Have you ever been held back before? Not because of a barrier preventing you from moving forwards, or you just catching yourself on something you shouldn't say. I'm talking about something you can't control, something out of your power. Something like asthma. A plan I had for my future was to fly for the military. I joined AFJROTC at my high school and started paving my way for success. I worked hard, earned a leadership position, and continued to improve my record. But then I discovered that there are restrictions for flying in the military when it comes to asthma. If you still have a bad asthma condition after a certain age, you will not be allowed to fly. It felt like everything I did to prepare myself just all went to waste. And then I remembered you don't need to be in the military to fly. There are many more opportunities out there that will put me up in the sky and I wasn't going to let this disease prevent me from getting what I want. To me, it only felt like I had one choice and that was to get rid of my asthma. Even though I can't technically get rid of it, I can build up a resistance and withstand it. So I continued AFJROTC and started exercising a lot. When my asthma started to act up, I tried to just muscle through it. I only used my rescue inhaler if I felt like I really needed it. I made my body fight it off by itself. That was the only way to get stronger and I did. Because of all of my hard work I just recently got undiagnosed with chronic asthma. I used to take medicine to control my asthma every single morning because my bad allergies and physical activity would trigger it. And now my allergies just make me sneeze and working out just gets me in shape and it doesn't make it feel like my throat to closing in on itself. Although I still have asthma, it's not as bad as it was before. And now I'm on the runway to a new destination. In the Fall of 2022, I will be attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and will be majoring in aeronautical science. I will attend this college for four years and will eventually become a commercial pilot. And this is another thing I will have to work hard for. And if I can basically get rid of my asthma, I know I can do this. I guess not everything is out of your power.

A photo, a frozen moment in time. I am a photographer and I photograph what? A story. A story that needs to be told, but not with words... But with light. My first image: the one of me sitting on the window sill, with my hand supporting my head as I look out. This was taken in the midst of the pandemic. Trapped inside, just like everyone else. In this photo "Together we are Alone" I wanted to convey a sense of loneliness. It's quiet, but only because it needs to be because your family is sick and they need rest so that they can survive... Survive? is that what we were doing? Image number two is the one of me cuddled in a blanket. The light is harsh on the right, but on the left it's dark. And it calls to some, way too many it calls, and way too many decide to listen. In this photo "Last Look at Light", I wanted to show that some people are in a situation just like this one. Trying to decide whether to put on a fake smile and try to make it through, or give up and let the evil win. To those people, I want to give this message. The light is there, you just have to look for it. If you don't, you will be lost in the dark forever. Photo number three is a familiar feeling after looking at one and two. This is the one with me wearing the mask surrounded by hands. Are they attacking me? Do they even really notice me? I hope they notice me. But do I? It's chaotic out there. I guess I have to choose. Peace or chaos, peace or chaos, "Peace V.S. Chaos". All of these images, they seem so sad. Am I sad? No, no I'm not. I am truly a very happy person waiting for my next chapter of life to start. But that doesn't mean that everyone is. Happy I mean. After taking all of these photos my photography teacher asked me "why do your photos matter"? And I told him: photography isn't just a frozen moment in time, it's a story. They are stories that can change the world and make a change for the better. But in order to change the world, I first need to change myself.

Did you go on a vacation last summer? Was it very far away at some paradise beach, or at a historical site learning about the cool things that happened long ago? How did you get there? It was on a plane, right? That's what I thought. This is why my favorite scientific discovery is the amazing force: lift. Lift is the upward force against weight and gravity and is harnessed by many things that fly. In a plane, it's created by the angle at which the air hits the wings and the flaps at the end of them. Putting the flaps down will cause the air to be pushed downwards. According to Newton's third law of motion, "every action will have an equal and opposite reaction", if the flaps push the air down, the plane is consequently pushed upwards. Lift is my favorite scientific discovery because I want to be a pilot someday. I have always dreamed of being in the sky and just being and feeling free. Without the many trials and attempts to get a flight to occur, my dream of flying might have ended the same way everyone else did before the Wright Brothers came along. The discovery of lift has been a game-changer for me. I now have a dream and I feel as if I have a purpose to fulfill. Who knows, maybe one day I'll be the one flying you to your next destination. And it would have been through the help of you and your thoughtful scholarship.

Schools have been teaching math for a very long time and there is a very good reason for that. Math is the basis for many things you do in life. Whether it's adding something to get an answer, or subconsciously making calculations to get the result you want, math is used all the time and every day. I for one, love math. It can be stressful at times, but there is a moment sometimes where you are confused for a minute, but then you finally get what your teacher is telling you and there is a wave of confidence and understanding that makes you want to get to work. I have felt this before in my classes. Currently, I am taking college algebra at Bridgeland Highschool. In this class, there was a lot of reviewing old topics and I was confused on why we were just relearning old stuff. Then in the second semester, my teacher tied In all of that old stuff into new concepts and made it new. Sometimes the newer concepts made it hard to keep my grade up in the class, but when I look back and see that I did manage to keep an 'A' in the class, I feel proud of myself. It makes me feel smart and it makes me want to keep learning. Math can also sometimes be fun. This is a silly example but sometimes when I am playing the videogame "Halo" with my brothers, we will actually be using math even though we are just trying to kill each other. One of us could through a sticky grenade at a certain angle where our brain has made the necessary calculation to make a direct impact with the person and kill them. Or we would launch a slower-moving ball of plasma at a speeding vehicle far off in the distance and blow it up. Even though we are just trying to have fun, we are actually using math without even thinking about it to get what we want to be done. I also think that math is very important for life in general. For me, I love sci-fi in the way of "humans are now exploring space on their giant spacecraft" type of thing. I know humanity is slowly trying to get to that point and I have always wanted to live in a world where this was real. And this will only eventually become real if people learn in the STEM category. Math is one of the more important ones here because to create accurate measurements and make precise calculations, you need to be fluent in the language of math. And math isn't only used in my sci-fi dream. A current example of people that need math is architects. Do you like the house you live in? Did you know that it was put together on the foundation of math? Architects have to use extensive math all the time to build structures that are habitable by people. If math didn't exist, neither would your house because they wouldn't know how to put it together. There are more reasons why math is important or why I like to learn it, but for the sake of my word count, I better keep it at this. Math is used all the time, whether you are thinking about it or not. It can be used for fun, for creating things, or for the advancement of the human race. But one thing is for sure, and it would be that we will never stop learning math because there is still so much more to learn.