Hello! My name is Alyssa Anderson and I’m currently a senior at Thea Bowman Leadership Academy in Gary, Indiana. I’ve been involved in organizations and different groups since I was able to walk. The first group I remember being apart of is my church. I attend Zion Missionary Baptist Church in East Chicago, Indiana. My family has been involved with this church long before I was born. I’ve been blessed with the ability to sing in the choir and be apart of the praise dance ministry. The second group I joined was my older sister’s dance school. I was in the dance studio even before I was born. I started taking classes and my first performance was in 2011 when I started going to kindergarten. The last childhood group I became a member of was Dunes Volleyball Club, where my older sister also went. I started learning to play volleyball at the age of five. I went on to be apart of many other things as I grew up. As I got older, I was able to play volleyball for my school and connect with other organizations. Going into middle school, I became apart of TRIO’s educational talent search program. There, I learned about college and got tutoring for math and reading as well as test taking skills. As I transitioned into high school, COVID hit and we became remote. I joined TRIO’s Upward Bound program through Purdue University and learned more about my grade level Math and English. During my junior year, I became a member of another profs called ECIER. It stands for entrepreneurship, creativity, innovation, education, and relationships. I learn a lot about life from ECIER and get to meet so many new people as well as business owners. I also joined the track and field team as a Shot put and Discus thrower. It gave me a chance to try something new after only doing two sports for basically my whole life. As a teenager that spent half of her life in a single parent home and seeming like I was in one for my whole life, I would love for there to be a resource center or just somewhere in my community where young people and go and get counseling. Trauma that happens when we’re young affects how we are when we become adults tremendously. Not just trauma through, good influences can make great adults. I feel that if the children in my community get the help they need, it wouldn’t be such a bad place. As a teenager, I’ve seen so many people become victims of their past and pass their parents’ bad habits onto their children. I want to be able to break generational curse that is out on families, especially in black communities.

Growing up I knew I wasn’t rich but I didn’t consider my self to be poor either. I grew up in a predominantly Black city in Northwest Indiana called Gary. I lived with my mother, father, and two older siblings. Since the sibling closest in age to me was eight years older than I was, I was able to have a lot things of my own. My parents at the time were blessed enough to provide me and my siblings with basic necessities plus some. Over time, as I got older, I started to become more expensive and my parents ended separating a few years ago. Now, my mother is my sole provider and she does what she cans to ensure that I don’t have to worry about money or anything related to money. Going into my senior year of high school I knew there going to be a lot of expenses but it’s way more than I imagined. The prices of things have seemed to skyrocket since my brother and sister were in high school. I know that it’s hard for my mother at times to care for and her other children including her grandchildren. We have a good support system around us but not enough for anyone to outright help me pay for college, not even my father. My mother also doesn’t like to ask too many people for help. She is a strong independent woman who I love dearly but I know she’s stressed and I want to be able to help her out as much as possible. I don’t much about finances and we very thing that ties into it, whatever that may be. One would think that since my mother works with payroll and deals with numbers everyday I would know some financial literacy but that is far from the truth. The only thing I know about money is that need it, a lot of it. I’ve always wanted to learn more about money and how it works. I want to learn how to make the most out of my money and save as much as possible. I want to be able make big financial decisions without consulting to my mother or any one else. I want be able to be as strong and independent as my mother. Learning about finances is very imperative to being able to live a decent life without worrying about money.

My name is Alyssa and I’m an athlete. I play volleyball, dance, and throw in track and field. I’ve been playing volleyball for about 10 years now and I absolutely love it. I want to continue my volleyball career throughout college. I’ve been dancing since I was 2 years old which set the foundation for not only sports but life as well. Dance, ballet specifically, was very hard for me but at my dance school we had to take ballet classes before we were able to take any other classes. Having to persevere through hot, hour long classes taught me about hard work and dedication. Track and field is something that I recently picked up last year and it was such a fun experience. Playing sports has given me the opportunity to meet so many new people and I want to continue this through the rest of my life. This scholarship will help me do exactly that. The money from this will go towards furthering my education. Ultimately I want to become a pediatric anesthesiologist. I’m going to have to go to school for a long time and it is not cheap. I want to be able to take some of the pressure off of my mother and let her finally relax after nearly 30 years of being a single mother. She raised three amazing children practically by herself with very little help from my father. Ever since I was a young girl, my mother has always instilled in me the importance of going to college after high school. I knew that working hard and getting good grades would be key to me being admitted into the college of my choice. She has helped me to stay focused and keep my eye on the prize. With her encouragement and unwavering support, I know there’s nothing I can’t do and college is at the top of my list after graduation. A college education is the only way I can achieve my goal of being a pediatric anesthesiologist. Sports has been a big part oft life and I’m not ready to give them up yet. I want to play sports for as long as God allows me to and I am still able. I’m ready to take advantage of every opportunity that is thrown my way and this is one of them. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me. Thank you for your consideration.

I’ve been playing volleyball for about 10 years now and I’ve learned so much from it. I started on a club team and me being African American in Northwest Indiana, there weren’t a lot of little girls and boys that looked like me so I stuck out like a sore thumb. I never experienced any type of discrimination but I did always feel like my teammates and sometimes even coaches didn’t think I was good enough of a player. Despite that feeling I still continued to play club ball and eventually made it on my school’s middle school volleyball team when I was in 6th grade. Because of my club experience, I was one of the top players and I helped my teammates around me. I didn’t know back then but, their parents simply could not afford club volleyball for their children. As I got older I somewhat mastered volleyball and I started looking at other factors outside of the simple bump, set, spike. I looked at communication, trust, and dependency. When I got into high school, I seen all of those other factors and they were taking a toll on me. I know how to play and coming from the club teams, I assumed that everyone else knew what they were doing too, but I was wrong. So the more I seen my teammates make certain mistakes I started to pick up their slack. I started holding myself accountable for their mistakes plus my own. I was stressed out and last year I was going to quit volleyball completely becomes of what I let it become. I had to realize that, one, I can’t leave my other teammates behind and, two, I have to play my game and make them play theirs too. This past year was a big test for me. I was the captain of the varsity team and there were so many bumps in the road. We lost team members due to injury, sickness, and just undedicated girls. I, again, was trying to pick up everybody’s slack and was lost and stuck. I had to take a step back and look at my situation from another point of view. I started holding my team accountable for their mistakes and correcting them while also being more encouraging. We were able to actually compete with the teams we played and have a bit of fun at the same time. For a while I had forgotten how fun volleyball is and how much I love the sport. Volleyball has been an outlet for me and doing it for so long has taught me dedication, adaptability, grit, and discipline.