Some of my favorite memories of my childhood revolve around my Nintendo NES. This was the first console my family had and my introduction to video games. My brother and I used to play a variety of games, but we were most excited to play Super Mario Bros with our dad. I remember being incredibly impressed by his skill at the game, I couldn't comprehend how he would get past the levels I could never beat. I lost my dad in 2019, but I'm grateful I have these memories to look back on. My love for games never died, and every time I pull up Super Mario Bros from the NES console app on my Switch, I think back on the wonderful times I had watching my dad beat the game. Each time I get to world five, I turn into the child I used to be, watching with stars in my eyes as my dad defeated every enemy that came his way. I love that I have this game to fall back on whenever I'm missing him. It's a great way to feel close when we're so far, a way to remind myself that one day we'll be together again, defeating enemies.

At fourteen years old, I was given the news that both my mom and dad were diagnosed with cancer, just months apart. I was beyond devastated. My world suddenly shifted from being a freshman stressed about homework to wondering if I would lose my parents. Ultimately, this nightmare came true when cancer took the life of my dad in June 2019. This loss has affected every aspect of my life, including my educational goals. After the loss of my father, my family heavily struggled financially. While I retained my love for academics despite the tragedy I'd been through, I was no longer sure I could afford the college education I'd dreamed of. My mother was no longer able to contribute to my education past high school. She was, and still is, living on my father's pension and the social security benefits from her health struggles. After the surgery and treatment she went through for her cancer, she is no longer able to hold a normal job. Her body cannot handle hours of work. While I am immensely grateful that she has this amount of income to survive on, I've watched her feel guilty for not being able to aid me in my education. This scholarship would mean giving me the ability to remove that guilt from her. I want to be able to fund my education not only to succeed in my future career but to lift the shame and worry from her shoulders. She has been through enough these last five years, I don't want her spending the next two worried about how I will finish college. Outside of familial stress, this scholarship would aid my ability to continue fighting for the life I want to live. When I was lost in the haze of my parents' illness, stories were something that brought me light. They provided me a way to escape from my own life into the fantastical one of a character of my choosing. I leaned on stories heavily to get me through the depression this time brought upon me, and once I saw the light more and more, I decided to tell my own story. This led me to my love of writing and editing. Today I am in college to learn how to do both of these, so that I may make a career for myself through the passion that got me through the worst time in my life. I am hopeful that this would be not only a career to support me financially but also one where I could spread the light that was shown to me. Winning this scholarship would not only mean funding my education but also relieving stress from my family. I would be able to remove guilt from the shoulders of my mother by showing her everything was under control. Furthermore, I would get closer to finishing my education and beginning my career. A career that would hopefully bring light to others going through similar struggles that I went through.

I believe that my faith should be the center of everything, including the art that I create. I know through my studies and my own experience that literature can have an immense impact on a person and I want the impact I leave to be positive. I want to “plant a seed” within people that God can then water through their potential exploration of faith. However, I don't want to write specifically Christian fiction, as I hope my work could be the spark that not only brings believers closer to God but non-believers as well. Thus, I want it to be widely accessible. What this means for my work is that my characters will not be openly labeled as Christian, they may not even mention God directly. What they will do, however, is have the kind of hope and joy that they express can only come from something greater than themselves. In this way, my work will present what a life lived for Christ can look like and how it may lead to hope, joy, and peace beyond all understanding. However, it will do so without being marketed specifically towards Christians. I hope this will make any of my work that I end up publishing reach a wide variety of individuals. This way maybe someone who doesn’t know God will pick it up and it may act as the seed I've described, planted to cause them to further explore faith. That is what I believe my job to be, planting the seed, it is up to God to water it, and then whoever reads my work to choose if they want to let it grow or not. I am currently implementing this belief through a story about grief. The inspiration for this novel comes from my own loss and struggles, and I hope this will give it the relatability required for people to connect to the work. I feel it is important to use the difficulties I have been through to aid others. God has led me through many valleys already in life, and I want to use those experiences to help Him lead others through the valleys of their own. Writing is one way I have found I'm able to do this. God has given me a passion for the art of writing and I feel it would be a disservice to Him if I did not use it to aid His people. Reading has been a very important part of my life. Stories became something I could fall back on when I was suffering, something God could speak to me through. I hope the stories I create can be that for another person.

My best friend Giovanna and I are each other's reasons for staying alive. We met spontaneously; she was new to my school and a teacher asked me to show her around. We learned that nearly all of our classes were the same and though we're both introverts and were very shy, the time spent together pushed us closer and closer. Now, I couldn't imagine my life without her. Some of my favorite memories were made with her. One of the most fun of these was when we decided to swim in a freezing lake at the camp we both went to. It was the kind of activity that was only fun if you had someone you loved doing it with you. I would've been miserably cold if she weren't there, but her presence highlighted joy within me instead. While we have plenty of fun memories to look back on, what made us the closest were the hard times. I strongly believe that the most difficult times in your life will show you who your true supporters are, and she was mine. In 2018, my parents were diagnosed with cancer two months apart. This quickly became the hardest thing I'd ever gone through. However, Giovanna stuck by my side through the entirety of it. We'd only been friends for a year at this point, yet she was the person I ran to with the pain. Though some of my friends distanced themselves from me during this time as they did not know how to handle what I was going through, she never left my side. She stayed with me through every breakdown, holding my hand while I cried. She stayed up with me during my late nights spent wondering what my future was going to look like; and she was the first person I wanted to fall into when my father died six months later. I wouldn't have made it through that time in my life without her support, and thankfully, I was there to offer the same support to her through her struggles. I'm not going to share all the details of her situation, as that is her story to tell and not mine. However, there was a period around the time of COVID-19 when she was strongly considering suicide. This absolutely shattered me. I was fearful each day, wondering if it was a real consideration or simply the kind of intrusive thoughts that I dealt with myself. When I found out it was the former, I was left with difficult action to take. I knew I had to tell her parents immediately, which is what I did, but I worried this would be a breach of the trust we shared, and that she may be angry towards me, or even want to end our friendship. Thankfully, our bond was stronger than her struggle, she understood why I had to do what I did, and eventually even thanked me for it. To this day I am so glad I reached out to someone who could intervene, I cannot imagine this world without my best friend in it. After that day we made a promise to one another, one that at times has been difficult for each of us to keep. We swore that we would not end our own lives, that we would live for each other. While each of our struggles both included in this essay and personal to us have made us want to break this promise, we won't. Our friendship is one of the most valuable aspects of my life, and I know she feels the same.