I absolutely did not want to get out of the car. My hands were sweaty, my thoughts were running wildly in my head, and I’m pretty sure I forgot to eat lunch. Would it be that bad if I just put the car back in drive and booked it to the nearest exit? I was being ridiculous. You never knew until you tried. Pressing the off button on my car, I gathered all my courage and picked up the resume lying on my passenger seat. Stepping out into the blinding sunlight, I looked up at the sign that could be the best or worst start to my senior year of high school. The neon red sign that read “Texas Roadhouse” loomed over me and I began to walk to the front of the building, ready to possibly start the next chapter of my life. At the beginning of my senior year, I applied for my first job at my favorite restaurant. It was time for me to get real-life experience and what better way than working at the place where I spent my birthday every year? When I walked through those double doors for my interview, I couldn’t help the giant smile that appeared on my face when I got inside. While that smile stayed on my face throughout my interview, it only got wider when I walked out the door with a new job and hope that I would be able to give it my all. Now, 6 months later, I earned a promotion due to my ability to lead a team and my warm and inviting nature. My ability to always be the optimist in a situation is my most valuable quality. If I wouldn’t have been optimistic, I never would have gained a job that allowed me to make a stranger’s day by just giving them a simple smile. My job as a hostess put me in countless situations where I was able to light up someone’s day. I remember a guest I had who came in and looked like he had a rough day. I smiled at him and asked him if he wanted extra cinnamon butter for his rolls to add a little more sweetness to his day and the frown that had made a home on his face turned into a giant smile as he laughed at my joke. I had talked to him the entire way to his table about all the fun things he planned to do after a rough day at work. Now, I make sure to tell at least one joke to each guest that enters because you never know who needs it. I find myself greeting people who return to the restaurant multiple times and forming meaningful connections with everyone who comes in to eat. My positivity and ability to always remain an optimist is something that I know will help me in my journey to becoming a pathologist in the future. I won’t give up when research and experiments don’t work the first time and I certainly will not allow a patient to have a frown on their face when they learn they have a disease that might not be curable. I will strive to stay positive because if I can just make one person’s day, maybe I can make the world a better place by finding treatments for diseases that make it a dreary one. In life, not everything is sunshine and rainbows, but with my optimism, I hope I can remind patients that when you trust someone who truly cares, amazing things can happen.

The gleam of silver reflected on my glasses. I pushed them up, biting my lip, as I looked back up at my music teacher. “Today we will be choosing our instruments” she had said. The class had mixed reactions. Some sighed, some scoffed, and some didn’t even look up from their phones. But me, I couldn’t stop glancing at the instruments that lay at the front of the room. I had two options. Choose what my friends were playing or pick up the instrument that wouldn’t stop giving me that look. In the end, I made the right decision and now nine years later I yearn for the feeling of my fingers dancing across those metallic keys. When I enter the band room or prepare myself to march in another parade, I feel the stress of the day lift off of my shoulders and evaporate into the air. The four walls of the music room are my fortress and my flute is my fierce and loyal companion. Music inspires me to never be ashamed to do what I enjoy. Don’t give up on something that you know will make you happy for the sake of others. There were countless times when I was told I was weird for staying in band past the required years or dumb for choosing an instrument that “could never be heard above every other section”, but I knew my flute was mighty and she showed everyone what a force she was. Being involved in so many extracurriculars that revolved around my flute convinced me to get even more involved in multiple aspects of the arts. The insecurities that I had formed in my first few years of band faded away and I was ready to broaden my musical journey. I became a prominent presence at a musical theater camp, performing song and dance numbers and acting on stage for many children and adults to see. I also became a dancer and twirled my way across the stage. Now as I have gotten older, I’ve begun to step into my role as a teacher and inspiration for many young kids. I want to inspire the next generation to discover their passions and not feel ashamed to pursue them. I want them to take that leap and make the decision that they might feel insecure about at first but realize later it was the best decision of their life. The path less traveled might be a longer one, but it will leave you more fulfilled by the end. From becoming a counselor at the same musical theater camp that I once attended to simply promoting the marching band to incoming freshmen at my high school, I am demonstrating the confidence I have in the path I took and how I am continuing down that path by doing what I love in college. While my mind is full of ideas and my mouth is full of words, nothing compares to what I can communicate with others when I hold my flute in my hand. And what I want to convey to future generations, as well as those with far more experience than I, is that what you enjoy will sustain you for a lifetime. Find your passion and stick with it because a life without what brings you the most joy is a life not lived fully.

The first thing most teens want to do when they get their license is go out with their friends and celebrate their new found freedom. At least this used to be the dream of many teens across the world. Instead, my first thought when I first achieved my license is to get home as quick as possible and assemble the self-defense kit that just arrived an hour prior in the mail. This was the first thing I thought about because as a minority in America I must live every day in fear. In order to protect myself I have to always be afraid and attentive and that just is not ok. It is not ok that as an African American, as a pansexual, as a woman, and most importantly as a teenager I have this fear that something bad could happen to me at any time. It is not ok that as a teenager and a woman in America I fear being taken advantage of by a man and never receiving justice for it if it happens because that is just how our justice system works. It is not ok that as an African American I fear being harassed by a white person simply because of the way I look because people in this world still are allowed to have that mindset and get away with heinous crimes. And it is not ok that as a pansexual woman I fear being harassed by anyone who believes they have a right to comment on who I love because they simply do not agree with it. There are many things in this world that I wish to see change and that need to change, but the main thing I want to completely be demolished is hate. Hate leads to violence against every minority. Every person that is not the straight cisgender white man is always hated one way or another for being who they are and that needs to end. The thousands of lives that have been taken in America alone has been done because of hate in a person's heart. Now hate is not something that a law can simply be made about and everyone falls in line and begins to love. Hate is something that festers and grows from the moment a person first feels it and cannot be stopped until that person has satisfied that hate with violence. Until the next time it feels unsatisfied of course. I want to see hate leave this world completely because then I could walk to my car carefree and take my time in the morning and late at night. I want to see hate leave this world so that a ten-year-old is not sitting in a courtroom and the defendant across from her is a family member who she was supposed to trust. I want to see hate leave this world so that the women simply walking down the street is not catcalled and harassed and then spit and yelled at when she does not respond. And I want to see hate leave this world so that the happy couple who both happen to be woman are not told they have to leave a public area because the owner does not condone "sin". Hate has been the downfall of humans since I can remember and probably you can remember too and it needs to stop being normalized and instead start being looked down upon. If we cannot tell someone hateful that what they are doing is wrong than we have already failed every person that that person will hate and ultimately hurt.