This scholarship would help me to achieve my goals of completing my Chemistry degree and becoming a certified outpatient dietitian. My mom has been a nurse my entire life and has come to be one of the smartest and well-seasoned nurses in her place of work. When I was born, my dad served in Iraq in the National Guard and was a police officer until I was 17 when he retired after 20 years with the police force. Seeing the positive impact my parents have had on the people in my community has taught me the value of hard work and has inspired me to do my part to help people. Health and wellness is a very important idea to me and I want to make it accessible for people who need it most. I feel that healthy dieting and the importance of physical activity have been lost in American culture and have been replaced by unhealthy diet trends and poor self-esteem as a result of social media. This is something that can only be properly combatted by giving people a proper understanding of how their bodies work and what a healthy diet and lifestyle look like. In order to have the proper qualifications to become a dietitian, I will require a four-year degree in addition to a certification program of at least one year. I’ve completed my associate degree but still have another three years to complete and receiving this scholarship would be extremely helpful in achieving that. In addition to the external calling to becoming a dietitian, personal experiences have also led me to choose this to be my career. When I started middle school and my childhood metabolism slowed down, I began to gain weight long before I started growing taller. At the age of thirteen, I was told that I needed to lose weight without being given the proper tools to know how to lose weight healthily or to know that at my age I did not need to lose weight at all. Nevertheless, I tried very hard to lose weight in the ways I knew, I would try to diet the way my mom did but it was unsuccessful. By the time I started high school, I still hadn’t lost any weight or grown much taller so I decided to stop eating altogether. This finally worked for me and the pounds slipped off. I thought I had finally figured my situation out but was unaware of the negative effects that would pursue. I became obsessed with losing weight and I never lost enough weight. It began to become clear that what I was doing to my body was not healthy but once again I didn’t have the tools to understand how my body worked or how to have a healthy relationship with food. Thankfully, with the intervention of therapy, as well as lots of my own research, I gained a full knowledge of the function of calories, eating disorders, and how to have a healthy balance of activity and food to maintain a healthy weight. This was a three-year journey and something that, five years later, I’m still working on. As a result of my struggles, I am fully motivated to become a person that other people can use as a resource to improve their lives and live happier and healthier lifestyles.

I was born into a conservative family in a conservative town. My entire life I was surrounded by people who all thought similar to each other. As a result, I was not often exposed to people different from those of my parents. It is certainly worth mentioning that while I did grow up around like-minded people, I was taught tolerance and kindness to all people. But I was not taught about how to understand people different from my parents. Growing up I did not have the vocabulary or experience to identify why I was different from all the people around me. I didn’t know why I preferred playing Barbies with my girl cousins than soldiers with my boy cousins, and from what I understood from the adults around me, they didn’t either. It wasn’t until I turned 15 and moved to Anchorage Alaska and was able to choose my own friends that I learned about a diverse range of people. In Alaska, all of my friends were queer, whether they were bi, trans, gay, or straight allies. I was able to meet one person who fell somewhere in the LGBTQ+ community. Thus, I was finally able to identify what these feelings I had been feeling as I grew older. Right before I turned 17, I felt that I had learned enough from my friends and came to understand the LGBTQ+ community at a level that I felt comfortable identifying as gay. The positive impact this had on my confidence and self-esteem has been profound and I owe it all to the welcoming community I found in my friends and their willingness and ability to responsibly and comprehensively educate me on people who are different than myself and people who are more like me than I ever thought existed on this Earth. Getting where I am in terms of my confidence and mental health was not without its challenges and I spent most of my young life unequipped to deal with challenges such as depression and anorexia. As a result, Chemistry is the byway through which I will get my certification to become a dietitian so that I become the help and educator that I needed for myself when I was going through my struggles. I’ve chosen Chemistry specifically because the main process through which we process our food is through chemical reactions. In addition to having a solid foundation for my Certification program, Chemistry will also give me the freedom to pursue other careers should I choose to or need to. The Nutritional Science education programs are very competitive, and while I am deeply determined to be successful in my current endeavors, I feel secure in knowing that should I be unable to complete the program, I will have the means to pursue a different career path such as pharmaceuticals or becoming a chemistry teacher.

My name is Anthony Vigil and I’m 20 years old. I’m gay and my dad was raised Catholic. As a result, my dad was not very understanding of who I was when I was younger. I always behaved feminine and my dad would criticize and sometimes yell at me for my behavior even though I was only 6. I didn’t even know what being gay was until I was 14 and I didn’t know I was gay until I was 16. I struggled to understand what I was doing wrong and I was never able to fix it. As a result of the criticism I received when I was little, by the time I was a teenager, I had very little confidence in myself and low self-esteem. This would develop into full-on depression, anxiety, and symptoms of an eating disorder when I was 15 and my parents separated. My father had left for a month-long education program for his job and came back an entirely different person. He seemed to resent us for something and the sudden change had a very negative effect on my mother. I felt pressure to keep everything together for my mom and younger brother but I failed miserably. My parents’ turbulent separation took a great toll on my entire family. Through all of this, I struggled to understand and come to terms with my sexuality. My parents’ therapist suggested to them that I was dealing with depression and should receive personal help but it wasn’t for another two years that I would finally get therapy. After a year of my parents’ separation, my dad moved back in with us under the condition that we move from our hometown in New Mexico to Alaska. This effort was in vain and would end two months later with my mom and brother moving back to New Mexico and I would be left with my father. Shortly after, I came to terms with myself as being gay and came out to my friends. This helped me gain a new sense of confidence as I was able to embrace a part of me that I had run away from for so long. But during the pandemic, the mental struggles that came with intense seasonal depression as well as the isolation of quarantine, undid any progress I had made on my mental health. As I grappled to process the trauma of my parent's situation, stacked with the new challenges of the pandemic, I asked if I could start therapy. My therapist gave me tools to help me better understand what I felt and why I felt the way I did. As a part of moving on from the past phase in my life and developing more trust between my father and me, I did something terrifying and I came out to him. When I did, he responded surprisingly well. He told me that he would always love me and that he always had a feeling. I believe part of the reason he responded so well was that he had the time to process this information as I grew up rather than it being a sudden shock to him. In a way, I am grateful for this because it meant that our relationship would only improve. This was a turning point in my mental health journey as I had done the thing I was most terrified and since then I’ve only made positive progress in strengthening my relationship with my dad and becoming who I am.

They say that history repeats itself. The patterns of wars, famines, plagues, and artistic explosions are common throughout human history starting from the man caves to the Crusades to COVID-19. However, this pattern is not limited to human nature, it dates back even further to the evolution of Earth and even further back to the birth and death of stars. Everything in our universe is thousands and thousands of patterns that from a distance look like absolute chaos. The creation and development of the universe into what it is as we understand it to be now and will understand it to be in the future is a giant tangled knot that scientists have been trying to untangle since before the Romans charted the stars. Furthermore, the saying continues that if we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it. It is important to understand to learn about the nature of our universe so that we understand, not only where we came from, but where we are going. The threat of climate change is nothing new when we look at Mars and how there once was water and now there isn’t. The only difference is humans weren’t on Mars to deplete it of resources to support life. Thus, we have a responsibility to learn how we can maintain ourselves as well as our planet. In a larger sense, when we look outward, we can learn about our ultimate destiny when our star finally collapses and dies like the billions before. This can give us an idea of what's to come, albeit millions of years from now. But knowledge is power and knowing is better than not. Personally, my interests lie in Chemistry and how chemical reactions have developed the few basic elements bouncing around in our universe into the vast array of other elements and larger substances that make up what is our universe today. I think it is easiest to understand something by starting with the basics. I’ve taken Astronomy, Biology, and Geology classes and have a general understanding of how our universe, planet, and ourselves have evolved over time, and a common denominator I’ve noticed throughout them all is Chemistry. Chemical reactions are how our universe expanded from a few hydrogen atoms in a small vacuum to 118 elements and counting. It is how we are able to learn how old our planet is and how different minerals are created and how. Chemistry is how our body takes external resources and converts them into energy for us to be able to exercise, breathe, and survive. My career goal is to become a dietitian because I want to help people who struggle with their health. But beyond that, I have a profound interest in understanding where we came from, where we are going, and why we want to get there. My desire to help people as well as my passion to better understand the world around me drive me to study and learn how everything is connected, from the Big Bang to how the carrot I ate for lunch was grown.

My name is Anthony Vigil and I’m 20 years old. I’m gay and my dad was raised Catholic. As a result, my dad was not very understanding of who I was when I was younger. I always behaved feminine and my dad would criticize and sometimes yell at me for my behavior even though I was only 6. I didn’t even know what being gay was until I was 14 and I didn’t know I was gay until I was 16. I struggled to understand what I was doing wrong and I was never able to fix it. My mom was also often criticized by him for her weight and this led her to have body confidence issues that she also inflicted upon me because I was also a heavier child growing up. As a result, by the time I was a teenager, I had very little confidence in myself and low self-esteem. This would develop into full-on depression, anxiety, and symptoms of an eating disorder when I was 15 and my parents separated. My father had left for a month-long education program for his job and came back an entirely different person. He seemed to resent us for something and the sudden change had a very negative effect on my mother. I felt pressure to keep everything together for my mom and younger brother but I failed miserably. The constant stress I was under resulted in a loss of appetite and I stopped eating in an effort to lose weight and maybe love myself a little more in a physical sense if not a mental and emotional sense. My parents’ turbulent separation had a greatly negative impact on my entire family. My mother was a victim of gaslighting and I didn’t have the tools to deal with my stress and anxiety. My parents’ therapist suggested to them that I was dealing with depression and receive personal help but it wasn’t for another two years that I would finally get therapy. After a year of my parents’ separation, my dad moved back in with us under the condition that we move from our hometown in New Mexico to Alaska. This effort was in vain and would end two months later with my mom and brother moving back to New Mexico and I would be left with my father. Six months into living in Alaska, COVID-19 hit. In the time between moving to Alaska and the pandemic, I had been able to relatively recover from my difficulties with eating. But during the pandemic, the mental struggles that came with intense seasonal depression and quarantine, I stopped eating again because I simply didn’t want to care for myself and I didn’t want to exist anymore. This alarmed me and I begged my dad for a therapist and I was given that. This was able to help me have the tools to develop healthy eating habits and I was also able to learn how to love myself for who I was and have better self-esteem. This included coming out to my family who all took it better than I had expected. This was not the end of my story or struggles with mental health and even today it can be a struggle. I recognize that these are struggles I will probably deal with for the rest of my life but now I have the tools I needed all those years ago to be able to love myself and maintain my quality of life.

Growing up in Alaska, I’ve been able to experience firsthand the beauty of nature and what this world has to offer as well as what it has to lose if we do not protect it. As a result, there are many ways I choose to live sustainably beyond the simple “reduce, reuse, recycle” mentality. I did a small research project on the benefits of using bamboo products and found that largely, the benefits outweigh the detriments. Due to bamboo growing so quickly and being such a proficient oxygen producer, a lot of the products that I was originally buying in plastic I choose to buy in bamboo if there is a suitable replacement. Examples include bamboo brushes, combs, and toothbrushes. In general, I try my very best to purchase anything that is nonplastic. I use dissolvable sheets for my laundry detergent to avoid using plastic containers of detergent that oftentimes cannot be, or often go unrecycled. As a rule, growing up, we always had the lights off if they weren’t completely necessary and that has been a habit I’ve carried with me into adulthood as well. I try not to purchase things online and if I do I often do research in advance to see if I am purchasing from a company working towards being at net zero carbon emissions, and if I find that they aren’t I often won’t purchase from them. In terms of my activity outside of my house, I am fortunate enough to live in a place that is very accessible on foot and, as a result, I am very rarely in a personal vehicle and either walk or take public transportation to wherever I need to arrive. In the state of Alaska, oil drilling is a large part of our economy but it has had a negative impact on our environment and native lands. Due to the state’s large reliance on oil drilling, I recognize that it isn’t realistic to simply abandon the industry without having serious negative effects on our quality of life there. However, I am more aware of the significantly more negative effects the industry will have on our planet. As a result, since I’ve been able to vote I have made the attitude my potential representatives and community leaders have on climate change and environmental sustainability one of my top considerations. I believe it to be important that we reduce our carbon footprint and are conscious of the companies we employ for ourselves. Corporations are also responsible for a large portion of the amount of pollution in the world. Nevertheless, while I can’t control the actions of large corporations I can control what I do and where my efforts and attention go in terms of supporting companies and organizations that dedicate themselves to recovering the environment. I think that it requires worldwide cooperation for these efforts to be successful and thus the efforts do not exclude any one company, person, or country. I consider these personal morals in every aspect of my life including who I vote for in elections on all levels of government, who I shop from and what I buy from them, and how I behave in my own home and community.

In Alaska, I learned just how much I’m capable of doing on my own. It’s no secret that as beautiful as the state is, it is one of the most intense places to live in the country. I moved to Alaska from New Mexico when I was 15 after my parents separated. This means that within a year my entire life quite literally did a complete flip. I went from living in the Southwestern desert with my family of four in my large home to living in a state that receives an average of 176 inches of snow with just my dad in a 2 bedroom cabin. In the year that followed I learned how to drive on ice, pull yourself out of a ditch after you slide, and hide from a moose when you encounter one on a walk. None of these things I had envisioned myself doing for my sixteenth birthday. The isolation from the rest of my family and the intense weather were extremely taxing on me for the first year but I found ways to to cope. As I gained more skills and learned how to not only survive in Alaska but thrive as well, I gained a level of confidence I had never had previously. I learned how to ice skate and ice fish and developed an appreciation of the Native cultures as well and how they too were able to develop thriving societies in the harsh environment as well. Living in Alaska gave me confidence that if I could handle such intense changes in such a short time, I could strive to do anything that I am motivated to do. I fully attribute the success I’ve found academically my personality and my positive work ethic to my time in Alaska and the people I met there. Alaskans know how to work hard and that was something that was impressed upon me during my time there and is a skill I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Leaving Alaska, I have developed a new appreciation for caring for our planet and having to work hard to achieve my goals. After living in Alaska for four years and having been reborn as a confident and capable individual, I’ve started a new adventure in Spain where I’ve been learning about my heritage and familiarizing myself with the language. After my year here is over, I plan to fully devote myself to my studies in Chemistry so that I can go on to become an outpatient dietitian and help people have a happy relationship with their bodies and find joy in caring for themselves. This has been my dream since I was 17 after recovering from mental health issues from the struggles I faced in my teenage years. After being away from my family for so long, I am very motivated to return home so that I can be close to my family after the time I spent so far away from them. This brings on the financial trouble of having to deal with out-of-state tuition and how costly that can be. My family is my greatest priority and so I am more than willing to take on the added expenses of college if it means that I can be close to my family again and I am determined to work to make it possible.

Having a level of focus dedicated to one’s mental health is vital to one’s success and happiness in life. You are the only person you will have for certain for your entire life. People around you will come and go and be born and pass away but you will always have yourself. For this reason, if are in a poor mental state, your life becomes exponentially more difficult to deal with. Simple tasks can become taxing with the immense weight of poor mental health weighing down as well. From the age of 14, I have had depression and at times it was a great struggle for me to have the will to care for myself physically. It wasn’t until I began to care for myself mentally that I was able to find success in caring for myself physically without feeling overtaxed. Even today, 6 years later, I at times find it difficult to have the resolution to care for myself. However, I have been able to find the tools that work for me to make my life a little bit more joyful and exciting to live. I’ve been able to figure out small and meaningful ways to improve my mental health and make my life a little bit more enjoyable. While there is great value in the typical recommendations of exercising and getting plenty of sun, I’ve found that there is a profoundness in simply doing something that makes oneself happy. For example, my two favorite things are video games and chocolate so I will let myself buy a video game or get something chocolate if I’m feeling sad or if I’ve just done something difficult. Treating oneself was never something that people did around me growing up so I was unaware of what a positive impact it would have on me by letting me have something I want, even if it isn’t something that I need. In addition, I keep my mental health in check by choosing to break from my routine occasionally. I’ve found that while building a strong routine that works for oneself is particularly useful when trying to balance the responsibilities of school, work, and social life, it can result in monotony when every day is the same and you lose that sense of accomplishment knowing you’ll have to repeat the day you just had and the day you had before that. For this reason, at least once a month I allow myself to simply not do what I need to do. It can be anything as simple as not doing laundry on laundry day because I don’t feel like it, or as radical as going on a spontaneous drive to a place or a town without any advanced planning. By and large, good mental health is the key to finding an active role in one’s own life. In a world where working and settling down is such a large part of our culture, going actively against this is a way that keeps us safe but also brings us happiness and is a great way to keep our mental health up. By ignoring our wants and only focusing on our needs, we become passive in our own lives and lose that sense of purpose and accomplishment that we feel when participating in something that brings us pleasure.

Leadership to me is being able to create a welcoming and accepting environment in which others are able to demonstrate their own skills so we can collaboratively achieve a common goal. I pull my inspiration for a good leader from my best friend’s dad, Cory. Cory is a youth pastor and an influence on a number of young people, including myself. Cory has an innate ability to make everyone useful by listening to where their talents and interests lie. For this reason, I think listening is an important part of leadership. In addition, Cory is able to assess a situation if things are going poorly and adjust his own plans to the needs of the people he works with or the class of teenagers he’s teaching. A good leader is able to think on their feet and adjust plans according to certain limitations and allowances. In my opinion, leadership is the ability to give everyone a purpose and bring a group of people into a sense of agreement and trust. The importance of leadership is to be able to guide everyone to achieve a certain objective. This cannot be done if a leader doesn’t have a full understanding of their team. To be a leader is not to carry everyone behind you, but to push everyone forward so that it isn’t the success of the leader themselves but rather the success of their team. For example, are communal creatures that have their own leaders. The alpha wolf is considered the leader of the pack but does not lead physically. Instead, the alpha wolf will walk in the back of the pack to ensure that even the weaker members of the pack are not left behind. Without a leader, things can fall into chaos and groups can turn against each other as they become distracted from their goals. Leaders are necessary to keep everyone focused on the importance of a matter at hand. Leadership plays a key role in maximizing productivity and maintaining a strong sense of community in a group. Overall, I believe leadership is key to the success of any team effort. By having the power and responsibility to unite a group of people and facilitate any discourse within the group, a leader is the determining factor of whether or not a team will reach its objective. Leadership is a compendious word for a multitude of character traits vital to leading. The most important of these character traits are empathy, insight, and strong problem-solving skills. Without these, a leader is weak and doesn’t have as strong a grasp on their followers as they have the potential to.

I always try to be the one to offer my coat when someone is cold, walk someone home after a night out, or make room on the sidewalk when me and my friends walk in a group. I embody selflessness through my empathy, generosity, and morals. I find joy in being able to help others and being able to make someone else’s day easier makes me feel a sense of accomplishment. I attribute these positive qualities to my mom who taught me growing up that if I can help someone I should. My mother herself helps people every day as a nurse. For this reason, people often rely on her when they are scared and need help. One day, my neighbor came to our house in a great panic asking for my mom who was at work. I calmed her down and asked her to tell me what was the matter and she told me that her partner wasn’t able to speak and had a hard time moving her body. I had learned enough from my mother to be able to recognize this as symptoms of a stroke. I calmed my neighbor down and told her what I thought and informed her that I was going to call 911. I called 911 informing them of the situation and waited with my neighbor until the issue was resolved. In the end, everything turned out fine and I was thanked by my neighbor for the role I played in the situation. In addition to the morals taught to me by my parents, what I’ve learned in church has motivated me to share what I have with those who don’t have as much. The Bible places particular stress on showing generosity to the homeless and less fortunate. This past year I was working the front desk of a small museum in Downtown Anchorage, Alaska. This part of town is particularly congested with homeless people and one day a deaf man came in asking me for help. I couldn’t understand him very well so I gave him a paper and pen to communicate. The man was looking for a place to get a bus pass so that he could find shelter. I got on my computer and gave him the address of a bus station, soup kitchen, and shelter feeling sorry that I couldn’t do more. Later, he returned telling me that they couldn’t give him a bus pass without money. I saw this as my chance to be able to genuinely help him and I gave him the money he needed for a bus pass and a snack and gave him a bottle of water as well. Later in the week, he returned telling me that he was able to get a bus pass and how thankful he was for my help.

My main aspiration in life is to be able to make the people around me feel valued, comfortable, and safe. These aspirations came from watching Cory and Lori and the work they do in our community. In 2019 I moved to Alaska and had no friends and was far from my own family. My best friend was kind enough to welcome me into her own family. Her parents are both youth pastors at our local church and as a result, I started going to church with her and her family. At first, I only went with them to hang out with my best friend, but after observing what a positive impact the work her family had on the community through the work they do, I had a desire to be a part of it. They would attend every event early, leave late, and do it as a family. I would join them at fundraisers, clean-ups, and renovation projects for people throughout the community. By being part of something that gave to the community, I began to feel a sense of accomplishment and joy that I hadn’t experienced doing any other activity. To be able to make someone else’s day a little bit easier or happier makes me happy as well. In return for the lesson I was taught about charity and generosity by my church, I was able to share something of my own. I am gay so naturally going to church was originally something I was apprehensive to do. But by being there and being able to adopt the good behaviors of generosity charity, I was able to instill in my community a stronger sense of kindness and acceptance. By being myself and being able to show my community that while I’m not the ideal kind of person in their own minds, there is nothing wrong with people like me. By the time I moved away, I had seen a positive change in tolerance in a lot of the people I had met three years prior. To be able to feel more safe and comfortable in a space by setting an example of kindness and value that I wanted for myself was a great accomplishment for myself. In addition to helping myself, I’d like to think that I was able to help other people in the community whether it be other gay people in the church or simply how people I had an influence on interacted with the people around them. I can’t say I was able to change the mind and philosophy of everyone I met, but I would certainly like to think that I was able to pay back the positive influence the people around me had on myself with a stronger sense of acceptance and love for the people around them of all kinds.

I would most certainly be sorted into Ravenclaw if I were attending Hogwarts based on my interests, skills, and aspirations. My whole life I’ve always been fascinated by the arts. Being able to learn and recite music has always come easily to me and I enjoy it greatly. Growing up I was always told I had a beautiful voice. In first grade, I got in trouble for singing in the boys' bathroom too loudly; but even so, I was still complimented on the quality of my voice. As I grew older and my voice began to change, I relied on it less and instead turned to the piano to be able to express myself musically. This was a skill I was quick to master and was able to put to practical use by playing piano for my church for 2 years. In addition to music, literature, and drawing have been great passions of mine. I am a big fan of classical literature such as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” but I read a variety of literature ranging from biographical, theological, and historical pieces. Not only does my personality align with that of a typical Ravenclaw student in terms of my interests, but in my practical and professional skills as well. I worked in retail for three years and developed a keen ability to be able to problem solve and offer solutions to leave customers happy with their purchases and experiences. This eventually yielded quality problem-solving skills and the ability to think on my feet. I also have used my hunger for knowledge to learn foreign languages as well. I learned Spanish through my heritage and relatives in Spain and am learning French with some speed so that I can communicate with a variety of people. All in all, my aspirations in life might leave on thinking that I’m more of a Hufflepuff rather than a Ravenclaw. After all my main aspiration in life is to make sure that everyone I meet feels comfortable and happy around me. However, I think that in order to build the trust and reputation I want in my life, a level of capability and wit is indeed necessary. I want people to feel like they can come to me with their issues and feel confident that I can help them rather than simply listen, as important as the listening part is. I want to be able to improve people's lives, both in my professional and social lives.

As a former Boy Scout and son of two frontline workers, I have had sufficient exposure to a variety of volunteering experiences, but only one holds a significant place in my memory. Growing up I was always brought to volunteering events rather than choosing them making them feel more like a chore rather than an opportunity. But this changed my high school year after going on a trip to Texas with my church. We went to Amarillo, Texas for a week to help a church located in a largely immigrant-populated area to help provide meals for the children in the area and help renovate the church itself. This volunteer trip was the hardest I’d ever worked but brought me more joy than I’d ever experienced previously. Before the trip, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to meet expectations and would be a deadweight to the team I was working with. But by listening to what I was interested in, the leaders found things for me to do. On the trip, I painted walls, moved heavy furniture for the church, and helped prepare the lunches for the children. These were all things that I enjoyed in general and were skills of mine that were put to use. This experience brought me to the realization that volunteering doesn’t have to be a chore the way it felt when I was younger. This is because everyone has their own skills and interests that make them unique and useful. My skills and interests were different from those of my parents and therefore I didn’t enjoy the volunteer work they did. But once I found the skills that I enjoyed and did well, volunteering became a great joy of mine. Since my trip to Texas, I have volunteered for several other events that surround my interests, largely including food and providing it for those who don’t have much of it for themselves in my church. I carry this new outlook on using one’s personality to contribute positively to society in my professional aspirations as well. I’ve always had a fascination with how the body works particularly the role food plays in our lives and how we can best take care of our bodies. As a result, I’m studying to become an Outpatient Dietitian so that I can be equipped to turn my hobby of meal planning and cultivating healthy eating for myself and develop it into something much larger. In my planned career, I will be able to help a variety of people from diabetics, people recovering from eating disorders, babies with sensitivities, and many many more. I feel like my career is how I can primarily positively impact my life, so while I naturally plan to continue the volunteering I’ve been doing for the past few years, I also plan to dedicate myself to my education and later career.

As a child, I was always told that I was “ahead of the curve” or heavier than the other children around me. My doctors and parents encouraged me to start dieting as early as 12 years old without giving me the proper tools to figure out a safe and healthy way to lose weight. I finally decided to take matters into my own hands when my doctor told me I was in the 96% of my age-weight group. At first, I tried to do things “the right way” by signing up for elective classes that included a good amount of physical activity and began to eat less. Unfortunately, at the same time as my Freshman year, my parents had separated. My family went through a time so difficult that it was never the same. The high tensions and emotions that flooded through my house, mixed with the intense changes my body was going through, kept my anxiety at such a high level that I simply refused to eat at all. I would eat on occasion so that people wouldn’t notice. However, The physical impact this behavior had on my body couldn’t be so easily hidden. Eventually, my aunt who taught nutrition took notice of my eating behaviors and confronted me about the issue. She was the first person who was able to equip me with the proper tools for dieting and learning how the food was related to my weight. But by this point, caring for myself in any capacity was such a chore for me that it was taxing for me to have the willingness to care for myself. I was terrified of gaining my weight back being where I started and facing that struggle again. But after a sudden and difficult move across the country, the official end of my family as I formally knew it, and the start of COVID-19, I decided to do the hardest thing I could do; I asked for help. I started therapy and set alarms to help improve my eating habits although it still was a chore for me and I’d often eat even when I didn’t want to. But with additional help from my new friends and an honorary family with whom I felt supported, I taught myself, and learned from others, how to love myself again. I learned that caring for my body was a privilege and with time it became a joy rather than a chore. Today, while I’ll never fully be rid of the troubles I faced for 5 years of my life, I now have the tools and perspective to live a happy and healthy lifestyle. My experience has been what motivates and inspires me to get my education to become an Outpatient Dietitian so that I can help a variety of people care for themselves and have the tools and positive relationships with their bodies that I never had. And if they don’t have those tools or that relationship, I want to be the one to help them find that.

Currently, I give back to the community through my church. I have been heavily involved in helping my run events and activities that give to the community. Throughout the school year, my church does a “family night” in which families come to church to do activities and to be fed. In addition, we raise money for other charities and churches that do work for others outside of the church. I help with these events by setting up tables, helping cook the large dinners, and doing clean up afterward. In the four years I’ve attended this church, I’ve grown very close to the youth pastor and his family and they’ve taught me the value of working hard and offering everything you have to the community to make it stronger. They’ve also taught me how to be grateful for what I have and find joy in the work I do. I aspire to cultivate an equally positive and welcoming environment in any area where I work whether it be professionally, academically, or casually. In the future, I plan to positively impact the world through my career and education. My main aspiration in life is to make people feel comfortable and happy. To me making someone feel comfortable includes making them feel comfortable with themselves as well as with me. I am studying Chemistry to become an outpatient dietitian so that I can help people feel better about themselves and care for themselves so they live a high quality of life. This is something that I didn’t feel like I had access to growing up, so if I can help anyone deal with the struggles I faced when I was younger I want to do everything in my power to help them. In addition to my career, I plan to gain new skills in college that don’t help me in strictly a professional sense. My grandmother is an immigrant from Spain and I’ve observed firsthand how it isn’t always for people who aren’t born in this country whether it be how people treat them or simply the inability to easily understand or be understood. Thus, I have the goal of becoming trilingual. This includes English, Spanish, and French. Simply by being who I am, I grew up speaking English and Spanish fluently and I plan to minor in French while I’m in college. I feel that with these three common languages at my disposal, I could easily communicate with a variety of people and thus be able to help them in any way necessary whether it be in a social or professional setting.

In 2016, my grandpa got a small, curly-haired white puppy no larger than my hand I immediately wanted one of my own. My parents were initially apprehensive but by a miracle they permitted it and we went to the family that was giving them away. In a rural neighborhood, we pulled into a property filled with nearly 30 little white puppies running around barking and yapping and being quite frankly obnoxious. But amongst the sea of white puppies was one little brown puppy even smaller than the rest and we chose her for her good temperament. I named her Pipsqueak, or Pip for short, and bought her a little sheep chew toy and a little bed to sleep in. That night we put her in a box and I slept on the couch. Just as I was about to fall asleep I heard a whimper that persisted for some minutes before I scooped Pip out of her box and gently next to me so she was no longer afraid. She cuddled up close to me and I knew that my relationship with this dog would be special. As the years went by, Pip didn’t grow much larger but her personality grew strong. She enjoys exploring and running and playing tug of war; despite her small size. She wags her tail so hard her entire rear end shakes when she sees me and she’s my best friend. In 2019 me and my family moved from New Mexico to Alaska after going through a rough family time. These many changes were especially troubling for me and I relied on Pip as a friend and a companion who I knew I would never leave. In Alaska, we faced our adventures, mine were learning about who I am and what my interests are, and her’s were just how much bigger a moose is than she is and what temperatures she is and isn’t willing to go outside in. My intended degree is Chemistry as the basis education for my dream career as an Outpatient Dietitian. I dream of being a dietitian so that I can provide the tools necessary for people to have a happy and healthy relationship with their bodies and food in addition to living a higher quality of life. Based on my experience with Chemistry in the past, I know that this degree will not be easy, but I am prepared to work hard to achieve my goals. I’ve accounted Pip into my budgets and goals for the next few years so that I can provide her with a happy and comfortable life while I’m in school without leaving her behind because I could never live without her. I see my dog as my priority and I fully intend to work hard to provide Pip with the quality of life that I want for her so that she can live a happy and long life.

I’m motivated to get a higher education in order to broaden my opportunities to aid my community in an impactful way. Growing up, I would watch the positive impact my parents had on society and now it is my turn to have the same influence on my community. My father was a police officer for 20 years before retiring when I was 16 but remains greatly admired by the people around him. While he is no longer in law enforcement, he continues to contribute to the law enforcement community through entrepreneurship and charity work. In addition, my mother has been a nurse for my entire life and is one of the most skilled nurses in her field with a large array of experience. Seeing how my parents have dedicated themselves to their careers and watching the positive effect it has on the people that surround them has inspired me to get my bachelor's degree and attend a career certification program so that I can have the experience and skill to do something that improves the lives of others. Through my desire to help others, I have decided to get my education in Chemistry. This major will allow me to reach my final goal of becoming an outpatient dietitian while also leaving me with a sufficient baseline education to have the freedom to pursue other careers such as pharmaceuticals should I choose to do so. Chemistry has a strong relationship with our bodies as it is how we process anything that we put in our bodies whether it be food, drink, or medication. By studying Chemistry, I will learn the principles of how our body transforms foreign substances into the tools we need to survive such as the conversion of protein and carbohydrates into energy and how different bodies process things differently. As a result, studying Chemistry will equip me to be able to analyze another person’s situation, whether it be a diabetic individual or a mother and her baby struggling to breastfeed, and offer them the appropriate dietary solutions for them to be able to care for their bodies. Furthermore, I am excited to have a deeper general understanding of Chemistry and its role in the real world. It has always fascinated me to see how elements interact with each other to create more complex elements and other types of matter that we are familiar with and are still discovering today. I have a basic understanding of the subject through exposure in high school and other classes when I received my Associate's degree. However, my education in chemistry hasn’t been particularly deep and I’ve had the desire to better and fully understand the field. By attending college, I am killing two birds with one stone by learning something that I’m interested in and that will serve me well. Overall, what I hope to gain from my higher education is a complete understanding of a subject that has long fascinated me and the tools to be able to better the lives of others.

I think that the Ode to Millennials-Gen Z has explained the current intergenerational situation very well. The conflicts that we experience between the young and old generations are conflicts that we have faced in the past and will face again in the future. But I think that today the stakes are higher now more than ever. With climate change and nuclear war more of a reality than ever before, we don't have time to quarrel over who is better equipped to have all the political power. I think it is time for the younger generation to "deal with it" as the text states. Decisions being made today are going to affect the younger generation in a stronger and prolonged fashion than they ever will the older generation. The younger generation are the people who are going to take over when the older generation is simply unable to work and as a result, they'd prefer things to begin to transition into how they want to do things rather than having to change it all later on in life for the sake of a smooth transfer of power. In addition, the Millennials-Gen Z have a better grasp on what is best for our society as we've evolved as a whole. With every generation we get more and more accepting of ourselves and each other in a positive way and at times, it seems as thought the older generation actively works against any progress we make whether it be for better or worse. However, I think it is also important to have empathy and willingness to work with the older generation to solve the issues we face today. After all, as the passage states, the issues we face today are almost identical to the problems we faced in the 30's and 40's. And as a result, the older generation is more than likely to have a stronger understanding of what is necessary for us to solve these issues just as was done in the past. All in all, we could resolve the differences we have and in fact, have two of "The Greatest Generations" if only we are willing to listen to each other's concerns and work together to find a compromise. From what I've understood from my own experience, as well as looking at the problems mentioned in the passage, a large portion of the great divide between generations stems from a difference of priority. The older generation, the ones who brought the United States out of economic depression and into a victorious golden age of technology, societal improvement, and economic prosperity, continue to focus on the economic and moral issues of our current society. This of course is very noble, but it is only half of our world. The Millennials Z generations focus more on the environmental and social aspects of our lives and how we can improve that. This is also important and necessary if only we could work together rather than against each other. All in All, the passage does a very good job of summarizing the conflict we face amongst ourselves. But the reality is there should be no conflict between generations. Particularly with such strong-willed people, we could achieve more for ourselves if we were willing to listen and compromise, rather than combat and defend and I sincerely hope that in the next few years, the younger generation can be the ones to take the high stance of being willing to listen to the desires and needs of the older generation, in exchange for our insights as well.

My favorite aspect of Minecraft is the sheer freedom one has while playing. I've been playing Minecraft for nearly ten years now, and it has always been my medium of expression and creativity. I would build cruise ships, roller coasters and simple houses out of the basic tools we were given. And at 10 years old that was enough for me, and I was completely content. I would play a multiplayer survival world with my cousins and my little brother and while they went out to find food and loot, I would stay behind and I'd build an aesthetically pleasing house that would fit all of us comfortably. As the game got more advanced I started to turn to it as a way to decompress, I would start a survival world and rather than try to completely beat the game, I did what I wanted to do. I'd build my cottage and start my little farm and just be left in peace. As I got older, peace was harder to find in the real world. The complexities of high school, work and family difficulties eventually crept their way into my own life. So I would use Minecraft to escape all that; it was something that was truly mine and where I was truly me, and I didn't have to worry about there being any changes that I didn't authorize. And at the same time, anything I wanted I could have whether it be a wall of honey, a second home or a castle to myself. In Minecraft, I have the freedom to be myself and pursue my interests. I have my dog, my cat and my beehives and there's nothing more that I need. When the stresses of essays and deadlines are too much for me I know I can turn to the game for a few hours to escape, and return to real life more motivated than ever. Minecraft and its free-play design are what help me remain motivated and positive, even when things are difficult for me.