Going to college wasn't something I really though deeply about until I entered high school. When I entered high school the shift from 8th grade to 9th grade was huge to me. The first thing any teacher would ask of us to write was what were your plans after high school and that is where all the talk of college began. My older sister was forced to drop out of high school her junior year since my mother wanted her to start having real life experience at the age of 16. Now my older sister tells us how much she regrets agreeing to our mothers decision and to never give up on your education. After that conversation about how going to school was important for your future, I started to view school differently. Before I would question why we needed to go to school, for 8 hours 5 times a week, however I started to understand why my sister told us to not give up on our education. The reason why college matters even more now to me is the same reason why education matters to me. which is that growing through learning will increase ones knowledge and improve their future in a long run. Before I would just say I'll work a job that hires me and I'll be fine in life, however after maturing and getting a view of the real world, I know now that just going with the flow and not giving any effort for my future would only worsen my life rather than improve it. College to me is how I will live a life where I am happy with the decisions I will make, confident in the way I am, and proud of never giving up and always trying to improve in any big or little thing in life. Although I know that college will be difficult, I also acknowledge that nothing in life will ever be sun shine and rainbows. College won't be all happy memories, their will be tear sheds, headaches, stress and more crazy experiences waiting for me, but I will always open it will wide arms. My reason why I'll embrace it will be because I want to succeed in life, I want to have a life that after all the hardships I can finally be stress free and happy. College is a way to show that I have succeeded in life and that all the people that have always doubted me will finally see that I'm living a great life because I never gave up on my self and my life.

All my life I grew up knowing that education is the best thing to have a good life. By that I mean if I don’t understand the simple stuff like 1 + 1 = 2 then how will I understand the more difficult situations in life. Many of my peers now in days don’t see education the way I see it. Although their is homework and assignment due, I believe all the hard stuff we go though is preparing us the near future of how like in the world will look like. I now that if I’m given the opportunity to continue my education and knowledge of the world, I’ll do great for my life, my family and the people around me. This scholarship will give me the opportunity to start ready for college and continue my education and prepare for my future career with the knowledge I’ve gathers all my life. My long time goal in life is to live a life where I love the career I worked for in college. I want to work and not feel disappointed in myself for choosing my career path. I chose the business career path becuase its is since a huge variety of careers with business and opportunists in life. Being able to now that all the hard work and effort I put into growing my education for my better future is what makes me never give up. The times where I did feel like giving up and not continuing with my education was when I was emotionally drained. During 2020 it felt so suffocating, not because the pandemic but because of my family falling apart. My biological mother had kept a secret from the family. We found out that she was seeing someone else and didn’t want to be a parent to me and my siblings. During that time in my life, it was the most severe time where I felt truly alone and not wanted. I always had a feeling that I wasn’t the favorite in the family, however that is why I always tried my hardest with my education. When the news of my mother not wanting her children anymore happened my life stopped and I felt like it would never return to normal. However I did get out of my slump by my love for art. Art was my only happiness at the time and forever will be. Because of art I felt like my self again, like a new but old person I once was. Through my learning and growing with art for the last 4 year I believe that I have grown up a lot, which has helped me under stand my emotions more throughly by controlling my emotion to my art.

Dyslexia is "a condition of neurodevelopment origin that mainly affects the ease with which a person reads, writes, and spells, typically recognized as a specific learning disorder in children." (google) is what I was diagnosed with at the age of 7 years old. At a young age where I felt like I was dumb for not knowing the difference between the letter B and the letter D, which negatively affected me making me self-conscious of how I write and read things in life. Learning that I had the reading level of a 2nd grader at the age of 9 years old didn’t sound crazy in my opinion, but I later learned that it wasn’t a great place to be in at the time. When I entered 6th grade, I was able to be on the 6th-grade reading level, which was a big success since It showed the growth of my ability to read and write. Growing up with English has made me feel more mature and wise. Growing up and learning how to correctly read and write correctly has helped me a great bunch. This made me feel more connected to the language in many ways than one. For example, before I would be annoyed with my dyslexia since it was always getting in my way of reading, however after passing the dyslexia class and exiting it, I saw that all the hardships I endured pushed me to that moment of growth. Although reading has been a challenge for me forever, the growth I have gotten has made a bigger impact on my life than I could have imagined. Dyslexia was at first a concern in my life and is now something I'm not ashamed of but accept with open arms to embrace. Dyslexia has made me express the words I can't express correctly from writing to visual descriptions like paintings. Learning the process of art has improved so much through the years of my life. Understanding how concepts of the art foundation can be expressed through all different mediums has helped me show the many different words that were hard for me to understand through art. Dyslexia made me feel so different and weird when I was younger when I learned how to express myself correctly through the English language, which made me love stories, poems, novels, etc. Throughout my childhood, I had to learn that although I have a disability, that won't stop me with my goals in life. So I decided to continue growing and to never give up on myself. Through this, I saw that I was growing as a person as well, which affected how I grew as a leader. In the present time, I can see how much I have grown as a person with leadership qualities, growing with my disability, and my capability to learn more. Right now I'm the president of the National Arts Honors Society, which helps me grow as a learner, shows more maturity through my words and actions, and helps me grow with my understanding of the world of art. I know that my understanding of art and the love I have for everything about art will make me successful in life in the way I represent myself through my future job. Having an art career will benefit the world since I will be able to enjoy the career I’ll have in the future because I will express my love of art and the history of the art process.