My name is Alexis Cline, I am a first generation college student and I am attending SIUC for my bachelors degree in social work. I plan to become an adoption caseworker once I get my degree. My career will help the well being and meet the needs of gifted children because it is possible that i will make a difference in the foster care aspect. I hope to find loving and caring homes for children who need it the most. I have always loved kids and I cannot wait to help them one day in the future get everything they need in life. If I do not become an adoption caseworker in the future I still want to have a career in a field where I can do the most to advocate for gifted children, either that be working one on one with them or helping from an outside perspective. For gifted children in the adoptive system, the understanding of challenges these children may face must go past just simple test scores, these children feel out of the box compared to other children because they are different. They think different in a more deeper aspect, more complex aspect, and they question more. Many gifted children seek belonging, identity, and emotional safety in a world where they feel like an outsider. While looking into families for the perfect home I plan to educate the caregivers about the dual exceptionalities many gifted children experience such as anxiety, ADHD, or attachment issues. By helping the families understanding,I want to be the person who prepares the caregivers and or parents to not just tolerate the differences but to embrace, love, and support these differences that the children may have. I hope to build environments where gifted children feel seen, safe and supported, and where adults and parents can learn from these children. Another goal I have would be to collaborate with schools and communities to advocate the appropriate educational placements and mental health support. Gifted children often need intellectual stimulation and emotional security, and to meet these goals there must be cross-disciplinary. Overall I hope over long term that I can transform how the foster care system recognizes and nurtures giftedness within adopted children as a central part of who they are. Placing these children in families who not only understand more about gifted children but they are open to the messiness and deep emotional work that can endure. I hope these children thrive as individuals and feel understood and valued by their adoptive families.

Hi! My name is Alexis Cline. I am 17 years old. I'm majoring in social work at Lake Land College in the fall of 2023. I play volleyball and will be continuing my athletic career in college. I babysit two days a week, and work at McDonald's on the days I don't babysit. I take a lot of dual credit classes, and I have a GPA of 3.6 My entire life, I have always been a giver. I have such a big heart and will let people back into my life within a heartbeat. It is how I am, and I'm not ashamed of it. Having a big heart can be a good thing but also a bad one. Letting people back in sometimes benefits me, but others tear me apart. I want to be a giver. I want to help children, men, women, families, and anyone who needs it. There are so many things you don't know about people. Or maybe what they are going through, sometime they may need the slightest things. For the longest time, I thought I wanted to be a teacher when I was older. As I grew up, I realized I wanted to help people, and that's when the thought of going into social work came to my head. I have always been a positive person, and I think I always will be. I plan to get my master's degree in social work. Here in the next year, I will attend a 2-year school to play volleyball, then transfer to get my degree. Once I finish college, I want to go straight into social work. I'm aware of my financial status, as it's low. I also know that my field won't benefit much in that aspect, but I would preferably love my job rather than hate it. My preferred career is as a child and family social worker. I want to be able to protect vulnerable children and support those in need. There are many challenges children have to face, and I want to be a person they can trust. As I grow older I hope to see a change in the communities around me. I want families to succeed, and not see the neglect in a child. I hope to be a person who can improve these horrible things in our world. I would love to see families reunite, and adoptions of children who heed it the most and help with child care.

In my senior year of high school, I took American literature. We were to pick a book to read and answer tons of questions about it. I read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, and to this day it is one of the best books I have ever read. Just Mercy is about how the criminal justice system disproportionately targets those of color and those who are poor. The entire book is based on a man named Walter McMillian, a black man who was framed for the murder of a young girl named Rhonda Morrison. This book is targeted toward young adult readers, because they have such open minds, and they might benefit from understanding these problems, and being able to call for the system's reform. Aside from the target audience for this book, I want everyone in the world to read Just Mercy so that it could open their eyes to how our criminal justice system wrongly accuses so many people. Furthermore, it highlights mass incarceration in America. This book highlights many groups of vulnerable people who have been victimized, he also shares stories of those he helped throughout his life. The nonprofit organization Bryan worked for raised public awareness of racial issues. Throughout Stevenson's nonprofit law project, he helped many men, women, and children get off of death row and be proven innocent. The most important reason I would want everyone to read this book would be because Just Mercy shares how the potential for mercy can redeem us.

My Aunt Stacey passed away a few months after I was born. Although I knee very little of her, I’ve heard many stories about her. She makes me want to fight for the things I want in life. Stacey only had one hand. She was born like this and she adapted to it. She did everything on her own, and she was good at it. Stacey never complained about it or wondered why this would happen to her. She fought through and did everything she could, and she stayed positive throughout her life. She didn’t care about how she only had one hand. She thought of the bigger things in life. When I was only a few months old, my Aunt Stacey passed away in a house fire. She was babysitting a one-year-old girl. The oven had caught fire and there wasn’t even time to get out. She tried her hardest to get the baby out before her. But unfortunately neither of them got out. Because of Stacey passing away I have always told myself that things always happen for a reason. Sure, I didn’t meet her, or even know her. But she impacted my life more than ever. I focus more on what matters in my life, than the smaller things. I shouldn’t care about my hair looking good at school, I should care if I’m getting the best grades possible.