Every four years I look forward to sitting on my living room floor to root on Team USA for the Olympics. Since I was younger I remember watching Gabby Douglas on my TV screen doing amazing tumbling and flipping and the uneven bars. However this year was a little different for me. Don't get me wrong I still watched Simone Biles and Suni Lee do incredible moves but my attention shifted to not only a different athlete but a different sport. Through some scrolling on Tik Tok I stumbled on the page of Ilona Maher. Ilona Maher had amazing messages on her page to a lot of women out there. For me it was refreshing to watch a female athelete break so many societal stigmas about women and body types. Illona Maher was inspirational and so positive to watch which in turn, it made all of Team USA look good. Ilona Maher insisted that women are more than one note. They do not need to only be an athlete or feminine, but that they can be both and in essence they can be anything. She also talked about how fueling your body is what athletes do, what she does. She made a video of her saying that athletes eat a bunch of carbs. This broke barriers in females minds of what the "perfect woman" needs to eat. She broke the rules of diet culture saying that women are more than the food they eat. She also had other posts showing off her body saying this is what a Olympic athlete looks like, showing off her body and encouraging others to look at the differences in bodies of all the athletes throughout the Olympics. She posted another video where she asked her teammates how much they weighed, they all gave drastically different answers. Again breaking a stigma that women need to be a certain size or weight to have meaning. Before watching the 2024 Olympics I was not too aware of what rugby was. But after watching so much on Ilona Maher it was impossible for me not to watch her compete. Ilona Maher was captivating to watch. Seeing her block, push tackle and outrun her competitors had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. She truly put feminity and athleticism on the field proving that as a woman it also means you are strong and competetive and anything you want to be. Ilona Maher is an incredible athlete to look up to and she has amazing messages for many people especially women that truly made her my favorite athlete to cheer for on Team USA.

So my mom started working in hospice about five years ago. With this, I was allowed to see a greater insight into the improvement of elderly individuals. I realized the amazing stories they share and the struggles they go through. For Christmas eve my best friend and I decided to go to the old folks' home to play music or them. It combined my love for music and helping people together. This experience taught me to get out and help those in my community that is so often either taken advantage of or just overlooked. I think that allowing people who are forgotten in society to be showcased and know that the community is still there for them.

Last year, my mother at the age of forty got pregnant with a little girl. This was great news for my family since we are so close. She would go to doctor's appointments and the baby remained in good health even at the age where it is risky to have a baby. However, when my mother was seven months pregnant she got into a bad car accident while she was driving to work. I remember my dad getting a call while we were in his car coming back from grocery shopping. She said that she had just been in a really bad car accident about an hour from where we were. Even though this was the worst news you want to hear while you have a mother who is pregnant it seemed like the news just kept getting worse and worse. When we got there I saw my mom's car destroyed and she was in the ambulance. She said she hadn't felt the baby kick. While this was occurring I'll admit it was very hard to stay positive, although I still had your brother who was also in the car with me and my father. As an older sister, it was my job to make sure he was okay. I decided to tell him that everything will be okay and not worry. I started telling him stories about the baby and how fun she's going to be when she's born. This made me believe it. This experience has taught me that even when you are in very tough situations the best thing to do is to stay happy. Without staying optimistic you can make yourself feel more stressed than you even know and in the end, my sister was born a healthy twelve-pound baby.

Since I can remember I have wanted to become the president of the United States. Now, this dream for many may seem like just a phase or a far fetched dream that you can't ever achieve. However, I am not one to be like everybody else. This goal of mine will be achieved. I am deciding to go to college and major in political science while doing a pre-law path and once I am finished with college I will get on a campaign team to try to get my name out to the public. I am so passionate about achieving this dream and I will try my best to get there. In 2040 you will hear that Arianna Hirst is the president of the United States.

Joy has been determined by great philosophers such as Kant, Aristotle and Plato as having two overall qualities. These qualities being as being a state of mind and life going well for the person leading it. With all due resect to these great philosophers, I'd like to redefine the term joy. To me, I have had to find joy in the little things in life. Over the past years the world has been affected by a global pandemic. A silver lining occurred in this global crisis. I got to spend a lot more time with my family. This was a total reset on how my life was going to go. Fortunately, I now have a very tight knit family dynamic. I also got to go out and see the beautiful outdoors in my area. I got a new perspective on how I can think about my small town as a place with many hidden beauties. So, to answer the original question I would define joy as finding the good in things even when times are bad.