If there's anything that needs to be built in the United States besides better public transportation, it's literacy. The National Literacy Institute said in 2024, 21% of American adults were illiterate. That's over one fifth of America's population that may not be able to make informed decisions politically, financially, or medically, for both themselves and their families, and over one fifth of the potential workforce that is unable to read. As someone who experienced educational neglect myself, it is easy to see how the cycle can perpetuate and leave people trapped in poverty, some never completing their high school education. My goal as a writing major is to promote literacy starting in the northeastern United States where I grew up, but to later expand it across the nation. Through expanding literacy, I believe America can be made a better place through its citizens making more informed decisions. This scholarship would help me build the literacy of disadvantaged people, which I believe would be carried into the work force and to the children of the future, creating a happier and more productive nation. Lately, I have been witnessing concerned teachers posting on social media about the reading level of their students being below grade level. I have also watched my fellow university students struggle in the classrooms that I tutor. Many may call this an attitude or behavioral issue, but in many cases, it is actually a lack of support in education. Through my passion for art and writing, I would like to help support literacy in students of all ages, including adults, through picture books and graphic novels. The proceeds from my published work would also go towards donating books to places where students in need could be reached, such as foster homes, libraries, and schools. I believe that anyone can become a great reader and writer with the proper support. I have also watched many people around me fall into TikTok and Instagram reels rabbit holes where they are fed misleading information about healthcare, politics, and finances. These short form videos are easily digestible, but it is also easy for information to be manipulated. Additionally, because algorithms continue to feed a viewer similar content in order to keep them scrolling for longer, users of these websites may be absorbing misinformation without having the critical thinking skills that they would use to counteract it. With the current boom in AI-generated content, it's even harder to know what's true. Through public speaking and all-ages book readings at libraries, I'd like to give people the building blocks they need to navigate social media (and thus the world) responsibly. While social media can be a great informational tool, the best way for it to be useful is to teach people how to discern what information is correct so they can better support their communities. A strong community is the first step to stronger cities, states, and nations: my goal is to push us towards taking it.

Math appeals to me because it feels concrete in a world that is constantly shifting. As an autistic student, change and unpredictability can be hard on me, but as someone currently seeking an ADHD diagnosis, my brain also loves to experience new things. Math fits perfectly into that niche: while nothing will change the fact that two plus two equals four, there's so many different fields in math that I'll never run out of things to learn. While I may have struggled initially after a lifetime of educational neglect, once I was taught in a way that made sense to me, math quickly became one of my best subjects. I've always personally enjoyed algebra because it feels like solving a puzzle. The ways to solve that puzzle are formulaic, but in contrast to many unwilling math students' attitudes towards the field, I find myself using what I learned in my math classes every so often in the real world. I'm excited to hopefully someday expand into calculus as a hobby on the side of my writing major, because it's difficult to be a good writer without at least a base level understanding of other fields. My preferred textbooks come from OpenStax. My first university math course used an OpenStax book, which was helpful to me as a student financing my own education as it was free to use online. It was clear and easy to understand, and I used the built-in exercises to supplement my learning. I definitely plan on returning to OpenStax more often for any math learning that I would like to do on the side. Between OpenStax and the passionate teachers I've had over my life who taught me, I've grown to find math as one of my passions too despite it not being my field of focus. Whenever someone mentions how much they hate math, part of my heart breaks because I wonder if it simply wasn't taught in a way that was enjoyable or accessible to them. A teacher can make or break an educational experience, and a lot of my friends have mentioned bad experiences with math teachers both in high school and university. I hope someday that this changes and that everyone is able to have as much of an enjoyable experience with learning math as I did because it's both interesting in all of its forms and necessary for daily life.

I do my routine. I swim up, breach the water, flip, land, and then I blow bubbles for hundreds of eyes to see. I breach again and let my green hair flow behind me, calculating my jump to ensure I don’t traumatize the crowd again with the “accidental” breakage of my seashell bra. My tail flicks and sprays tank water onto the crowd, and they are infinitely more pleased with me than they ever have been with the real sea. I am awarded a sardine between my jagged teeth. The millionaire is back again. He’s been nice to me lately, bringing me treasures and trinkets and new seashell bras that twinkle in the sunlight. I wear all sorts of pearls and they look like the full moon on a clear night. It is evening and the humans gather round like crabs at a whalefall as I deliver tricks through hoops and hurdles. The millionaire is so pale that one might think him to be one of the many pearls he’s given me and his teeth are eerily straight, but there is a twinkle in his gray-blue eyes that glints so gemmily that I cannot help but swim up to him. He stands at the observation deck above the water. It is very nice to have pretty things in a miserable place. I can almost pretend that it isn’t. “Princess,” he says. I’m not really a princess. They pulled me twisting from the brine where I wore nothing but what I wove into my hair. Perhaps it was my fault for nosing about their discarded junk that stank up my murky depths. But as I’ve learned, humans are always looking for something to sell, and what an attraction they’ve made of me! He opens a small box. The crowd cheers as he kneels further and I know that I must draw my hand from the water. He asks me to marry him, or something like that, and slides the rock onto my long finger. The ocean stands stark in the distance behind me and it swallows the sunset while the humans swallow me. What I’d give to be the sun swallowed by the sea, rather than a twenty-foot deep tank that reeks of fish food and tourists! He smiles at me, and I too flash my sharp maw. My sharper eyes catch the owner of the zoo shaking hands with one of those men in suits behind him. They exchange human money. He does not love me, but he might feed me better than the humans at the zoo do. My body is eleven feet long with my tail; I might have been twenty if they had not taken me so young, but I am grown now and every part of me still courses with muscle from my routines, and I would make a nice display piece in the lavish home that he has told me so much about. Perhaps I would pluck my scales less often. I dive down. I breach the water once, ten feet up, twirling, and they all cheer. Twice. Fifteen, this time, further back in my tank. They gape in awe. The third time, twenty feet up, they shriek as I pull over the barrier, slapping my tail against the glass. I shake all of their shells and gemstones from my body, and I fall over the edge, further than I ever dived when I still knew the sea. When they come down, they find trickles of blood and a few scales. They do not see my flashing cyan eyes disappear with the sun.