Raising me and my brother in a single-parent household, my mom has instilled endurance and persistence in me as I’ve faced academics. She demonstrates the constant push against constant challenges: looking after me and my brother, working, and managing our home. Thus, I want to push through and rise above life’s constant challenges by learning and developing a valuable skill set. However, her shortcomings also inspire me. I recall visiting my friend: a gleaming white interior of his freshly painted garage expressed a refined aesthetic yet still personal and homely. In my home, such a project could not be followed through as my mom would focus on upkeep and my brother and I would focus on academics. I want to push through and become supportive and capable of fostering such a temple for my own family. Ultimately, my mom inspires me to become my own role model–of which there has only been just one in my family so far. Pursuing further education enables my inspiration, offering a journey to learn theoretical backgrounds and professional skills that will enable me to overcome my personal challenges and enable me to provide and give back to my family. My journey in speech and debate runs alongside my journey towards higher education. It started as an opportunity to vaguely grow and be sociable, encouraged by my mom. I competed for 2 years in the speech and debate league until my junior year, when the speech and debate coaches suddenly left. I was unable to continue competing in the league, but unlike when I started, I wanted to continue–fully by my own intention. Through the original oratory and dramatic interpretation categories, speech and debate had become a way to powerfully yet subtly express myself. So, I started competing in the California Lions’ Clubs Speaker Contest and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Voice of Democracy Program in my last 2 years of high school. In my senior year, I competed in the Poetry Out Loud Competition, a competition involving reciting poetry. This combined public speaking with literature. Successfully uniting the two in the state finals with my mom’s laptop stacked on some shoeboxes with a $20 microphone, I became the California state champion. I was able to take my mom with me to Washington D.C. to compete at the national finals and explore the city with her. Altogether, my motivation for competing in speech and debate began as push from my mom and a simple longing for growth, and became fueled by a want to express myself and explore unique and depthful intersections with other academic topics. I’d like to continue to use this motivation throughout my higher education. I’d like to keep pushing forward as my mom has shown me. I’d like to be my own role model so that I can continue to give back to my family just as I did when I took my mom to D.C. As I go on to transfer out of community college this year, I’m not forgetting the insight that I’ve learned from speech and debate, and I’m not forgetting who inspires me to continue forward.