When I was 9-years-old, my parents filed for divorce. Although it's been almost a decade, the divorce was violent--broken doors and rampant yelling. I remember the month vividly--my birth month, January--and my parents' separation was decided by what my 6-year-old sister and I answered when they posed the question, "Do you guys think we should divorce." I've slowly been increasingly less excited for my birthday since then. January 22nd reminded me of my first birthday when there was no party, cheers of excitement, and confetti. It was marked by paperwork, consoling my mother and sister, daily night terrors, and struggling to keep myself up when everything around me was crashing down. Following the divorce, my father moved to California for work, forcing a geographical wedge through my family. My mother, at the time, owned a buffet in our small, isolated Texas hometown, and dealing with the divorce, a restaurant, and two small kids alone was challenging. While we had a great support system, my mother decided to downsize our home and sell her restaurant, abruptly stopping her childhood dreams. As the oldest of her two children, I bore a heavy responsibility. My mother dubbed me "practically a second father" to my sister--and myself. I dealt with all the plumbing and managing the electrical things my father dealt with. I cared for my sister in and out of elementary school, making meals, doing house chores, and tutoring her while my mother constantly worked longer shifts to keep us afloat. While I was already realistic and considered an "old soul" for my age, I took on a stronger pragmatic lens, stripping myself of the childlike whimsy and idealism I should've grown up with. My "normal" was and is something I never wished upon anyone, but I had to push through. While it was a tumultuous time for my family and me, I did my best to make sure school and education were still a priority, as per my mother's wishes. The experience of being part of a separated family ensured I had the perseverance to see that priority through, leading me to constantly come out of each school year with Honor Roll awards and medals for the Texas competitive organization, the University Interscholastic League. When I entered high school, the reality of everything my world came to hit like a semi-truck. I grew up with my mother's ambition, drive, and passion, but without the resources or second parent to make things possible. I often struggled to find rides home to different events, or bore the responsibility of taking care of the apartment and my sister, causing me to quit specific extracurricular activities or the ambitions I had the dedication to follow through with. I learned over time that resourcefulness would be my best friend, and I wanted to do my best to remove the burdens my mother lifted. I began to walk from place to place, only ever asking to be brought home as I trekked down the nearly unwalkable roads of my current city. I learned to build the same poker faced resilience my mother had, and the resourcefulness that kept the three of us living. The experience of growing up the oldest child of a single mother shaped me to carry the strength of mine, persevering through the barricades that dare try to stop me.

When I was 9-years-old, my parents filed for divorce. Although it's been almost a decade, the divorce was violent--broken doors and rampant yelling. I remember the month vividly--my birth month, January--and my parents' separation was decided by what my 6-year-old sister and I answered when they posed the question, "Should we divorce." Following the divorce, my father moved to California for work, forcing a new, geographical wedge through my family. My mother, at the time, owned a buffet in our small, isolated Texas hometown, and dealing with the divorce, a restaurant, and two small kids alone was challenging. While we had a great support system, my mother decided to downsize our home and sell her restaurant, abruptly stopping her childhood dreams. As the oldest of her two children, I bore a heavy responsibility. My mother dubbed me "practically a second father" to my sister--and myself. I dealt with all the plumbing and managing the electrical things my father dealt with. I cared for my sister in and out of elementary school while my mother constantly worked longer shifts to keep us afloat. My "normal" was and is something I never wished upon anyone, but I had to push through. While it was a tumultuous time for my family and me, I did my best to make sure school and education were still a priority. The experience of being part of a separated family ensured I had the perseverance to see that priority through. While I haven't had much opportunity to shape the world, I hope to foster the same tight-knit support system my world--the family I have--has for those who need it. Through higher education, I aspire to carry out my dreams of being an Engineer, hoping that the lost inner child of me--and my mother lives on through me.

I've never been a sports fan. I'm short--standing at around 5'2"(if I'm being generous), the furthest thing from athletic, buff or flexible, socially inept, and any other adjective you could describe an awkward 17-year-old. Music is more of my forte--pun intended--so when my TikTok For You Page suddenly shifted from a culmination of video game content, musician tips, clarinet covers, and strange memes to constant streams of USA Men's and Women's Gymnastics videos, I initially wasn't all that piqued. That was until I came across my first video about the American gymnast Steven Nederoscik. Dubbed on the app as "Modern-day Clark Kent" and on the global stage as "The Specialist," Steven Nederoscik became the first athlete I followed for over two days. He was the athlete I felt I most personally resembled. While I'm not an athlete, we carried the same nerdy hobbies and interests, like video games, engineering, and the Rubik's Cube. Additionally, we both stand relatively short and need to wear glasses. Like Steven Nederoscik, in order to focus on the task at hand, I'd take off my glasses. On my rare down times, I spent my time playing video games or trying to get a new personal best on my beat-down Rubik's cube. We both shared a nerdy, slightly awkward disposition, and we both pushed ourselves to be the best at what we specialized in--me with my clarinet, and Nedoroscik with his pommel horse.

Like Joyce Tolbert, my mother and father passionately emphasized the power of service and education. My mother, an ex-local restaurant owner and the bearer of a Bachelor's in Computer Science pushed my sister and me to strive for academic excellence, influencing us to carry high grade-point averages in school. My father, on the other hand, fought and worked for our country as a serviceman and commander in the United States Air Force, encouraging us to work to better ourselves and our communities. The values instilled in me by my dedicated and hardworking parents allow me to embody and express my own B.A.B.Y.L.O.V.E spirit, pushing me to follow my aspirations to be a future Mechanical Engineer and clarinetist. Academic excellence and a focus on education are standards I've followed since I began school. As an elementary school student, I earned multiple awards for A honor rolls and continued the pattern through high school. No matter how rigorous or simple the course, I ensured I learned the subject entirely and submitted quality work. Additionally, I started thinking about and planning for college during my first year, creating high school schedule spreadsheets to keep track of rigor, taking notes about specific scholarships or opportunities, and formulating my first-ever college list at the end of my first semester. My disposition towards higher education and my goal to attain a degree(and hopefully a double minor or double major) has been prevalent most of my life, researching my first ever dream college, Brown University, when I was around 11. While my dreams of attending a prestigious college became less prominent, I never stopped thinking about higher education and how to volunteer more with the options given to me. Due to my parents separating, I grew up in a single-parent family, so constant rides to and from different activities and college tours were more of a burden than an opportunity or positive. I learned to use my school-given Chromebook and my phone in more ways than just playing an online game or texting, instead using both to dedicate a portion of my day to transcribing historical documents for researchers and museums, and transcribing social media posts for screen reader users and visually impaired individuals. Moreover, I recognized how empowering music can be, especially in a group, joining my band's auditioned ensemble, performing concerts for the community every term, as well as joining the Tri-M Music Honors Society, aiding the group in setting up and preparing the school's first Veteran's Day Program. Being given the ability to push my academic standards to the test and healthily balance both music and volunteer opportunities is a strength I'm overjoyed to have. I think both allow me to empower myself, my community, and others in my social circles in a way I would've never thought was possible for someone as timid and reserved as myself. Learning that I get to embody the B.A.B.Y.L.O.V.E. spirit and work to empower those even further, just as my parents did me is monumental, and an honor I'm more than privileged to have.

This summer, I went back to the Philippines to visit my family. In June, specifically, I returned to my birthplace, a small village on the outskirts of the Tubod/Baroy named Pange. In Pange, we had constant power outages, exacerbated by the fact that the typhoon season was nearing. In my black, carry-on backpack, I carried the following: first-aid materials, my charger cables and box, bracelets, money, my Rubik's Cube, a sad Pou plush from my beloved girlfriend, and my grey, four-year-old Nintendo Switch. Initially, when I arrived in the Philippines, my Nintendo Switch was hidden away. My case, loaded with roughly ten games and the console itself, was my second most valuable possession. If anything were to happen with it, I'd grieve tremendously. However, due to the worsening typhoon weather, the WiFi used at my Lola's house was shaky. Because the router was paid for by my aunt so that she could teach and work digitally, we agreed to avoid using the internet for the time being to allow her to continue her job. While I spent countless hours with my cousins exploring the village, hanging out, and playing basketball with them daily, I began missing video games, causing me to bring my switch out for the first time. At first, I was hesitant to play with my cousins. Our home-away-from-home was multi-generational, and we had children as young as 18 months running around the house's common area, kitchen, and bedrooms. The chaos that ensued 80% of the time was a worry for me and my personal belongings, as it meant that accidents happened, and they happened often. Moreover, my two youngest cousins, ages 18 months and three years old, were magnetized to anything new or with a screen. I worried about them mishandling or hiding away the trinkets I'd let them play with often. Eventually, however, I became more comfortable. The eldest cousins in the house, aged 8 and 12, began watching me play Stardew Valley during power outages, and soon we were in the common area, playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land, as well as Mario Party Superstars. Mario Party Superstars soon became my favorite co-op game. Spending an extra hour or two with my younger cousins, teaching them more about my favorite hobby and console was something I was excited to do and something they were excited to experience. While multi-generational, only three out of the ten currently living at the house were working, and, like a majority of Filipino families in the country, money was hard to come by, so video games were far from common outside of the communal pay-to-use computers. My switch was my cousins' first experience using a console, much less a handheld console ever, and I could tell that their inquisition struck them hard. Over the last two weeks of my stay back in Pange, my cousins and I, and eventually, just them, created and completed over 12 different Mario Party Superstars games. Their beginnings as Players 2 and 3 soon transformed into Princess Peach and Daisy, and their knowledge of the Mario Party minigames and universe grew exponentially. Nintendo brought us together even further over the short time we spent together. The memories of excitement filling their faces with every 10-roll or minigame win and their exclaims of frustration after every missed Super Star and the player swap was unforgettable to me, and my eagerness for the next time we load a game is insurmountable.

Across all of my devices, I have over 2,000 hours on Minecraft, and, across every single one, my favorite aspect—the multiplayer experience—stays the same. I'm an avid Minecraft Bedrock Edition player, and I first truly fell in love with the game when I joined a random individual and his group of friends on a Minecraft survival world. At the time, I was using a cross-compatible, yet ripoff version of the game, found through my 8-year-old resourcefulness(basically just downloading every bootleg on the Play Store), and soon after meeting that group, I downloaded the real thing. Shortly after, I completely fixated on the game and looked into every single one of its features. I would join my newly found friends on their quest to defeat Jean, the game's main boss and beloved purple-black Ender Dragon. Every new world we explored fueled our endless childhood creativity, filled our insatiable craving for discovery and adventure, and allowed us to build companionship with one another through dreaded "first nights" and cave diving trips. We traversed endless block-filled worlds, learning about the game together, and soon, our chats turned into voice channels. It was around this time that we learned about Minecraft Servers. The first true friend I met, a kid named "Char" introduced us all to Lifeboat. Lifeboat became our new Survival. Like our survival worlds, we worked perilously to climb and advance in the server's Bedwars and Skywars minigames. Cubecraft, another featured server, was another server we found and soon we dedicated large amounts of time to rising the ranks in PvP games there. As a mobile player, playing with Char—a console player—and his console-player friends forced me to improve exponentially to adapt to their pace as controller users. While we're no longer friends, my experience with Char and his group was my first proper introduction to building community online, and, without him, I wouldn't have learned to forge a multitude of friendships with those who came from different backgrounds from me. Minecraft's emphasis on its online features and creativity influenced the servers I grew up on for 8 years, actively shaping and encouraging the young mind I had then and the crafty mind I have now.

Figuring out I was both Black and Lesbian at a young age was a jarring experience. Growing up the minority in a minority-dominated area forced me to learn to navigate the world seeing, without truly feeling seen. Facing both homophobic and racist microaggressions by those who I felt looked like and acted like me constantly completely flipped my worldview, instilling in me prominent feelings of isolation and being excluded--even in my close friend groups. Realizing that I wasn't truly being seen by my peers, I sought validation and community elsewhere. I pushed myself out of my typically shy, closed-off bubble and explored different volunteer opportunities, soon becoming the co-owner of a Black teen safe space, and volunteering to transcribe social media posts for the blind and visually impaired. I found community in those who faced the same issues as me and felt a profound feeling of accomplishment every time I could help those who, like me, felt underrepresented. Although both of my volunteer groups shut down, they ignited a new passion. In my early high school years, I aspired to be a psychiatrist to support those who may not have found a counselor that related to their experiences as a queer person or ethnic/racial minority. While my dream career path changed my senior year, I still feel a need to push for acceptance and community, to hopefully spark the same light into others my volunteer groups did to me. My current aspirations now include becoming a Mechanical Engineer who does music performances on the side, hoping to be the representation younger me, and those like me, truly need. The money from the scholarship moves me one step closer to my goals. A majority, if not all, of my higher education, will be funded off of financial aid packages and scholarships alone. As a child of a tremendously hard-working mother and father, adding another financial burden through college is the last thing I want to do. Easing the load for me and my parents, as well as avoiding student loans is my current biggest priority, other than passing this year's classes, and being given this opportunity is a personal leap in the right direction. Moreover, Coco's legacy being passed onto me, regardless of the scholarship money or not, will become another list of items that continue to push me to strive for both excellence and understanding, ensuring that I can be freely seen for what I am and that I can see others be free in their light.

No matter the distance or destination, I'm interlinked to a greater community just by being Filipino. Growing up a Filipino military child, I spent my early years moving from country to country, spending countless hours rebuilding pieces of relationships I'd soon come to lose. However, with every daunting move came a journey filled with other Filipinos who shared the same, empowering feeling of community my family and I did. While each piece of me dreaded each relocation, a part felt a spark to form and be a part of the communities I could connect to. My mother, a first-gen Filipino immigrant, made sure every step was lined with those who loved us, and those who related to us through the culture we shared. My grandmother, who lives back in our province of Mindanao, made sure we had a home away from home to go back to, regardless of the time spent away or the language barriers we faced (I grew up speaking Bisaya, but forgot as I immigrated to the States). Every reunion was brought to life by tables of cards and family playing tongits, lechon-filled fiestas, and the hollers of pride the loved ones and I shared. Each new ending came a new, yet familiar beginning, marked with love and the sense of community I never lost. Our final move was sometime around my 8th grade year, during quarantine. With the strong value of community and family instilled in me, I worked to forge my own, making sure to nurture the community I grew up with by connecting to other Filipinos in the Greater Cincinnati area. Under my mother's advice, I sought to connect to others regardless of difference and find common ground. While I wasn't naturally a social child, my parents pushed me to be a hardworking, persistent student, and through that, I found a love for music, biology, and math. The fondness I gained towards these subjects led me to rejoin my school's Symphonic (and eventually Wind Ensemble) Band and expand my love of Biology through AP sophomore year, and strengthen my fascination with math through Honors Pre-Calculus my junior year. These subjects not only solidified my dreams of pursuing these subjects in college but allowed me to connect to those who also seek the type of community I grew up loving. My band classes, in particular, required everyone to work together to produce music that would eventually be used to help build community and pride in our area through packed concerts and numerous parades. Without my family's values of community and persistence, the initial passion I had to join the concert band and help shape my greater community through music wouldn't have come to fruition, nor would I have been able to surround myself with a community of friends and musicians who shared the values I proudly grew up surrounded by. To this day, my love for these subjects remains, and I've been doing my best to continue my passion for STEM subjects and music. I've spent the last 3-4 years working to maintain my 4.0 GPA to aid in finding opportunities like this while continuing my hobby as a musician through different extracurriculars. With this scholarship, I plan to continue building community through music in college, as I aspire to double major(or major/minor) in Mechanical Engineering and Music. My goal is to do my best to provide ease to the parents, family, and community that worked hard and pushed me to become the individual I am today.