Having sickle cell disease has influenced me in multiple aspects. One major one would be my career path. I want to pursue not only medicine but research because I want to help in developing a cure that is more accessible and also create programs to help with better things like hospital stays. I remember my first blood transfusion being a particularly traumatic one and has left me with anxiety every time I step into a hospital. I want to change the culture when it comes to Sickle Cell, my experience would not have been as bad as it has been if SCD was taken more seriously. That experience has really inspired me in the social works aspect. I want to become a hematologist and later go into research. My capstone in high school was about the history of SCD up until 2024 because I want to be a part of that history and I want to make care a lot less scary and I want my experience to become less and less normal. I have organized a blood drive and a blanket drive. The blankets went to Seattle Children's Hospital to provide comfort to children hospitalized. SCD has also affected my school experience severely, I have had to miss significant amounts of school because of crises and that was especially hard to navigate since there is not accessible support at school. It has also taken a toll on my social life. It has been extremely isolating because there were no other people who I knew that had SCD and it is a difficult topic to bring up to people without it and I still find myself struggling to do so. Yes, my disability has made it hard for me in some aspects, but I have never let it define me. While having setbacks in my health has made school harder, I have never let myself fall too behind and I completed high school with a 4.0 and while the start of college has been rough, I will not let it define my future success. While I still struggle to tell people, I have made considerable progress. For my capstone project in high school I did a presentation in front of my whole school and that did include sharing my experience with a lot of people that I would not have typically told and discovering there is a SCD community close to me has helped the loneliness and going to some event and interacting with people like me is something I’m grateful for. I believe that this scholarship can help me in my career path especially since it would be able to lift the burden of paying for education and make college a little less stressful and hopefully sharing my story will inspire others like me to not let a disability define them.