One of my all-time favorite hobbies would have to be reading. Mason Cooley said that “reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” I believe this to be completely true. Reading helped me a lot growing up. My parents constantly argued over every little thing and my brother was rebellious and careless which only increased the tension within my family. Reading provided me with an escape from my daily life. Growing up I loved reading fantasy, dystopian, and romance stories. Some of my favorite books were “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, “Divergent” by Veronica Ross, and “Winter Town” by Stephen Edmond. I still love those books and genres, but my interests have largely expanded after starting college. I read far more non-fiction than I used to. One reason for this is my growing interest in sociology. To be more specific, gender and sexuality studies. A class I took last fall rekindled my passion for sociology. Since then I have read several books on sexuality and gender identity to increase my knowledge and awareness. Out of all the gender and sexuality books I have read so far, the most informative and interesting one would have to be “The ABC’s of LGBT+” by Ashley Mardell. The book was very fun to read and it helped me understand much more about gender identity and sexuality. Reading has helped me in a lot of ways. It helped me escape from my family tension, get over my depression, and get through break-ups and toxic relationships. Books have always been helpful to me and the thing I love most is when I find an interesting new book to read in my spare time.

Positive support can make an incredible impact on a person's life. Having a positive support system has definitely had an impact on me. When I was three years old I was diagnosed with epilepsy due to a brain tumor. Even though the majority of the tumor was removed, the technology was not advanced enough to remove all of it. So, I grew up with epilepsy which I controlled with medications. I cannot remember a time when I was on only one medication. At one point, I was at the maximum dosage for four different medications. The side effects of these medications made it difficult for me to do activities normal for children my age. I was always exhausted, so I had significant difficulties socializing with my peers. This caused me to develop fewer and lower-quality friendships. Looking back, I never had someone I would consider my best friend. While in adolescence this made me feel very lonely and depressed. In adolescence, I had a few peers I occasionally spent time with, so I managed to enjoy my time in school because of them. In high school, I was kicked out of the group. Since I was not the same as them and could not keep up with them as much, they decided to ignore me until I left their group. They ignored me for two weeks however, I was very dense back then so I did not fully understand that they were leaving me out. I only felt like something was off. When one of them told me that they all did not want to be friends anymore I was devastated. I knew I was different, but I truly believed that we could be friends regardless of our differences. I was devastated, I thought I was so stupid that I could not understand their intentions earlier. I was embarrassed of myself. For the first time, I thought that I hated myself. It was a really hard time for me. I was stressed during school, which caused me to have more seizures, which caused me to hate myself even more. In my sophomore year of high school, I started thinking about suicide. I wanted to die, but I was scared of dying. These thoughts affected my schoolwork and increased my seizures. Eventually, one of my teachers found out and had me go to the counselor. The counselor strongly encouraged me to talk about how I was feeling with my family. After contemplating it for a few more days, I opened up to my mom about how I had been feeling. She was shocked and incredibly sad when I told her even so, she listened to what I had to say and gave me good advice. Having her listen to me was incredibly helpful. We talked for a very long time and I felt at ease for the first time in weeks. I strongly believe I made it this far in my life due to my support system, my family. My mom and older brother always listen to me when I am upset or stressed and comfort me so I feel better. I receive a lot of great advice from my mom, and my brother always puts a smile on my face. It is because of them that I found goals to work towards. My dream is to become a full-time college professor so I can educate and help others. I am so grateful to have them both in my life.

Being patient is important to me since I work with children. Children are like sponges, they absorb all information about the world around them regardless of whether the information is good or bad. How adults act around children after they have lost their patience can cause long-lasting trauma. Personally, I have some traumas from my childhood due to this exact reason. When I was a child, I was a cry baby. I cried at everything! Whether it was something unimportant or a serious injury, I would ball my eyes out. When I was six, my father yelled at me to shut up after I got into an argument with my mom and was crying in my room. As a child, I was scared of my father. He scared me since he was a very impatient and impulsive alcoholic. One thing that truly terrified me as a child is when he came upstairs. My father almost never came upstairs; however, when he did come upstairs it was never good. So when he yelled at me to shut up, I learned how to cry quietly out of fear. For years after that incident, I had trouble crying out loud. Patience is important to me since I never want any child to feel the way I felt after that experience.

As a child, I was discriminated against since I had a disability. In comparison to others, my disability was not nearly as bad however, having a disability at all made me different from my peers. This made it harder for me to make friends and play games with my peers. Since I had epilepsy, I was the weird seizure girl. For several years being the seizure girl negatively affected my self-confidence. Luckily, I had an amazing and supportive older brother that would help me in school. These experiences made me more resilient to bullying. While bullying does still affect me, it does not affect me nearly as much as it did when I was a child. By becoming more resilient, I gained back the self-confidence I lost as a child. As an adult, I try to prevent bullying as much as I can. Online bullying has grown significantly and it is harder to prevent. Whenever I see a case of online bullying I always try to write something positive and uplifting. Personally, one positive comment means more to me than hundreds of negative ones. When a person goes out of their way to do or say something positive it brings more positivity and happiness into the world. When that positivity and happiness goes to someone that is being treated unfairly or harshly, I know from experience that it can really make their day. Due to my experiences dealing with bullying, I have become a more resilient, proactive, and positive person.

For me, being independent means being financially independent. Financial independence is important since people can move away from their parents, get married, and start a family, but still not be financially independent. To be financially independent, I would have to be capable of earning my own money and paying for all my necessities myself. I find financial independence more important than other types of independence. I have moved away before however, I would not consider myself independent at that time. My parents still paid for everything, all I did was go to college. My parents paid for my rent, groceries, credit card bill, and education. I was by no means independent from my parents just because I moved out. Things have become much worse for my family since that time. I have moved back home, we lost the house I grew up in, and my parents got divorced. We also lost an extreme amount of money during this time, making it difficult for my brother and me to finish college. I still cannot be financially independent because I lost a lot of function to move my left side after brain surgery in December 2019. In my current state, I am unable to get a job to support myself, so I cannot become financially independent from my parents. Independence is important to me since it allows people to have more freedom. In order to become independent, I am putting my efforts into school and my recovery so I can become capable of working again soon.

I absolutely love my personality! I am a very open-minded, optimistic individual. These traits have increased my interest in various things. By being open-minded, I found that I enjoy learning about other people. Topics that interest me are sociology, gender and sexuality studies, education, and religion studies. I love learning about these topics since they educate me on other people's perspectives. While being optimistic has helped me get through some tough times in life. I had a really hard time as a teenager, since I had epilepsy. I controlled my epilepsy by taking four medications at their maximum dosage. This made it extremely difficult for me to be active and social like my peers. I stayed optimistic and made a few friends during high school. Before then I did not have good friends. By staying optimistic, I made friends even though it was a very difficult thing for me to do. I also consider myself a dreamer and a planner. I know exactly what I want to do in life and how I want to achieve these things. My dream is to be a college professor that teaches sociology. Sociology is one of my biggest passions! I love learning about it and teaching it! I know exactly how I want to achieve this dream too. I have everything planned out perfectly. Since I enjoy thinking so far ahead, I do not become confused about what I should do in the present. I love that my dreaming and planning help reduce a lot of my stress and anxiety.

My parent's divorce was a hard time for my entire family. My dad cheated on my mom for twelve years and left her with absolutely nothing. During this time, I lost both mental and physical things. I lost any trust and faith in my dad, my car, and the house that my older brother and I grew up in. My dad only had to pay for three things, the phone bill, my car payments (as I was only nineteen at the time), and one of the payments on the house. We lost everything because he refused to pay them without even informing us. Instead of telling us, we thought he was paying for what he needed to pay for until my car was towed and our house foreclosed. While dealing with everything, I learned how important it is to have emotional support. My older brother, mom, and I all had our fair share of bad days. It helped so much since I could talk with them and have them understand how I felt. I will never forget how I felt sitting in my empty house after the movers left. Everything felt so empty. Even so, I still had my family. Things could have been worse. I stayed positive by thinking of everything as a new beginning. By thinking of a new beginning, I felt optimistic. Even though I lost a lot, I still had my mom and brother. Having my family with me during these times made it much easier for me to remain optimistic. These times have taught me that not everything is perfect. Sometimes terrible things happen to us and all we can do is try our best to be resilient throughout these ordeals. Being resilient and having emotional support helped me a lot during these times.

Being an influential figure is very important, since influence helps persuade people. When a person is well-known, their words hold more value. This influence can be very helpful in persuading others to believe or act in a certain way. If I was a highly influential figure, I would stand for equality. By standing and fighting for equality as an influential person, I would be fighting for the rights of all minorities. Equality can include anything from eliminating the gender pay gap to LGBTQ+ rights to providing more opportunities to people regardless of their race or socio-economic status. One way I can become an influential figure in other people's lives is by following my dreams. My dream is to become a college professor and influence others to be more open-minded through education. By being open-minded, people can engage in fewer acts of discrimination and reduce negative biases, prejudices, and stigmas. Open-mindedness also helps people reflect on themselves and any misinformation they have learned. In the future, I hope to become an influential figure in my student's lives.

I am trying to have a positive impact on the world through education. I am currently tutoring children in low-income areas. Since they have fewer resources allocated to education, I find it very important to help them. I love teaching and this is a great way to help children achieve a better future. While tutoring these children, I am working on my bachelor's degree. I eventually want to become a college professor. Education is one of the most important things to me! In the future, I would love to teach people about sociology. Sociology is a very broad, but important subject to learn. I want to be the type of teacher that gets my students thinking. By having my students think, I can help them examine themselves. One thing I have learned in college is that examining yourself is incredibly important. Just recently I wrote a "Who Am I?" essay, which was one of the most thought-provoking experiences I had so far. I had to deeply and thoroughly examine myself and explain what parts of my identity were important to me, which were less important, and why I felt that way. By examining ourselves we can realize any biases, prejudices, stigmas, and stereotypes we believe in and what privileges we enjoy in life. One reason I want to become a sociology professor is to help others identify what kinds of biases, prejudices, stigmas, and stereotypes they hold and help them become more open-minded. I can teach them to become more open-minded by educating them about the different types of people and cultures around the world, and the different aspects of a person's identity. This way, I can positively influence and impact my students' lives!

I chose my area of study since I wanted to create a difference through education. I am a 3rd-year college student majoring in childhood and adolescent development with a minor in sociology. By choosing my major to be childhood and adolescent development, I get the knowledge I need to be involved in making a difference in childrens' and adolescents' lives. By picking my major to be sociology I get to learn about societal differences and the impact these differences have on people, the school system, the government, and much more. Sociology is the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society. By learning about sociology, I learn about the effects of bias, prejudice, stigma, stereotypes, and discrimination in different settings. I want to eventually become a college professor, so learning about the various types of bias, prejudice, stigma, stereotypes, and discrimination in the classroom helps me create a better vision for my future classroom. My dream is to become a college professor since I strongly believe that college is one of the best learning areas. In college, students have a large amount of freedom in choosing their classes. Students find the classes that they would find the most interesting, so it is easier for college students to stay focused in comparison to kindergarten through high school. There are of course types of classes that students do not want to take or are not as interested in. I believe that the type of professor in those kinds of classes is very important. When I am a professor, I want to make my classes interesting and educational. I want to encourage discussion and debate in my classroom. While going through my classes, I have been saving resources that are educational and interesting. This way I would already have a lot of educational resources for my students. Additionally, these resources are all very impactful and fascinating to read or watch. There is a lot of work that I am and will need to put in to become a college professor. In order to become a professor, I plan on starting my master's degree as soon as possible. I have a lot of passion for sociology, so I plan on getting a master's degree in sociology. While studying for my master's degree, I plan on interning at a local college. It is also highly recommended for aspiring professors to obtain a doctorate, so I plan on studying for a doctorate as well. I want to get a doctorate in sociology with a specialization in gender and sexuality studies. By teaching college students, I strongly believe I can make a difference. There is a lot of misinformation in the world. This misinformation can create negative biases, prejudices, stigma, stereotypes, and discrimination towards others. By teaching my future students the correct information I can help correct their worldview and encourage them to examine themselves.

My biggest dream is to help influence other people's lives through education. To complete this dream I plan on becoming a college professor in sociology. There are various requirements I must meet in order to become a college professor. These requirements include but are not limited to education and experience. A lot of colleges require their professors to have a Master's Degree in their field of expertise. For me, this would be sociology. However, I have not even completed my Bachelor's Degree yet, not to mention my Master's. I plan on completing my Bachelor's Degree in May 2023 with a major in Child and Adolescent Development and a minor in Sociology. I rediscovered my interest in sociology around six months ago and I have loved learning about it ever since. In particular, I love learning about the impacts of gender and sexuality on societies around the world. In order to become a college professor, getting a Ph.D. is highly recommended. So, after obtaining my Master's Degree I plan to get a Ph.D. in sociology with a specialization in gender and sexuality studies. My dream is to influence my students' lives by providing them with interesting, new information about the impacts of various parts of our identity on society.

I find it very important to invest in the right things. I am currently twenty-one years old, a lot of people my age think that investing in stocks or having a 401k is the way to go. While those are good options, they have a lot of risks associated with them. For example, with stocks, it is fully possible to lose all the money you put in. Stocks can be great when they go up and the investor can gain a lot of money, but if the stocks go down the investor can just as easily lose a lot of money. For this reason, I have learned that investing in real estate is more stable and less risky. By investing in real estate, the investor is making a long-term investment. The way I would invest in real estate is to: buy a house in a decently inexpensive area, rent out the house, use the money from the rent to pay off the house, and after ten or so years you have a profit of at least a couple hundred dollars a month coming in. Since rent is a stable source of income, there is little risk in this type of venture. Personally, I have learned that investing in real estate is better, in the long-term, than investing in stocks or owning a 401k.

My educational goals are to complete my Bachelor's Degree, obtain a Master's Degree, and earn a Ph.D. I plan on completing my Bachelor's Degree in May 2023. I will be graduating with a major in Childhood and Adolescent Development and a minor in Sociology from California State University, San Marcos. I recently became very interested in Sociology. I enjoy learning new things and new concepts about society. Throughout all my courses, I currently find my sociology ones to be the most interesting. This is why I want to work towards obtaining a Master's Degree in Sociology. Having a Master's Degree is required for my dream career. My dream is to teach people about the different aspects of life and how societies all over the world are impacted by these aspects. In order to do this, I need to become a college professor. I have been doing a lot of research on how to become a college professor, and having a Master's Degree is one of the biggest requirements. Another big requirement is experience, so I plan on interning at a college near me while working on my Master's Degree. By interning, I can gain experience teaching under a mentor professor. I strongly believe that this will be an invaluable experience for me. While a lot of colleges only require a Master's Degree for their highest level of education, a Ph.D. is recommended. Some colleges actually require their professors to have a Ph.D. in order to teach there. Either way, having a Ph.D. is very beneficial, which I why I plan to obtain a Ph.D. as well. While I also plan on getting a Ph.D. in Sociology, I would love to have a specialization in gender and sexuality studies. The topic that garners my interest the most in all of Sociology would have to be gender and sexuality. Gender and sexuality is a growing topic of concern for a lot of people. We know more than we did a decade ago, but there is a lot we, as a society, do not understand. In order to spread awareness and advocate for gender equality, we first have to understand how to help and gain knowledge on the needs of the LGBTQ+ community. I see myself having a positive impact on the future through education. By educating others, I can increase my student's awareness. This includes any prejudice, bias, and stereotypes my students have or believe in. Education also helps clarify misinformation and encourages people to examine themselves. The impact I have on my future students will help them examine themselves and decrease prejudice, bias, and stereotypes that they have.

I grew up with a mom that strongly believes in holistic nutrition. Throughout my life, I picked up her beliefs. I believe that the best way to live a long and healthy life is to eat healthily and to exercise. Personally, I am vegan and I know all the benefits that veganism helps me live longer. There are both good vegans and bad vegans. It is fully possible to be vegan, yet be unhealthy. To be a good vegan, I cook constantly and use fresh foods. I love going to my local farmer's markets! There is always so much good, healthy, and fresh food! Getting fresh fruits and vegetables from the farmer's market helps me eat healthier. Exercise is also very important to living a long, healthy life. Lack of exercise is associated with a lot of diseases, such as obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. In order to prevent these diseases, it is important to exercise often. However, there is such a thing as too much exercise. If people exercise too much or too extreme, they can be at risk for a condition called Rhabdo, which can even be fatal. This is why it is important for people to exercise moderately. Moderate amounts of exercise help people prevent disease and keep healthy, so they can live a long life.

The past few years have been challenging. When I was three years old I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor. The majority of the tumor was removed that year; however, the technology was not advanced enough to get all of it. The bad cells that remained caused me to have Epilepsy. I lived my whole life with Epilepsy until my doctor recommended getting a second surgery. It was not the first time that this was recommended to me. Throughout the research I did to prepare for my decision, I found out that there were higher chances of success this time. The surgeon I consulted eased my only worry by confidently stating, "I will not let you lose your left side!" One of the potential side effects of the surgery was losing all function in the left side of my body. Since the surgeon was so confident, I became hopeful and wanted to try the surgery. In preparation for the surgery, I went to the hospital many times. I had to get several Electroencephalography tests (EEG), Magnetic Resonance Imaging tests (MRI), and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging tests (fMRI). I went to the hospital quite often, it eventually became routine. Overall, I spent six months preparing for the surgery. Early morning on December 30th, 2019 I went in for my surgery. I woke up from the anesthesia a few hours after the surgery ended. Not long after I woke up the doctors came to do a post-surgery evaluation. That was when I found out I could not move my left side. Luckily the doctors quickly assessed how bad it was, and since I still had feeling in my left side there was hope for recovery. I was still affected by all the medication in me, so I did not wrap my head around it until a couple of hours later. It took me one week to get into the physical therapy ward. Once I got into physical therapy things were looking better. I will never forget my occupational therapist at the hospital. She always pushed me past my limits and I was always exhausted after my sessions with her. She loved making me do army crawls! They were always so hard for me, but all of the work she made me do increased my recovery rate. I was in the hospital for an additional month for physical therapy until I had recovered enough to do outpatient therapy. I got into a physical therapy clinic pretty quickly. The therapists there had me doing different, unique exercises. Then COVID-19 hit. After the pandemic started affecting everyone the therapy clinic temporarily closed. The closure lasted an entire month. I definitely lost some progress during that time. I was very aggravated since I did not know all the exercises I needed to support my recovery and that affected me physically. When the clinic opened again, they started doing fully online sessions. It definitely helped that I could talk with my physical therapists and get their advice! It has now been a little over two years since the surgery. I am seizure-free and off of all four of my medications. I still have trouble physically, but I have learned a lot from this experience. The biggest lesson I learned is to never give up. No matter how hard something is, if I do not give up then it is achievable. Currently, I am back in college studying for my Bachelor's Degree. After graduating, I plan on attending graduate school so I can follow my dreams of becoming a college professor.

I am very excited about virtual reality technology. From what I have heard it is very interesting and fun to use. I especially enjoy the fact that people can experience other countries without the travel fees. A lot of people do not have the opportunity to travel due to high prices. Virtual reality allows these people to get the travel experience without all of the insane prices. There are also various other benefits to virtual reality technology. This technology provides various online platforms to meet new people and become friends with them. This kind of technology will be especially beneficial if we have another lockdown, whether it is due to the pandemic or anything else. In addition, it would have been beneficial during the beginning of the pandemic as well. After the first six months of the pandemic, mental health problems arose in both children and adults. There was a lot of depression and anxiety amongst our population. I believe using virtual reality could have helped people get together and increase their social interactions. There are also a lot of entertainment elements in virtual reality. Since this technology originally came out, there has been a large number of games that can be used in virtual reality. Both single-player and multi-player games have been adapted to work with virtual reality. People often post videos of them playing these games on social media platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, and Tik Tok. As virtual reality is still relatively new, these videos are very interesting and entertaining to watch. Overall, I am incredibly excited about virtual reality technology. There are a lot of benefits to using this technology, and I am learning more about it each day. Since it is a relatively new technology, it is expensive; however, once it becomes normalized I believe the price of it will go down and become a common thing for people to have.

While my K-12 experience was not overwhelmingly positive, it was relatively easy. I constantly went back and forth from the local public school to different forms of home school. I always tried to learn new things and gain new experiences in whatever school I attended. In fact, I learned a lot of different and interesting things in school! However, not many of the things I learned could be applied to college life. I moved away from home for my first semester of college. It was my first time having roommates and living in an apartment. I had no clue how to do anything. I did not how to pay rent, how to use a pay-to-use laundry machine, why I had to pay for parking, or even how to get along with my roommate. Overall I had an incredibly hard time adjusting to living on my own, not even to mention actually attending college. High school was much more lenient than college. The teachers at my high school were very nice and I had a close connection with all of them. I expected something similar in college. However, in collect it was a hassle just to ask questions after class, not to mention trying to actually connect with my professors on a personal level. I found this to be very disappointing. I had always enjoyed the connections I had in elementary, middle school, and high school. The schoolwork was much harder as well. I would go to class for half of the day and spend four to six hours on homework assignments. This made it difficult for me to relax. When I first started college I was on the maximum dosage of four different medications to help suppress my Epilepsy. This made it very hard for me to function. I would typically be wake up at nine or ten o'clock in the morning and fall asleep by nine o'clock at night. Very little of my time would actually be spent relaxing. I went to my classes, came home, did my homework, and only then I would relax. I was not used to the amount of work that college required, which made it even harder for me. Additionally, I found it difficult to adjust to my professor's teaching methods. College professors were very different from high school teachers. They talked about difficult topics with ease, and they constantly were using terminology I did not know. I would often ask questions after class. I took every chance I could get to ask questions. However, it was difficult to ask questions most of the time. I took a couple of classes back-to-back, so I could not afford to wait in a long line of people after class in order to ask a question. So I tried emailing my professors to get the answers I needed. This worked out around half of the time. Sometimes my professors did not see my email or they would just forget about it. After such an easy K-12 experience I had a hard time adjusting to college. Due to all the struggles, I ended up failing my first class ever. I still remember pleading with the teacher for some help, as I needed that class for my major. He still failed me. When I look back at it now it was understandable. The difference between high school and college is quite big, and I excitedly rushed in unprepared for college life. I had no friends in any of my classes, so it was initially difficult to interact with my classmates.

One of my favorite hobbies would have to be sociology. Ever since I took my first sociology course in college, three years ago now, I have loved learning about it. I find it incredibly intriguing how different races, cultures, gender, and sexualities have various impacts on a person. Learning about how various factors shape a person's self-image is very interesting to me. The biases, prejudices, and stigmas we encounter as children help us develop our own biases, prejudices, and stigmas. These can have a positive effect or negative effect on our self-image. Another factor that shapes our identities is representation in our society. Before learning sociology I never thought much about how people were represented in television shows, movies, social media, and on the internet. Now I notice all the stereotypes and toxic commentary in everyday media. I like the fact that I am able to identify stereotypes and other harmful things, so I do not contribute to the cycle of negative bias. Just last fall I took another course in sociology. As a child and adolescent development major, I loved learning about the inequalities in our school system and how it negatively affects people. Additionally, I learned how bad the homelessness situation is with people who identify as LGBTQ+. If someone asked me what my favorite part of sociology was, I would have to say that I love learning about other genders and sexualities the most. Sociology always broadens my horizons and encourages me to look at other people's perspectives. After getting my Bachelor's Degree, I am determined to work towards my Master's Degree. My dream career is to be a college professor, so I need to attain a Master's Degree in the field that I want to teach. Currently, I am thinking about getting a Master's Degree in either sociology, liberal studies, child and adolescent development, or education. While all of these topics are very interesting to me, as of right now I am leaning more towards sociology.

If I could describe myself with one phrase, I would say I am a glow-getter. A glow-getter is women who gives their all to achieve their dreams. Whether it is my hobbies, beliefs, or my schoolwork, I always put my best effort into what I decide to do. Because of this trait, I get incredibly immersed in my beliefs and hobbies. Additionally, this makes me harder on myself, especially with my schoolwork. After graduating, I plan to apply for graduate school so I can attain a Master's Degree. This way I can follow my passion for teaching and becoming a college professor.