As children, we depend on others to care for us. We seek their love and hope they have our best interest in mind. My childhood has been marked by constant uprooting and change. Being a military child, I have experienced the challenges of adjusting to a new home, a new community and even a completely new culture. I am not not alone. Being part of the military allows you to meet many others who are in the same situation. Through a common connection, I met Norman. Norman was also due to move soon. When we first met, I could immediately sense his concerns and fears. Leaving his old home and comfort was a challenge to him. His dad, just like mine, had to leave for an extended amount of time. The difference though was that I was well used to separation, Norman was not. This was the first time he was uprooted and exposed to the military life. His body language was tense. He was afraid not knowing what the future may bring now that his dad had joined the military. I knew exactly what he felt like and let him know that I would take care of him - just like my parents were taking care of me. As soon as Norman realized that he would be safe in our home, he relaxed and rested his paws on my lap. Norman is a military pet. His human needed someone to care of his furry friend while he was away. The non-profit organization Dogs on Deployment was his answer. We first saw Norman on their website. Reading through his profile, we knew it would be an ideal match. Our family volunteered to foster Norman and provide him with the love and care his human dad couldn’t for the time being. It is through programs and fosters that military families are oftentimes able to keep their pets. Without them the pets end up being neglected and poorly cared for, even if the family loves them and does their best. This happened to my childhood companion Sam, a Labrador Retriever with the biggest heart you can imagine. Sam and I grew up together. He helped me learn how to walk. We snuggled and napped together on the couch. Even though I was little, I still have many fond memories of my loyal companion. When it was time to move again, my family searched for a new home. They were still unfamiliar with the military moving process but put their trust in a pet service that seemed reliable. My mother begrudgingly entrusted Sam to a dog kennel while we lived in military lodging for five weeks. If my mother would’ve known what she’d come back to she’d never have left him to begin with. He lost 25 pounds, had permanent damage to his nerves, and was psychologically abused. It broke our family’s heart when he died soon after. No pet should suffer like this. After Sam’s passing, my family decided not to adopt another dog while my dad is an active duty service member. Instead, we chose to dog sit and foster. Because of Sam, I am passionate about animal advocacy. I believe that as living beings under our care pets have the same rights to comfort as we do.

Guidance and direction - as a military child, these are two essentials you need as you try to make sense of an unpredictable life. Being uprooted repeatedly, trying to get used to a new home, new community and even a completely new culture is challenging. I have had one steady, guiding rock that I can rely on, a person that I know is always there for me, no matter how chaotic our current life circumstances are. That person is my mother. 17 years ago, I was born into an active-duty military family. The military life is something my immigrant mother has never experienced before. She quickly adjusted to the high-tempo lifestyle that often put her in the position of a single parent as my father was deployed to war zones for many months, in the field for weeks, or conducting exercises on the other side of the globe. My mother did not just care for me, the household, our finances, but arranged our household moves, medical treatments, school changes, and everything else. There wasn't any extended family that we could ask for help. Our nuclear family was key. Our military friends became our support network and part of every support network is mentorship. Mentorship is essential. Civilians are unable to grasp how challenging military life is. During elementary school, I learned about mentorship from my mother. She led by example and shared her experience with me and other military family members. She welcomed new families to the community, guided new spouses overwhelmed by the military lifestyle, and referred families challenged by domestic violence, substance abuse, illness, and death to the resources they needed. She has done this at every single one of our eleven duty stations, so far fostering a community that becomes stronger through mentorship. My mother has shown me that sharing your expertise, passion, and understanding with others improves our entire community. I began following her lead in the Netherlands, where we volunteered together for our Soldier and Family Readiness Group. Having been exposed to several cultures and languages due to my mother’s background, I easily adapted. When I realized that some military children were challenged by an overseas move, I began helping children who just moved to the area. Just like my mother, I shared my knowledge and experience with them to make them more comfortable in their new environment. Ten years later, I am still mentoring other military children. And my mother is still my role model and mentor. She has instilled a proactive mentorship mindset in me that I use to create positive change in our community. As I now reflect on the role of mentorship in my life, I come to one conclusion: It is a necessity. Without mentorship, our military community would not be as connected and as strong as we are. With constantly changing aspects of military life, every member of our community needs mentorship to succeed. As mentors - no matter how old we are - we create connections with people and foster positive change - a change that has a ripple effect. As Mother Teresa once said: “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” When I directly affect another individual as a youth mentor, I am able to make the biggest difference hoping that those on the receiving end are inspired to do the same for others in the future. Looking back at the role my mother has played in my life, I realize just how important mentors are. They are stones that cast themselves to make ripples.

Math makes sense. Math is a staple for me. Math is my consistency. As a military child, I am constantly on the move, never able to stay in one place for long. I bounce from one state -- or country -- to another. Oftentimes my father, who serves as a Soldier, isn't home. The one thing that has stayed consistent is math. It is something I've learned I may rely on and it is constantly evolving. In my first physics class, I knew for sure I'd pursue a STEM degree. Unlike my life so far, I was able to calculate and accurately predict where an object would land in kinematics, whereas I was used to never knowing where I would land. I could work out the amount of work a force had done on an object. I could tell you where shrapnel in an explosion would fall. What I love about math is its consistency. One can learn about the entire world through math. From math stems physics, then chemistry, then biology. It is the basis of STEM and will always be. I enjoy being able to understand a problem in its entirety, and now I can understand certain math jokes. Not only is math the foundation of other sciences but also music. I am a cellist and something that is heavily involved in string instruments is waves, which is (you guessed it) physics. Because of physics, I am able to understand the tuning of my instrument better. For instance, when I play a G on my D string my open G string will vibrate. It is something called sympathetic resonance or sympathetic vibration. Because of the structure of the waves, they are constructive. The higher G has exactly twice the frequency of the lower and when played simultaneously they increase the amplitude at the frequency of the lower pitch. This is how I am able to tell when I am perfectly in tune with another musician as well. If we play the same notes on our instrument the amplitude will double and if we play the same notes an octave apart the amplitude will still double every other period. Overall math is reliable. It is a way for me to learn about and comprehend the world. I gain new understanding through math. I learn more about how the world operates through math. Math opens a whole new lens, a new viewpoint of the world for me to explore and I am excited to dive in in college. I plan to do research in the fields of computer science and engineering. Creating real and practical solutions with the use of math to then be applied to the real world. I strive to learn, I love to learn, and what I love to learn about most of all, is math. That is why I would like to pursue a mathematics degree.

Statistics - or fake math as my calculus teacher jokingly calls it, is an extremely useful tool; though the best use I've found for it is in research. Hi, my name is Anna Galeano and I am a high school student attending a Department of Defense school in Germany graduating with an AP Capstone Diploma in 2023. I plan to do research in the fields of computer science and engineering (and am pursuing the very same majors as well). I love the idea of creating real and practical solutions with the use of math and science to then be applied to the real world. I strive to learn, I love to learn, and what I love to learn about most of all, is math and science. College will encourage and help develop my passion into something more tangible through research. Though to do this I need to first take care of the financial aspect of college, without sinking into debt. I believe I should receive this scholarship because I have already made strides in accomplishing my goals. I’m committed and will follow through. Without any funding, one of my research projects, titled "Chasing Bread Crumbs: How Sharing Seemingly Irrelevant Information May Prove to be a Vulnerability", was admitted to the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium. A brief summary of it: I built a web scraper to collect information on service members of the military to learn about how much information they post and evaluate their accounts with the procedures of OPSEC. Protecting critical information in the military is extremely important and I find computer science and networking fascinating, hence I did my project on just that. I earned first place in the continent of Europe and presented my research in New Mexico. Also, it so happens that in order to present my results well, I used statistics. It helped me both explain my research and come to my final conclusion in my presentation and paper. You might be wondering why I live overseas, well, I am a military child. Being one means I have less access to scholarships as I do not live in the States. I’ve contacted several organizations that provide scholarships to students in my state of residence, though they’ve refused to allow me to apply because I live in Germany. This is despite the fact that they do not limit their recipient through location nor high school they attend. To me, a scholarship is a great investment; an investment into my future.

Math makes sense. Math is a staple for me. Math is my consistency. As a military child, I am constantly on the move, never able to stay in one place for long. I bounce from one state -- or country -- to another. Oftentimes my father, who serves as a Soldier, isn't home. The one thing that has stayed consistent is math. It is something I've learned I may rely on and it is constantly evolving. In my first physics class, I knew for sure I'd pursue a STEM degree. Unlike my life so far, I was able to calculate and accurately predict where an object would land in kinematics, whereas I was used to never knowing where I would land. I could work out the amount of work a force had done on an object. I could tell you where shrapnel in an explosion would fall. What I love about math is its consistency. One can learn about the entire world through math. From math stems physics, then chemistry, then biology. It is the basis of STEM and will always be. I enjoy being able to understand a problem in its entirety, and now I can understand certain math jokes. Not only is math the foundation of other sciences but also music. I am a cellist and something that is heavily involved in string instruments is waves, which is (you guessed it) physics. Because of physics, I am able to understand the tuning of my instrument better. For instance, when I play a G on my D string my open G string will vibrate. It is something called sympathetic resonance or sympathetic vibration. Because of the structure of the waves, they are constructive. The higher G has exactly twice the frequency of the lower and when played simultaneously they increase the amplitude at the frequency of the lower pitch. This is how I am able to tell when I am perfectly in tune with another musician as well. If we play the same notes on our instrument the amplitude will double and if we play the same notes an octave apart the amplitude will still double every other period. Overall math is reliable. It is a way for me to learn about and comprehend the world. I gain new understanding through math. I learn more about how the world operates through math. Math opens a whole new lens, a new viewpoint of the world for me to explore and I am excited to dive in in college. I plan to do research in the fields of computer science and engineering. Creating real and practical solutions with the use of math to then be applied to the real world. I strive to learn, I love to learn, and what I love to learn about most of all, is math.