Being a student-athlete in high school is one of the hardest yet most rewarding things I have ever done. I played soccer all four years of high school, and as my final season came to a close, I was left to reflect on everything soccer has left me with. Maintaining grades while getting to practice and games on time is not for the faint of heart. It truly takes a lot out of a person to be a student-athlete. Soccer would begin during the summer so I would spend countless hours in the extreme heat all summer working hard to prepare for my season but that was nothing compared to what I would face when school began in the fall. Once school started, things became a real challenge. Now, I am an extremely driven student who has worked hard to maintain my 4.0 GPA with honors and dual enrollment courses, so as one can imagine the workload was much heavier on me. I knew that when I decided to take on the classes I would have to work hard every day, but I was used to that, after all, I am a student-athlete. I knew what hard work was and I was driven to work hard. I had to manage my time making sure I could get all my work turned in on time while also being at every soccer practice and every soccer game. There was a perfect balance between getting your work done and being committed to soccer. I have perfected that balance over the past four years. I spent every waking moment working on school when I was not on the soccer field so I could keep up my grades and still do what I love. Another challenge I faced while being a student-athlete was being fully committed to soccer and making sure I had time for other important things in my life such as family and friends. I was extremely lucky to have friends and family who supported me while I played soccer. They came to all my games just to cheer me on, so I had to make time out of my schedule for them because they did the same for me. Through all these challenges, however, I was able to learn many life lessons that are valuable for all. I learned the true value of hard work is not so you can show off what you have accomplished to others, but it is being able to say to yourself, "That was hard but I am very proud of myself for doing this." That is the value of hard work. Being proud of yourself means the most and I would not have learned that lesson without being a student-athlete. Another important life lesson I learned is how to manage your time well. Life throws so much at you and managing your time well is something everyone needs to be able to do so they can handle the real world. With soccer and school dividing my time I was able to learn how to prioritize what needed to be done first and go down the list because I knew I had limited time I could work. The final and most important lesson I learned is you will make time for what you love. I made time for soccer, academics, friends, and family. I love all of them and made sure to give time to all of them because soccer, academics, friends, and family are the most important things in my life.

Nowadays you can talk to just about anybody and hear the woes of technology. It has caused increased depression in teens and young adults. It has caused the crime rates to go up. One would think that technology is creating a worse world for us. To me some technology is good it can be life-saving. The medical world has changed drastically with new technology. Social media are keeping people closer to each other. The good and the bad of technology are balanced on a thin line. I am here to talk about the good things about technology. Years ago monitoring a disease would require getting blood drawn or you may not even be able to monitor it at all. People would be at the doctor for hours after they get their blood drawn. It's painful and you must do it regularly just to monitor the disease. Even just getting biomedical research was going to consist of getting blood drawn from donors. A new technology that s doing good in our world is biosensors. Biosensors can track the bodily fluids found in fingerprints. They can be used for monitoring disease, forensics, and biomedical research. They look for certain markers found in bodily fluids to indicate disease. This technology allows for disease to be monitored and even cured. It gives me hope that many lives can be saved simply by a new piece of technology. Furthering the technology can lead to creating longer lifespans for humans. Even though technology has a somewhat bad reputation for some of the bad it has caused I believe that it can be used to create a better world for us. Saving and possibly prolonging life undoubtedly outweigh some of the bad. Preserving life should be an inspiration for us all. I know that it most certainly inspires me to see some of the good in technology.

"Organize and prioritize your work and studying so you do not fall behind." So many of my friends have fallen behind on work this year and ended up starting to fail a class. To me, failure is not an option. Planning what needs to be done when has allowed me to prioritize my time and let me have more free time. Having stuff is done on time and possibly the grades you want to see relieves stress making your school life more enjoyable. This has helped me maintain my 4.0 and keep my stress down to a minimum so that is why I wish to share this tip.

This is the story of how I got an entire school to laugh because of the weather. I had to do a filming project for a class. It had to be a weather report. That seemed simple enough. Little did I know this weather report was gonna make the entire school laugh. For the sake of my story and the privacy of the teacher, I am gonna call him Mr. Kiwi. Unfortunately, Mr. Kiwi was in a bad mood because of me when I had his class in the morning. We could not grasp the concept he was teaching at all. My class was behind in his lesson plans and he was all around crabby today. I was relieved to leave his class at the end of the day. I go around enjoying my day. My friends who did have Mr. Kiwi after I said the class was brutal. He was rude and gave more homework than necessary. Well, I told them it was probably my fault and promised to make up for it somehow. It ended up that the last class of the day would fulfill my promise. We were assigned to make a weather report. I previously mentioned that it should be simple. The perfect spot for filming just so happened to be right by the window next to Mr. Kiwis' room. Well as I mentioned he was crabby and did not get any better in the afternoon. While we filming Mr. Kiwi had lost it. He ended up yelling at the kids in his class about how he wished he never became a teacher. While this happened me and my film crew had gone silent. his entire performance was caught on camera. After that, we moved to a new location to get the project done. While we were moving out and about I had a brilliant idea for the weather report. My friend quickly agreed but said we have to do a real project, not just a joke project. We told nobody what our plan was. We filmed just like the rest of the class and made a fairly decent project. We decided to add our funny clip as the very last part to complete the project. In the film, we had to give one week of made-up weather for wherever you'd like. The weather had some good days and bad days but nothing too drastic. Yet. When we got to the last day of the weather report it was sunny skies. The weather was amazing. Then it hit. Out of nowhere, we received a breaking news report of a large tornado moving into the area. The tornado was no ordinary tornado. We classified it as a kiwinado. I and my partner jumped off the screen to reveal a large tornado with Mr. Kiwi's face on it. We used the audio clip of him yelling as the side noise of the tornado. That was the end of our film project and the entire class laughed for a very long time. My teacher for that class even agreed it was funny. Many people had videoed the project without my knowledge. This kept the story alive. Somehow Mr. Kiwi saw it. The next day after class he came to me and asked how my film project went. I told him that it went well. He asked about the unexpected storm called the Kiwinado. My face went pale. He began to laugh and told me he thought it was funny. So this is the story of how I got a school to laugh at the weather.

Years ago monitoring a disease would require getting blood drawn or you may not even be able to monitor it at all. People would be at the doctor for hours after they get their blood drawn. It's painful and you must do it regularly just to monitor the disease. Even just getting biomedical research was going to consist of getting blood drawn from donors. Partial fingerprints weren't enough to identify a perpetrator years ago. My favorite tech invention is biosensors. Biosensors can track the bodily fluids found in fingerprints. They can be used for monitoring disease, forensics, and biomedical research. They look for certain markers found in bodily fluids to indicate disease. This can be useful in hospitals to diagnose a patient much father than tests. In forensics, it can identify characteristics like gender, age, and medications of the perp. With a biosensor, you will get some bodily fluid taken off your fingerprint. It is painless and easy. It's accurate and safe. For biomedical research, a person can easily get some fingerprint fluid taken and be on their way. It is still painless and simple to run tests for. Forensics have evolved with biosensors. Catching the perp is now much easier with partial fingerprints because of fingerprint fluids. This can give a profile of who the perp is. Biosensors consist of five main parts. The analyte is the substance the rest f the biosensor is detecting. The bioreceptor is programmed to recognize and target the analyte. A transducer converts the bio-recognition from a bio receptor into a signal. That signal is then converted to an electronic for a digital image. The display will generate numbers or curves that the user will understand and use. My studies will be in biology to help me become a forensic pathologist. My contribution to the world will be helping bring justice and provide closure. I would be using biosensors to create a profile of the perpetrator. I could have access to figure out the age, gender, and even the habits of the perp. Becoming a forensic pathologist is gonna help me give families closure during a hard time and prevent what happened to them from happing to other families. This is rewarding to me. I want to help families who have been hurt and make it to where other families won't be hurt. I hope that my contribution will be able to save the lives of people. I don't want others to hurt deeply. I want them to be able to hear after a hard time. I also plan to research to see what else we can use to identify a criminal by the biological makeup he leaves at the scene of the crime. Biosensors are my favorite invention from the past decade. They have opened up a whole new world in the medical and forensic fields. I will use them to contribute to the world and bring criminals to justice while helping families heal from a tragedy.

I want to pursue a career in STEM because I've always been fascinated by science, particularly biology. Ever since I was a kid, I've loved science. I wasn't picky about what science courses I wanted to take because I wanted to further my understanding of the world around me. It is part of who I am as a person. I've always wanted to help people, even as a small kid. To me, STEM is the best way to help people because it covers all fields of innovation. Furthering the felids of science, technology, engineering, and math will allow people to live better lives or improve their lives. I want to be a part of that change. I intend to better the way people live their lives by learning about human biology. To me, STEM is the most rewarding field to study. Every day you get the opportunity to discover something new or worthwhile. Keeping that in mind sometimes when you put in work and you still fail you would end up learning something new in the process. To me, failing and then learning from that failure is the most rewarding part of studying STEM. Pursuing STEM is exactly what I want to do in my life. It is rewarding and it's a dream I've held onto my entire life. By helping people and advancing technologies and learning new things, I would be fulfilling my life's purpose. That is why I want to study STEM. The problem that I'm going to face in pursuing my dream of studying STEM is going to be finding the right college for me that is affordable, and has a science program that will get me more hands-on experience to learn from. The price of college, especially nowadays, is extremely pricey and I'd like to be able to go to a good college with as few student loans as possible. This means affordability my top priority. This is the bigest obstacle I will need to face. If I can't even afford to pay for learning science then I will never be able to help others face hardships that will help me nd them grow as a person. The second obstacle is going to be the whole learning part of it. I can learn by listening and taking notes but I prefer hands-on experience. That helps me understand the concept to a whole new level. STEM requires hands-on experience for people to have a deeper understanding. I want to have a deeper understanding to further my love of knowledge. Overall the obstacles that I will face can be conquered with hard work and perseverance. Earing the cash to get into a college will take time and effort but will be worth it. Finding the right school is also going to be challenging. Getting the right kind of learning for me from a school will take effort but I can overcome the obstacle. Overcoming these hardships can be done with effort and perseverence.

The historical figure I admire most, though not very well known, is Marjorie Merriweather Post. She was fighting against the gender norms at the time by taking over and expanding her father's, C.W. Post, company. As the only child of C.W. Post, he trained her in business and took her to business meetings during her childhood. By the time her father committed suicide in 1914, she was ready to take over the company and expand it. She went against the gender norm by running a company instead of letting the board take over. I admire her for going against the norms of society. The reason that I admire her most was her generosity. When the U.S. joined W.W.1, she sent $75,000 worth of supplies to Europe to help with the war effort. The ship that carried the supplies had sunk, but she decided to send the same amount of supplies that were lost. Another voucher of her generosity was creating a charity for underprivileged children. She acquired a circus, and through the circus, she raised money for underprivileged children; she even decided to let the children enjoy the circus. After W.W.2, she opened her lavish property, 'Mar-a-Lago' to give therapy to veterans and train them to get their lives back together. Her generosity is an admiral trait, and that's why I strive to be like her. Marjorie Merriweather Post went against the gender norms of the time to run her father's company and expand their wealth. When most women were raising children and taking care of the household, she was on the front lines of the business. She was extremely generous with her wealth by giving to charity for underprivileged children, and she gave the children something to smile about. That is why I admire her.

My favorite book is The Hunger Games by Suzane Collins. I fell in love with the book from the first page. Everything about it has caused me to love the book. I love the fact that it takes place in the future, and to me seems like a warning of where humanity could head in the future if we don't check ourselves. It gives us the possibility that if we don't work together, there won't be much in the future to live for. The characters have also caused me to love the book. Katniss Everdeen, who is my favorite character, is selfless and puts her loved ones above all else. She has done what it took to protect her sister by taking her place, even if it meant she would have to die. The story is written in first-person based on her view, so I really feel like I know her personally. Petta Mallarck is a helpless romantic and would do anything to keep Katniss alive in the games because he loves her. Haymitch Abernathy is probably my second favorite character. He provides comic relief. He breaks the tensions that I feel when the characters are placed in a difficult situation. He also shows wisdom which I admire. The plot is the basic hero's journey story, but it's the best kind of story for me. The plot is extremely suspenseful. It continues to keep me up every time I reread the book. Each chapter holds a new challenge, an added wave to the plot. Lastly, this book has shaped who I am today. The selflessness and love in all the characters have caused me to be selfless. My personality has been shaped by the book. This is why The Hunger Games by Suzane Collins is my favorite book.

1. Why do I deserve this scholarship? In truth, I really don't deserve this scholarship. Other people are probably in more need of the money than I am. With my grades I should be able to cover most of the cost it takes to get into collage. I'm only applying for because I'm nervous about doing my first essay scholarship. If I had to pick one reason why I deserve it, it would be for me to get over my nerves by pressing the send application button. 2. My academic and career goals revolve around th wonderful field of science. I plan to take as many science courses as I possibly can while still in high school. I plan to major in biology so I can fulfill my dream job at being a forensic pathologist. 3. Well I've overcome many obsacals in my life but the one I will always remember is going to tryouts for soccer. I didn't know anybody there and I am a shy person. A bunch or girls were doing a drill together and I asked if I could join them. It was perhaps the most terrifying moment of life. I'm so glad I overcame my fear and reached out to them.