Growing up as a faithful Girl Scout meant engaging in a lot of community service at a very young age. Some of my first memories are of my troop and me gearing up to help out at the Food Bank of the Rockies and start fundraisers for school supplies for kids in Evans, CO. At the time, I couldn’t really grasp what it all meant, but it ingrained the spirit of community and helping those around you in my life. I continued volunteering throughout my later school years. Homeless shelters, children’s hospitals, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and many more opportunities have allowed me to make an impact both in Colorado and beyond. Each experience has taught me a new, important lesson. The most universal lesson has been not to take what I have been gifted for granted. In this day and age, it's so easy to become lost in what's popular and the “gimmes” as the Berenstain Bears have dubbed it. Social media has taught us to want whatever the newest thing is; in short, it has made many people extremely selfish. While doing community service is an amazing way to allow me to be more grateful in my everyday life, that is not what it means in my life in the present day. Community service is an act that allows me to connect with my community, as well as a representation of who I want to become in the future. It’s one thing to complete community service because of a graduation requirement, but it’s an entirely different thing to strive to help your community in any way you can simply because you are able and willing to. I want to live in a community where people are happy and healthy, and they care about one another. I enjoy helping people to smile, especially when it feels like they're drowning in the currents of life. Never ever do I wish to become the type of person to become so obsessed with myself that I completely ignore the struggles of the people around me. Community service has allowed me to find my one true love: helping people. There is nothing like being able to support a fellow human through hardship. It doesn’t matter who they are, what they’ve done, or what they believe; you do it for them because they’re human. I fell so deeply in love with helping others that I plan to dedicate the rest of my days on this Earth to it as a therapist. At this point, I’m not sure where I’ll be going in the Fall or where my life will lead, but I can say for certain that my desire to provide comprehensive mental healthcare will follow me wherever I go. My adventures in pursuing community service will only become more impactful as I am able to get my degrees. Whether it be through a hotline, NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), MHA (Mental Health America), or through a school in my local community, my passion for helping others, especially through volunteer work, is sure to follow me.

Mental health has been a constant in my life for over 7 years. While I was struggling with my own mental health, so were all of the people I chose to associate with. I’ve become intimately acquainted with mental health in a large variety of forms and presentations. I researched the conditions and symptoms that concerned my close friends, learned the best possible things I could do to help them, even with my limited experience. No matter how hard I tried to push myself into other career paths, I always ended up in the same place. “I have to do something that will help people.” And so, born out of my own struggle and experience in helping my friends through crises, I decided that I wanted to help people through their own mental health as a therapist. To confirm to myself that becoming a therapist is a pathway I’d enjoy and calm my anxiety about it, I started to work with my high school’s counseling department as a peer counselor. I took a 6-month class that prepped me to help other students through their challenges socially, emotionally, and in their classes. Even with the very few meetings I’ve had with my assigned students, I really do believe that this is the pathway I was made for. My plans for my entire career are built around wanting to emotionally support as many people as I’m able to. The first step I must take on this pathway is getting my bachelor’s in Psychology. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to specialize and help others in a way that I didn’t have access to when I was a young teenager. This kind of education will help me accomplish my aspirations of becoming a therapist. Furthermore, I will have the resources necessary to self-regulate and move through my adult life as responsibly and with as much benefit to the people around me as possible. My future degrees in Psychology and Mental Health Counseling are the final pieces required to build my dream life, in which I make as much good and provide as much support to others as I can every single day

I am a time-traveler. Not because I've cracked some mythical hidden code or solved the mysteries of life, but because with a single glance into the deep molasses-colored pools of my eyes, I am instantly transported to the nights of my adolescence, when my mind and body were locked in utter rejection of one another. My hair, greasy and sticking to my face and hands, and my teeth, rotting, all because my mind holds me prisoner in my bed most mornings. Anxiety and panic attacks cause my red-hot cheeks to smush against the cold tile floor as my chest tightens. I’m helpless in trying to stop the tears from falling off my barren lashes. Through the blurred tears with a simple blink, I’m snapped back to the present. Standing in front of my mirror as I do every night, in a time younger me never imagined surviving long enough to experience. I notice my hair cascading gently down my back and a minty residue in my mouth. In these moments, everything is tranquil. Now, I can easily picture a serene future in which I not only exist, but I thrive. I aspire to help anyone with struggles become a time-traveler rather than be buried six feet under. The depression was disorienting. I couldn’t describe how I was feeling or when it started; I just knew there was nothing I could do to stop it from progressing. Not once was there a pinpoint-able reason as to why I became severely depressed, so according to my undereducated knowledge, I must’ve just been imagining everything. Imaginary or not, I didn’t fully understand what was happening, and that terrified me. I refused to let anyone, not even my closest friends and family, see that broken, dark part of me. It breaks my heart to know that I would've rather died than risk my pride enough to let anyone know how bad things were becoming. From confusion to anger and anger to gratitude, the farther in time I get, the more my quiet understanding of my own mind grows. I spent years being angry. Angry at myself, my family, and at whatever was making me suffer. Somehow now, every angry thought that I survived seems like a building block in the foundation of what I stand for. I stand for support systems, self-care and fostering positive mental health in youth. I’ve been where so many kids are, and I was able to come out on the other side. I’ve experienced the pain first-hand, my passion is derived from struggle, and that makes it run deep through my veins. I want to dedicate my studies and passion to psychology and counseling. Those nights alone in my room are not relics to be hidden, but are snapshots along my time-traveling discovery. You have to recognize and understand the past in order to move on and grow from it. If I can master meeting people where they are, offering small glimpses of the future by using evidence-based practices and the language of minds I hope to deeply understand, those nights will all be worthwhile. Therapy benefited me and my journey so greatly that I plan to dedicate the rest of my life to helping others to the best of my ability. I yearn to foster an education in psychology with the kind of empathy only personal experience can give me and the hope of being a walking example that it is possible to overcome the struggles of depression to leave as my legacy, as my personal mark on the world for all time.

I've been lucky enough to have been gifted parents who always push me to be the best version of myself. They didn't care what classes I was in or what I pursued, just that I did well in those classes and that I was dedicated to what I pursued. So many people don't get to have that luxury and in realizing and understanding that, I knew I had to do more than what they expected of me. I choose to work hard and get all A's with an occasional B in all of my classes. I chose to take harder classes, APs, and college-level courses in order to go above and beyond in my schooling. Whenever presented with an opportunity to go more in-depth in a course, or to obtain extra credit, I take it. Doing well in school and working hard was all my parents wanted for me. They never pushed me to do more or to overwhelm myself. But I did that anyway. In January of 2023, I got a job as a hostess at a restaurant. Despite all of the struggles I've had balancing work and my intense course load, I've stuck it out, gotten promoted, and still work at that same exact restaurant over 2 years later. It is a strongly held belief of mine that in whatever you have going on, you should be fully invested in it. Throughout every single hobby and project that I start, I get fully invested in it. As a freshman I would get so particular over every single project I accomplished, getting them done to the absolute best of my ability, and then reviewing them even more. This pride I have in my work transcends just my schoolwork and career and goes as far as to infect my hobbies. It's almost as if I can never just be casual about most things I get involved with. When I start reading during the summer, I fully immerse myself in it with annotations and page markers. I can specifically remember one instance where I wanted some custom embroidered pants to wear to a concert, and rather than buying them online or only doing a few little patches myself, I fully immersed myself in the project. Working from the time I got home from school till the early hours of the morning just to get these lovely jeans ready. Throughout my entire life, I always strive to produce the best quality of work when for a majority of the time, that work could've been easier had I held myself to a lesser, but still acceptable standard. Out of respect for my parents, my coworkers, my bosses, my teachers, and my friends, I will always do my best to meet their expectations. But for myself, I will always end up doing more.