiological research. I would love to continue the fun part of my work now - outreach at schools, block parties, libraries, and afterschool care - but I want to provide a higher level of service, and I want to push for systematic change to improve the outcomes for these children.

My experience raising a family is a common, but very overlooked story. In the summer of 2017, a gorgeous little baby girl was born. Three years later, that baby's grandmother was looking for help, because after thirty years of raising her own children, she just didn't have the energy or the means to support yet another child. It took about three days from the day that our mother asked if I could care for my niece, and her first night in her own bedroom at my house. After two years, we "got adopted," one of the most bittersweet experiences of my life. Where I'm from, West Virginia, informal kinship arrangements are common. I also spent a few years in the care of my own grandmother, as did many of my friends. There are many different reasons that a grandparent, aunt, uncle or cousin might raise a child, but in an overwhelming majority of cases, the root reason for out-of-home care in WV is substance use disorder. I was studying legal assisting when my little girl moved in, with the intention of working in the legal office of my then-employer, which was a large health insurance company. In that field of study, I learned more and more about how law and policy are created in the United States, as well as how to evaluate the unintended effects of those policies. As I started to read more and more about federal health policies like PPACA, HITECH, and OSHA, I was also learning about my region's history, estate law, and educational policies. My intent was to take my associates to UC's political science program, but by the time I got here, my interests had shifted. Switching to Public Health was one of the best decisions I have made in my academic career. While political science is interesting, in Public Health I get to learn, think, and write about how policy affects health and educational outcomes. I get to learn about epidemiology and psychology, and I even get to learn how to perform medical assessments. This course of study also affords me a lot more autonomy in the doctors' office, because I can now speak their language, I know what questions to ask, and I know how to verify their advice and prognoses through research. The best parts of my studies in the health field so far are the practical applications that I already enjoy. Thanks to my health assessments class, when my daughter is sick, I know how to assess her to have a better idea of how to treat her over the counter, and when it's time to get a doctor involved. When I'm driving my niece and daughter to school and they have questions about their development, I can give them accurate, age-appropriate, science-based answers thanks to my classes on health promotion. Studying public health in an Appalachian setting has allowed me to see first-hand how public health policy can shape the entire geography of disease for a community. It was public policy that ultimately created my daughter's predicament in 2020, and it is through public health policy that our community can rectify that for the children who come after her. The division between the policymakers and healthcare experts in our country needs to be dismantled if we hope to employ evidence-based approaches to disease on a national scale.

Education affects our lives and worldview at every stage of development. During elementary school, I attended a very strict religious school, and my views about religion and faith have been dramatically affected by that experience. During the same time, I was also bullied by other students. That experience taught me to stand up for myself, and to treat others with kindness because I know how it feels to be an outsider. In high school, I attended public school, where I made several life-long friendships. I also had opportunities that weren't offered at my previous school, such as AP courses, college-level math classes, work-study and community service opportunities, and foreign language options. In AP history, I gained a better understanding of the world around me and how we got to where we are, which I still carry today to inform my worldview. In AP English, I read classics and articles that were not allowed at my previous school that opened my mind up to perspectives from different places and times. These experiences, as well as being in a much more diverse population, allowed me to hold and analyze ideas that weren't discussed in my family. In my last two years of high school, I switched to homeschool to make time for work. Because of the AP and college level classes that I had already completed in public high school, I was able to take my high school equivalency exam a year before my graduation date, and received recognition for scoring within the top 10% on that exam. I went on to score in the 90th percentile on my SAT. For the next ten years, I worked full time while deciding what I wanted to do for a career. Unfortunately, because I was a first generation college student, I was not prepared with knowledge about how higher education works, from funding to enrollment and withdrawals. Because I needed to leave school to focus on work several times, and because I was not aware of the proper way to withdraw from a college without harming my record, by 2019, when I was really ready to go back to school, my record was shot. Transcripts don't show how many nights you had to work late while earning straight As, they only show whether you pass or fail. Over the years, looking at my transcripts you can almost see the pattern. For a semester or two I earn straight As, then a semester of full Fs or Ws. And on each occasion, the reason was money. Fall 2019 was the semester of appeals. I went back to school, determined that I would once and for all finish what I started no matter what. I used a payroll deduction loan to pay for that semester at the community college because I was disqualified from any other financial aid. I spent hours drafting and submitting three appeals in total, each on different points, and each winning. Finally I submitted a proof of satisfactory progress showing that my first semester did go as planned - I had earned the Dean's list. Over the course of college I have pursued every route I can find to paying for college and staying with it through graduation. After the adoption of my daughter, I had to quit working to take care of her, and so the financial strain has hit again. However, I am working every angle to try to get this paid for so that I can build a better life for the both of us, and so that she won't have to work this hard.

I have been a queer single parent since July 2020 when my now-daughter came to live with me. I had helped raise a three year old in the past with a prior partner, but I had never been a full-time parent and I had never done it all on my own before. Over the last almost-two-years, I have seen amazing growth from her - not just in the fact that she's grown more than a foot since she moved in, but also in her confidence, kindness, and emotional regulation. We have had the opportunity to travel to Florida to visit my parents, to Ohio to visit her grandparents, and to Tennessee to visit Wonderworks (her favorite vacation destination). Throughout this time, I have felt more love and happiness than I ever thought possible, and I'm unspeakably proud to call her my daughter. When she moved in with me, I had just come out as trans-nonbinary, and had been living out of the closet regarding my sexuality for about ten years. I had dated and even married in the past, but had decided to take some time to myself right before she moved in. It turns out, once you have a kid it is really hard to date, especially when you're in the LGBTQ community in a place like West Virginia, and especially during a pandemic lockdown. We have been able to start getting involved in our local Pride events this year, and while we're still a little fresh, we've already been able to meet some amazing individuals. I had never envisioned myself parenting alone, and some days I feel frustrated and lonely, but on the whole I couldn't have planned a better life for myself. Every day I get to spend with my daughter is a day I can call well-spent. My major is Public Health, where I am working on projects relating to child welfare topics like food security, school nutrition and fitness, and parenting issues. While working on those topics, I keep LGBTQ issues and impacts at the front of my mind. I have found that, in the classroom, it's not very common for folks to talk about impacts directly to the LGBTQ community, so I try to make sure I am knowledgeable and outspoken about those impacts. I hope that in doing so, I can make sure that these issues are also at the front of the minds of my classmates when they go on to work in epidemiology, education, and medicine. I also know it's important for me to use my education and voice to make sure that future LGBTQ folks can easily step over barriers that folks my age had to climb. Issues like poverty, discrimination, racism, medical neglect, and mental health are important to address for everyone, but they tend to culminate around the LGBTQ community. The policy work that I intend to do would be geared directly toward alleviating those burdens, especially in the public health and public policy areas.

My big "impossible" goal for my education is to finish this bachelors degree and go on to earn a dual JD/MPH degree. This would allow me to practice law defending the rights and health of our communities as a public health attorney. I live in an area of the United States where access to dental, mental healthcare, medical care, and many other necessary services is severely limited based on geography and socio-economic status. Over the years, I have seen my friends, family, and even myself suffer needlessly because of the inequity in the health fields. It's past time someone did something about these issues, and there's no reason why I shouldn't be someone doing something about it. When the least of us benefits, we all benefit. By improving health outcomes in rural Appalachia, we can set the standard for care higher for everyone. By developing innovative policy that improves the outcomes for providers practicing in our state, we can help other communities who struggle with brain-drain to boost access in their communities. By ensuring reliable access to high speed internet in rural areas, we can connect with those communities and work collaboratively to solve other pressing issues. More intelligent minds thinking about a problem often leads to faster resolutions, and the myth that rural folks are not intelligent is just that: a myth. By improving the communication and education ability to these populations, we not only improve their individual lives, but we bring many more capable and unique voices into conversations where their perspectives are sorely needed. In recent years, we have seen over and over how neglecting disadvantaged communities can lead to wider negative impacts. When poor countries do not have access to vaccinations, mutations in disease can occur more easily and then spread back into vaccinated communities. When wildfires set in heavily forested areas, the ecological damage can spread across continents. The most benefit we can give to ourselves and our global community is to lift everyone up into an equitable position. When I look at our country, and at the world as a whole, I see so much potential for innovation and quality of life if only we could get people out of the unnecessary bounds of chronic poverty. Historically, the United States has been a testing ground for new ideas about governance, social programs, population management, economic development, and so many other factors. We can be the example of how countries with wide economic disparity can close those gaps. If we figure out how to solve this problem, other countries can follow suit and we can eliminate the problem on a global scale. Other minds are already working on this issue, and I want to help.

Panic attacks have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It took years to find most of the triggers, and there are still some that I am not quite sure what they are. My therapist and I have worked for three years now to weed out and work through each of them, but it's still a struggle some days. In 2019, I had a mental health crisis. I couldn't take the time off work to get inpatient treatment, and all the therapists I knew about at the time were booked out for months. At the time, telemedicine hadn't taken off in West Virginia at all, so I was bound to the practices in my local area, as were a large share of the population of the state. I spent months looking for care, and right when I decided to just forget it and try to do life on my own, the pandemic hit and all of my symptoms got worse. A friend recommended their therapist to me. Their recommendation was one of the first practices in West Virginia to offer telemedicine across the board, one of the first practices in West Virginia to openly advertise LGBTQ-affirming treatment, and one of the only practices in West Virginia with openings within a month. I have been seeing this therapist every week for about three years now, but the challenges to gaining access to mental healthcare hasn't ended there. About a year into therapy, we decided that I needed to try medication to manage my anxiety and ADHD symptoms. Therapy was helping, but I still wasn't functioning as well as I could, so we decided to seek out further treatment. Together we tried about a dozen different facilities, none of which could help me unless I either went inpatient or waited six months for an outpatient appointment. When I did finally secure an appointment, the provider was not available on the day of the appointment and needed to be pushed back even further. This experience has been common in West Virginia for my entire life. With the well-documented population drop and brain-drain in Appalachia overall, it's not surprising that access to necessary mental health care across the region is inequitable and often low-quality. Most people do not access mental healthcare here, and those who do often have their only interaction be the mental health screening on an ipad when they check in for their yearly exam. Many people in this state are ready to see this situation change, myself included. That is part of why I chose Public Health as my major. I am currently seeking experience in public policy work to gain an understanding of how these changes are made, and hope to be able to influence policy that brings high quality mental healthcare providers to our state. Beyond that, I want to help get reliable high speed internet access to all West Virginians so that they can access those mental healthcare providers, and so that they can access other social determinants of mental health like high-paying jobs with healthcare benefits, higher education, and wider community. My experience with mental illness has strained my relationships in the past, from driving away partners to avoiding friends. Fostering a sense of community is one of the simplest ways to improve mental health, but unfortunately many mental illnesses are inherent barriers to seeking and building community. Part of the work that I have done with my therapist in the last few years is to learn how to rebuild those connections, and how to build new ones. It frustrates me that there are so many people around me who can't access that learning. Mental illness has shaped a lot of my environment, but it has never defined who I am. It has led me to end friendships and relationships, give up on dreams, and ultimately hide in the past. But over the years, I have always found that I am bigger than my anxiety, and I am stronger than my depression. Some days I don't actually believe that I am capable of working around my mind, but those community connections get stronger every year, and my threshold for stress gets higher every year. I know that if I can work through the barriers in my own mind, I can also work through the barriers of the outside world. My hope is that I and others like me can take those barriers down behind us so that people in the future don't have to fight so hard to get help.

When I was in high school, I tried all of the study strategies that were taught in class that were supposedly the best way to retain information, but I almost never saw much difference in any strategies over just reading the material again. Eventually, I started to learn more about how memory works, and worked out a way to engage as much of it as possible the first time around. When I'm taking notes, I never write the notes on my laptop the first time. In a lecture, I will have a pen and a notebook where I keep all of the notes from the class. I do this because the physical motion of writing the letters helps my brain to remember specific phrases, especially if the spelling is difficult because I have to slow down and really notice it, instead of letting auto correct fix all of my spelling issues for me. I also always doodle something unique on the tops and sides of the pages. When I try to recall what I have written down, having the pages look visually different helps me to keep related topics together. Finally, as I'm writing the notes, instead of down the page, left to right, and creating an outline, I will make arbitrary margins and put related topics into individual, oddly shaped boxes. This helps me to keep related topics together in my mind, and to visualize the information in my mind like a map.

I am very fortunate that I get opportunities to think creatively all the time in my life. As a single parent, I get to make crafts and projects with my daughter regularly. Crafting and painting with a four year old really helps to get out of your head, away from the need to make something perfect, and into a mindset of limitless creativity. When I have free time, I'll often pull up my drawing application on the ipad and spend hours drawing and painting colorful surrealist profiles, designs, patterns, and comics. Sometimes when I have the time and energy, I will pull out a canvas and paint, a notepad and chalk, or even just a sheet of paper and a pencil to sketch and draw. My work and education rely on creativity, too. Because I freelance different skills like tutoring, notary, paralegal, delivery, grant management, and marketing, I am constantly thinking of creative new ways to combine my skills and experience to not only be more useful to our community, but also to reach my goals faster.

The biggest threat to our world right now is the human impact on climate change. People everywhere in the world are or will be impacted by climate change, whether it's directly through the weather as we've seen in the winter storms of Texas and Florida in recent years, or it's the indirect impacts of reduced agricultural production and drought. In my opinion, the only way that we can reverse the tide on this crisis in time to make a difference is through policy reform. Nobody should be able to profit off of actions that push us closer to the brink, and there should be consequences for willfully making decisions that hurt the lives and futures of children. As individuals, we usually can't change what policy is enacted as much as corporations can, but there are other ways we can have an impact on the ways business is conducted. As individuals, we can influence lawmakers with our votes, and through lobbying like writing letters, calling their offices, and participating in town hall meetings. Everyone with access to a computer or smart phone can have a letter written and mailed to their representatives almost instantly through any number of online platforms designed specifically for that task. We can also influence to a certain degree how businesses operate by being conscious of how the companies we purchase from make and spend their money. We can make an effort to, when given a choice, choose to do business with companies who try to reduce their impact on global climate change.

My entire story of winding up back in college 10 years after dropping out is about obstacles and persistence. Every setback, from hunger to illness, had only one solution: keep marching. The thing I wish I had known ten years ago, though, is that, for a lot of those obstacles, the resolution doesn't always look like a victory. Sometimes, a setback will affect us permanently, such as a disability caused by an illness or accident. At other times, the resolution won't be what we thought we needed, as with divorce. And still at other times, the victories are so small and growth so gradual, it feels like maybe they're not even there at all. In any of these times, it is easy to feel like we have nothing to show for our persistence. But eventually, we all turn 30. As I reflect on the most recent decade, the first decade of my life as an adult, I can't help but be shocked at how much I have overcome. To me, persistence means no matter what, you will always take one more step. With small steps, it's usually not until you have the distance of time and the comfort of stability that it's possible to actually grasp the scope of personal growth. I can't describe this phenomenon better than Safra did in People Watching S1E20: "All you had to do was something slightly better than the time before that, because no one can jump that high, but everyone can take one small step." Every day that you persist through an obstacle, you are taking one small step toward whatever that obstacle was blocking from your life. I could have never jumped from poverty to stability, from dropout to deans list, but I could always take one more step.

In April 2021, I was working full-time from home, but I knew in the following semester I would need to reduce my hours so I could serve my internship and finish my degree. Since the internship was probably going to be unpaid, I knew we would need to save up to float us through the last leg of my associates. I decided to take on an additional, part-time summer merchandising job for our local grocery store. As a single parent, every decision must be carefully weighed, and this part-time job was no exception. It took several weeks to get childcare assistance, which would have cost more than my mortgage payment. I would spend every weekend reaching out and arranging childcare between friends and family for the morning hours when I needed to be at the store. Every week something would come up and someone would become unavailable. I would work quickly, rush to pick up my daughter, and then spend the night working my full-time job. After four months, I had saved enough to get us through the next semester, but at the cost of my mental and physical health, as well as time with my daughter. In the end, we did survive that time, and it taught me a few valuable lessons that I plan on passing on to my daughter when she gets older. The first is that it is imperative to set boundaries for others and reasonable expectations for ourselves. There were times where I had a conflict between my jobs, and I had to learn quickly how to prioritize and say “no” when anything went above and beyond a reasonable expectation from either employer. As my ability to accurately assess how much I could handle developed, making decisions about priority and time management became easier.

As a single parent, I find myself struggling constantly with finding a balance between relaxation and self-care and providing for the physical and emotional needs of my daughter. Even in my situation, however, there are some things that I have found easy to implement in my routine that keep me grounded and emotionally maintained. The most important act of self-care that I give myself is weekly therapy. Having a place to vent and let go has helped me to become more authentic over the years. The second way I take care of my emotional wellbeing is through securing a babysitter or daycare to make sure I can take some time to do "grownup" things like appointments, important phone calls, and sometimes even shopping. The third healthy habit I have implemented in my life is a nightly unplugging routine. I end all my chat conversations on social media, follow up on all urgent emails, and clear out all the notifications on all my favorite applications in a way that ends the conversations or lets the other person know we will continue in the morning. Then I set my phone on Do Not Disturb and plug it into a charger in another room before lying down for bed. Unplugging each night keeps me from doom-scrolling and lets me take a few minutes to recharge my emotional batteries before I go to bed to recharge my physical battery.

Over the years I have developed a study routine that works best for me. First, I read and take handwritten notes on the outline of the assigned reading materials on the right-side pages of my notebook. Next, I attend the lecture or watch explanation videos on the topic and take handwritten notes on what stands out as important on the page to the left of the topic it falls under in the outline. Then, I take all of those notes and type them into a word document so that they are legible, I have to go through and understand and sometimes expand on the information some more, and I can fix formatting. I use blue text to denote what was learned in the second set of notes, and red text for what was learned from the textbook. For extra thoughts and clarifying questions, I use italics. Then, I use those outlines to discuss the topics with folks online or friends and refer back to them when I am tutoring. Writing by hand helps me learn kinesthetically, typing helps me learn visually, and discussing and teaching helps me learn auditorily. By leveraging all three of these strategies and learning types, I am able to retain more information than if I relied on only one.

My feelings about what truly matters have taken a huge shift over the last two years. For a long time, I thought that financial stability and generosity were the most important goals in life. However, after my child came into my life in 2020 and I left my long-term full-time job in 2021, I am finding that there are more important things. I don't think there is one Meaning of Life that will fit every person in every situation and every corner of the world. Each person, I believe, has to find the meaning of their individual life. Sometimes that meaning will find you, through the people you meet and the information you learn. Sometimes you have to create that meaning on your own through your values and ambitions. And sometimes that meaning is forced on you through hardship and challenges to your family or community. The meaning of my life is finding ways to make the world better for my daughter. The meaning of my life is to keep trying and trying until eventually, I figure out where I am supposed to be. The meaning of my life is to make connections and find solutions to issues that threaten my communities. The meaning of my life is to be a part of the worldwide family while doing my part to keep my little corner safe and fair. None of these things can simply be achieved because they each require continuous attention and effort to maintain. To me, that is what makes an effort worthwhile.