I was born "Anna Marcelle". First biological female born to my dad's side of my family in multiple generations. My mother named me like a family history project. Anna in honor of my great-great grandmother on her side and Marcelle for my great-grandmother on my dad's. This is where the cheers and applause stop. My grandparents would try to raise me as a perfect little girl when they babysat me on the weekends, my dad's influence saw me ignoring gender constructs so I could just be a kid. I also was never fond of my first name. I tried changing it multiple times, assuming "nicknames" instead. I never quite understood how to be a girl either. I just kind of existed, sometimes forcing myself to be more like the girls I was surrounded by. I once adopted a housewife like persona to make my high school boyfriend happy. I sure wasn't. Once COVID lockdowns started, I experimented with names and pronouns quite a bit. "Tenney" was my name for a while. Picked it because it referenced the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who. I used she/they pronouns from 2021 to 2023. At one point I tried to adopt the name "Anna" again since there was a Supernatural character with that name. No. The name was still sounding too feminine for me. I don't want to be seen as any specific gender 100% of the time. I decided to use any pronouns, and finally found a name: Terrin Jensen. Terrin for a little-known baseball player who currently plays for the Norfolk Tides. Jensen because of Jensen Ackles, the actor who brought my favorite Supernatural character alive. I wouldn't have started finding myself without finding Supernatural first. And the name altogether was much more gender neutral. Thus, I came to the conclusion that I'm genderfluid. I haven't fully come out since my mom would take me renaming myself in vain. I also feel weird trying to explain my gender to my 65 year old dad. He understands the rest of the LGBTQ+ community besides anything under the trans umbrella. I have only been fully out to one workplace I've worked at since that application was the only one that accommodated a chosen name. I also see how the new presidential administration wants to handle people like me. Our genders don't matter to the government, we're to be our assigned gender at birth. The media matches this too. Living outside the gender binary isn't really respected. With my cinema degree, I want to change that. I've started writing my capstone film that reflects a queer romantic relationship like the one I am currently in with my fiancé. Neither of us are on the gender binary and we identify as bisexual and pansexual. We love each other as people. People beyond gender. Both main characters in the film are queer. Neither will be a punchline or a tragic ending like how Hollywood either laughs or buries their gays. I was influenced to go for a cinema degree by watching two YouTubers. James Rolfe of Cinemassacre, behind the Angry Video Game Nerd series was the first one. Seeing him produce the episodes himself outside of mainstream media had a charm to it. He only answered to himself to create comical reviews of games from yesteryear that were far from award winning game cabinet staples. I knew I wanted to create content like James one day. The other YouTuber that inspired me was Dan Bell, creator of the Dead Mall Series. He creates mini documentaries of failing shopping centers. This directly inspired the documentary I made in high school that led to me finding out that I have a talent in filmmaking. I'm passionate about filmmaking because there are stories to be told. Stories that Hollywood moguls either wouldn't dare to touch, or would handle improperly. There's also a charm to independent filmmaking that Hollywood can't replicate. Every independent film is a labor of love. These films truly are examples of "quality over quantity" since they're not about turning blockbuster profits. They're about telling stories that mean something to the filmmakers.

My low-income background can only stop me from obtaining my bachelor's degree as much as I allow it to. I got an associates degree to help cut down on the cost. However, my background is now catching up to me now that I'm three semesters away from graduating with the degree I have wanted for years. I come from a family that used to be part of the middle class. We no longer make enough money to be counted as such. When I was getting through community college, I also worked as a secondary income for the family. I have helped pay many bills while studying for classes. This went as far as working 10 hour overtime shifts on the evening shift at a manufacturing plant then going to class the next morning. I then went to my second job later that day. Unfortunately, my family is facing even an more dire financial situation now that my father has gone through hernia repair surgery. It's harder to focus on my education when my father is so focused on medical bills. He's suggesting that I take time off from college again while he figures things out financially. I took a year off in 2023 and worked while navigating the college transfer process. Taking time off again isn't ideal now that I have a pathway to graduation. I pride myself in being a hardworking person. The hard work gets me farther than being complacent with being in a family that is barely getting by, and has gotten me to where I am a year and a half from getting my degree. I now need this scholarship to help obtain my educational goal of completing my bachelor's degree. This scholarship would help me stay in school by paying a small portion of the money I owe the college after financial aid. I could focus on classes without worrying about money. My performance in college will not drop due to a tight financial situation. I wish to complete my college education in spite of being from a low-income background. It is my time to hold my degree. I continue to do the work, it is my time to see the results of that work. I believe my degree can help me earn more money than my father currently does. I can only make my beliefs a reality with being able to focus on class, not cash.

In the 11th grade, I chose to self-produce a documentary for my National History Day competition. I had previously been in arts education for instrumental music with little understanding of film and video production. However, I did have the desire to learn. I had been making shorter videos for class projects when I was allowed to in the past. Making this documentary was different. I fully researched, wrote, shot footage, was the voiceover, and edited the whole project. The first words that pointed towards this being my pathway within the arts came from the judges at the school level. “This looks like you have a future in film.” My main inspirations for my interest in film are independent filmmakers James Rolfe and Dan Bell and the movie “Oppenheimer” (2023). These inspirations led to me entering the Cinema program at McDaniel College. I first found James on YouTube in the 6th grade in his two-part analysis as to whether the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Genesis was the better console. I became a fan of his web series, “The Angry Video Game Nerd” and its corresponding movie. I’d also watch his behind-the-scenes video on how episodes of his web series were made. I have wanted to be like him ever since. Later, I’d find Dan Bell’s “Dead Mall Series” on YouTube as well. His videos focused on shopping centers close to their demise. His commentary on why the shopping centers were struggling combined with his cinematography and editing made for interesting watches. Watching his videos directly inspired me to make my documentary in high school on the history of Montgomery Ward. As for “Oppenheimer”, I saw it in theatres not too long after its initial release. I was transfixed by the cinematography and musical score more than anything else. The cinematography synchs with the film score in a way that no other film can replicate due to how the music production was done after the film was initially shot. I’d go on to analyze this film in my Introduction to Cinema class at McDaniel, my first semester in the program. I was first pushed to keep pursuing my craft by my Advanced Placement World History teacher, Samuel Spinder, the year I made my documentary. He oversaw the project and gave me guidance to keep going with it when other students would have stopped. He also had me screen my documentary for the class and was proud of how far I went with the project. Later, I’d be pushed further by my now-fiancé to pursue my degree. We met through similar interests bringing us together on TikTok where I’ve been a short-form content creator for a few years. He gives me the motivation to keep going by listening to me when studying cinema gets tough. They also have starred in some of my class projects so I can get them done without worrying about who’s going to be in front of the camera. I can just focus on being behind it. With the scholarship, I can focus less on how I’ll pay for college so I can focus on my arts education. I will always keep pushing to go farther in film since I know the future will be bright.

My artistic experience in Maryland that led me to where I am now happened on May 11th, 2019. This was Maryland History Day, the state level of competition within the National History Day organization. That school year's competition theme was "Triumphs and Tragedy in History". I created a 10-minute documentary entitled "The Triumph of American Retail, Followed By Its Tragic Demise: The Story of Montgomery Ward". The documentary followed the creation of the Montgomery Ward brand from its days as a humble mail-order catalog to a well-known department store that would eventually go defunct in 2001. I was passionate about every aspect of the project, meticulously researching, photographing, scriptwriting, and editing to craft this documentary. It was my favorite part of the school year, and I wanted to continue with this afterward. This project opened up the pathway of taking multimedia classes in high school as an elective and drove me to pursue more. I took art, photography, and theatre classes while in community college and worked on applications to different filmmaking and cinema degrees. I also kept the video-making and storytelling passion alive through short-form videos I made for social media. I've never stopped with the passion since that documentary. I now attend McDaniel College in Westminster. Maryland as a Cinema major and a Theatre Arts/Political Science double minor. I'm excited for the stories I can tell in the future.