Throughout my life, I have grown up Christian, I was raised in a Methodist church, then moved throughout a Baptist, Methodist and assembly of god church. However, my relationship with Christ was not always good. My father used the church originally as a form of abuse, saying that if we went and did the bible wrong, we would not be clean in the eyes of God, and that we were going to be in Hell forever. I never saw it that way. I always saw that Jesus didn't care about what you looked like, what you wore, any of the things people judge you for on the surface, I saw Jesus as someone who would look at you, and as long as you didn't cause harm, lived your life to be kind and happy to everyone, you would be able to go to heaven. I remember a time specifically when Jesus impacted me is I was at PennDel youth convention in 2018, I was in the worship service with my friend Balthazar, we were singing the song Oceans, and at first, I was panicking, I felt terrified of some unknown energy, but after that a wave of peace and happiness came over me and I started to cry and laugh, I wasn't sure why, but then later that night after service I noticed my self harm scars had gone away. It was just an immense wave of happiness to me, and although I had my doubts about Jesus, I knew in that moment he was real, and all the doubts that I had were washed away. Now, I continue to go to a Baptist camp in my hometown called Camp Judson, and I spend my summers there as a counselor to help kids grow and explore their relationship with Christ. It feel that kids find it more reassuring to talk to me too, as I dont look like a normal Christian, I have tattoos, pierings, and I am very open with being LGBT, which has caused kids struggling with similar issues to open up to me more often than my co workers. Its a great point in my life to be able to help kids find their relationship with Christ like I did and allow them to find the love in themselves God wants them to have.

Its absolutely incredible someone halfway across the world can make an impact on your life. My role model was a friend I met at church camp around 3 years ago, his name is Juan Balaguer Gonzales, and he is from Zaragoza, Spain. I met him when he was coming to America for the summer through a YMCA program that allowed people to become counselors, and when I met him, he didn't speak English, so, after that week of summer camp, I started teaching myself Spanish for him. The next year, I was able to have full conversations and get to become very close with him in my week as a camper. Even when he would go back to Spain, we would still talk almost every day. He became someone I could talk to about my abuse, whenever I felt suicidal, and would be there to talk to me and help me overcome those mountains. He showed me that no matter how many times people would tell me "music isn't a career, pick something that will have more money," or things along the lines of "why are you still here?, You're annoying and ungrateful" or horrible things that would push me to the edge, that you can either cry and let them win, or get up, and show them how wrong they are. He has been a huge factor in helping me pursue my dream of becoming a music teacher, learning Spanish all by myself, and through him, I have met so many people around the world who have supported me through times where my friends around the block wouldn't have even stopped to help me. Juan, along with many other people, have pushed me to succeed. Juan specifically has been driven, proud and always pushes for nothing but his best in schooling, as he is going to college for economics, and I aspire to become exactly like him. I will push myself to be the best I can in my schooling, I push to not let anyone look at me and determine my worth, I am the only person who can look at myself in the mirror and determine how I will react, how far I push myself, and I have friends from all over the world who support me, and will look at me saying "I'm so proud of you, and I'm happy to see how far you've become. When I am older and become a teacher, I want to try and encourage kids to learn about as many cultures as possible, as Juan was the first person I ever knew from outside my small town. I have always grown up in the area where if you think different, youre a problem, if you are not the same as us, we will remind you every day. That kind of mentality for a town is awful, and I still see people now in my college with that close minded view. I want to encourage kids to see outside of their own town and outside of their own perspectives. Get involved in the community, learn a language, make friends with the kid everyone else hates. You never know how the smallest action can impact someone.

Music has always been a giant impact in my life. It has helped me with huge life changes, for example in middle school, I was trying to come to terms with my sexuality and it caused a huge rift in my mental health, as the town I grew up in was extremely conservative and the kids would attack anything outside their normal, I became suicidal , because I thought there was something wrong with me. But my one place of freedom was music, the teachers would encourage me to express myself and that I was safe in their rooms, music allowed me to express my emotions without having to use my words, and later in life, all the music organizations I joined (Marching band, Jazz Band, Choir, etc) I have made so many friends, many who have gone through similar struggles as me. Now, as I am in my second year of my Music Education degree, I have created new memories and bonds with people who understand the joy music brings. I have friends who no longer care about "who is in first chair is the best" or "If I get a solo I am the best of the best" I have friends who soley support eachother, through all the hardships and stress of this degree, and don't care about competing for top spots, we all just want to see eachother happy and successful in all we do. I hope to carry this feeling of community, safety and love into my classrooms in the future, because as cheesy as it is to say. I honestly do not think I would have accepted my sexuality without music, or would have been here long enough to see the amazing world of love here at my university without music and the teachers.

My mother was a fire. Growing up, I saw her in a toxic,abusive marriage, she had 3 kids to support and after she left him in 2016, I saw my mother grow into the strongest woman I know. She did everything she could off of a teachers salary and extra jobs whenever she could to put my brother and I through all the activities we wanted, she would take us to band competitions, be there through our concerts, and stay up super late just to make sure we got home. I look at her proud of everything she has done. And now, she recently got married in July 2020, and seeing her finally happy, smiling and singing, something she never did in the marriage with my father, makes me so happy. She has been through hell and back, got through college by herself with a child, worked, and payed off her student loans without the help of anyone. I want to be just like her, I am also going to school for teaching and I want to have a happy family. With music, I am currently attending Mercyhurst University for Music Education, and afterwards I want to teach choir, or general music, but in my classroom, I want to help create a diverse environment that will help kids explore the world and cultures outside their town, and in my dream school, I want to be able to use my ability to speak Spanish when I can to help create closer connections in the community around us and students who are multilingual to feel safe and comfortable speaking their native language without fear of being judged or made fun of with their peers. This scholarship would help me immensely with my degree, as being in music there are many other costs outside of tuition, such as instrument rental fees, recital costs for junior and senior year, buying music for concerts, for percussion, we have to buy assortments of mallets and auxiliary such as tambourines,calves, snare keys. And with music, our classes may not count for credits so that we remain in the allowed credit range for colleges, for example, in my college you can only take a maximum of 18 credits, and freshman year, my classes would have counted for 23, but we had to make some zero so they wouldn't be over the limit. Along with extra classes, we are expected to practice 2-3 hours outside of class for multiple classes, and some kids are working through this too. For academics, we can be in the building from 8am-8pm, or longer if there is a required faculty recital. With the scholarship it would help relieve some of the monetary pressure the degree creates and allow me to help save my money I earn from my job in the breaks to help get a car before senior year, as that is when we do student teaching placements, and a car would allow me to reach more schools in the area, and allow me to continue my job during the academic year, which would help me earn more money for school, and relieve some of the debt outside of college.

I have had a very rocky road with self love, coming from an abusive household where if you weren't perfect, you got screamed at, something thrown, and it created a giant cloud in my head. I would become hyper-critical of myself or get frustrated at the littlest things if I couldn't do them perfectly the first time. I had become extremely harmful to myself even up to nearly attempting suicide January 2020. From that, I had a friend who I am forever grateful for. He helped me get back up on my feet and would be there to push and support me every time I felt myself slipping. I would see him at a camp my youth group went to yearly, and there, he would be with me all week, he was one of the most supporting people in my life. Along with him, this year, I met my current boyfriend. He looked at me, someone who was scared of love and closeness, someone who didnt see the value in waking up every morning, but was too afraid to die, and he loved me. He would talk to me every day and once we started dating,I got to go to church with him. The churches in my town were very small minded, so someone like me, who was LGBT, had tattoos, and believed many things against normal teachings, was terrified. But when I went with him, it was the most loving and amazing community I have ever met. They made me feel a safety I have not felt in a long time. Along with this, my boyfriend has shown me that love is unconditional, he will look at me when I feel like everything is wrong and Im worth nothing, and say "You are the most beautiful woman in the world, Im so proud of you." He looks at me every day and says "I cant wait to see what you will become, I want to see you succeed." With him, I have learned slowly, that I am beautiful, I deserve love, and I and the only one who can look in the mirror and say "You are worthy of love." Even in my darkest moments he holds me close and supports me until Im ready. Im more ready than ever to face my dream of becoming a music teacher. And with him I feel like I can carry the world. And its crazy to think younger me didn't even think I would live past 17 years old. But, here I am, 19, and Its an amazing feeling living day after day, further than you've ever thought.

The moment that changed my life and its perspective was January, 2020. It was the day I had almost attempted suicide. I was 17 years old, and a senior in high school. The only reason I was stopped was because right before I had attempted, I heard my mother come home from work. That moment changed my perspective on life later that day, because I had realized, up until that point, I put such a weight on myself to be perfect in everyone elses eyes, and I never had put myself first in anything. I allowed my friends to push and abuse me to my breaking point on numerous situations, coming home and then pretending everything was okay as to not put any more stress on my single mother. I learned from that day that I am the only person who can look at myself in the mirror and say "This is what I am worth and nobody can change that." With this newfound perspective, I have allowed myself to become strong, if someone says things that would previously had knocked me to my low point, I simply just look at myself and say "They do not know what you have overcome to get here, you have created yourself to become an amazing, strong and determined woman." This perspective will benefit me in the future because, I have learned to recognize signs of abuse or people taking me for granted very quickly, and am able to bring up these concerns, or stand up for myself and what I believe in without fear. I am no longer afraid of making others not like me, because through college, I have met people who care about me, I have friends who love me and are determined to see me succeed, and I cant wait to see them all grow.

I believe my greatest achievement was teaching myself Spanish. I began my journey in 2017 when I met my friend Juan for the first time and I wanted to be friends with him, but he didn't speak much English. Through that, my view from a small conservative town in the middle of nowhere was opened. I was able to learn about other cultures and countries far away from me, I was able to communicate with friends I had met on the internet who spoke Spanish, and create deeper connections with my friends here who speak Spanish. Through learning Spanish, it taught me that I could be whatever I wanted to be, because in my town they are very against anyone that is different, but when I would speak Spanish with my friends in public, it was amazing, I felt awesome, and the more I learned or the more people I met, the more my world was opened. I saw the way others thought, I experienced some of their hardships with them, and I learned about a culture that was beautiful and rich, and I want to experience it first hand one day when I see Juan in Spain one day. I hope to achieve a greater knowledge in Spanish, with becoming more fluent, and learning about all the different dialects through Spanish speaking countries, and use this in my classroom in the future. I want to be a music teacher, and in my classroom I want to show kids the music and life outside of their town. I want to work with schools who have a large Spanish speaking population to help them succeed more, without fear of language barrier or just plain racism from their teachers and peers. I want to use this skill and help create more relationships in my life and cross boundaries. Learning a language has been the greatest gift that I've given myself, and the pride I have in saying "I started this all by myself, simply because I wanted to make a friend."

The person I am most thankful for is my boyfriend Jacob, and I understand that it may seem very cheesy to say, but this man has helped me and shown me love in ways I never imagined. There are many times that I could talk about the things he has done for me, but the one that sticks out to me was a few months into our relationship, for some backstory, I grew up with a very emotionally and mentally abusive father, he would throw things, and scream at us for doing something so simple as playing too loudly when my siblings and I were around 9-10, from this, I have always become hyper critical of myself, and tried to push myself to be the image everyone wants me to be, even if it meant stretching myself thin to please everyone, I became depressed and suicidal, and I still struggle with this today. But despite knowing this, there was a time I sat crying in his basement because I was terrified of thinking if his family wouldn't approve or like me, and that he deserved someone better, that I was always dragging him down because of my depression, but he looked me in the eyes, took my hands and said to me simply just "Im proud to be with you. You're amazing." and in those words I felt every bit of judgement and fear leave my body, and every ounce of love and meaning that I have for him and he has for me. I look at him proud as the sun seeing him succeed in music, watching him climb high with his music, and no matter how many people say he deserves better than me, he looks at me like I'm the only one in the room.

Education is almost one of the founding pillars in my life. Education has been what I have decided for my future career, as my dream to become a Music Education teacher has gotten closer to becoming complete, I've discovered there are so many opportunities lacking for people in my field for college. One of the major hurtles that people in music struggle with is finding opportunities for scholarships, with my school I am fortunate enough to get the opportunity were they will apply some awards and scholarships through the university automatically, but even with these my bill is still around $15000 a year. Trying to find outside scholarships for music was one of my largest struggles in high school, scouring through websites built to help find opportunities, it was extremely rare I would even find a scholarship for education, even more rare to find one for music education. Even when we do find these opportunities, they are normally very specified to your concentration, for example if you are an opera vocalist, a violist, or a composer, there will be competitions for you, but as a percussionist, I have found none. Along with this, many music schools will make you pay out of pocket for more things not included in the tuition, such as instrument rental, buying the recital space for your required junior and senior recitals, and time to pay for your accompanists if you feel like you need more time. Many other struggles for the major include some of your classes costing zero credits, but are necessary for you to graduate on time with your class. Such of an experience was my freshman year of college, where I would have had around 23 credits, but only 18 were counted for that year, with classes from 8am-8pm or longer if there was a faculty recital, minimum practicing around 2-3 for each class a week, and you often choose going to class, or eating. Education is so important to me because I push myself through this, knowing I probably wont have enough money to support a family of more than 2 children after college while I pay off my student loan debt. But I want to create my classroom in the future for children to love music, I want to push and try to help any of my students going to the same career path to find any opportunities I can help them with, and I hope in the future we will have more opportunities for an amazing program and better access to scholarships and affordability for our college.

Its absolutely incredible someone halfway across the world can make an impact on your life. My role model was a friend I met at church camp around 3 years ago, his name is Juan Balaguer Gonzales, and he is from Zaragoza, Spain. I met him when he was coming to America for the summer through a YMCA program that allowed people to become counselors, and when I met him, he didnt speak english, so, after that week of summer camp, I started teaching myself spanish for him. The next year, I was able to have full conversations and get to become very close with him in my week as a camper. Even when he would go back to Spain, we would still talk almost every day. He became someone I could talk to about my abuse, whenever I felt suicidal, and would be there to talk to me and help me overcome those mountains. He showed me that no matter how many times people would tell me "music isnt a career, pick something that will have more money," or things along the lines of "why are you still here?, Youre annoying and ungreatful" or horrible things that would push me to the edge, that you can either cry and let them win, or get up, and show them how wrong they are. He has been a huge factor in helping me pursue my dream of becoming a music teacher, learning spanish all by myself, and through him, I have met so many people around the world who have supported me through times where my friends around the block wouldnt have even stopped to help me. Juan, along with many other people, have pushed me to succeed. Juan specifically has been driven, proud and always pushes for nothing but his best in schooling, as he is going to college for economics, and I aspire to become exactly like him. I will push myself to be the best I can in my schooling, I push to not let anyone look at me and determine my worth, I am the only person who can look at myself in the mirror and determine how I will react, how far I push myself, and I have friends from all over the world who support me, and will look at me saying "Im so proud of you, and Im happy to see how far youve become.

A song that inspires me is Oceanos by Hillsong United (the spanish version of oceans) it has helped me a lot in my life and has helped my faith grow as well. This playlist, I tried to show my journey of being broken, hurt and confused in the beginning of my life, as I had bad mental health, and slowly find my way into loving myself, forgiving those who hurt me, and getting into a relationship with the man who showed me value and safety which I am greatful for. Thank you for listening.

I believe everyone goes through hardships in life. And we all have our own experiences. For me, I struggled with an emotionally and mentally abusive household for years, of which I am still trying to get away from, the trauma of abusive and toxic friendships, and still trying to learn to love myself. When I was younger, my father was in many careers, all of which have left trauma and pain in his head. Due to this, there was violence and pain brought on to my family. I remember times where he would throw the kitchen upside down, scream and throw things at me and my brother for playing too loudly when we were only 10-12 years old. But the worst was when he began cheating on my mother. This began around 2012 when I was in middle school. The nights where I would come home and hear him and my mother screaming, throwing things, hitting, and many other awful profanities. I would go to school barely being able to focus, and come home to face assaults of “why aren't you succeeding, you need to try harder, why are do you not want to interact with us, you're spoiled and ungrateful.'' Despite the fact I was a student with a 3.5 GPA, it was never enough. Eventually I figured out I was a Bisexual as well, and although it finally felt right, my father would never accept it. I constantly feel worthless. I turned to self harming. I would do this on a regular basis until I could barely breathe. After years of this routine my mother had discovered my father was taking our money to spend on his mistress and divorced him, taking me and my brother into her custody and I lost all contact with my father. I had never told my mother about my harming tendencies and over time I slowly got better, I had even stopped. All was well until my junior year of high school. I had a friend for 15 years who, after getting into a relationship, the man had become extremely protective of her. He began to send me messages telling me to stay away from her, saying I was not to speak to her, or even be around her, and these progressed until he had come to my locker threatening me, and had threatened to shoot me and my entire school. The administration did not handle this well and proceeded to blame me for the actions, saying I was spreading around the rumor that the school was going to be shot up. After that was resolved months later I had friends close to me turn on me without explanation, to this day I still have no idea why. After that day, I went home and put a knife to my throat. I was about to end it all when I heard my mother's car door slam as she had gotten home from work. I never told her about that. The self harm continued after that until graduation, where I finally had felt free. Graduation was something that honestly saved me. I was finally free to leave the school and people that hurt me away. I was able to come to my university and become my own human, and being here has made me find friends who love me, a man who shows me what it's like to be loved and to feel safe. Unfortunately my father is still constantly harassing me in my life, texting me and trying to push himself into my life no matter how many times I tell him I will never forgive him with the pain and harm he put my family through. But here, I'm slowly learning to look in the mirror and not see a crying girl in pain, someone unworthy of any shred of love or kindness shown. Someone who must prove her worth by serving others until she has nothing left. I see a girl who has come through a lot, someone who may not be perfect but I am still here. I still am getting up in the morning to pursue my dream of teaching music. I have met friends from other countries who have shown me more kindness than those across the street. And I know I'm going to make it. That's all I can ask for.