For someone like myself, who grew up with little and doesn't ask for much unless it's absolutely necessary; I find comfort in routine, and in structures that can be accommodating, like flexible schedules. The qualities that one searches for are going to change from one person to the next, based upon personal priorities, but ultimately I think most people will have common overlaps like fiscal security, personal fulfillment, etc. As for me, I think there's a huge understated social value to the work many fields contribute to the world today, especially in fields that are a prerequisite for humanity's maintenance and progression, such as the industries involved in medicine and access to education. I'm particularly interested in the social benefits to underserved communities via medical charity in the short-term, and socialized healthcare systems in the longer-term, wherein tax dollars are used in subsidization of healthcare expenditures rather than military contracting, be it publicly- or privately-facilitated. I aspire to be able to advocate for the pro bono treatment of the lower brackets of the income and capital gains earners in our country. Medical healthcare expenses are the largest singular cause of debt for disadvantaged communities that make upward social mobility prohibitively expensive, the effects of which are disproportionately negatively impactful toward Black people, and other communities of color. Throughout a career, depending on the size of their metaphorical microphone, attitudes and perspectives change on the attitudes and perspectives shared the most. If one's advocacy can reach more eyes and ears, more opinions can change. For example, there've been waves of change in the American zeitgeist, alternatively the American collective consciousness, with regards to how people see and treat ideals traditionally espoused by progressives and socialists. More people than ever want socialized healthcare in the USA to reduce treatment and medication costs, more and more college students are seeing other places in the world and wondering why their collegiate-level education couldn't be free in the richest nation on the globe, but it can be in so many comparable nations. It doesn't take a doctorate in business law for people lacking more and more social amenities that are debatably human rights considering modern leaps in productivity and technological capabilities, for everyone to see and understand these niceties go unserved here. We have twenty-something flavors of Oreos, and millions of people seemingly believe that babies are fully-formed, conscientious beings after being fertilized egg cells for 3 weeks, and we have half-baked (mis/uninformed) people not receiving decent education and healthcare befitting a nation of our supposed 'stature'. Medical debt alleviation could provide invaluable relief. It begins one step at a time. Under capitalist frameworks of the economy, social goods are forced under charitable deeds at the behest of maintaining the highest-possible profit margins. Eventually, we will see the true moral decay of the West for what it is: not the gender non-conforming, blue-haired, social justice warriors - but rather, the prioritization of profits at the expense of human suffering. Most working-class Americans can't afford a surprise $400 expense, including myself at the time of writing this. One message at a time, we can shift the collective view toward one of doing social good for the sake of doing social good and materially uplifting the disadvantaged, instead of working toward something that seems positive from the outset for the short-term profits associated with it, that ultimately ends up backfiring hugely in ways that disproportionately hurt the working class and the environment as we've historically done to this point. As medical professionals see more clients, their sway on the perspectives of others is far outsized relatively speaking.

Since I was a young boy, games have been inextricable from my experience in growing up and fostering a life for myself and those in my immediate circle. Many people have discussed the various pros and cons of the largely increasing proliferation and pervasiveness of video games and video game culture on younger generations today, often coming to mixed conclusions. In modern-day, a myriad of thinkers in the Internet space will purport their specific ideals as to what forms of media should or should not be easily accessible by the public, but these ideals will have as many forms to take on as there are people willing to ascribe to them. Temporarily putting the many controversies of the gaming industry aside for the point of this narrative, I believe there to be many implicit or unspoken benefits to participating in gaming culture as it has stood in years prior, as well as in present-day. Of the many games I've decided to put lengthy bouts of time into, with a specific lens to highlight Nintendo games, the Super Smash Bros. series has been one of my all-time, favorite co-op gaming experiences. Being able to foster a strong relationship with people as an adult is much easier said than done, now more than ever. However, using gaming consoles to share vivid, exciting experiences and stories with the ones you love, be it a significant other, or close friends, is a social boon in contemporary society. Everything in terms of interacting with one another is through the frame of technology and social media - which also has its advantages and disadvantages - but can be incredibly isolating. Isolation as a concept wherein the prison one's trapped in, is their own mind is one I think more people can relate to than not after our collective brain-frying during the COVID epidemic. When looking at the Smash Bros. series specifically, the features in the game that accompany the unlocking of new playable characters during cooperative gameplay have been some of the most exhilarating parts of sharing it with those around me. The room lights up when the "New Challenger Approaches" screen comes on, regardless of your screen brightness, because it changes the competitive/cooperative energy into one of cheering on whoever is brought to fight them. Whether the players know the character by their silhouette or not, every new character is exemplary of how the game can accommodate so many different gameplay styles. It can be scary on day one when one sees the skills gaps that present themselves as people play and learn with one another, but it also is a prime display of how far anyone can come in their growth. It's an underscore to people's deeper-seated want (and often need) to overcome adversity and show not only to themselves but those they decide to play with, that they have been capable of excelling in the face of obstacles - be they tangible and real, or imagined/perceived. It's taking the real tolls out of their in-situ frustrations from the world around you and beating them into submission with a digital proxy and with help from people around you who love and want the best for one another. This is the epitome of creating happier, safer spaces for camaraderie, and more content attitudes about the dissatisfactions people face in their everyday life at the same time. Co-operative play in young people is an integral factor in those social skills being translatable to co-operate better with their peers in other situations, a prime example being in school. Building those positive habits early pays dividends later on.

Early on in my adolescence, life handed me the decidedly heavier of two bags, my will and choice absent throughout; in one hand, a bag of money to help suspend one over the grips of poverty, and in the other, a bag of rocks to facilitate ones' drowning. The added challenge is that the bags get heavier with every layer of social marginalization we experience as contemporary people. I grew up in a single-parent home with a mother who, despite doing her very best, was only able to barely surpass making it check-to-check, in terms of how one might define the household's economic prosperity is concerned. We've only made it this far by the skin of our teeth, and as I've grown into a fully-fledged adult, I've noticed more and more how my rural community has been stratified from the heights of metropolitan cityscapes only an hour or so from us. Living by our limited means has developed my worldview into one that highly prioritizes empathy and socioeconomic class consciousness above most, if not all other motivators - especially the profit motive, as a means of determining one's life path and self-imposed morals or rules of autonomous governance. This upbringing has strongly molded my system of beliefs to be one that emphasizes the need for equity just as much, if not more so, than equality. It's an obvious truth in this day in age that the hurdles placed in front of us as working-class people go far beyond the bounds of palpable aesthetics or optics of political action and inactions. With unrelenting drive, I aspire to leave this world having worked to make it a more kindhearted and considerate place than it was before I came into it. As many of my peers have already begun to do, I believe this and my many other social goals and hopes have innumerable potential avenues with which positive, materially-relevant change can be brought to our suffering, huddled masses who yearn to breathe free. In particular, by advocating the right to furtherance of legal representation in terms of one's bodily autonomy in the federal guarantee of abortion rights for women, or significantly reducing the barriers to entry for higher education by using government subsidies toward educational initiatives and organizations - and a situation lies in our healthcare systems currently which is not dissimilar to the many issues that plague the American educational system in its current forms. People regularly are forced to choose between rationing their maintenance medications and their emergent ones for acute and life-threatening conditions solely on the basis of prohibitively expensive product prices. In this country, the government works to pass off business costs, innocuously disguised to the consumer as price hikes and fluctuations, which can be baselessly blamed on political regime change, global economic instabilities characteristic of the capitalistic overhauling of regulatory organizations, etc., in order to artificially raise profits relative to their almost static operational costs. Starting from the small seat of my local offices, I aim to one day be able to run for public office in the hopes of beginning to advocate for structural changes in this overall dynamic to positively impact working-class communities all across this country. I strongly believe in the power and potential good of labor union organizing and class solidarity on the part of the gig workers and field laborers that have kept this country running, while those above them siphon every cent in profits that they can off of their employees' undervalued labor. United, the people may sit at the table to bargain - when divided, we beg for scraps.

Ever since I was a child, I've felt a passionate yearning to help others, be they worse or better-off than myself. I believe this underlying empathetic relatability is something crucially lacking in the medical industry as it stands today. All too often, people tell others of interaction after interaction with medical professionals, and I think a poignant question stands waiting to be asked: approximately how many of these interactions are received positively? When it came down to my education, the 'hard' sciences always seemed to call to me. I've been able to make sense of scientific material that others around me seemed to strongly struggle with interpreting, like chemistry and biology classes will normally do. But there was more to it - over time this comprehension opened doors and windows for me to see the world around us all in a way I feel many cannot. As the years went on, I found myself further aligning with the beliefs, perspectives, and ideals of those prominent in the medical profession. Between actually being able to understand intensive physiological course materials AND becoming warmer and warmer in my internal welcoming of the medical space, I thought this path MUST be one for someone like myself. As with all dreams though, there were detracting factors at play. I'm the son of a single mother, and my father is minimally involved in my everyday life, including as a payee in my future endeavors. Making ends meet has always been burdensome for my mother and me, and living in a rural town with only about 8,000 in populace makes high-earning opportunities slim to none for us. As a grown man with an incredibly strong sense of empathy, the misfortune and suffering brought about by my living in poverty my entire adult life has not passed over me passively. One day I hope to ease the sufferings and burdens of others by providing pro-bono healthcare at an institution that has allotments for professional works of charitable services for those in need of care who may be uninsured or underinsured. Our country is one of great promise, but often the promises made are not kept, even by those we trust with our physical health and well-being to. I want to help in making the healthcare system work more for people, by people, as many here like to paraphrase. Right now, our system perpetually misses the mark in terms of positive outcomes, puts patients in more debt than they could even physically imagine, and underserves its people. The bloat and red tape in the health care industry now usurps the wants, needs, and corporal self-authority of the populace for the wants and needs of rich old men who own hospitals and run them solely as ruthless business organizations only tangential to the practical mission of hospitals here and everywhere else: treating the sick regardless of their wealth or class. Being someone in dire financial straits myself, I believe I'm more inclined to provide amicable, quality healthcare to a patient far more similar in life experiences to someone like myself, as opposed to the average privileged med school graduate who sees desperate squalor as "offensive to their sensitibilities", instead of offensive to their senses of humanity. A homeless woman deserves no less care than the First Lady, and yet we have hundreds of thousands of people dying in the streets every single day, with others walking around them as if they were ripped bags of trash. Frequently the only factor keeping our impoverished from seeking vitally-necessary treatments is a paywall I hope to help in tearing down one day.

A realization of mine that I've found to help validate and ground a lot of my worldview as it is today, is my continued attempt to internalize the fact that life is incredibly happenstance. Good things happen to terrible people, terrible things happen to good people - this occurs more often than not, and much more than people are usually comfortable discussing. Whether or not there exists any intention to those things happening prior hugely changes the discussion, but the general idea has been truly game-changing for me over time in being able to better-process both the beneficial and adverse events in my life to this point and going forward. In the terms of the many mental health obstacles I've faced, the central tenant of my subsequence coping mechanisms was the act of taking into consideration how little I am truly able to control in myself and the world around me and slowly but surely finding more holds within my reach; this is almost comparable in my mind to climbing up an indoor rock-climbing wall, one where you begin with far fewer places to establish a grip, you can occasionally get more on your way up, as well as lose handholds in circumstances completely out of one's control or foresight. Throughout the long journey of coming into adulthood and forming an identity for myself that aligns with my ideals, values, goals, and interests, I had to endure immense amounts of internal suffering. I've been through mental health struggles that challenged my very will to live on many occasions. Having endured frequent episodes of self-harm, abuse, suicidal ideation, anxiety-driven paranoia of worst-case scenarios being the only expectation I had anymore, and much more than what's discussed at-length here. That concept of life being happenstance instilled much-needed solace in taking the burden off of myself; life holds you back without your own consent sometimes, and not being perpetually-successful does not equate to personal, moral failings. The current state of affairs perpetuates "individual responsibility" narratives, responsible for holding back systemic growth since the days of Jim Crow and Stonewall by placing the otus on the individual whose little capability to personally influence in the world around them has only diminished over time, instead of larger groups like governments and corporations who would actually have the capital to push beneficial improvements individuals want and need but cannot achieve alone, at least 99.98% of the time. This realization can potentially be useful as a direct binary to help onesself in the emotional/mental exercise of specifically delineating and identifying areas in one's life where they have the ability to control the circumstances to the benefits of themselves and others around them, and where they don't. What in life has an outsized influence on their outcomes by entities other than onesself - a prompt for introspection where many will immediately have ideas as to what they are capable of making tangible, beneficial changes to. Being at the end of one's rope in terms of their mental health is a terrifying experience to undergo. When on the brink of capitulating to suicidal ideations and the like, one has the potential to belittle their own material experience as a conscious human being down to the effective abolition of their own self-esteem. Overcoming this can be intensely overwhelming, especially if one suffers from chronic loneliness, like myself. Pulling myself away from the ledge multiple times was/is a looming terror. It'll always be daunting when one's alone in their room at night, feeling worthlessness - but it's possible with introspective tools such as this, accessible through therapy and genuine emotional communications.

I'm a young man coming from a single-parent home and families that have no real intergenerational wealth between them to speak of. All my life, I've been interested in scientific news and materials, and have built dreams of careers involving practicing medicine, culture, and my communication skills being of tangible benefit to not myself but those around us and those who will come long after. I want to be a cog in the machine that returns the once-strong tides of the United States labor movement from how it is now; where it siphons off of the masses into the means of war and further-still strips marginalized groups of their humanity, to one where instead the masses are able to see the material benefits to the profits for which their labor was the central supporting structure. Throughout the U.S.'s history, many uprisings and movements formed in the attempts to seize the factory floors over which their capitalist slavemasters dangled them. Marginalized communities of all kinds: separated, otherized, deemed to be lesser-than, then tore them from any semblances of their once-proud cultures and ran to reduce the whole of the populace down to one: the Individual. The distinction here to note is the diminishment of "Populace" as a whole of the population working in-tandem for their shared goals and interests for forward-progression to the "Individual" and if there are those who live like you and do wrong, all Individuals within the social strata that fall into working-poor districts will never see benefits due to them. Hyper-individualist sentiments are the backbone of what norms and the hierarchies that formed as a result of them, in the U.S. today. Black, gay, Jewish, Muslim, Native/Indigenous peoples and others across time and continents have suffered as a result of this dichotomy; one wherein a group that has an outsized influence, relative to its actual composition in the populace, names itself an ingroup and represses any immediate influences to challenge their presumed title. The real challenge is working through all the societal knots and logistical circles it requires to galvanize towns, let alone nations, on top of aiming for a medical college education and doctor's certifications, because of multiple intrinsic aspects of the endeavor alone. But being able to begin a career as a health professional, you gain the trust of those under your care as well as those who hear any positive word-of-mouth testimonies to your service, and network development ensues. With the backing of the scientific community, as well as addressing the working class's societal grievances and advocating for policy changes to ameliorate the disparate material conditions under which most Americans live today, waves of change can be wrought with time. No great change is done in an instant, and no growth is ever linear when speaking in real-world terms. The unifying factor which underlies the marginalized communities we see around us every day being adversely and disproportionately oppressed by the systems we're meant to put faith into is that the working-class people are the ones who suffer. The binding link that even includes white people as a group typically associated with perpetrating marginalization of others, is the fact that the vast majority of white people are in conditions of a country which does not deserve the title of "the best country in the world". Trusted people in communities around the world can increase their reach and invoke the rights and needs of all people in common good; a nation that does good for its people will always do well, but one that does well at the sake of the people can never do good.

My name is Austin Cedio. I'm a young man who turned 24 a few months ago and have been working toward my Bachelor's Degree in Biological Sciences, B.Sc. for several years now. I began working in the food service industry to try and supplement my income through college, and am hoping to graduate this year and begin working at my local pharmacy to save money before applying to medical school. I think, like a lot of people in the past few years given our collective suffering, have fallen off and subsequently gotten back onto my healthier dietary ways in waves - but recently, I endured months of arduous work concerning the improvement of my mental health, career path, and time management. The small advances I've made since then have turned my life around in a refreshing manner. College was almost akin to a cocoon in that I'm breaking out of it having grown new wings, and taking a breath of fresh air as I do so. I've gone through several iterations of myself in the process of becoming the man I am today. Since my early, formative teenage years, I've always been interested, and have done well, in science courses, and my career interests and aspirations have grown in scale and breadth much like my perspective has in recent years. I think that even though I come from a single-parent home, and do not have intergenerational wealth to substantively accrue, I should still be able to pursue my passion of going into medicine. Immediately after graduating high school, my naivety and inexperience lead me initially down a path rife with self-doubt and reservations about my intelligence, capabilities, and goals in life. Much like countless people today, I've struggled with mental and emotional conditions/disorders that have made a debilitating impact on my self-confidence and overall educational progress throughout my adult life to the present. In my continuous self-scrutiny and reinvention, my diet has been a recurring item to be addressed. In my younger years prior to the pandemic, I had even begun expanding my palate by cutting out artificial sweeteners and highly-processed foods, and had been working to cut out red meat from my diet altogether. Many of my closest friends have been huge influences on my dietary expansion as vegan and vegetarian, and once given that anecdotal experience with education about health, nutrition, anatomy, and bodily processes, I'm now entering the world with optimism, and a greater comprehension and awareness of the health of myself and those around me to inform myself as an aspiring medical professional. Since the pandemic, my income has diminished significantly since becoming a full-time student, my mother is retired and currently out of work after we cared for my grandfather for 3 years after he suffered a large stroke that left him wheelchair-bound and in need of constant attention until his passing 6 months ago. Every little bit counts when you're the classic stereotype of a young man with only the clothes on his back, entering the working world with almost no relevant firsthand experience or material savings. I care not for notoriety, entitlement, greed, or boastfulness, and have disdain that many have abused the systems we have today to become physicians primarily for monetary gain or whatever social value they derive from a position of esteem in the eyes of the average person one would pass on the sidewalk. I have hopes and dreams beyond that of medicine, including societal betterment through progressive activism, and policy change advocacy work on the local governmental level by advancing pro-labor movements in the US. Pretty please?

In life, people experience highs like mountains and lows like trenches and those are moments in our life where pivotal changes can be made to self-improvement. I'm fortunate to have a relatively stable living situation, food and water security, and other basic necessities of modern life afforded to me. But many battles faced are ones not visibly endured, and instead are internal, which many choose to keep in silence. Over the past several years, I've learned that keeping those conflicts internalized only propagates unsettling dissatisfaction with oneself. I have taken blows inflicted by the hands of my own mind, as well as those from the voices of others. It's common to have issues during one's developmental years that will temporarily hinder their personal growth, myself being no exception to that rule. Starting from the age of 14 years old, I began to realize I was different than my peers in school in how information is processed and our capabilities to focus - or rather, my lack of ability to do so. I had never heard of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) before then, but it soon became a fixation. I had first heard some of the symptoms and heavily identified with them as issues I'd dealt with for most of my life since beginning school. As the years progressed forward, I began looking into different resources with increasing frequency about signs and symptoms of ADHD, and began trying to take action at the start of my time in community college. High school had been a difficult slog, but I managed to graduate nonetheless; college was a completely different ordeal. I suffered in classes, as did my GPA. Minor symptoms of anxiety and depression first experienced in my teenage years grew more severe within me as my self-confidence waned over time. I would read about classical symptoms and want to find help, but struggled to find the resources I needed on my own. Then came a low point in my life where I attempted to harm myself in car during an argument with a former girlfriend, and I decided to seek therapy to talk about the thoughts and feelings that clouded my mind and judgment. The first placement was in group therapy, which I attended for a summer before leaving as it wasn't right for what I needed, and then sought therapeutic counseling at a local hospital's mental health department. As I began to settle in and adjust to the new counselor, I was informed that the mental health department was not covered under my insurance, and I could no longer afford to go. I attempted to make personal life changes on my own to try and correct my issues, but this lead to a façade of thinking all was fine again when in reality the issues were just masked by an exterior composed of false bravado. This continued into my journey to University of Rhode Island, where I currently attend, and trying medicines that were either unaffordable in the long-term or had side effects that negatively impacted my well-being, pushing me to switching. Once at URI, I sought counseling and therapy, began to realize that I needed structure and validation that I wasn't previously receiving, and needed to add value to my life intrinsically. Looking for external validation deflated the value I placed on my feelings of myself, and after finally being assessed and confirmed to have ADHD, I've begun the long path forward and upward. I have learned that there is no instant fix to what ails our minds, but it's a day-by-day process of incremental self-improvement.

My dream is to be able to go abroad and bring back what I've learned to benefit future patients and people of lower socioeconomic statuses. I aspire to go to medical school in Japan, because they are innovators of the major fields of science right now, they have higher life expectancies than most developed countries in the world, and their ratio of positive medical outcomes is substantially higher than those of the United States. I want to go there and take the knowledge they use to become a strong medical professional, and specifically there because Eastern cultures have always been a point of fascination for me. The food, the culture, the language, and the people are all parts of Japan that seem so markedly different from the United States and spur me to going there. Ever since I was a young adult in high school, I've had a great passion for different languages, including Italian for four semesters. It was in the interest of being able to communicate with my grandfather, whose parents came over from southern Italy, but sadly he passed away not long after I began my studies during my sophomore year. This drove my path toward learning Italian much deeper than before, and during my senior year I went to Italy for a week with some high school peers and my teacher's family; this became a profound event that was emblematic of the brilliance of international travel. As a young man, I also wanted to learn more about the world around us and looked to Asia because of its almost mystical, foreign intrigue. Japanese culture stuck out as one of kind and intelligent people who care so much about the society they live in which, when juxtaposed to the United States, appeals in a great capacity to my highly-empathetic heart. As well, their higher education costs are remarkably lower than they are here, too. After beginning to learn the language recently, I've become entrenched in different parts of their culture and how they live, including their nationwide compulsory healthcare system that allows people of all economic backgrounds to receive healthcare treatment for little or no out-of-pocket costs - a cause that I have deep mental investment in. America being one of, if not the, richest nations on the planet and spending so much more on healthcare than other OECD-comparable nations while also having vast disparities in healthcare treatment among people who can't afford insurance, or are underinsured and can't afford treatment is a situation I find deplorable and in need of as immediate a change as is possible. I want to become a doctor so I can live my dream, innovate and help heal those in the community I wind up practicing in, and then bring my knowledge back to advocate for social and political reform. I am of the belief that healthcare is a human right, and not a privilege for those with great amounts of disposable income, and should be heavily subsidized by the government in order to allow for little-to-no out-of-pocket expenses for people in dire financial situations - including the homeless and those below and in the general vicinity of the poverty line. The circumstances around this tend to be polarizing and politically-driven towards overcomplication and not finding solutions in order to bolster the medical industrial complex that contributes to the capitalistic structure that keeps those with little money from ever creating intergenerational wealth for themselves and their families, and allows the highest earners who expropriate their funds through exploitation of their workforces to essentially live in a societal playground with no accountability.

Over the course of my academic career, my interests have shifted because I had only ever known the idea that you can have one path where you do one thing - so you better do it well! But after walking into my high school and realizing that I was probably not going to be an architect like I'd thought. I then realized my love and the importance of science in our society and knew that that was going to be the purpose of my education; this was the path that had opened up in front of me thanks to the wonderful teachers who instilled in me a love of learning. I then switched again from chemistry to medicine where I am now, but this is only because I know that in this world there is far too much bureaucracy around medicine and I want to create a future where people can receive the medical attention they deserve without losing everything they've worked so hard to earn. I am a lover of foreign cultures and languages, so I'm currently teaching myself Japanese in order to go to medical school there, for multiple reasons. I'm someone who has had many privileges in my life, but the financial surplus necessary in order to go to American medical school is not one of them. As well, Japan has one of the highest life expectancies and better medical outcomes in their patients than the United States, and I want to 1) experience the beautiful foreign culture of Japan and 2) take that excellent medical care knowledge back home with me, and advocate for social and legislative reform for the betterment of the middle and lower-class families that the system abuses in order to prop up the top 5% of earners in this country. I want to be a part of the movement to make American healthcare free for people who earn a salary less than $150,000 per year. The terrible healthcare system we unfortunately have had to bear for generations now needs change, and with my entire heart I aim to be part of the solution. The people need healthcare, they need food, they need education, and a huge part of my life is wanting to be a moving part that will inspire great change to benefit those who are in worse situations than myself. It's my personal belief that the purpose of life is to do what one loves, and leave the world with it in better condition than how it was when one enters it. Scientific innovation and medical studies are the root core of my educational passions, and pursuing socioeconomic change to better the world (or at least our nation) for the disenfranchised people that have been put under a system that uses 50% of us to fund 1% of us. The U.S. spends twice as much as any comparable OECD nation in the world on healthcare, and yet we are subpar at best when compared to them. An educated populace is a powerful populace. Embracing and improving the synergy of the people and their government through putting progressive changes in motion, and treating people in a hospital while doing as much work pro-bono as is feasibly possible for a doctor - that is the dream I seek to fulfill through my education. Creating this positive change for the many who need it is what life is for. Aiding in shaping a better life for those who cannot do so themselves so more people can achieve their dreams in the ripples caused by my own dream being caused. Life is a tale of history. History is solely the timeline of humanity and what it has chosen to do. My dream is to be someone remembered for being a positive influence for the world that gave me the life I was fortunate enough to inherit. Building a better life for those who come after us, built upon the work of those who came before. This is what life is meant to be. This is my dream, the one I will live my life to surmount and bring to fruition. Life is short, but with many doors and opportunities open to create and spur on amazing work. Innovation, progression, and taking the time to make one's life beautiful and live their dreams at their greatest potential; this is how history is truly made.

In the wake of my grandfather's passing, I was so young and felt lost along my path. I was 13 at the time, and wanted to connect with him in a deeper way, so I started learning Italian in high school to talk to him in the language of his parents. He was born in America after his parents immigrated from southern Italy, and he always tried to impart bits and pieces of their culture to me as I grew up. I struggled to retain my first semester of Italian and he would occasionally review the vocabulary with me, and if I was able to remember well enough he would let me sit in his recliner with him while we watched sports events and ate snacks. Those times were a big deal to me and are memories I will always cherish. My Italian teacher was influential in my life because she helped me to better understand the Italian culture as a whole. As I began my second semester of Italian, he passed away over the course of a week and I threw my adolescent self into the language as a result. I began to finally excel in the language to honor him. I went on for four semesters and concluded my high school career with the ability to write whole papers and essays in Italian, and utilize multiple tenses to tell stories expressing myself. My instructor, Signora Monahan, guided me the entire way and was able to empathize with me. She was instrumental in keeping me from going down a path of sadness driven by the loss of my first close relative. This was a class that helped to keep my feet held down through a lot of typical teenage growing pains. I was fortunate enough to be able to become the President of the Italian National Honor Society my senior year, and worked closely with Signora to bring Italian culture to my high school through small events like Italian dinners and fundraisers like homemade gelato sales a couple times every season. She exposed us to Italian almost completely on day 1. Beforehand, I knew almost nothing about what it's like there, the cultural significance of Italy, the landscape, the political system; all these important aspects that were necessary to understand aside from the grammar. She taught us to express ourselves in the language of a culture completely different than that of what we're used to. I was able to learn about the many facets of language learning that initiated a drive in me to learn as many languages as I was capable of. Today as a 22 year-old man, I am thoroughly in love with the learning of languages, as well as understanding foreign cultures and peoples. She was able to direct me to find the definition of what life is meant for in me, just using a few basic steps over the course of 3 years. I found two of my best friends in her class, I was able to travel to Italy with her on a trip she organized, and was able to fulfill a goal of mine to intrinsically feel pride in myself and my culture to honor my grandfather. He left behind a large family of Italian-Americans who love with their whole hearts, and her instruction has allowed me to open a door for myself to begin to understand an entirely new population of people in a way I could never have done prior. I will always remember her and her wide-reaching impact on my life.

Losing my grandfather was one of the most formative and impactful events of my high school career. In those few years where you really start to become your truest self, you face many factors that travel alongside you and guide you in your decision-making for years to come. Growing up, I was lucky to have what I did, but it wasn't much. Something I did have and appreciate everyday is a family that loves me. My father had partial custody of me after my parents got divorced, and for a long time, his parents lived in his furnished basement that functioned as a lower apartment beneath his home. I always loved going to visit them, and have more sweet memories with my grandparents than would be able to fit in 800 words or less. My grandparents were both children of foreign immigrants, my grandmother's family being from Ireland and my grandfather's from Italy. He was about as Italian as an old Italian man could be. He was a stout man, had slicked-back hair every single day, deep brown eyes and a perma-tan from years outside and at the beach where he and his wife loved to go on big family trips to bury their feet in the sand. He was always using little Italian fragments with me he'd taught to my dad and his brothers as a kid, but I was so young that few caught on long-term. I remember him telling me all the time, "...and don't tell your mother I taught you that!" The brightest light in the room, with a laugh that was as contagious as could be, he once had a birthday party thrown for him that took up an entire Rhode Island dive bar with our extended family coming in from around the country to show him they love him. He was the very reason I wanted to take Italian in high school instead of the more traditional path of Spanish or French. I dreamed about being able to speak to him in the same language as his parents who passed long before my time. I struggled through my first semester of Italian during sophomore year, but he and I would sit on the couch together and he would ask me what certain words meant - if I got them right he would let me sit on the recliner with him to watch whatever sports event he felt inclined to watch that day, and it would always make me feel so proud of myself for retaining what I did for my second language. Then, towards the end of my second semester of Italian, I was just starting to be able to express myself in full Italian sentences and use colloquial expressions. But during that semester, he fell ill and was in the hospital for a few weeks. Those were the longest weeks of my life. I had two Thanksgivings that year, as I had many years prior, but the one at my dad's house without Poppy for the first time felt off to me. It felt like all I could think about was him being there with us at the head of the table next to Gram like always. It was quieter than usual, and although I didn't know it at the time, that was going to be his last Thanksgiving. Not long after his birthday, he passed of cancer in the hospital overnight. We were thankful it was in his sleep and any suffering he was too stubborn to tell us he was feeling would finally be over. After that, I was so driven and motivated to do the best I possibly could in Italian in tribute to him. I spent years learning Italian, up to AP Italian IV where I would write entire stories and essays in full Italian with little to no help, and could speak it slowly, but fluently. I became the President of my high school's Italian National Honor Society. Then around the end of my senior year, I was able to save money and take my first international trip to Italy and spent 10 dreamlike days there. I brought back so much, between souvenirs and experience alike, but the plane ride home was spent with me hoping that Poppy was looking upon me with pride, wherever he was. He has always been in my heart and always will be. Then earlier this year, Gram started feeling ill herself and was hospitalized the day after the anniversary of Poppy's death. She passed this Christmas Day and joined him wherever he is now. I was the first to speak at her funeral, and now I'm pursuing a career in medicine, so hopefully I can one day give someone a little more time with their grandparents. Salute, Nonno. Ti amo siempre.

I have many driving forces in my life. The more I learn, the more I crave to promote positive change. My greatest inspirations in life are: to become a doctor and help bring positive and meaningful changes to the lives of the people I'm lucky enough to care for; to travel abroad and find as many wonderful ways in which our world is run, and bring those ideas back to the United States to advocate for reforms that would uplift the many who have been downtrodden by the few; and to one day facilitate a change that makes life easier or better for marginalized peoples, who have been wronged by our society for far too long. I grew up in small towns, never really having to pick up any roots behind me since I didn't settle for long. Once my mom was finally able to buy her own home, I settled in and began learning about the beautiful world around me - over the years this perspective has only grown more vast. I am passionate about language. I learned Italian in high school to honor my grandfather, whose parents came from Italy in the 1900's, and ever since he passed I became driven to master the language like never before, and studied it for 4 semesters. I then took classes in American Sign Language and learned about the culture of the Deaf community, and not long after was able to succeed in Arabic classes, learning about African and Middle Eastern cultures, whose histories are fraught with obstacles put in place by those who didn't care enough to understand them. The more I learned, the farther out I could see into the horizon. I'm currently learning Japanese and want to complete medical school there because it's cheaper than in the United States, and I no longer have income after quitting my bartending job of 4 years to pursue a full-time university degree in Biological Sciences at URI. Once I am able to graduate, I want to test in there, complete a medical degree, and come back to give back to the state that allowed me to reach my dreams by helping the ill and those who are in need. I want to also advocate for reforms that help the Black community and other People of Color, the Muslim community, the LGBT community, and many more. The impoverished peoples of this country are kept down by a system that only benefits the top 1% of earners, and I want to help bring changes to promote the lives of lower and middle class people who work harder than anyone else and deserve it the most. I want to help bring clean water to cities, cleaner air to the country, and protect wildlife and the environment. I aim to shoot for the stars and bring whatever I can back with me to help those less fortunate than myself. The largest tsunamis started as small waves, and that's how true equity can be achieved.

Being a first-generation student has made quite an impact on my goals in terms of career choices. There are so many places that I aspire to work to influence for the positive change of humanity. I've lived my life in small, predominantly white towns and cities in Connecticut, and dream to become a physician by studying abroad in Japan, where levels of education are some of the highest in the world. The healthcare system needs physicians who care about more than just their patients, but our country as a whole. Many are uninsured, or underinsured as a consequence of their socioeconomic conditions and are disenfranchised from the universal right that healthcare should be. I come from the broken home of a payroll secretary and a validation/compliance manager of a drug research company and have lived in lower middle-class homes for my entire life. Mine is a very average life, but even then there are so many ways in which I am privileged. This pushes me to dream to bring better quality of life to those who need it. I love languages, and currently have learned Italian and some Japanese, and have taken courses in several others during my schooling. Learning about foreign countries, cultures, and religions is a matter in which I hold great pride. My mother has always been my caretaker, and it's impossible to express the gratitude for all the years of love, food and shelter she's been able to give me. Even then, she has had to go through many struggles both fiscally and emotionally. As I grew older, I was able to see beyond the fences to the people around this country who are struggling and being deprived of what they rightfully deserve as human beings - food, shelter, and love. I want to advocate for the betterment of others' socioeconomic conditions and push for stronger social reforms for the benefit of marginalized communities while pursuing a career in medicine to care for those in my immediate vicinity. I've written papers discussing ways to reform our current healthcare system to make costs more manageable to those in dire straits, and hope to publish them someday. I want to research cures and/or treatments for cardiopulmonary diseases because this, to me, is the center of where people's souls are. I have large dreams that are going to be difficult to accomplish, but that's what dreams are meant to be. Life is short and is meant to be a challenge for people to show their growth and to do whatever they can to achieve their various fantasies about their "perfect life". Life is not fair, but it could be much closer to it if we work to make it so. Health professionals in positions of higher education and social "status" need to focus on more social causes like providing equity to women, people of color, foreign immigrants, and other groups whose opportunities have been stripped from their grasp by the people at the top who take advantage of historical systems to further the gaps of economic equality. I want to be a medical professional one day and advocate for healthcare reform, among other things, like hospitals being mostly government-funded so as to not be for-profit businesses, more social safety net provisions, and increasing our levels of education to balance out rural and urban disparities. We are gifted with knowledge and, as a species, should work to improve the lives of others as much as possible, while minimizing impact on foreign countries and their people, the environment and nature, and our less fortunate neighbors. That is my dream.

All my life, I have felt restricted to my small hometown. I moved a lot as a kid and finally settled in right before high school, and never really got a chance to lay down formal roots anywhere. Considering the currently inflated costs of American colleges and medical schools, and my great passion for humanitarian work and interest in medicine, I want to formalize my personal love of languages and diverse cultures to earn my M.D. abroad. My current plan is to try and learn as much Japanese as possible, and begin schooling over there. I began studying it on my own a couple years ago as a hobby, and want to invest more of myself into it. Many people pursue medicine for reasons like the "prestige" involved, the higher salaries associated with medical practice, etc. I don't care personally about glamorized careers. It's my personal philosophy that with the limited amount of time we as people have on this planet, those in places of fortunate standing should do what they can to improve the lives of others who are not on as strong of a footing: even with my limited means. I want to dedicate my life to advocating for those who have had their voices stifled by those in positions of power, and I aim to help people through the power of medicine and science. My main concern in career selection has always been wanting to do something where I come home to a loving family at the end of the work day feeling fulfilled, and have made a positive change in the world through my work. Every day is not guaranteed to be that way, but not every day is guaranteed. This scholarship is advertised as mainly in the effort of supporting the arts, but I also posit the question; what truly is the scope of art? In terms of enlightening those it affects, fulfilling the dreams and creative influences of those who propagate the art, anything can be deemed art or artistic in certain aspects. Through my collegiate career, I've had the privilege of taking courses in Arabic, American Sign Language, and four semesters of Italian in high school that spurred my love of foreign culture and diverse perspectives. As an Italian man, it meant a lot to me to learn the language of my grandfather and his family that came over from southern Italy in the early 1900's. Learning in Japan would be an amazing opportunity to express this love of culture and the inherent art of linguistics and writing in non-Romanized scripts; this was instilled in me during the formative years of education out of a genuine curiosity and appreciation for a foreign culture. I want to take this opportunity in a plan that I've contrived wherein one can follow guidelines for the several tests of Japanese fluency to attain higher-level comprehension of the language and greater memorization of words, grammar, and characters in writing. Speaking in many tongues is something that speaks quite literally to the souls of many who come from other places and feel outed once in America. I want to broaden my horizons and deepen my love of Eastern cultures by going there and trying to return to America having globalized my mentality, thereby reducing the epidemic of America-centric social structures we are bound to by living here. While also pursuing a career in medicine, I want to use different perspectives from people and places around the world to advocate for better socioeconomic conditions for the people living here in America. Ways one could do that would be through social media activism, petitioning legislative bodies for reform, and spreading a message to the people that the way they live now is a low bar that they have been told for generations is good enough. With homelessness being a crisis in America right now, and gross disparities between the top 1% of people and the impoverished communities around the country, this is a message people need to hear. Educating our fellow citizens on what ways we can better ourselves physically, culturally, and socially are some of the strongest routes towards making worthwhile change. Our current system keeps certain people up, and depresses those at the bottom. The Buddha has been quoted as saying, "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, And the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared;" a message that stays in the roots of my subconscious every day.