Get your class content in at least two forms! Read your textbook before class, and attend lectures! Or attend the lectures and go to office hours for more help. Most schools have free tutoring as well! Go to lectures and tutoring. Just make sure you go over your class content at least twice so you will be ready for the exams. And please, attend lectures! It helps a lot. @annie_frank28

"I wish I would have started when I was younger." Time and time again that is what I hear if I ask anyone older than 30 how they handle their finances, and what they would have done differently if they had the chance to start all over. "Start saving young," they said, "if not you'll regret it." For a while, I only understood, what all the adults in my life were telling me, on a surface level. If I start earlier I would be able to contribute more to my savings. But couldn't that be made up later? Well, the answer is yes and no. I found the real answer when I came across a video online explaining exactly why it was important to start saving earlier: compound interest. Because I started contributing to investment accounts when I turned 18 instead of when I turn 30, I will be able to reinvest the money I make on interest. This means that to reach my savings goals I will have to contribute less money over time if I start at 18 than I would have to contribute when I turn 30. Looking back I can't believe it took me so long to figure that out, but I am so glad I did. Now I will be able to save smarter and give my future self a fighting chance in the financial world.

My favorite way to help others is to volunteer at my local food bank called the Food Shelf. The Food Shelf is basically a small grocery store that is run mostly by volunteers and a few employees of the community resource center. Being there is super fun because I basically got to talk to my friend all day while we sorted donations, prepared meal boxes, cleaned, organized the back, collected clients' groceries, and placed them in their cars. During the summer of 2020, many members of my community were negatively affected by COVID-19, the Food Shelf was in desperate need of more volunteers as people could only volunteer in two-week blocks, then they had to take two weeks off to slow the spread. I ended up spending over eighty hours volunteering there that summer, over sixty of those were with one of my friends. We really enjoyed ourselves and got to help out many of our fellow community members in the process.

Chain one, yarn over, pull through repeat. Chain one, yarn over, pull through repeat. Repeat… repeat… repeat… I fall into a trance as crocheting puts my mind at ease. It wanders off as my fingers mindlessly repeat the actions: yarn over, pull through and go into the next available space. I learned how to crochet in the last month of my senior year of high school. After school finished I continued to crochet into the summer. I learned to crochet a cute shirt, I wore it on several occasions and even made several for my friends to wear. Now I am taking on the huge project of creating a blanket big enough to fit a full-sized bed. Crocheting is a way for me to take my mind away from the world and put my hands to work. I can watch a show, or listen to music or an audiobook while my hands work away. It helps me feel a little bit productive while I am relaxing, which keeps me from feeling guilty about “wasting my time,” even though time spent relaxing is never a waste. Crocheting also gave me a little bit of consistency in my life when I moved out of state for college and everything seemed to be different. Crocheting stayed the same and it brings me joy.

Chain one, yarn over, pull through repeat. Chain one, yarn over, pull through repeat. Repeat… repeat… repeat… I fall into a trance as crocheting puts my mind at ease. It wanders off as my fingers mindlessly repeat the actions: yarn over, pull through and go into the next available space. I learned how to crochet in June of 2021. I had a few weeks left of my senior year of high school, and honestly not a lot left to do. Most of my classes had already finished covering material and let me have a free period to work on other classes. I had nothing to do, and I wanted to put all of this newfound free time to use. I had always loved making things with my hands and wanted something to keep them occupied while I listened to music or watched YouTube videos. I went online and ordered a pack of crochet hooks on a Friday. They arrived at my house before the next school day, and I was able to track down some yarn and shoved everything in my backpack. That Monday I looked up two videos on YouTube and started practicing. My first few attempts were less than stellar. The yarn somehow became a trapezoid instead of a square. But I did not get discouraged and pulled out all the yarn and kept practicing. By the end of that week Wednesday, I knew two different stitches and could crochet in straight lines consistently. This may not seem super impressive, but I was proud of myself. After school finished I continued to crochet into the summer. I learned to crochet a cute shirt, I wore it on several occasions and even made several for my friends to wear. Now I am taking on the huge project of creating a blanket big enough to fit a full-sized bed. Crocheting is a way for me to take my mind away from the world and put my hands to work. I can watch a show, or listen to music or an audiobook while my hands work away. It helps me feel a little bit productive while I am relaxing, which keeps me from feeling guilty about “wasting my time,” even though time spent relaxing is never a waste. Crocheting also gave me a little bit of consistency in my life when I moved out of state for college and everything seemed to be different. Crocheting stayed the same and it brings me joy.

1) Steve is a monkey and he deserves bananas. I will give Steve a banana if I win this scholarship. 2) My goal is to make enough money in my future career to have a strawberry plant. I would get a bee with the plant and name him Bert. That way he will be a Bert bee! 3) I pole-vaulted over a bar in tack. I used a pole, ran, and jumped. I overcame it at the first track meet of the year!

"I wish I would have started when I was younger." Time and time again that is what I hear if I ask anyone older than 30 how they handle their finances, and what they would have done differently if they had the chance to start all over. "Start saving young," they said, "if not you'll regret it." For a while, I only understood, what all the adults in my life were telling me, on a surface level. If I start earlier I would be able to contribute more to my savings. But couldn't that be made up later? Well, the answer is yes and no. I found the real answer when I came across a video online explaining exactly why it was important to start saving earlier: compound interest. Because I started contributing to investment accounts when I turned 18 instead of when I turn 30, I will be able to reinvest the money I make on interest. This means that to reach my savings goals I will have to contribute less money over time if I start at 18 than I would have to contribute when I turn 30. Looking back I can't believe it took me so long to figure that out, but I am so glad I did. Now I will be able to save smarter and give my future self a fighting chance in the financial world.

“Annie, do you think you could stay for an extra two hours? I know you’ve already been here for a long time but no one else volunteered.” Rhonda, one of the workers at the food shelf asked me. “Oh for sure,” I said with my arms stuck in soapy water up to my elbows. “I don’t mind helping out.” I was already seven hours into the eight hours worth of shifts I had picked up, two more hours would not kill me. Besides I love my community’s food shelf, during a global pandemic the least I could do was spend two more hours of my time volunteering there. That is what I love about my community. We have so many services dedicated to helping and supporting one another. It is exciting to know that, while not many people can volunteer at five o’clock on a Tuesday night, we still have so many people that are willing to donate and volunteer to help further the common good. As a Sunday School teacher that is all I can hope to teach my students that service to others and service to their community is a service to God. Service is one of the pillars of my life, and it is my goal to inspire as many people as I can to serve with me. That is all I can ever hope to achieve. Of course I have other ambitions as well. I want to travel and see the world. There are so many great things about this world and I want to see and do it all. From the beautiful dances of different cultures that I hope to learn one day, to the amazing architecture around the globe, I want to experience every last bit of it. The world is so wonderfully diverse that it would be devastating to me if I could not see the world through someone else’s cultural lens for a change. I would like to graduate college with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and business management. I would also like to one day become a foster parent. Becoming a foster has always been a dream of mine, I know that it will be a lot of work but I feel that I would be able to give children and teens within the foster care system a good and loving home. Before I can do this, however, I need to become financially independent and stable. In order to achieve this goal as quickly as possible, I would like to graduate from college early in an effort to minimize debt. By becoming a foster parent and continuing to volunteer both in and outside of my community I believe that I can truly make a difference in this world. Even if that difference is small overall, it will be deeply felt by a few people.

“Wait, I thought it was spelled P-O-M-E, pome, because it rhymes with home.” I told my ninth grade English teacher, Mr. Stanina, one day after class. “No, Annie, it’s spelled P-O-E-M, poem.” He said with pity in his eyes. “I’ll never be able to spell,” I said “I might as well just give up now.” I had always struggled with reading and writing. I was put in the lowest level reading groups, had to do fluency folders, and was the last in my class to test out of a set of spelling words for our spelling tests. I had a hard time believing that any college would take me because of this. I did everything I could to build myself up in every other aspect of my life, but still I was incredibly insecure about what I considered to be my biggest failure as a student and as a person. That was until Mr. Stanina taught me in ninth grade. Mr. Stanina worked us to the bone in his class. Which was a trait that I simultaneously admired and detested. I read more books and short stories in his class than I did in any other class before or after that. I wrote more in-class essays than I did regular essays in the next year. I could see myself improving with every essay I wrote and every book I read. While my spelling was improving little by little, my word choice and use of rhetorical devices improved greatly. Mr. Stanina helped me improve my confidence as a writer, and eventually I felt I deserved to be in his class. He was always pushing us, and at the end of the year he told us that because we had survived his class and passed it we could handle any English class after. I stayed after class that day and asked him if he thought I could handle college English classes with my terrible reading and writing skills. He told me something that I have never forgotten. He said “Annie, you only take a bit longer to read, and you write wonderfully. If you type your essays, you will be more than fine in college. Sure you mispronounce words from time to time, when reading out loud, but so does everyone else.” I cannot say that I never doubt my ability to write, but I can say with confidence that Mr. Stanina helped me more than anyone else ever had. I applied to colleges and got in, with the application essay that I wrote. Now I enter my essays and speeches into contests of all kinds, and I will be attending a university I love, all because of Mr. Stanina. He gave me the confidence I needed to write without worrying about my pesky spelling.

“Who wants to be the cashier and make change for customers?” My always enthusiastic Girl Scout troop leader asked my second-grade troop. “Oh, I do! I do!” I said bouncing on my tiptoes with my hand high above my head. “Alright, Annie. But if anyone else wants to switch with you later please do. You have been the cashier the last two times you were at the cookie booth. I don’t want you to get worn out!” She replied. As my eight-year-old self was setting up our money box one of my troop mates asked me “why do you want to be the cashier anyway?” “I just love making change for people!” I replied. “But why?” she had asked, “math is boring.” It was always difficult for me to relate to my troop mates point of view. Even as a child I was always drawn to math. For some inexplicable reason I loved figuring out how much money I owed someone if they gave me twenty dollars and bought two boxes of cookies, as fast as I could in my little mind. As I got older and entered middle school, I realized that math was helping me make friends in my classes. Being placed in my school’s advanced math programs was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I struggled at first, as many do, but as I started working and reasoning through the homework questions with my equally confused classmates, I started to not only understand the problems, but also the process and logic behind them. This is also what helped me to make friends in the class as there is no greater academic bond than struggling and helping each other with difficult problems. I later figured out that the logic and reasoning behind math was why I was drawn to it. There is always a process or two to lead me to the correct solution or solutions to any problem whether it was simple addition or college level calculus. After I completed my middle school journey I ventured onto high school. There I realized that math had so many real world applications. My physics, economics, chemistry, biology, and statistics classes showed me truly how much math impacts the society we live in today. Physics taught me to look at the world around me through a new lens. It made me wonder about the mechanics behind bridges and planes. The math behind economics, statistics, chemistry, and biology gave me ways to analyze and quantify different data points. Math allowed me to fully dive into each subject and embrace the new material in each. I was able to view the world through each lens and get a better understanding of each. I wondered how many different sugars or deoxyribose are needed to make up all of the DNA in every living person and the processes that go along with living. I see a country and wonder what their gross domestic product is and if they are efficiently using their resources, and what could be done better if the math behind their processes lined up. Statistics made me wonder what could be done to help different groups of people who were affected by events and situations such as natural disasters. Knowing how to interpret data has made a world of difference for me as a young person because I am able to more easily discern what data can be trusted and what data has made itself sectiable to errors. Without math and my understanding of it, I would not be able to live the life I have today.

Avatar The Last Airbender was the most impactful animated show that I have ever seen. It not only has wonderfully loveable characters and great world building, it also tackles extremely difficult subjects such as genocide, grief, and the ambiguities of war, in great ways. Avatar Aang taught me that in a world filled with hate and loss, acts of kindness and forgiveness can stop cycles of injustice. As, in the words of Avatar Kyoshi “only justice will bring peace.” The avatars inspired me as a child and still inspire me today to do what is right and do my best to better the world around me.

I stared down at my lunch tray, eating as quickly as I could so no one would see me sitting by myself. I dumped my tray and hurried to the media center, where I sat huddled in a corner counting down the seconds until the end of lunch. As soon as the bell rang I walked as quickly as I could to my English class, I was always the first one there and I hoped that no one would wonder why. All of my friends had a different lunch shift than me, which left me to face what every middle school student dreads: I had to eat lunch at an empty table. For the first two weeks of seventh grade, I ate at an empty table. Until one day, a girl who I barely knew came up to me and asked, “Hey, do you want to come and sit with us?” I looked up from my tray and slowly nodded. She motioned for me to follow her, I grabbed my lunch and we winded through the sea of tables until we got back to hers. “Hey everyone, this is Annie and she is going to sit with us now.” She said to the table. They went around and introduced themselves to me. Then the girl who led me to the table said “And I’m Ava.” Ava’s small gesture spoke volumes about her character. She was the same age as me, but at that time she was my hero. Ava made me feel as though I were a part of something. The people at that table soon became close friends of mine, and I started to think of it as our table, not just Ava’s table. That gesture meant that I could take my time eating my lunch. I could be surrounded by people who cared about me and who I cared about. I could relax and laugh during lunch, and I did not need to hide out in the media center anymore. Her act of kindness still has an impact on my life today six years later. Whenever I see someone sitting by themselves or struggling to make friends, I go over to them, just as Ava did to me, and I talk with them. I want them to feel welcomed and cared about, like how Ava made me feel. I pay forward the kindness that was given to me and hope that the next person does the same. I would like to see the world become a kinder place, through acts of kindness both big and small.

“Find the work, see the work, do the work.” My lead robotics mentor, Mr. Woitalla, said to our team. He liked to start out each of our weekly meetings the same way, by giving us a, sometimes short, motivational talk. We called this “Woitalla Time.” I have taken this to heart especially because I am a woman in STEM. I must work twice as hard to be considered equal to my male counterparts, and there is always more work to be done. This has helped me be more productive in my everyday life, and to constantly look for more to do with my life. His words made me want to take on more; I joined more school activities and took harder classes in subjects that were new to me. I took up coding and learned the languages C++ and Java, to help my robotics team. I also taught myself how to solder when there were not any classes that could fit into my schedule that challenged me. I have shown myself that I am capable of much more than I originally thought, thanks to Mr. Woitalla’s motivating words, and the challenges I gave myself because of them. They have inspired me to double major in both accounting and business management. I know that I am able to do this and maintain balance within my life because Mr. Woitalla pushed me to do more and to be more.

When I was a young girl I loved being in Girl Scouts for one reason and one reason only: to sell cookies. I loved making posters, setting up our cookie booths, making sales, and most importantly, handling transactions. I was overjoyed every year when my troop got our order forms because it meant that we could start selling our world-famous cookies. Each year I had one simple goal: sell the most cookies in my troop. Every moment that I was not inside of my house I had at least twelve boxes of cookies in a variety of flavors just in case someone might want to buy some. I could not check to see if the number of cookie boxes I sold matched up with the amount of money I had in my orange envelope. I absolutely loved counting, and it gave me a strange calm feeling. This is when I started to realize my love for math. I figured out that the reason I loved cookie season so much because it meant seemingly endless days of counting money and organizing my cookies. I started pushing myself to solve math problems faster and faster each day, or attempting to challenge myself by trying more difficult math problems were daily occurrences. I needed to ensure that I was learning because I craved knowledge in any form, at that age. I loved math and still do, to the extent that even learning it in a different language could not stop me. A degree in accounting would mean the world to me because I could continue to do what fills me with childish delight. I still love both business and math, and they bring me so much joy that continuing to study them my entire life sounds like a dream come true. I want to continue doing what makes my childhood self proud. STEM subjects such as math will require me to continue improving upon my logic and problem-solving skills. These skills are helpful in any work environment because they will allow everyone to work more efficiently and lead to fewer mistakes. My studies of math will help me prepare for any career I choose. However, I already have a future career in mind. I would like to become an accountant at a large accounting firm and work my way up the corporate ladder.

When I was a young girl I loved being in Girl Scouts for one reason and one reason only: to sell cookies. I loved making posters, setting up our cookie booths, making sales, and handling transactions. I was overjoyed every year when my troop got our order forms because it meant that we could start selling our world-famous cookies. Each year I had one simple goal: sell the most cookies in my troop. Every moment that I was not inside of my house I had at least twelve boxes of cookies in a variety of flavors just in case someone might want to buy some. I could not check to see if the number of cookie boxes I sold matched up with the amount of money I had in my orange envelope. I absolutely loved counting, and it gave me a strange calm feeling. My love of math also started around this same time. Pushing myself to solve math problems faster and faster each day, or attempting to challenge myself by trying more difficult math problems were daily occurrences. I needed to ensure that I was learning because I craved knowledge in any form, at that age. I loved math and still do, to the extent that even learning it in a different language could not stop me. A degree in both business management and accounting would mean the world to me because I could continue to do what makes me fill with childish delight. I still love both business and math, and they bring me so much joy that continuing to study them my entire life sounds like a dream come true. I want to continue doing what makes my childhood self proud. A degree in both business management and accounting would give me some much-needed flexibility in my career. I plan on getting a job that would allow me to work remotely, preferably for a large accounting firm, while I travel around the world. I plan to deliver results both consistently and above expectations. That way I can work my way up the corporate ladder and eventually work my dream job of either a partner at a large accounting firm or a CEO of a company.

My mother is the most influential woman in my life. She has defied the odds and gender norms her entire life. She got her pilot’s license when she was still in high school and she became a flight instructor after college. After which she started working for American Airlines. She has been working in a male-dominated field her entire life, and she was very young compared to most of the other pilots, due to a huge gap in hiring new pilots, because of layoffs throughout the industry. My mother, Amy, has always encouraged me and my brothers to go to college. She thinks furthering our education is a necessary step in our lives. She has supported me through my many fundraisers and volunteering hours and is very proud of me for giving back to our community. She always made sure I was able to attend lots of volunteering events in my younger years which sparked my love for community service. She taught me the importance of giving back to my community and paying back what was given to me by our community. I would like to carry my mother’s grace and never-ending persistence into my future career as an accountant. STEM-related fields, especially math, are consistently dominated by men. I would like to be one of the women that balances the gender scales. I will continue to fight for equality in the workplace, just as my mother has done her entire life. I would like to give these wonderful lessons that my mother has taught me to the next generation of leaders. I would like to become a foster parent for my community to take in children who have fallen on hard times. I want to give them a wonderful life just as my mother has given me. I would like to inspire them to treat everyone with kindness, respect, and to have empathy. I would like to have my future foster children come with me to volunteer to instill a sense of community in them. Making their lives better will not only benefit them but the community as well. After all, kindness is often repaid tenfold, and I would like to continue the cycle.

My community has felt the economic impacts of COVID-19. Many community members have been unable to afford common necessities, such as groceries. Our local food bank has seen a soaring demand, that they have been struggling to keep up with. This has been occurring throughout my community, my country, and our world for centuries. I would like to see the United Nations’ global goal of “Zero Hunger” around the world, be achieved. I want to make sure that no one in my community goes to bed hungry. I would like to see their empty kitchens, filled to the brims with food. I have been working in my community to achieve this global goal, on a smaller scale. Over the past two years, I have spent over 265 hours volunteering within and outside of my community. Over the summer of 2020, I spent around 80 hours volunteering at Northfield Community Action Center’s Food Shelf. I sorted through produce two days a week, I picked out which produce items were still good to eat, and which items needed to go in the “pig-boxes.” “Pig-boxes'' are boxes we fill with food that is no longer good for people to eat, and they are donated to a local pig farmer at the end of each week. I shopped for clients, as they could not come inside due to COVID-19. I would go out to their cars in the parking lot, take their orders through a series of questions on a tablet that the Food Shelf provided, got their groceries from inside, then I walked out to their car and filled it with groceries. I also processed and sorted donations. After the food shelf received a donation I would weigh the donation, check the dates on the items to ensure they were still good to eat, and sort them into the different categories the food shelf has for organization purposes. For example, we had cooking and baking items and canned meals. I also reorganized their stock room by moving all of the donation boxes from their storeroom in the front to the back and vice versa. I know my time at the Food Shelf had a big impact on members of my community who have fallen on hard times. They were always sure to thank us for what we were doing and were really appreciative. I know I made a small but fairly consistent impact on their lives, and hopefully, I brought them some joy. On a more global scale, I held a fundraiser to help alleviate the burden that many people from Yemen are facing right now. I made over one hundred friendship bracelets and sold them in both my school and my community. This was made extremely difficult due to COVID-19, but I was able to sell about thirty friendship bracelets. I donated everything I earned to Yemen, and I donated both my time and the cost of materials. I chose to make friendship bracelets because I wanted to remind members of my community that we are all global citizens and we should all help each other. We needed to extend our friendship to people who needed it most and continue to consistently do so to make the world a kinder and more peaceful place.

My mother is the most influential woman in my life. She has defied the odds and gender norms her entire life. She got her pilot’s license when she was still in high school and she became a flight instructor after college. After which she started working for American Airlines. She has been working in a male dominated field her entire life, and she was very young compared to most of the other pilots, due to a huge gap in hiring new pilots. My mother, Amy, has always encouraged me and my brothers to go to college. She thinks furthering our education is a necessary step in our lives. She has supported me through my many fundraisers and volunteering hours, and is very proud of me for giving back to our community. She always made sure I was able to attend lots of volunteering events in my younger years which sparked my love for community service. I would like to carry my mother’s grace and never ending persistence into my future career as an accountant. STEM related fields, especially math, are consistently dominated by men. I would like to be one of the women that balances the gender scales. I will continue to fight for equality in the workplace, just as my mother has done her entire life.

To be involved in my community, is to give back what was given to me. It is extremely important for people to give back to their communities, because it takes a town to raise a child. Communities often help people in so many ways it is difficult to quantify, but communities need people to give back so they can continue to give. The cycle of giving and giving back must be maintained by the community, in order for everyone to benefit. Learning to repay people’s kindness with kindness is an important part of life, and should be something everyone strives to do. It is important to be involved in a community, because it is beneficial to everyone, and it is the kind thing to do. Over the past two years I have spent over 265 hours volunteering within and outside of my community. Over the summer of 2020 I spent around 80 hours volunteering at Northfield Community Action Center’s Food Shelf. I sorted through produce two days a week, I picked out which produce items were still good to eat, and which items needed to go in the “pig-boxes.” “Pig-boxes'' are boxes we fill with food that is no longer good for people to eat, and they are donated to a local pig farmer at the end of each week. I shopped for clients, as they could not come inside due to COVID-19. I would go out to their cars in the parking lot, take their orders through a series of questions on a tablet that the Food Shelf provided, got their groceries from inside, then I walked out to their car and filled it with groceries. I also processed and sorted donations. After the food shelf received a donation I would weigh the donation, check the dates on the items to ensure they were still good to eat, and sort them into the different categories the food shelf has for organization. For example we had cooking and baking items and canned meals. I also reorganized their stock room by moving all of the donation boxes from their store room in the front to the back and vice versa. I know my time at the Food Shelf had a big impact on members of my community who have fallen on hard times. They were always sure to thank us for what we were doing and were really appreciative. I know I made a small but fairly consistent impact on their lives, and hopefully I brought them some joy. I was a youth assistant for Sunday school at Bethel Lutheran Church in Northfield, Minnesota for two years. Every Sunday I would attend an elementary Sunday school class and help the students with their projects for the day, and I made sure the students were listening to their teachers during the lesson. If the teacher from the class I was assigned to could not attend class that Sunday I would step in and teach the lesson for that week. That only happened about four or five times in the two years I volunteered there. I assisted with the kindergarteners my first year, and I helped teach the third graders in my second year. I had lots of fun with the kids, and we grew really close over the school year. I make sure to say hello to them whenever I go to the elementary schools for pep rallies. I hope that I became an older sister figure to them, because I like to think of them as family. In the future I hope to become an accountant. I would like to go to high schools and teach juniors and seniors how to do basic taxes. Many of them will have started their first jobs by that time and I would like to arm them with the knowledge they will need for life beyond high school. Many schools, as of now, do not teach their students necessary finance skills, I would like to bridge that gap in my community.

“Tina you fat lard come get some dinner,” Napoleon said to his lama, from our tiny DVD player. My cousins and I all howled with laughter in our old sleeping bags, from the floor of our cablin. After my first time watching Napoleon Dynamite with my family when I was seven years old, I fell in love with it. We watched it four times the first day I saw it, and continue to watch it at least once every year when our family gets together. We constantly reference it, and the mere mention of Napoleon's name is enough to bring back years worth of memories. Napoleon's wacky dance routine in his “Vote for Pedro” shirt, always brings a smile to our faces. Napoleon Dynamite is more than just a movie to me. It is quality time spent with family. It is cold cabin nights where my family is snuggled together on our beat up couch, stealing grandma’s famous popcorn from each other’s bowls. It is also a comedic masterpiece, that I would recommend to anyone looking for a fantastic movie to watch.

Over the past two years I have spent over 265 hours volunteering within and outside of my community. Over the summer of 2020 I spent around 80 hours volunteering at Northfield Community Action Center’s Food Shelf. I sorted through produce two days a week, I picked out which produce items were still good to eat, and which items needed to go in the “pig-boxes.” “Pig-boxes'' are boxes we fill with food that is no longer good for people to eat, and they are donated to a local pig farmer at the end of each week. I shopped for clients, as they could not come inside due to COVID-19. I would go out to their cars in the parking lot, take their orders through a series of questions on a tablet that the Food Shelf provided, got their groceries from inside, then I walked out to their car and filled it with groceries. I also processed and sorted donations. After the food shelf received a donation I would weigh the donation, check the dates on the items to ensure they were still good to eat, and sort them into the different categories the food shelf has for organization. For example we had cooking and baking items and canned meals. I also reorganized their stock room by moving all of the donation boxes from their store room in the front to the back and vice versa. I know my time at the Food Shelf had a big impact on members of my community who have fallen on hard times. They were always sure to thank us for what we were doing and were really appreciative. I know I made a small but fairly consistent impact on their lives, and hopefully I brought them some joy. I was a youth assistant for Sunday school at Bethel Lutheran Church in Northfield, Minnesota for two years. Every Sunday I would attend an elementary Sunday school class and help the students with their projects for the day, and I made sure the students were listening to their teachers during the lesson. If the teacher from the class I was assigned to could not attend class that Sunday I would step in and teach the lesson for that week. That only happened about four or five times in the two years I volunteered there. I assisted with the kindergarteners my first year, and I helped teach the third graders in my second year. I had lots of fun with the kids, and we grew really close over the school year. I make sure to say hello to them whenever I go to the elementary schools for pep rallies. I hope that I became an older sister figure to them, because I like to think of them as family. In the future I hope to become a foster parent. I want to provide children in the foster care system with a loving home, and prepare them as best I can for adulthood. By becoming a foster parent I will be able to positively affect the lives of children within the foster care system, and hopefully I will help them become happy, healthy, functioning adults. It is also another way I can give back to my community because it has given me so much.

Legacy is the story you leave behind when you move on. It is the combination of what you did and who you were. There are many different types of valuable legacies one can leave behind, however there is only one that is important to me. I want to leave behind a legacy of kindness in my community. When I was a young girl, my grandmother told me a story. “Where were you this weekend?” my six year old self asked my grandma. “Papa and I went to his high school reunion.” She replied. “Oh, what was that like?” I questioned. “It was nice to see everyone he grew up with again.” She paused, then her tone turned more serious as she looked at me. “You know Annie, you should always be nice to your classmates.” “I know grandma, don’t worry.” “When we were at the reunion one of papa’s old classmates came up to me and said ‘Oh you know Tom was nice to everyone in high school.’” She said choking on her last few words with a smile. “He said that, after all these years, he still remembers how papa treated everyone well. Really Annie, be nice to your classmates, it will make a difference.” That moment when my grandmother choked on her words has stuck with me over ten years later. She knew that my grandfather made a huge impact on the lives of those around him, and she wanted me to carry on that legacy. Ever since that moment I have tried to do just that. I have and continue to try to let kindness lead my life, and to make a positive impact on those around me. One of the best examples of when I made a positive impact on others would be when I made paper baskets, filled them with candy and taped one to every locker that belonged to someone in my grade for May Day. May Day soon became one of my favorite holidays, because every year more and more of my friends wanted to help me. So many people wanted to help me make someone else’s day better, that it made my life better in the process. That is the legacy I hope to leave behind, I want to be the person that made other people want to make someone else’s day a little better.

The Australian Wildfires devastated people and animals alike. My friends and I could not sit idly by and do nothing. We decided to raise money for WIRES, an animal relief organization, and the Australian Red Cross. We were able to donate $1300 by collecting donations and selling t-shirts, stickers and bracelets. We got many local businesses to display our donation bucket and help our cause. We sublimated 100 T-shirts and designed the bracelets and stickers by ourselves. We sold our merchandise during our high school lunch, at our middle school’s lunch, and outside of of high school’s basketball game.