user profile avatar

Arion Thomas

1,275

Bold Points

2x

Nominee

1x

Finalist

1x

Winner

Bio

My goals are to change the stigma behind mental health. I want to help as many people as possible to find them inner self and to nourish and take care of it by being cognizant of their mental health.

Education

Newton High School

High School
2019 - 2023

Miscellaneous

  • Desired degree level:

    Master's degree program

  • Majors of interest:

    • Behavioral Sciences
  • Not planning to go to medical school
  • Career

    • Dream career field:

      social sciences

    • Dream career goals:

    • Shift leader

      Biddy's
      2021 – 20221 year

    Sports

    marching band

    2019 – 20201 year

    Research

    • Psychology, General

      Newton High School/ Live Oak Elementary — Facilitator
      2021 – 2023

    Arts

    • Newton high school sound factory

      Music
      2019 – 2020

    Public services

    • Advocacy

      Self — Posting on Instagram
      2019 – Present
    • Volunteering

      Beta — Cleaning up rivers
      2022 – 2022

    Future Interests

    Advocacy

    Politics

    Volunteering

    Philanthropy

    I Can Do Anything Scholarship
    The dream version of myself is "everyone’s dream" because I want to be an inspiration to everyone, I want people around me to aspire to be like me because I'm so amazing to them.
    Theresa Lord Future Leader Scholarship
    Once I arrive at college I plan to double major in Child and Infant development and Psychology. Some of the clubs I would like to join include: Student Government Association,Poetry Club, and The Botanics Organization. Since I really like all of these topics I would like to hone in on them and develop them through these clubs. Like with my poetry, I would like to create a blog or website to showcase my creativity and express myself. In Student Government I want to create waves throughout my university. I plan to create a pleasant environment for all of my peers who elected me to do so. I plan to keep my trend of exceptional grades up. I want to make the Dean’s List every semester and uphold all of my personal academic standards for myself. In addition to keeping stellar grades in college I also want to immerse myself in my majors and do research so I can expand my knowledge. I will work very hard to perfect my experiments and put my name on a piece of research that is remarkable and will be remembered for centuries. For instance, one of my intended hypotheses for research is “how does fashion and different clothing items affect a child’s mental health?” The mistake I am talking about today is not a thrash or an unforgivable sin that would be super sensational or unhinged to most readers , but this mistake changed my outlook on life. Starting my junior year I found a new job about five minutes away from my house. This job also had a whole lot of other amenities like closing at 9 o’clock, being black owned, and being right beside one of my favorite breakfast places. I started working there and about six months in I was promoted to shift leader. I was so happy and excited that the owner saw it in me to lead her store but this position had a lot more requirements than I knew coming into it. Before all I had to do was be a cashier and just help customers,but when I became shift leader I had to run cash registers, learn how to make food, learn how to man the grill, and to keep order among all of the cashiers. Keeping the order among the cashiers was one of the hardest tasks that I had to do. While working there I was working alongside three of my best friends. So when there was a task that I had to allocate to them I wasn’t taken as seriously because we were all friends, it was hard to demand respect in that position . The mistake I made was not being able to assert my dominance in the correct way at the beginning. To solve this I had to make an executive decision to have a meeting with all of my cashiers, including my friends to respectfully assert my dominance as their shift leader and ask for their cooperation. After this everyone followed suit and respected my position. What I learned from my mistake is that being young in a leadership position can be arduous but it’s all about how you handle it. For me it was hard in the beginning but calmly and respectfully voicing my ascendancy to the cashiers helped create a space for me to be their leader. This mistake also helped me in my future because I have been given plenty of leadership opportunities which include jobs and extracurriculars and now I know how to properly present myself as a leader and gain the respect of my peers.
    Trees for Tuition Scholarship Fund
    Everyday I make it my mission to make a positive change in people's lives around me because the person I am today is because people have poured into me and changed my life. On a daily basis I give people compliments and try to boost their mood by making them laugh.On a school level I am involved in over half a dozen clubs and presidents of three of them. I plan and create events to create school spirit in the school. For instance, in Student Government Association I help plan pep rallies and games. Seeing the smiles on my peers' faces was and still is so priceless. These things I do at school are subconscious. Our school mascot is a Ram and we have an acronym that corresponds with it and it’s R=Respectful A=Accountable M=Motivated S=Successful. When I do these things I am fulfilling our school’s motto and I’m making the lives of everyone around me more enjoyable and pleasant. The thing that I consider as my legacy in my high school career is the service project that I have been facilitating and planning since 2020. I am the creator and CEO of Reading in the Right Direction. The goal of the program is to equip,facilitate,and encourage reading to elementary school students in hopes that they will find pleasure in reading leisurely. When first introducing my program I started with an afterschool program here in my county. I accumulated over 35 hours with this service project.The problem that the school faced was that students were reaching the 4th and 5th grade and were only reading at 1st and 2nd grade levels. This problem was revealed to me when I went and volunteered with my school. We traveled to different schools in our county to help with SRA. SRA is a very intensive reading program that focuses on the mastery of reading.The students would work on learning the sounds of letters and how to sound words out when reading. I observed that the passages that the students were reading were on a fourth or fifth grade level, and they were in the 8th grade. I was so disappointed to see this in my own county.It seemed like the students were just being passed onto the next grade, I wanted to stop this cycle so I started at the elementary level. I started by going to the school about twice a week and reading the students a book every time I saw them. I also gave them a reading log to track their progress. When the students reached a certain amount of reading time they would get a prize from me. The students would be so excited to see me every week to hear a new story and get their weekly surprise from me. I started to see an amazing improvement in their reading skills and their confidence in reading aloud. I love these kids for sticking with me and being a part of my program. The love is surely mutual! When the program ended the students were on the verge of tears and they were telling me “please don’t leave us” and “Ms. Arion , please come back soon”. Although developing their reading skills was my primary goal going into the program, the love and relationship we all made is what really affected me the most, and I am ever so grateful. So all in all Reading in the right direction is one of the main impacts that I made in my community and school system.
    Dema Dimbaya Humanitarianism and Disaster Relief Scholarship
    Everyday I make it my mission to make a positive change in people's lives around me because the person I am today is because people have poured into. What On a daily basis I give people compliments and try to boost their mood by making them laugh.On a school level I am involved in over half a dozen clubs and presidents of three of them. I plan and create events to create school spirit in the school. For instance, in Student Government Association I help plan pep rallies and games. Seeing the smiles on my peers' faces was and still is so priceless. These things I do at school are subconscious. Our school mascot is a Ram and we have an acronym that corresponds with it and it’s R=Respectful A=Accountable M=Motivated S=Successful. When I do these things I am fulfilling our school’s motto and I’m making the lives of everyone around me more enjoyable and pleasant. But what really brought me to community service is the disparity I saw with my own eyes , in my own community. What I consider my legacy is the service project that I have been facilitating and planning since 2020. I am the creator and CEO of Reading in the Right Direction. The goal of the program is to equip,facilitate,and encourage reading to elementary school students in hopes that they will find pleasure in reading leisurely. When first introducing my program I started with an afterschool program here in my county. I accumulated over 35 hours with this service project.The problem that the school faced was that students were reaching the 4th and 5th grade and were only reading at 1st and 2nd grade levels. This problem was revealed to me when I went and volunteered with my school. We traveled to different schools in our county to help with SRA. SRA is a very intensive reading program that focuses on the mastery of reading.The students would work on learning the sounds of letters and how to sound words out when reading. I observed that the passages that the students were reading were on a fourth or fifth grade level, and they were in the 8th grade. I was so disappointed to see this in my own county.It seemed like the students were just being passed onto the next grade, I wanted to stop this cycle so I started at the elementary level. I started by going to the school about twice a week and reading the students a book every time I saw them. I also gave them a reading log to track their progress. When the students reached a certain amount of reading time they would get a prize from me. The students would be so excited to see me every week to hear a new story and get their weekly surprise from me. I started to see an amazing improvement in their reading skills and their confidence in reading aloud. I love these kids for sticking with me and being a part of my program. The love is surely mutual! When the program ended the students were on the verge of tears and they were telling me “please don’t leave us” and “Ms. Arion , please come back soon”. Although developing their reading skills was my primary goal going into the program, the love and relationship we all made is what really affected me the most, and I am ever so grateful. So all in all Reading in the right direction is one of the main impacts that I made in my community and school system.
    Walking In Authority International Ministry Scholarship
    Everyday I make it my mission to make a positive change in people's lives around me because the person I am today is because people have poured into me and changed my life and they all inspire me. On a daily basis I give people compliments and try to boost their mood by making them laugh.On a school level I am involved in over half a dozen clubs and presidents of three of them. I plan and create events to create school spirit in the school. For instance, in Student Government Association I help plan pep rallies and games. Seeing the smiles on my peers' faces was and still is so priceless. These things I do at school are subconscious. Our school mascot is a Ram and we have an acronym that corresponds with it and it’s R=Respectful A=Accountable M=Motivated S=Successful. When I do these things I am fulfilling our school’s motto and I’m making the lives of everyone around me more enjoyable and pleasant. The thing that I consider as my legacy in my high school career is the service project that I have been facilitating and planning since 2020. I am the creator and CEO of Reading in the Right Direction. The goal of the program is to equip,facilitate,and encourage reading to elementary school students in hopes that they will find pleasure in reading leisurely. When first introducing my program I started with an afterschool program here in my county. I accumulated over 35 hours with this service project.The problem that the school faced was that students were reaching the 4th and 5th grade and were only reading at 1st and 2nd grade levels. This problem was revealed to me when I went and volunteered with my school. We traveled to different schools in our county to help with SRA. SRA is a very intensive reading program that focuses on the mastery of reading.The students would work on learning the sounds of letters and how to sound words out when reading. I observed that the passages that the students were reading were on a fourth or fifth grade level, and they were in the 8th grade. I was so disappointed to see this in my own county.It seemed like the students were just being passed onto the next grade, I wanted to stop this cycle so I started at the elementary level. I started by going to the school about twice a week and reading the students a book every time I saw them. I also gave them a reading log to track their progress. When the students reached a certain amount of reading time they would get a prize from me. The students would be so excited to see me every week to hear a new story and get their weekly surprise from me. I started to see an amazing improvement in their reading skills and their confidence in reading aloud. I love these kids for sticking with me and being a part of my program. The love is surely mutual! When the program ended the students were on the verge of tears and they were telling me “please don’t leave us” and “Ms. Arion , please come back soon”. Although developing their reading skills was my primary goal going into the program, the love and relationship we all made is what really affected me the most, and I am ever so grateful. So all in all Reading in the right direction is one of the main impacts that I made in my community and school system.
    Nyah Regina Williams Book Scholarship
    Winner
    Everyday I make it my mission to make a positive change in people's lives around me because the person I am today is because people have poured into me and changed my life. On a daily basis I give people compliments and try to boost their mood by making them laugh.On a school level I am involved in over half a dozen clubs and presidents of three of them. I plan and create events to create school spirit in the school. For instance, in Student Government Association I help plan pep rallies and games. Seeing the smiles on my peers' faces was and still is so priceless. These things I do at school are subconscious. Our school mascot is a Ram and we have an acronym that corresponds with it and it’s R=Respectful A=Accountable M=Motivated S=Successful. When I do these things I am fulfilling our school’s motto and I’m making the lives of everyone around me more enjoyable and pleasant. The thing that I consider as my legacy in my high school career is the service project that I have been facilitating and planning since 2020. I am the creator and CEO of Reading in the Right Direction. The goal of the program is to equip,facilitate,and encourage reading to elementary school students in hopes that they will find pleasure in reading leisurely. When first introducing my program I started with an afterschool program here in my county. I accumulated over 35 hours with this service project.The problem that the school faced was that students were reaching the 4th and 5th grade and were only reading at 1st and 2nd grade levels. This problem was revealed to me when I went and volunteered with my school. We traveled to different schools in our county to help with SRA. SRA is a very intensive reading program that focuses on the mastery of reading. The students would work on learning the sounds of letters and how to sound words out when reading. I observed that the passages that the students were reading were on a fourth or fifth-grade level, and they were in the 8th grade. I was so disappointed to see this in my own county. It seemed like the students were just being passed on to the next grade, I wanted to stop this cycle so I started at the elementary level. I started by going to the school about twice a week and reading the students a book every time I saw them. I also gave them a reading log to track their progress. When the students reached a certain amount of reading time they would get a prize from me. The students would be so excited to see me every week to hear a new story and get their weekly surprise from me. I started to see an amazing improvement in their reading skills and their confidence in reading aloud. I love these kids for sticking with me and being a part of my program. The love is surely mutual! When the program ended the students were on the verge of tears and they were telling me “please don’t leave us” and “Ms. Arion, please come back soon”. Although developing their reading skills was my primary goal going into the program, the love and relationship we all made is what really affected me the most, and I am ever so grateful. So all in all Reading in the right direction is one of the main impacts that I made in my community and school system.