Being involved in my community and helping other has always been important to me. My dad is a huge community volunteer, and he has been taking me a long on his activities even before I could walk. There are pictures of me sitting on his shoulders while he volunteered planting trees and removing invasive species. This concern for the community has stuck with me, and as a result I continue to work with non-profits that help the environment and its people. Because I graduated from a secondary school system that has an over 70% free and reduced student population, I have a goal to use my Mechanical Engineering education to help offset food insecurity. As a varsity level athlete in high school, I saw first hand how lack of food affected many of my athletic and non athletic peers. I was a teammate with big guys who, although they got a free breakfast and lunch at school, did not always have snacks pre practices, games or matches to give them energy. They also didn't always have enough food over the weekends. This not only affected their bodies but their spirits as well. This has lead me to want to incorporate my Mechanical Engineering education to help increase agricultural food production for human consumption. I have an interest not only to mechanics, but also to agriculture as a result of my 10 years of 4h participation. I am striving to work with different areas to mesh my Mechanical and ag. interests to help people. Our agricultural food supply is at risk due to dwindling agriculture lands, over development, global warming and other man made issues. I want to design and improve agricultural mechanical systems and practices to increase our ability to add to the world's agriculture food supply. We have an ever increasing human population but food insecurity is climbing too. I want to offset these conflicts to decrease food insecurity. I believe that the access to healthy food should be a right to all humans, not just to those who can afford it.

Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. My dad is very involved as a volunteer with community non-profits and he began toting me along to these activities since I was born; this has instilled in me the desire to use my college education to be a Steward of my community and make lives better for those around me. I grew up in a secondary school corporation that has a 70% free and reduced lunch population. Many of my classmates and peers lived within the level of poverty. All the students in my secondary school corporation have been able to get free breakfasts and lunches because of its high poverty level. I have seen first hand with kids that I went to school with what food insecurity can do to people. Even though we were able to have 2 free meals a day while at school, that doesn’t cover the needs of people during weekends and evenings. I feel that having food should be the right of all human beings, not just a privilege for those who can afford it. Being exposed to seeing what food insecurity can do to others has given me the drive to try to do something about it. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. My dad is an Agricultural Engineer. These experiences have allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other mechanics to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. This goal has become a passion of mine, and I hope that I can directly help to improve not just local but world wide food insecurity as well.

I deserve this scholarship because I know that putting in the hard work produces results. I have grown up in a rural area and attended a very small high school. Even though I performed very well all throughout school, there were times where I knew our corporation wasn’t able to offer some of the courses that I really needed to best prepare me for an engineering career. Where larger high schools offered a plethora of AP classes, my high school only was able to offer 4, of which I took all 4. Despite these academic challenges, I chose to prepare myself as much as I could. I took every dual credit class that I could fit into my high school schedule earning me 35 dual credits before I went to college. I participated in the maximum amount of Academic Bowl teams that were allowed each year to allow me practice and collaboration with students and faculty members having the same interests as myself. Luckily for me, this paid off, and I was accepted into and currently enrolled as a Mechanical Engineering major at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology. I am very proud of this accomplishment because Rose has been ranked as the number 1 engineering college in the nation for the past 27 years based on the type of education it offers to its students. What gives me a leg up toward winning this scholarship is that I know what it’s like to have to work for what I have. I wasn’t allowed to have a cell phone until I was 14 years old. When that time came, I was expected to pay for the phone as well as my monthly phone bill. I funded this responsibility through my part time job of weekly cleaning the small church that I attend. Now that I am in college, I still hold this job today. I use it now to not only pay for my phone, but it puts the gas into my car as well. Along with this part time job, I also hold jobs in the summer. Some of these have been refereeing for the Parke County Youth Basketball League, stacking hay for Huxford Farms, working as a Groundsmen with Veteran’s Tree Service, This summer I am interning at Green Leaf Inc. I understand what hard work looks like, and I appreciate the things that I have because I buy a lot of them. My willingness to not only work inside the classroom but outside of the classroom as well has paid off. It is this work ethic and enthusiasm for learning and self-improvement that make me a good candidate to earn this scholarship.

As a person, what defines me is being an advocate for the underdog because I am an "underdog". I come from a very rural poverty stricken small county. The high school I graduated from had an over 70% free and reduced lunch population. Sadly, my home area often gets a bad rap simply based on its low income. As a student and an athlete, I saw first hand how being food insecure negatively affected many of my peers in the classroom as well on the athletic field. That has lit a fire under me to use my college education in Mechanical Engineering as a means to try to conquer food insecurity. I plan to do this by working with several different entities to improve mechanical systems and increase agriculture production of food for human consumption. Our dwindling farm acreage due to global warming, over-development and an ever growing population makes it more important than ever to improve our mechanical systems and farming techniques to offset this insecruity. I believe that access to healthy food should be a right, not just a privilege. That's my plan to advocate for the underdog, and that's what defines me as a person.

I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. To change the world, I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience through Horse and Pony and Goat Clubs. This has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research, design and improve farm machinery systems and practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with different entities to create improved farming systems and methods to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. My interest in helping to offset food insecurity is a result of the rural community in which I live. The school system I come from has an over 70% free and reduced lunch population. I have seen first hand how food insecurity affected many of my peers. On my high school cross country team, I was a teammate of a runner whose family struggled from pay check to pay check. I spoke with my church board about his predicament and was able to get my church to help his family pay for their heating bills one winter because without that hlep, their electricity was going to be cut off. That teammate also sometimes didn’t know if his family was going to have food from day to day to feed the family. At school he was able to eat free breakfasts and lunch. Dinner and weekends were never certain. I saw how this concern weighed him down and broke his spirit. Seeing how this affected him really sparked me to want to be able to do something with my career that could make a difference for people in need. I care about my environment as well. I have much volunteer experience with non-profit organizations that focus on the environment. I have planted over 400 seedling trees for soil erosion prevention, with Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Ouabache Land Conservancy. And I have cleaned and cleared areas for trail building with Indiana Trails Initiative. Helping people and the environment that serves them are important to me. I want to use my engineering knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. This goal has become a passion of mine and that’s how I plan to change the world.

School has always been a priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I was able to earn straight A’s til I graduated as Valedictorian while in high school. I am proud to say that after my first three quarters at Rose-Hulman, I have earned a 3.72 gpa and have been on the Dean’s List every quarter so far.. Since the first grade, my dream has been to study engineering at Rose. Math has been my strong suit and favorite subject of mine. As a 6th grader, I chose to work independently to challenge my math skills on an internet school ALEKS program. This prepared me to take Alg. I and Geometry while in middle school allowing me the opportunity to get to Calculus II in high school. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, through my senior year in high school. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level for the first time in our high school’s history. which was a highlight of my high school career. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience through Horse and Pony and Goat Clubs. This has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research, design and improve farm machinery systems and practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with different entities to create improved farming systems and methods to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I have much volunteer experience with non-profit organizations that focus on the environment. I have planted over 400 seedling trees for soil erosion prevention, with Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Ouabache Land Conservancy. And I have cleaned and cleared areas for trail building with Indiana Trails Initiative. Helping people and the environment that serves them are important to me. I want to use my engineering knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. This goal has become a passion of mine.

I am a product of a “yours, mine and ours” blended family. Although my parents each came from families that did not have any divorces in them, they each ended up in divorce from their first spouses. Dad was married to his first wife for 9 years and they had 2 children. Mom was married for 12 years to her first husband, and they had 1 son. A few years after divorcing from their respective first spouses, my parents met in church. They married, had me and have been happily married to each other for 21 years. They are defying the divorce odds for the 2nd-time-around statistics that say the typical second time marriages end in a 60-67% divorce rate. I am one of the lucky ones from a blended family. Even though there’s a pretty good age gap between myself and my half-siblings, we were all raised in the same house so we are a family. I’m sure when I was younger, my older siblings may have been annoyed with me from time to time, but I still always knew that they cared for me. Now that I am older and more mature, our bond as siblings has actually grown stronger. Besides my dad’s focus on a strong family bond, he also has a very strong sense of community service and he has instilled this into me. He has been taking me along with him helping with non profit organizations since I was a child. I have helped plant over 400 seedling trees with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Ouabach Land Conservancy (OLC) for soil erosion purposes. I also have helped Indiana Trails Alliance clear trash from ravines, creek beds and old railroad trails to create free natural areas for the public to use. I continue to volunteer mainly with OLC to this day. With OLC I have also planted wildflower and grass seed and set land markers on its natural areas, and I have shuttled guests when they hosted a free eclipse viewing event. My dad’s ideal of being a steward of the environment is important to me as well. I plan to use my Mechanical Engineering Degree to improve mechanical systems and farming methods to increase the amount of agricultural food sources to help offset food insecurity. Our amount of row crop acreage is dwindling due to human over-development, depletion of natural- resources and an ever growing human population. We could become in jeopardy of running low on agricultural food sources if we don’t do something about it. I want to use my college education to work with groups to do something about it. I believe that all humans deserve access to food no matter what their socio-economic status is. Healthy food should NOT only be available to those who can afford it. I suppose you could say that the acceptance that I received from my blended family of half-siblings reinforces my need to be accepting and help others around me as well.

I have been a sports participant for as long as I can remember. As a child I participated in baseball, soccer, basketball and running sports such as cross country and track. When I got to the high school level of sports, I was a four sport varsity letter earner. These activities gave me the desire to work with community youth. With my basketball team I helped plan and run the elementary level boys summer basketball camp for four summers in a row. At these camps I lead small groups in fundamental skills, but I also taught them a lot about hard work, good sportsmanship and being a humble player. Through cross country I helped set up and run the elementary and junior high level cross country meets that were run on our high school course. This work with youth caught the attention of community members who invited me to referee for our county’s basketball youth league that plays on Saturdays from January through May each year. I have referred for this organization for two years now. My job as a referee has helped me as a student and a leader. I mostly only refereed second grade through fourth grade games. At this age group, they make a lot of mistakes, and a part of my job was to tell them what they were doing wrong and to teach them the right way. There are also times when you have to break up fights. A prominent memory from my referee experience has to do with heckling spectators. Ironically, since those playing were young kids, you would think that the parents wouldn’t heckle the referee; I’m still basically a kid myself. But you’d be surprised with how much you get yelled at by fans. Being heckled definitely taught me to keep my cool and not react negatively to it. Being a referee for younger kids, I realize the way I conduct myself is important for me to model in a calm way. I simply would choose not to respond to the heckling with any emotion. From helping kids learn the game of basketball, and keeping them from fighting with each other and ignoring the fans yelling, I would say this job has helped me as a student, a leader and role model for others. It has also taught me how to keep my cool around other people through my adult life. This is a skill that has not only been helpful to me currently, but I’m sure I may be placed into situations in the workplace where I will have to tap into that ability to stay calm in stressful situations. With my engineering degree I will be placed into situations where I will need to be able to effectively communicate and work with others in a calm way. I not only will need to be able to voice my ideas, but I will have to be able to listen while others give input of their ideas as well. Refereeing has helped me to develop these skills.

I have been blessed to have been born into a Chrisitan family that believes in serving others. My lineage in this church family goes back at least to my great grandparents and possibly even further back than that. Our family attends a small little church named Dailey Chapel Christian Church and it is full of my immediate family and several of my cousins. I’m not sure if there are very many people who attend Dailey Chapel who aren’t related in some way. Our church may be small, but its outreach is MIGHTY! Even though within my church we do a lot of outreach such as filling shoe boxes every year with essential items to give to inner city youth; helping pack food bundles with IDES, Christmas caroling at the local nursing homes and tithing and supporting area groups financially such as the food pantry and our local school’s clothing closet; I also feel the need to perform acts of service in many other ways as well. Besides my church influence, I have also been influenced by my dad’s acts of service that he does on a daily basis. Along with his full-time job as an extension educator, he also belongs to several non-profit organizations doing manual labor to help the environment. He has been toting me along with him to these activities even before I could walk. Alongside my dad I have worked with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Ouabache Land Conservancy (OLC). I have helped plant over 400 seedling trees for the prevention of soil erosion. For OLC I have also planted grass and wildflower seed and dug holes and placed land markers. I have many volunteer hours cleaning trash out of ravines and creeks for trail building purposes with Indiana Trails Initiative. I realize that the founding members are aging and need younger people to carry on their ideals. I also did many service projects when I was a boy scout and as a member of my junior high and high school National Honor Society groups. This has been my leadership style. I jump in to do things and it encourages those around me to want to help out as well. And I do so with a willing heart. My faith compels me to serve and help others. Because I grew up on a small hobby farm and have 10 years of 4H experience in our county’s Horse and Goat Clubs, I have a special interest in participating in activities that help the environment and the people within it. The secondary school system I grew up within had a high poverty rate. Over 70% of our students qualified for free and reduced lunches, and during the school year our school had a Buddy Bag program to send food items home with students for not only themselves but also their families over the weekends.I saw how food insecurity affected those peers around me, and seeing that affected me. With my engineering education that I am gaining at Rose-Hulman, I have the desire to mesh the knowledge I am gaining with my interest in agriculture to work with other groups in an effort to improve agricultural food production. Because of global warming, over-development and depletion of our natural resources, our agricultural land is shrinking; yet, we have an ever increasing human population. I have a mission to offset that food supply deficit. I believe that access to food should be a right, not just a privilege. My faith is driving me toward that goal.

My grandpa Gib Dickey served in the military during the Korean War. I didn’t get to know my grandpa very well as I was only around 3 years old when he passed away. I however have heard many stories from my mom and my aunts about things that they know about his military experience. He was drafted at the age of 23. Before being deployed, he and my Grandma Pat were dating. Despite Grandma’s desires, he would not marry her before he went to Korea. She was five years his junior, and he was concerned that if he married her and died overseas, he didn’t want to leave her a widow at her young age of 18. Prior to being drafted, Grandpa (a poor, rural farm boy from Parke County Indiana) had completed about a year and a half of school at Purdue University and was studying Electrical Engineering. He graduated as Valedictorian of his Rosedale High School class which included about 23 students)which earned him the $43 scholarship that helped him pay for his start of schooling at Purdue. Without that scholarship, he would have never been able to have afforded going to college. Grandpa Gib was an inquisitive, tinkering whiz and could fix everything. This worked in his favor in the ARMY because once they realized his talents for electronics, while in Korea he became their radio repairman and operator. His talent in this area may have saved his life while overseas. His radio work minimized his time spent on the front lines. Fortunately, Grandpa was one of the lucky ones. He made it back after the war safe and sound. But my mom has said he didn’t like to talk about his experience in Korea very much. He was proud to have served, but he didn’t like the feelings and memories it brought since while serving there he had to spend nights taking cover in fox holes for his own safety and witnessed people getting wounded and killed first hand. Despite his American ARMY family while there, he was lonely and worried. When the war was over, he was ready to come home. Once home from Korea, Grandpa married my grandma, but he did not return to Purdue. He bought a small plot of farm ground and farmed that for the rest of his life. He also continued to utilize his electronic knowledge and was the community TV repairman until retirement. He worked those two essentially full time jobs so that he and Grandma could raise their 4 daughters. I’m very proud of what my grandpa did as a veteran and more importantly as a human being. His legacy has taught me hard work, responsibility, honesty and a devotion to the protection of his country,

I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. A portion of my involvement is the result of my dad being very involved with community volunteerism. Ever since I was very small, he has taken me along to help with multiple volunteer projects. My volunteer experiences continued with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and as a 10 year 4H member and have carried over into my activities to this day. I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school groups and for other non-profit organizations. My dad has shown me that volunteerism is important for the betterment of all communities. The most important roles that I feel I have made the most impact are those in which I work with area youth and also non-profit organizations. Being a mentor and supporting my community are what legacy means to me. In high school as a four year basketball and cross country participant, I planned and helped run the elementary summer basketball camps and the elementary Runner’s Club Meets during my four years of high school. My tasks were to teach, coach and be a role model for the younger participants. I am involved in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. As a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Goat clubs, I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. I also helped younger members handle and prepare their livestock for the shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I have years of experience that have taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can learn from. Being a positive example for these younger members is something I don’t take lightly. I am very specific in how I handle myself and my words in all situations that I am involved. The example I am setting for all those around me is very important to me. Besides mentoring, I volunteer with community groups. One group with which I am a volunteer is Ouabache Land Conservancy. This group my dad helped form in 2007. For OLC I have helped plant 50 trees, laid straw on newly planted grass seed and set markers on its nature preserve. I also shuttled guests during OLC’s 2024 Eclipse viewing event in its natural area. I have been working with OLC since around the age of 8. I have also helped the Indiana Department of Natural Resources plant 300 trees to prevent soil erosion, and I have helped with trash pick up and trail building for Parke Trails Initiative. For the latter groups, I see that a lot of their members are aging. They need the younger generation to do the “heavy lifting” that they no longer can do. That’s where I come in. I want to help to carry on the visions of the groups’ founders. I think it’s important for younger people like myself to get involved with community groups. My desire to mentor youth and stay involved with these groups stems from the legacy that my dad has modeled to me, and I hope to continue to be a life-long volunteer for many organizations now as well as into my future.

School has always been a priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I was able to earn straight A’s until I graduated as Valedictorian of my high school class.. I am proud to say that after my first full year at Rose-Hulman, I have earned a 3.65 gpa so far. Since the first grade, my dream has been to study engineering at Rose. Math has been my strong suit and favorite subject of mine. As a 6th grader, I chose to work independently to challenge my math skills on an internet school ALEKS program. This prepared me to take Alg. I and Geometry while in middle school allowing me the opportunity to get to Calculus II in high school. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, through my senior year in high school. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level for the first time in our high school’s history. which was a highlight of my high school career. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out.. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience through Horse and Pony and Goat Clubs. This has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farm machinery systems and practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with different entities to create improved farming systems and methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. The secondary school corporation that I graduated from has over 70% free and reduced lunch population. I got to see first hand how food insecurity affected so many parts of the lives of the peers around me. Even though these kids got 2 free meals per day, that didn’t include food on the weekends. Our school received donations to pack buddy bags for the needy students to take home so that their entire families could eat on Saturday and Sunday. I was a member of our high school’s cross country team. One of my teammates lived in a household that didn’t have much money. Sometimes the food he had at school was all that he would get for the day. I saw how the lack of access to food affected his energy as well as his spirit. Seeing this reality so close to the peers that I had contact with every day, really affected my view of life. I believe that access to healthy food should be a right, not a privilege. My interest in increasing agricultural food production, decreasing food insecurity is a direct result of what I have witnessed around me. Helping the environment is also important to me. I have volunteer experience with non-profit organizations that focus on the environment. I have planted over 400 seedling trees for soil erosion prevention, with Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Ouabache Land Conservancy. And I have cleaned and cleared areas for trail building with Indiana Trails Initiative. Each of these non-profit organizations work to create natural areas that can be used by the public for free. These three organizations are run by people who have great goals, but they are again. I realize that to keep those goals alive, it takes the younger generation like myself to get involved. Helping the environment and my fellow humans within it is important to me. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. I also want to continue with environmental efforts as well.

My Aunt Terri is the most giving person I know. She teaches children in Sunday School at our country church and plays the piano. She prays for people. She never forgets to mail me that yearly birthday. And, even though I’m not a little kid anymore, she still always packages up some little treats for me on holidays. I know that those packages are created with love, because she goes out of her way to find treats that she knows I like, such as the elusive Oh Henry candy bar that you can’t find on regular store shelves. She cares about and takes care of everyone. Despite all of her good works, she has been hit hard by some very serious health issues. Around 6 years ago, she battled breast cancer. She went through surgeries and intense radiation. She’s now in remission. Just when she was feeling safe, she received additional diagnoses of lymphoma and leukemia. Hearing those words almost knocked her down spiritually and physically. At that time, the doctor said they were mild forms; no treatment was applied. Time passed. Her conditions made her very tired, but she was still pushing herself to carry on as normal. Then last winter, it all came to a head. She had to be hospitalized for pneumonia and sepsis. She needed oxygen. Her immunity was rock bottom. She had trouble breathing. She was incredibly weak and had no appetite. The sepsis part was what really concerned me. My grandpa had contracted sepsis and it almost killed him. He was told that if he hadn’t gotten to the hospital when he did, he was about 2 hours from death, so the whole family knows the frightening consequences of sepsis. As for my aunt’s struggle with sepsis, the entire family and church family were afraid and prayed for her. I thought she was going to die. If my uncle hadn’t gotten her to the hospital when he did, she probably would have. The hospital was so full that week, she didn’t even get admitted into a room. She was literally in a hospital bed stationed in one of the hallways. For the 10 days that she was there, the hospital was diligent to do what they had to do to save her. Although still very weak, she was sent home with an oxygen tank. The next week she had to be readmitted to the hospital. The sepsis was still present making her blood cell counts dangerously high. She fought her way through. She was so weak, but she was eventually able to get the sepsis cleared from her body. My aunt is still not out of the woods. Although she is home, she is immuno compromised. For a time she stayed away from crowds, and underwent two different types of extremely intense infusions to get her blood count and immunity higher. I’ll never forget one Sunday when we were going into church, I was thinking to myself, “I wonder how Aunt Terri is doing,” and to my surprise, there she sat, playing the church piano for the congregation. Thankfully, my aunt survived the sepsis. That was a blessing because I know sepsis can be deadly. She still uses oxygen at times, and her energy level will never be the same, but she does not want these things to stop her from living life. My aunt is an inspiration to me. She is living proof that you can overcome things and keep a positive attitude. Her mantra to never give up is something that I can carry with me whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed.

I like Sabrina Carpenter because she has a very real persona about her. On the outside she looks glam and all that, but she has openly confessed that she has been on the receiving end of being bullied, discounted and not necessarily taken seriously (in her early career) as an artist. I appreciate her candidness about going through those types of situations and how hurtful it was to her. It shows that even very famous, talented and oftentimes beautiful people are not immune to the hatred that others can aim at them. Despite these taunts to her character, she didn't give up. She knew what she wanted to do and she forged on with her dream. She's a very talented singer, but probably more importantly I admire her song writing ability. To me, almost anyone can sing or attempt to. The real talent lies within the story telling and the ability to set that story to a melody. The power of music rests in the power to connect to people and help them feel emotions. Sabrina Carpenter is proving herself to be a master of that art. For these reasons, I admire Sabrina Carpenter. Because she is a young star, she has the ability to positively connect with her younger fans. She can definitely positively affect the minds of her fans.

I have admired Taylor Swift for a very long time. It's one thing to be able to sing well and move your audiences. But I am more impressed with her ability to create a story line, add a melody and put it into a song. There are lots of excellent singers and there are lots of talented song writers. To be both a song writer and a singer creates the whole package. That is Taylor Swift. In all honesty, I am most enamored with one of Taylor's first albums and performance which features her hit song "Our Song". Even though Taylor has matured and evolved so much from that time, and her additional hit albums and songs are unmatched in their quality and popularity, that first song goes back to her roots. I love the acoustic guitar; her naturally wavy hair. That initial breakthrough and performance was raw, authentic and vulnerable. It is those qualities that make her relatable and have paved her pathway to evolve into the huge star that she is today. I appreciate that Taylor began (and still is) as a humble young lady. Her family and home that shaped her were similar to most middle class family homes. She may be very famous and rich today, but deep down, she is that same person whose family moved to Nashville with her so she could follow her dream.

My brand new Love Island challenge would be to include new competitions that are very diverse from the very mundane to things that are mentally or physically challenging. Couples would be randomly paired together to see how compatible they are during these activities. The diverse activities could include water sports (such as tubing behind a boat); rock climbing; bike riding a tandem bike together using only a paper map; showing livestock in a competition; playing a game of scrabble; shopping from a grocery list together; shopping for a car; attending couples counseling; attending a movie premiere; attending an opera, etc. After each round of the initially paired together “random” couple, the pairings would rotate to two different people matched together. The viewers could be the ones rating and voting for the couples that they think are the most compatible. The viewers vote would narrow down the pairings that they want to see move on to the next round. Then at the end of the show, the viewers would choose the winning couple. The whole point would be to find what the couples interests are as well as their level of toleration for the activities to see who better belongs together. Or is that not really the point of the show????

While I was still in high school, I kept myself very busy with sports and my studies that I almost didn’t have time to think about anything else. I was a four varsity sport athlete at the high school level, and from conditioning in the summers for cross country, to transitioning to winter basketball, and then participating in both baseball and track during the same sports season, I was very active. As for studying, even though I did have to apply myself through school and was a straight A student who graduated as Valedictorian of my class, school came fairly easy to me. So I didn’t feel like I had too much stress in my life. Then came college. This fall I will be entering into my sophomore level at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Being a collegiate level athlete was not in the cards for me. Statistics show that only about 7.5% of high school graduates go on to play some type of collegiate level sport. That leaves a whopping 91.5% who do NOT participate in college sports. I’ll admit, that first summer that I had off before entering college, I almost felt like I was retired. There were no sports any longer “required” of me: I had no conditioning, not open gym, NOTHING!. That was rough for me at first, and it mentally got me a little down. I needed something to occupy my time and essentially my mind. So, I turned to playing golf and weight lifting. Both of which I do now because I enjoy them. With weight lifting, I love to challenge myself. I’m a numbers guy. Math has always been my strong suit. Rose-Hulman is a nationally renowned engineering school. It’s no wonder that a math guy like me would find Rose to be my perfect fit school. Watching my numbers improve while I’m lifting weights motivates me to do more. It helps me feel good about myself. I picked up golf as a hobby mostly for the pure relaxation of the sport. Our high school did not have a boys’ golf team, so I didn’t have the chance to play there. Now I do it because I enjoy it. The enjoyment factor that I receive from the sports that I now am involved, goes a long way for releasing my stress levels as a college student. I mentioned earlier that while in high school, school work came easily for me. That is not the same now that I’m in college. Rose-Hulman has been ranked number 1 in the nation for engineering schools for the last 27 years. Last year it also ranked number 1 for its Mechanical Engineering Department, and that is my major. It is not an easy school to attend, so the pressure is definitely on me to make the grades. I am happy to say that I did make the Dean’s LIst the entire first year that I have been at Rose, but it was not without A LOT of studying and homework. Having the outlets to relieve that stress in my life of golf and weightlifting have been a game changer for me. I have picked up a couple of intramural sports while at Rose as well. Fitness has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It has however evolved depending on the lifestage that I am in. I am appreciative of my abilities to be physically activating. Its benefits are reflected in not only my physical ability but my mental ability as well.

I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience through Horse and Pony and Goat Clubs. This has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farm machinery systems and practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with different entities to create improved farming systems and methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. A part of this interest of mine to improve and increase our agricultural food supply is because of the experiences I had throughout my secondary education. The school from which I graduated had an over 70% free and reduced lunch population. The qualifying students were able to receive two free meals a day during the school year, but that didn’t account for weekends and summers. Our school did have a buddy bag program where certain kids had a backpack supplied to them for the weekends with non-perishable food items to feed their families. Unfortunately, that program did not run through the summer nor were there any other summer food programs. I saw through my peers how food insecurity can affect people. It inspired a mindfulness within me that access to healthy food should be a basic human right, not just a privilege. I also have much volunteer experience with non-profit organizations that focus on the environment. I have planted over 400 seedling trees for soil erosion prevention, with Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Ouabache Land Conservancy. And I have cleaned and cleared areas for trail building with Indiana Trails Initiative. All of these programs offer free access to their natural areas for families to enjoy. Helping people and the environment that serves them is important to me. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. This goal has become a passion of mine. I also plan to work with non-profits for the rest of my life in an effort to preserve our natural areas for humans as well as wildlife activity.

I have been blessed to have been born into a Christian family that believes in serving others. My lineage in this church family goes back at least to my great grandparents and possibly even further back than that. Our family attends a small little church named Dailey Chapel Christian Church, and it is full of my immediate family and several of my cousins. I’m not sure if there are very many people who attend Dailey Chapel who aren’t related in some way. Our church may be small, but its outreach is MIGHTY! Even though within my church we do a lot of outreach such as filling shoe boxes every year with essential items to give to inner city youth; helping pack food bundles with IDES, Christmas caroling at the local nursing homes and tithing and supporting area groups financially such as the food pantry and our local school’s clothing closet; I also feel the need to perform acts of service in many other ways as well. Besides my church influence, I have also been influenced by my dad’s acts of service that he does on a daily basis. Along with his full-time job as an extension educator, he also belongs to several non-profit organizations doing manual labor to help the environment. He has been toting me along with him to these activities even before I could walk. Alongside my dad I have worked with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Ouabache Land Conservancy (OLC). I have helped plant over 400 seedling trees for the prevention of soil erosion. For OLC I have also planted grass and wildflower seed and dug holes and placed land markers. I have many volunteer hours cleaning trash out of ravines and creeks for trail building purposes with Indiana Trails Initiative. I realize that the founding members are aging and need younger people to carry on their ideals. I also did many service projects when I was a boy scout and as a member of my junior high and high school National Honor Society groups. This has been my leadership style. I jump in to do things and it encourages those around me to want to help out as well. And I do so with a willing heart. My faith compels me to serve and help others. Because I grew up on a small hobby farm and have 10 years of 4H experience in our county’s Horse and Goat Clubs, I have a special interest in participating in activities that help the environment and the people within it. The secondary school system I grew up within had a high poverty rate. Over 70% of our students qualified for free and reduced lunches, and during the school year our school had a Buddy Bag program to send food items home with students for not only themselves but also their families over the weekends.I saw how food insecurity affected those peers around me, and seeing that affected me. With my engineering education that I am gaining at Rose-Hulman, I have the desire to mesh the knowledge I am gaining with my interest in agriculture to work with other groups in an effort to improve agricultural food production. Because of global warming, over-development and depletion of our natural resources, our agricultural land is shrinking; yet, we have an ever increasing human population. I have a mission to offset that food supply deficit. I believe that access to food should be a right, not just a privilege. My faith is driving me toward that goal.

School has always been a priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I was able to earn straight A’s til I graduated as Valedictorian. I am proud to say that after my first two quarters at Rose-Hulman, I have earned a 3.65 gap so far. Since the first grade, my dream has been to study engineering at Rose. Math has been my strong suit and favorite subject of mine. As a 6th grader, I chose to work independently to challenge my math skills on an internet school ALEKS program. This prepared me to take Alg. I and Geometry while in middle school allowing me the opportunity to get to Calculus II in high school. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, through my senior year in high school. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level for the first time in our high school’s history. which was a highlight of my high school career. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out.. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience through Horse and Pony and Goat Clubs. This has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farm machinery systems and practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with different entities to create improved farming systems and methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. The school corporation that I came out of has over 70% free and reduced lunch population. I got to see first hand how food insecurity affected so many parts of the lives of the peers around me. Even though these kids got 2 free meals per day, that didn’t include food on the weekends. Our school received donations to pack buddy bags for the needy students to take home so that their entire families could eat on Saturday and Sunday. I believe that access to healthy food should be a right, not a privilege. My interest in increasing agricultural food production, and decreasing food insecurity is a direct result of what I have witnessed around me. I have volunteer experience with non-profit organizations that focus on the environment. I have planted over 400 seedling trees for soil erosion prevention, with Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Ouabache Land Conservancy. And I have cleaned and cleared areas for trail building with Indiana Trails Initiative. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. I also want to continue with environmental efforts as well.

I am a Christian and I have attended my small, country home church of Dailey Chapel Christian Church since birth. This is my mom’s home church as well, and our family has attended this church for at least four generations, if not more. This is even where my parents met. Although my church does many good works in the community, it does not have a very large youth group. In fact, most of my life at my church, I’m really the only one of my age group. Despite this, I always feel loved, and I am blessed to have a strong support system around me. Not all kids are able to say that they have that support. So, I am dedicated to participating in activities where I can be a mentor to youth in need. I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and have carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. The activities that I feel I am impacting the world most through are those that involve working with youth. In high school I was a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I helped with the elementary Runners Club. I helped clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walked the visiting teams through the course pre-meet, and if kids are “lost on the course”, I go out to locate them and run them in. In basketball, during 4 summers, I volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I taught small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talked to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school with my National Honor Society chapter our group helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids. I was involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President, I taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. And this past Christmas, at Rose I helped assemble bikes with Toys for Tots. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I have volunteered with the summer Special Olympics Program registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I just finished 10 years of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs membership. The last two years I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I co-planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members, helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair, and I was tasked with working shifts in Horse and Goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I am a role model and have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. From my education as a Mechanical Engineer, I want to mesh that with my interest in agriculture to improve machinery and farming methods to increase the agricultural food supply. My experiences with youth has shown me what food insecurity does to people. I want to try to alleviate this issue. I believe that access to healthy food should be a right, not a privilege. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I am in my third quarter Rose-Hulman studying Mechanical Engineering. I want to continue the mentoring and volunteer activities that I do through my college career and the rest of my life as well. This desire to give back is what my faith has instilled within me.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s through my secondary which earned me Valedictorian of my senior class. . Since the first grade, my dream has been to study engineering. Success to me will be using my education in engineering to help the people around me live a better life. One area that I want to concentrate my efforts toward is increasing the agricultural consumable food supply. Math has been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a 6th grader, I chose to work independently to challenge my math skills on an internet school ALEKS program. This prepared me to take Alg. I and Geometry while in middle school allowing me the opportunity to get to AP Calculus II in high school. All of this was deliberate on my part to prepare me to be accepted to Rose-Hulman. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I was raised in a small county that has a lot of poverty; in fact my high school corporation has over a 70% free and reduced eligible population. I have seen first hand some of my peers whose families don’t have enough money to buy the necessities for their family. Those students were eligible for free breakfast and lunch while at school, but that did not cover the weekend or the summer. My previous school corporation received local grants so that it could pack weekend buddy bags for students in need that could help to feed their families over the weekends. It really affected me to realize the food insecurity that many around me experienced. I want to use my education to improve food production to be used for human consumption. I believe that having access to healthy food should be a right for all people, not a privilege. Helping my community is a big interest of mine. I have a lot of volunteer hours under my belt with different non-profit organizations. I became interested from a young age because my dad is dedicated to volunteerism. He has been packing me along on many of his endeavors since I was about age 4. I helped plant 150 seedling trees with Indiana Department of Natural Resources for soil erosion prevention. I have cleaned up trash from creeks and ravines and cleared brush for the Indiana Trails Initiative for trail building.. The group I am the most involved with to this day is the Ouabache Land Conservancy. With them I have helped plant 50 seedling trees, planted grass and wildflower seed, dug holes and placed land markers and I shuttled guests for their 2024 Eclipse Viewing Event. Through all of these groups I enjoy helping care for natural areas that are free and accessible to the public to enjoy nature. I see that many of their members are aging, so they need the younger generation like myself to help them continue to fulfill their goals. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for the purposes and improving mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. This goal has become a passion of mine.

While in high school, I have successfully juggled four varsity sports along with holding a 4.353 gpa on a 4.0 scale, sadly however, my small school does not have a golf team. Our high school enrollment is around 365 students grades 9-12 and sports-wise it only offers the basic sports and golf is not one of them. Although I enjoy the four varsity sports in which I participate, I always hoped we would add golf to one of our offerings. Because I am not able to play golf for a school team, I picked up golf for the first time last year as a leisure sport. Ever since that first crack at the game, I have fallen completely in love with it. In between my school sports, I go to the golf course every chance I get. I’ve had to teach myself several parts of it because I had no opportunities for things to be taught to me by a coach. I think that’s what has made it so exciting for me. It’s been a challenge all the way around, physically and mentally. I don’t merely play on one course; I play on several. I bought a WTHI golfing pass which gives me access to over 20 area golf courses at a discounted price. I was able to use that on the first course today as a matter of fact. I’m chomping at the bit to get to every course that is on that pass. That’s part of the allure to me in golf as well. Every course is unique. Unlike a baseball field or a basketball court, golf doesn’t confine you to a dimension or a time limit. You can make it your own. I also feel like as I age and perhaps my joints deteriorate, golf will be something that I can maintain even into old age. Golf is relaxing, it’s fun, but at the same time it’s a challenge. I am glad I finally discovered how enjoyable it is. As I age I know my body may get to the point where my school related sports of running basketball and baseball may not be so easy for me to participate physically. I really enjoy golfing and I am glad to know that I have the physical potential to play it as a recreational sport for the rest of my life. I also learned that you’re never too old to learn a new sport.

I have been an avid equestrian since the age of 2. My mom was a 10 year 4H Horse and Pony member, and I loved being around horses and ponies so much, I decided to follow in her footsteps. It is through my saddle club experience and my 10 years of 4H experience that I have spent most of my life caring for horses and helping other youth with their horse interests as well. I just finished 10 years of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs membership. The past two years I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I co-organized and planned a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members. For this I volunteered to trailer in my own horse to lead the equine demonstration part of the clinic. As an Ambassador, I also helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair, and I was tasked with working shifts in Horse and Goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows and answered their questions. I have also given riding and handling lessons to young children. I had kept my “step up” horses and ponies even after I outgrew them because I trailer them to horse shows so that I can teach younger kids how to ride and show safely. Some of my horses I did free leases for younger kids to use at the 4H fair as well. I feel another advantage I have with my horse experience is, I have tried several different horse disciplines. I'm not a "one trick pony". I have shown every thing from halter, to showmanship, western pleasure, trail, gaming, English pleasure and even driving my 37 inch pony with a cart. This versatility has given me a great apprecition for many aspects of the equine industry. I know the importance of hoof care, vet checks, proper ground work, gaining trust in your horse, grooming and many other things. I am able to relay the importance of patience and good sportsmanship to those around me. I've seen several of my peers lose interest in the important components of being a responsible care taker of horses, and that's not being a true equestrian. I have always taken care of my own horses, and I have the ability to teach those correct techniques to others. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I have years of experience that have taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. Although I’ve always been a workhorse when it comes to getting things done, I am actually quite shy. Growing into becoming a seasoned equine member, I learned how to take on leadership roles. The confidence that working with horses gave me, forced me to come out of my comfort zone and be more communicative with not only younger kids but with people in general. That has been a great take away for me!

I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. A portion of my involvement is the result of my dad being very involved with community volunteerism. Ever since I was the age of 2, he has taken me along to help with multiple volunteer projects. My volunteer experiences continued with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and has carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school groups, my 4H involvement for other non-profit organizations. I know that volunteerism is important for the betterment of all communities and I have taken leadership roles in several activities. Per the topic of this essay, I want to describe the volunteerism I am involved in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered two summers ago with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs. My last two years I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and demonstrated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. I also took on work shifts in the horse and goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I answered questions of fair guests, helped younger member handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. Being a role-model and example for these younger members I don’t take lightly. I am very specific in how I handle myself and my words in all situations that I am involved. Another community group that I have volunteered for are the Ouabache Land Conservancy. For OLC I have helped plant 50 trees, laid straw on newly planted grass seed and set markers on its nature preserve. The OLC currently has 150 seedling trees ordered representing 15 different varieties that I will be helping them to plant for the spring season. I also drove the shuttle for the OLC’s Eclipse Viewing Event. I have been working with OLC since around the age of 8. I have also helped the Indiana Department of Natural Resources plant 300 trees to prevent soil erosion, and I have helped with trash pick up and trail building for Indiana Trails Initiative. All of these groups have the goal to preserve natural areas so that families have free access to use them. For each of these groups, I see that a lot of their members are aging. I don’t want their ideals to end just because they aren’t as physically able. I see that they need the younger generation like myself to carry on their goals. I really enjoy the physicality and the internal satisfaction that working with these non-profit groups creates for me. I think it’s important for younger people to get involved with these endeavors so that the goals of the aging founders can be carried out even when they are unable to do it themselves. I am aware that colleges encourage leadership and community involvement of their students. I hope to continue to be a life-long volunteer for many organizations now as well as into my future.

The school corporation that I grew up within and attended has around a 70% free and reduced lunch population. Seeing how many of my peers within my school who would not be able to pay for and have breakfasts and lunches without this program made me more aware and concerned about how food insecurity affects children and their families. Being exposed to this pushed me to want to find solutions for insuffcient food supply. I feel that having access to food for people should be a right, not a luxury. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. From taking this class and other high level thinking STEM courses, gaining an education in engineering seemed like a good fit for me. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. This goal has become a passion of mine.

I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and have carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. The activities that I feel I am impacting the world most through are those that involve working with youth. While at Riverton Parke I was a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I helped with the elementary Runners Club. I helped clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. In basketball for 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school with my National Honor Society chapter our group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids and an additional family games night. I was involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President two of those. I have taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. Last summer, I finished 10 years of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs membership. This past two years I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members, helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair, and I was tasked with working shifts in Horse and Goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I am a role model and have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. Other organizations that I have volunteered within are helping plant 300 seedling trees for Indiana Department of Natural Resources and also planting 50 trees, planting grass and wildflower seed (topping it with straw), digging holes and setting land markers and shuttling guests at the 2024 Eclipse event for Ouabache Land Conservancy. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I am currently a freshman at Rose-Hulman studying Mechanical Engineering. This past Christmas, I helped assemble bikes for Toys for Tots. I hope to continue the mentoring and volunteer activities that I do through my college career and the rest of my life as well.

Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I have grown up in a school corporation that has a 70% free and reduced lunch population. Many of my classmates and peers live within the level of poverty. For my last two years of high school, all the students in my secondary school corporation have been able to get free breakfasts and lunches because of its high poverty level. I have seen first hand with kids that I went to school with what food insecurity can do to people. Even though we were able to have 2 free meals a day while at school, that doesn’t cover the needs of people during weekends and evenings. My school had a buddy bag program for some families that would send a back pack with food for the whole family to make sure these kids had something to each on the weekends. But this was only covered through donations, so not every student received these. I feel that access to food should be the right of all human beings, not just a privilege for those who can afford it. I lucky because I've never gone hungry, and I can't imagine what that would be like on a daily basis. Being exposed to seeing what food insecurity can do to others has given me the drive to try to do something about it. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. This goal has become a passion of mine and I hope that I can directly help to improve not just local but world wide food insecurity as well.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve achieved that. Since the first grade, my dream has been to study engineering. Math has been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a 6th grader, I chose to work independently to challenge my math skills on an internet school ALEKS program. This prepared me to take Alg. I and Geometry while in middle school allowing me the opportunity to get to Calculus II in high school. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, through my senior year in high school. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level for the first time in our high school’s history. which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply. This goal has become a passion of mine.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve achieved that. Since the first grade, my dream has been to study engineering. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a 6th grader, I chose to work independently to challenge my math skills on an internet school ALEKS program. This prepared me to take Alg. I and Geometry while in middle school allowing me the opportunity to get to Calculus II in high school. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, through my senior year in high school. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level for the first time in our high school’s history. which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply.

I am a naturally quiet person, but I’ve always been a hard worker. For several years of my younger life, I took on the role of being a “work horse” when it came to getting things done, but for a time I was happy to simply be in that role. It was out of my comfort zone to step into the role of leader. My involvement with sports helped me to overcome that shyness by taking on roles as team captain. In junior high and high school, my coaches chose me to be captain of my basketball and cross country teams. This helped me learn a lot about myself and others. Before every game, I would meet up with the referees and the captains of the other team to go over instructions. I was in charge of keeping my teammates in line and bringing out the best in them. During the game, I was also the one calling out plays and communicating with my coach to see what I needed to tell my teammates. In this role, I realized that I don’t get mad very easily. I am a pretty calm and optimistic person. I found out that some people can really get down on themselves if things don’t go as planned. In athletics, I realize in a clutch situation you have to snap them out of that mindset and get their heads back in the game for the success of the team. If a teammate makes a mistake or gets down on themselves in a game, that by no means makes them a bad person or teammate; they just need to be checked up on. I also learned that checking up on someone doesn’t just have to be done verbally. It can also be done through actions; high fiving someone after a good play, showing them where they need to be on the floor, and helping them up after they fall. On the floor as the team captain, I had to make sure that I was giving every play my all and model this for everyone else. I had to bring the energy. As captain, I had to yell either what offense or defense we were running, making sure that everyone knew what the plan was and whether they were doing it right. In order to make sure of this I would study our plays and memorize them to heart so that way I knew if somebody was out of position. If somebody was out of place, I would redirect them. Not only did all of this happen during games, but also at practices and in school. I would help many of my teammates with their school work so that way they kept their grades up. I did this because if you failed a class, then you got kicked off of the team. It’s very important to have every member of the team eligible to participate. All the sports that I was involved in were definitely team sports, not individual sports. My leadership as team captain could bring light to more possibilities in my future. While working in groups, if I ever see somebody feeling down, I will try and cheer them up. From my experience I have found that good leadership needs to come from a calm and positive place. Good leaders don’t have to yell or put others down to make their points. Good leaders find the potential in others and work to allow teammates to bring out their potential. I want to portray that in other future leadership positions as well.

I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. A large portion of my involvement is the result of my dad being very involved with community volunteerism. Ever since I was very small, he has taken me along to help with multiple volunteer projects. My volunteer experiences continued with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and has carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my church and my fraternity for other non-profit organizations. I know that volunteerism is important for the betterment of all communities, and I have taken leadership roles in several activities. My dad has modeled this sense of service through his actions for as long as I can remember. My dad is involved in several non profit organizations. Even though he holds down a full time position as an Agriculture and Natural Resource Educator through Purdue Extension, he still volunteers many hours to non profits. Because of his Degree in Agricultural Engineering with a major in Forestry Management, most of his volunteer efforts center around activities that deal with the preservation of natural areas. He has been taking me along on these activities for so long, watching him volunteer and my doing so along with him has simply become a part of our lives. I also have an interest in agriculture and natural areas. From my 10 years of 4H involvement in Horse and Pony and Goat Clubs, I respect the importance that agriculture has on our nation. I am currently majoring in Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. I just finished my first quarter at Rose. Because of my interest in mechanical systems as well as agriculture, my dad suggested I go into Mechanical Engineering which will allow me to go in many different directions and can be intertwined with agricultural types of things. As an engineer I have the desire to work with different entities and combine my engineering education with agriculture. I have a desire to research, collaborate with other entities and develop improved farming methods and machinery so that our nation and world can better meet the demands that a growing population requires in agricultural food production and consumption. With climate change, over development and depletion of our natural resources and tillable acreage, the amount of agricultural ground in our nation is dwindling. This in turn is having a detrimental effect on our ability to supply the necessary food to meet the needs of those who have food insecurity. My focus is to put emphasis on alternatives so that we can offset this decline with ways to manage it. Too many people in our world are food insecure. I can’t imagine what that must feel like for a family. Children who go to bed hungry; or parents trying to make ends meet so that they can feed their families is a hardship. The ability to have food and not be hungry should be a human right, not a privilege. My father has instilled in me the importance of helping those around me. I admire his work ethic and generosity with his time to help those around him. I want to model my life after his and continue to volunteer not only now but into my future as well. The education I am gaining in engineering will give me the knowledge and tools to help me to fulfill this dream.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve achieved that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a 6th grader, I chose to work independently to challenge my math skills on an internet school ALEKS program. This prepared me to take Alg. I and Geometry while in middle school allowing me the opportunity to get to Calculus II in high school. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, through my senior year in high school. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level for the first time in our high school’s history. which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve mechanical systems and agricultural practices to increase our world food supply.

I am a fan of wicked because it cleverly tells the back story of why the Wicked Witch does the things she does. I shows her "human" side and how the shunning that she experienced because she looked different from the others broke her down and caused her to do the bad things that she did in the original Wizard of Oz story. This really mirrors the deeper side of human nature when people are ostracized, ridiculed and excluded and how that effects their souls. This happens in our world every day when people are unkind to each other based of differences or looks. A person's spirit can only take so much before they are completely broken and either give up or lash out at those who have made them feel that way. Often the beaten down person lashes out at innocent victims who simply get caught in the cross fire of their wrath. Wicked could definitely be an excellent spring board in classroom discussions or counseling groups to help people from both sides of the issue (the vicitms as well as the instigators) to help them see how ignorant or mean actions effect not only the recipient of that meaness , but the whole community as well.

I have been raised in a blended family. When my dad and my mom married, they each had children with previous marriages. After each parent’s first marriage ended in divorce, and before finding each other, my dad already had 2 children and my mom had one. After marrying each other, my parents had me; my dad was age 46 and my mom was ag 38. They raised the four of us children all in the same home, and we all got along pretty well and still do. My parents are good people and have always taught me to do the right thing. One of those things I volunteering my time to good causes. I have been volunteering with various organizations for as long as I can remember. My volunteering career all started through my dad. When I was young he would always sign me and him up for trash cleanups. These would often take place on hikes in the woods, creeks, and sometimes towns. One time in a creek cleanup we took canoes, and I’ll never forget that my mom, dad and I had to pull a whole side of a trailer behind us that had been dumped and we had to walk beside our canoe because it was filled with trash like old tires and other things.. I never minded helping out, and I actually started to enjoy them as these jobs made me feel good about myself. There were also many times where my dad and I would go out and help plant trees for organizations like the Ouabache Land Conservancy and IDNR’s Healthy Rivers Initiative. I have no doubt in my mind that I have helped plant over 350 trees in my lifetime. My dad has invested many, many hours with nature types of groups. He is so selfless with his time, that there was one year that three different organizations selected him as their conservationist of the year for his efforts to preserve natural areas. Because these volunteer efforts are so important to him, he has taken me along with him ever since I was old enough to walk. His including me always made me feel special because I loved doing things with my dad. I now realize that besides him wanting to be with me too, he was also trying to instill within me the importance of service involvement. I respect my dad for all of the hard work he has put into volunteerism. I have learned the importance of those efforts too, and I still go along with him to the natural areas serviced by the non profit organizations with which he participates. We continue to clear trails, plant trees and wild flower seeds, remove invasive species and plan and work educational programs that are free to the public. Most of the areas serviced by my dad’s groups are preserved for people and families to use for free to be able to get close to nature. I see that the founders of these groups are aging. I understand the importance of younger people like myself getting involved so that the dreams and goals of those founders will live on when they are no longer physically able to do so themselves. My dad modeled that importance to me all of my life, and I admire him for that. Both of my parents are selfless. They have worked all of their adult lives at jobs to help all four of us children be able to go to college. I am proud of my parents and respect and appreciate everything they have done for me.

I have been a sports participant for as long as I can remember. As a child I participated in baseball, soccer, basketball and running sports such as cross country and track. When I got to the high school level of sports, I was a four sport varsity letter earner. These activities gave me the desire to work with community youth. With my basketball team I helped plan and run the elementary level boys summer basketball camp for four summers in a row. At these camps I lead small groups in fundamental skills, but I also taught them a lot about hard work, good sportsmanship and being a humble player. Through cross country I helped set up and run the elementary and junior high level cross country meets that were run on our high school course. This work with youth caught the attention of community members who invited me to referee for our county’s basketball youth league that plays on Saturdays from January through May each year. I have referred for this organization for two years now. My job as a referee has helped me as a student and a leader. I mostly only refereed second grade through fourth grade games. At this age group, they make a lot of mistakes, and a part of my job was to tell them what they were doing wrong and to teach them the right way. There are also times when you have to break up fights. Ironically, since they were young kids, you would think that the parents wouldn’t heckle you; I’m still basically a kid myself. But you’d be surprised with how much you get yelled at. Being heckled definitely taught me to keep my cool and not react negatively to it. Being a referee for younger kids, I realize the way I conduct myself is important for me to model in a calm way. I simply would choose not to respond to the heckling with any emotion. From helping kids learn the game of basketball, and keeping them from fighting with each other and ignoring the fans yelling, I would say this job has helped me as a student, a leader and role model for others. It has also taught me how to keep my cool around other people through my adult life. This is a skill that has not only been helpful to me currently, but I’m sure I may be placed into situations in the workplace where I will have to tap into that ability to stay calm in stressful situations. Now that I am in college, I am no longer participating in organized sports as an athlete. I mainly am only able to participate in intramurals. So, I look forward to continue being a referee for younger athletes. I find that a rewarding activity.

Without a doubt, my favorite Team USA athlete is Lebron James; however my admiration of him goes way beyond his athletic skills. For almost all of Lebron’s life he had experienced pressure. Whether it was pressure to succeed, make a name for himself, or provide for his family, he was able to surpass all expectations. From becoming a professional basketball player as a teenager and continuing to do it twenty years later is amazing. The fact that he has been one of the best players in the world for the past two decades and still puts in the work and hours to get better everyday inspires me. Let alone how much he has given back to the community. He has founded his own charity and has sent thousands of kids from his home of Akron, Ohio to college for free. Lebron James is passionate about helping his community and I admire that. I don’t come from the wealthiest community. A lot of the students at my school have to take home food for the weekends, and the homes in some of the towns around are not the nicest. Our entire school corporation this year is considered Title I schools which means a large majority of our student population qualify for free and reduced lunches. As a result, for the first time this year, both elementaries that feed into our high school as well as our high school now qualify for our entire student population to have totally free breakfasts and lunches. Even though I wouldn’t normally qualify for free lunches, this program includes every student, so I am benefiting from it. This is a big thing for all of the kids in our school corporation. Kids who may have previously had food insecurity at least know they can get two nourishing meals a day as long as they are at school five days a week.. That has to be a huge weight off of some of them as well as their parents knowing that they won’t go hungry during the week. Any opportunity I have to help the community and volunteer I take, and I would love to one day be able to make an impact on my community like Lebron has on his. Lebron started the Lebron James Family Foundation in 2004. Last year it raised over 17 million dollars and helped over 1500 students. In some ways, I bet that the communities that his charity helps are financially not much different than my own community. If people are in need, it doesn’t matter where they live. Lebron is so much more than an athlete; he’s a philanthropist.

I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and have carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. The activities that I feel I am impacting the world most through kindness are those that involve working with youth. At Riverton Parke as a cross country runner, I helped with the elementary Runners Club by helping clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball over 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school my National Honor Society chapter group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids and an additional family games night. As Chess Club President for four years, I taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered summer 2023 with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I just finished 10 years of the Parke County 4H Horse and Goat clubs membership. The past two years as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassadors, I planned and demonstrated for a youth showmanship clinic targeting younger members, helped with the mini 4H horse show, and I worked shifts in Horse and Goat Barns fair week. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I have years of experience to pass along skills that the younger members can learn from. Non-profit organizations that I have volunteered within, are helping plant 300 seedling trees for Indiana Department of Natural Resources and also planting 50 trees, planting grass and wildflower seed, digging holes and setting land markers and shuttling guests at the 2024 Eclipse event for Ouabache Land Conservancy. The latter of these two groups (OLC) has a membership that is aging. The OLC encompasses several acres of woodsy areas and their mission is to make their natural areas open to the public for free. This requires a lot of physical labor to maintain these properties. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time of volunteering for the OLC to help keep its dreams alive. I realize that in order to keep groups like this viable, they need younger people like myself helping to continue the dream. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities surrounding my involvement with youth, I have gained much self- confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I enjoy performing these acts of kindness to help those around me.

I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. Because my particular school corporation has about 70% of its population qualifying for free and reduced breakfasts and lunches, I feel that there are many youth within it that lack the resources that others might take for granted. For struggling families to put food on the table is a real concern, so many youth in my area may not get a lot of chances to do extra things like clubs or sports. I have dedicated a lot of my time volunteering to make sure that youth in my area are allowed opportunities to do fun activities inside and outside of school. While in high school, I helped with the elementary Runners Club by helping clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball over 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school my National Honor Society chapter group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids and an additional family games night. As Chess Club President for four years, I taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered summer 2023 with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I just finished 10 years of the Parke County 4H Horse and Goat clubs membership. The past two years as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassadors, I planned and demonstrated for a youth showmanship clinic targeting younger members, helped with the mini 4H horse show, and I worked shifts in Horse and Goat Barns fair week. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I have years of experience to pass along skills that the younger members can learn from. My community volunteerism doesn’t only extend to activities that are merely youth focused. Non-profit organizations that I have volunteered within, are helping plant 300 seedling trees for Indiana Department of Natural Resources and also planting 50 trees, planting grass and wildflower seed, digging holes and setting land markers and shuttling guests at the 2024 Eclipse event for Ouabache Land Conservancy. These two organizations offer many free programs and spaces that families may use for their enjoyment free of charge. I feel helping provide natural spaces for families to use is helping my community as well. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me.

For almost all of Lebron’s life he had experienced pressure. Whether it was pressure to succeed, make a name for himself, or provide for his family, he was able to surpass all expectations. From becoming a professional basketball player as a teenager and continuing to do it twenty years later is amazing. The fact that he has been one of the best players in the world for the past two decades and still puts in the work and hours to get better everyday inspires me. Let alone how much he has given back to the community. He has founded his own charity and has sent thousands of kids from his home of Akron, Ohio to college for free. Lebron James is passionate about helping his community and I admire that. I don’t come from the wealthiest community. A lot of the students at my school have to take home food for the weekends, and the homes in some of the towns around are not the nicest. Our entire school corporation this year is considered Title I schools which means a large majority of our student population qualify for free and reduced lunches. As a result, for the first time this year, both elementaries that feed into our high school as well as our high school now qualify for our entire student population to have totally free breakfasts and lunches. Even though I wouldn’t normally qualify for free lunches, this program includes every student, so I am benefiting from it. This is a big thing for all of the kids in our school corporation. Kids who may have previously had food insecurity at least know they can get two nourishing meals a day as long as they are at school five days a week.. That has to be a huge weight off of some of them as well as their parents knowing that they won’t go hungry during the week. Any opportunity I have to help the community and volunteer I take, and I would love to one day be able to make an impact on my community like Lebron has on his. Something that I would like to ask Lebron James would be “What keeps you motivated after all of these years”, and “What are your future plans/goals to help out your hometown, and how do you plan to carry them out”? I’m sure after doing the same thing after twenty plus years it can get repetitive, and I would love to know what still motivates him to this day. This would be helpful for me because I’m sure there will be a point in my career where I feel unmotivated, and I will have to push through it. Then the second question I would ask because I would like to know is “How do you go about trying to accomplish future goals and learn that process?” Seeing how much success he has had throughout a very long career, I would try to apply his process to the things I am doing in my life. This could help me be better at setting better goals for myself even if they don’t seem realistic at first, and trusting in the process to get there. Lebron started the Lebron James Family Foundation in 2004. Last year it raised over 17 million dollars and helped over 1500 students. In some ways, I bet that the communities that his charity helps are financially not much different than my own community. If people are in need, it doesn’t matter where they live. Lebron is so much more than an athlete; he’s a philanthropist.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last as a high school junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. I’ve been accepted to Rose-Hulman where I will study Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were 10 years of Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I have a lot of volunteer experience with several community organizations such as Trails Initiative, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and Ouabache Land Conservancy. I feel it is important to try to improve things for the betterment of our environment and our resources. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge for these purposes and improve agricultural practices to increase our world's food supply.

I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. A portion of my involvement is the result of my dad being very involved with community volunteerism. Ever since I was very small, he has taken me along to help with multiple volunteer projects. My volunteer experiences continued with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and has carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school groups, my 4H involvement and for other non-profit organizations. My dad has shown me that volunteerism is important for the betterment of all communities, and I have taken leadership roles in several activities. In high school as a member of our National Honors Society chapter, I helped plan, run and clean up after our junior high and high school NHS inductions and our school Veteran’s Day Programs all of which are open to the public. As a four year basketball and cross country participant, I planned and helped run the elementary summer basketball camps and the elementary Runner’s Club Meets during my four years of high school. I am involved in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered last summer with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs. The past two years I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. I enjoy being a role-model and example for these younger members and I don’t take that lightly. I am very specific in how I handle myself and my words choices in all situations that I am involved. Other community groups that I have volunteered for are the Ouabache Land Conservancy. This group my dad helped form in 2007. For OLC I have helped plant 50 trees, laid straw on newly planted grass seed and set markers on its nature preserve. I also shuttled guests during OLC’s 2024 Eclipse viewing event on its Atherton Island natural area. I have been working with OLC since around the age of 8. I have also helped the Indiana Department of Natural Resources plant 300 trees to prevent soil erosion, and I have helped with trash pick up and trail building for Parke Trails Initiative. For the latter groups, I see that a lot of their members are aging. I don’t want their ideals to end. I think it’s important for younger people like myself to get involved with these endeavors so that the goals of the aging founders can be carried out even when they are unable to do it themselves. My desire to stay involved with these groups and others stem from the legacy of volunteerism that my dad has modeled to me, and I hope to continue to be a life-long volunteer for many organizations now as well as into my future.

I have been a determined individual ever since elementary school. I was determined to earn straight A’s my entire school career and so far I’ve managed to do that. I was determined to simply be an all around good person by always trying “to do the right thing” and modeling that to others. These are some of the ways in which I have demonstrated leadership; being a leader is instilled in how I present and conduct myself not just in public but in all parts of my life. In school I am involved in many things: National Honor Society, four varsity sports, four different Academic Bowl Teams, chess club and many others. In all of these activities I try to lead through example. Through NHS for the past 3 years I have helped organize, set up and run the NHS junior high and high school inductions as well as the yearly Veteran’s Day Programs. All of these programs are not only attended by our school’s student body, but they are open to the public as well. My presence within these activities are on full view by my peers, underclassmen and community members, so I hope that my example will encourage them to participate as well. Through NHS I have also helped with both of our feeder elementaries' PTO family night events and other events as well. And our NHS chapter cleaned both elementary school’s town community parks and baseball fields last month. As a leader on our academic bowl teams, although my main team is math, over the past four years I have also stepped in and competed on three other teams of science, social studies and interdisciplinary as needed. As a leader I want to model that it is important to pitch in where needed for the good of the teams as a whole. I have also been a chess club participant the past four years while in high school. The past two years I have served as the club’s president. My leadership duties for this involved planning the weekly club’s agenda; teaching younger members how to play chess and also playing matches with all of the club’s members including our special needs members. I would have to say if I’ve encountered any obstacles, it would be that I sometimes get hounded about the fact that I don’t run around with groups of people who rough house and are doing immature things. There are times when I choose to stay home on a weekend because I don’t want to involve myself with activities that I know are poor choices. I have been fortunate to have a small group of friends who have the same ideals as myself, and so I keep those friends close because they support my decisions. I was really surprised this year when I was crowned Prom King. I don’t really consider myself “popular” in my class, but I think that I was chosen because I am viewed as someone who is fair and always tries to do right by others. A true leader does so in actions, not merely in title. Because of my strong academics (and also my immense participation in sports) I am well aware of the image I am putting out there for my peers, area youth and others in the community to see, and that is very important to me. My goal as a leader is to emulate a hard working all inclusive quiet leadership that those around me respect and appreciate.

I am very involved with my school and community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and have carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school and community groups. The activities that I feel I am impacting the world most through are those that involve working with youth. At Riverton Parke I am a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I have helped with the elementary age Runners Club. I help clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet so they will know the path, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball the past 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school with my National Honor Society chapter our group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids and an additional family games night. I have been involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President the past two years, I have taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered this past summer with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs. This past year and again this year I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. I also was tasked with working shifts in Horse and Goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I am a role model and have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I hope that my involvement with youth will set an example for others to do that as well. I also hope it will inspire the youth that I currently work with to some day do the same in their future for others. I want to continue the mentoring and volunteer activities that I do through my college career and the rest of my life as well.

I am very involved with my school and my community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and has carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school groups and my 4H involvement. The activities that I personally gain the most from are those that involve working with youth. At Riverton Parke I am a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I have helped with the elementary age Runners Club. I help clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet so they will know the path, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball the past 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school with my National Honor Society chapter our group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids and an additional family games night. I have been involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President the past two years, I have taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered this past summer with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs. This past year and again this year I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. I also was tasked with working shifts in Horse and Goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I am a role model and have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I hope that my involvement with youth will set an example for others to do that as well. I also hope it will inspire the youth that I currently work with to some day do the same in their future for others. I want to continue the mentoring and volunteer activities that I do through my college career and the rest of my life as well.

I believe that food insecurity is a very large problem not only for our nation but for our world as well. I have attended school in the Southwest Parke School Corporation my entire school career. This corporation has an over 70% free and reduced lunch population, so I have seen first hand kids and families who have food insecurity. Because of our high poverty level, this past school year for the first time ever, our entire student population in our corporation was able to receive free lunch and breakfasts. Even though I am not normally a free/reduced lunch student, because of this opportunity, I benefited from this program as well. But free meals at school only go so far. Poverty stricken families still struggle with that third meal of the day that’s not offered by the school, weekend meals and summer meals. Our corporation does have community donors that help with a buddy bag program that sends food items home with the needy students so that their families have meals over the weekends during the school year, but that program through our corporation ends when summer vacation begins. I believe that having access to nutritious food for Americans should not be a luxury, it should be a right. Addressing this need is something that I want to put to task with the skills I will learn through my engineering program. A growing contributor for the insufficient amount of food in our country is a depletion of tillable acreage. I’ve been accepted to Rose-Hulman where I will study Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were 10 years of Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. This is a way that I can use my engineering skills to help improve agricultural food production and alleviate food insecurities for people in need.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last year as a junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. I’ve been accepted to Rose-Hulman where I will study Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were 10 years of Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I have a lot of volunteer experience with several community organizations such as Trails Alliance, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and Ouabache Land Conservancy. I feel it is important to try to improve things for the betterment of humanity and our resources. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge to help the environment.

I am very involved with my school and my community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and has carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through many groups. The activities that I personally gain the most from are those that involve working with youth. At Riverton Parke I am a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I have helped with the elementary age Runners Club. I help clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet so they will know the path, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball the past 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. I am also teaching athletes what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. With my National Honor Society chapter our group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids. I have been involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President the past two years, I have taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered this past summer with the Special Olympics registering and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat Clubs as well as being selected a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassadors where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show. I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I realize that as an older member, I am a role model and have years of experience that have taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I want to continue the mentoring and volunteer activities that I do through my college career and the rest of my life as well.

I am very involved with my school and my community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and has carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school groups and my 4H involvement. The activities that I personally gain the most from are those that involve working with youth. At Riverton Parke I am a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I have helped with the elementary age Runners Club. I help clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet so they will know the path, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball the past 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school with my National Honor Society chapter our group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids and an additional family games night. I have been involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President the past two years, I have taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered this past summer with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs. This past year and again this year I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. I also was tasked with working shifts in Horse and Goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I am a role model and have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I hope that my involvement with youth will set an example for others to do that as well. I also hope it will inspire the youth that I currently work with to some day do the same in their future for others. I want to continue the mentoring and volunteer activities that I do through my college career and the rest of my life as well.

I am very involved with my school and my community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and has carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school groups and my 4H involvement. The activities that I personally gain the most from are those that involve working with youth. At Riverton Parke I am a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I have helped with the elementary age Runners Club. I help clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet so they will know the path, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball the past 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school with my National Honor Society chapter our group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids and an additional family games night. I have been involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President the past two years, I have taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered this past summer with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs. This past year and again this year I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. I also was tasked with working shifts in Horse and Goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I am a role model and have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I hope that my involvement with youth will set an example for others to do that as well. I also hope it will inspire the youth that I currently work with to some day do the same in their future for others. I want to continue the mentoring and volunteer activities that I do through my college career and the rest of my life as well.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Having the opportunity to take high school Algebra I as a seventh grader has allowed me to take both AP Calculus I and AP Calculus II courses. I have also been a member of our school’s math team every year since the fourth grade. Last year my high school’ academic math bowl team qualified for the state level contest at Purdue University for the first time. This was one the highlights of my academic career. I was told I had a talent for math ever since the first grade when my teacher at that time awarded me the class math award. Teachers had trouble challenging me because I was so far ahead in my skills than all of the other students in the class except for one other student. In the fourth grade, my teacher finally approached the principal to let her know that myself and the other boy needed enrichment so that we could potentially max out on our math possibilities. That is when I was put onto an Aleks math computer program that I could work on my own to continue to challenge myself. That's how I was able to take Alg. I for high school credit in the 7th grader and then get to AP Calculus AB and BC levels while in high school. The other student who had this opportunity has been my best friend since preschool. We have pushed each other with our math skills.. I love math. It comes easy to me and yet challenges me. I see working out a math problem like working a puzzle. I enjoy finding many different ways to work out a math problem and still come up with the correct answer. I’ve had teachers that find these different paths to the correct answer intriguing. It’s my propensity for math that has led me to my college major choice of engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. .

I am a naturally driven person, so putting my all into my academics and my sports is something important to me. If I have one downfall, I would have to say it is that I can be very quiet. Luckily being involved in sports has not only shaped me physically, but it has helped me socially and it has formed my sense of independence which has enhanced my personal development. Sports have always been a big part of my life. I am a four varsity sport athlete at Riverton Parke, and I have never taken any of them for granted. There is not a time in the school year where I don’t have some sort of practice after school. Whether it’s cross country, basketball, baseball, or track season, I will do whatever it takes to improve. Year round I am in the weight room getting stronger and trying to better myself. I have been placed in leadership roles and have had to motivate teammates into giving their best effort.. Because I am a quiet person, my involvement with sports, for my entire life, has helped to bring me out of my shell as well as my comfort zone. I have served as co-captain for my four years of cross country and captain for the past 3 of my four years of high school basketball. Being in the role of captain pushes me to lead my team by calling plays on the court, leading stretching and drills at practice and redirecting my teammates if they are in the wrong position during a play. I appreciate the respect and leadership that being an athlete has allotted me. I not only try to lead my teammates on the court, but off the court as well. I am the valedictorian of my class and hold a 4.368 gpa on a 4.0 scale. I tutor and help my teammates study for their academic tests because schooling comes easy to me. I want to help them strengthen not only their bodies but their minds as well because working as a team is the most important part of any sport. If my teammates fail a class and get suspended from the team, that affects our whole team. The team bonding of sports has helped my social game as well. Being a sports participant has also fostered my independence. That might sound contradictory because so many of the sports that I am involved with are team sports, and don’t get me wrong, I am a team focused player. I have a role; I know my role, and I execute it for the good of the team. I have often participated on several different teams all at the same time. From that I gained independence, because I didn’t feel like I needed to know all the kids before I joined a team. Any of the sports that I played I chose because I wanted to play them, not just to be with my friends.. During any given season, my teammates become my friends and that helps us to mesh better as a team. With each new season, I enjoyed meeting new people and making new friends. Because sports force me to come out of my shell, they have been a saving grace for me socially. This has helped me to be my best self and will be a skill that I can utilize at college and in my future career. I love participating in athletics, and I am fortunate to be able to continue my track and field sport at Rose-Hulman this coming fall.

There are several ways in which I convey the qualities of leadership. Three characteristics that I feel I encompass as a leader are determination, passion and respect. In school. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Once in high school, earning the title of Valedictorian also became a goal. To do that straight A’s alone would not get the job done. I knew I had to take every weighted class and also every AP class my school had to offer. I also have already earned 35 college dual credits. This is something that I had the determination to complete. Math is a passion of mine and has been my favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. During my junior year, I led our team to a state qualification and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time which was a highlight of my high school career. I’ve gained a lot of respect from how I conduct myself in leadership positions as well. I am a 10 year Parke County 4H Horse and Pony Club and Goat Club Member. This led me to be nominated to be a part of the first ever Parke county 4H Livestock Ambassador group for the past two years. As an Ambassador, I acted as the secretary at the group’s meetings. I co-organize a 5 species youth showmanship clinic for the younger 4H members. I volunteered to bring in my horse for the equine section of that clinic, and I led a demonstration in proper grooming and showmanship techniques. I also worked shifts during the 5 days of the county fair in both the horse and goat barns to help younger members prepare their animals for the shows. Another area where I use my leadership skills is through my high school sports. I am a four year team co-captain of my cross country team; and I am a three year team captain of my basketball team. In the position as captain, I have earned much respect from my fellow teammates as well as my opponents.. During four years of varsity cross country I volunteered to help set up, run and clean up after the junior high and the elementary runner’s club meets. With basketball, I have volunteered the past four summers organizing and running the summer elementary school basketball camps. I enjoy working with youth. I realize that I have years of experience that I can use to mentor them. In all of these leadership positions my calm personality helps me possess a “quiet authority”. It is important to me to be a positive role-model for the youth that I work with. As an older athlete and member of 4H, there are always youth watching what I’m doing, and I don’t take that role lightly. In my roles as captain of my varsity cross country and basketball teams, I am always able to keep my cool. I model this to those around me, and I have found that I do not have to yell or be the center of attention in order to maintain order. I developed these characteristics by practicing them. I am lucky to have participated in many school activities and sports, 10 years of 4H involvement and community volunteerism to help me learn and develop these characteristics to use in my future.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last year as a junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. I’ve been accepted to Rose-Hulman where I will study Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were 10 years of Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I have a lot of volunteer experience with several community organizations such as Trails Alliance, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and Ouabache Land Conservancy. I feel it is important to try to improve things for the betterment of humanity and our resources. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge to help the environment. I have had a dream to be able to attend Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology ever since my first grade class took a field trip there. Rose is nationally renowned and is known for its academic rigor. I feel very blessed to have been accepted to such a prestigious engineering school. With its reputation however comes a hefty price tag. Yearly tuition is $52,000 and yearly room and board is an additional $17,000, so four years of attendance will cost over $276,000. Without scholarship money, I would not be able to financially afford to attend Rose-Hulman. Earning a scholarship can help me to cover these expenses.

I am very involved with my school and community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and have carried over into my memberships through my school and community organizations.. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school groups and my 4H involvement. The activities that I personally gain the most from are those that involve working with youth. At Riverton Parke I am a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I have helped with the elementary age Runners Club. I help clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball the past 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school with my National Honor Society chapter our group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids. I have been involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President the past two years, I have taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered last summer with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat Clubs. The past two years I was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in youth showmanship clinics for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. I also was tasked with working shifts in horse and goat barns during its 5 day fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today.. I hope that my involvement with youth will set an example for others to do that as well.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. I was named Valedictorian of my class this year, but that was not merely achieved with straight A’s. I also intentionally took every weighted and AP class that my school has to offer. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. While maintaining a 4.368 gpa on a 4.0 scale, I have also been a four year four sport varsity athlete in cross country, basketball, baseball and track. As captain of my cross country and basketball teams, I have helped organize and run the summer youth basketball camps and helped with coordination of the junior high and elementary cross country and runners club meets. I made Academic All State in three of my four varsity sports this past year, and I have committed to being on the Rose-Hulman Track and Field Team in the fall. I have also held a part time job as custodian of my home church since July 2019 and still am at this position. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last year as a junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking Physics, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel. I’ve been accepted to Rose-Hulman where I will study Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I have a lot of volunteer experience with several community organizations such as Trails Alliance, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and Ouabache Land Conservancy. I feel it is important to try to improve things for the betterment of humanity and our resources. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge to help the environment. I have had a dream to be able to attend Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology ever since my first grade class took a field trip. Rose is nationally renowned and is known for its academic rigor. I feel very blessed to have been accepted to such a prestigious engineering school. With its reputation however comes a hefty price tag. Yearly tuition is $52,000 and yearly room and board is an additional $17,000, so four years of attendance will cost over $276,000. Without scholarship money, I would not be able to financially afford to attend Rose-Hulman. Any scholarship money I receive will go directly toward educational expenses.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last year as a junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. I’ve been accepted to Rose-Hulman where I will study Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were 10 years of Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I have a lot of volunteer experience with several community organizations such as Trails Alliance, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and Ouabache Land Conservancy. I feel it is important to try to improve things for the betterment of humanity and our resources. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge to help the environment.

I am very involved with both my school and my community and have been since a young age. My volunteer experiences started with my 5 years of Boy Scout membership and has carried over into my memberships through my school and community clubs. To this day, I still continue to perform hours of volunteer time through my school groups and my 4H involvement. The activities that I personally gain the most from are those that involve working with youth. At Riverton Parke I am a four varsity sport athlete. In cross country I have helped with the elementary age Runners Club. I help clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet so they will know the path, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. For basketball the past 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. In school with my National Honor Society chapter our group has helped facilitate the PTO Night for elementary-aged students and their families, where I played games and talked with the kids and an additional family games night. I have been involved with our high school Chess Club all four years and as President the past two years, I have taught and played matches with our club members including those who have special needs. I am involved with youth in my community outside of school as well. I volunteered this past summer with the Special Olympics registering teams and talking to participants about their various sports. I am also a 10 year member of the Parke County 4H Horse and Pony and Goat clubs. This past year and again this yearI was selected as a member of its first ever Livestock Ambassador group where I planned and participated in a youth showmanship clinic for our younger members and helped with the mini 4H horse show during the fair. I also was tasked with working shifts in Horse and Goat Barns during the week of the fair. In this position, I helped younger members handle and get their livestock ready for shows. Through 4H I like being a role model for younger kids. I realize that as an older member, I am a role model and have years of experience that has taught me a lot of skills that the younger members can benefit from my knowledge. My community means a lot to me because it has shaped me into who I am today. From my community activities I have gained much self confidence and desire to mentor others just as people mentored me. I hope that my involvement with youth will set an example for others to do that as well. I also hope it will inspire the youth that I currently work with to some day do the same in their future for others. I want to continue the mentoring and volunteer activities that I do through my college career and the rest of my life as well.

I am a naturally driven person, so putting my all into my academics and my sports is something important to me. Being involved in sports has shaped me physically, socially and it has formed my sense of independence. Sports have always been a big part of my life. I am a four-sport athlete at Riverton Parke, and I have never taken any of them for granted. There is not a time in the school year where I don’t have some sort of practice after school. Whether it’s cross country, basketball, baseball, or track season, I will do whatever it takes to improve. I have been placed in leadership roles and have had to motivate teammates into giving their best effort. I am a rather quiet person, and my involvement with sports, for my entire life, has helped to bring me out of my shell as well as my comfort zone. I have served as co-captain for my four years of cross country and captain for the past 3 of my four years of high school basketball. Being in the role of captain pushes me to lead my team by calling plays on the court, leading stretching and drills at practice and redirecting my teammates if they are in the wrong position during a play. I appreciate the respect and leadership that being an athlete has allotted me. I not only try to lead my teammates on the court, but off the court as well. I am the valedictorian of my class and hold a 4.353 gpa on a 4.0 scale. I tutor and help my teammates study for their academic tests because schooling comes easy to me. My academics earned me Academic All State in cross country, basketball and baseball this year. Being a sports participant has also fostered my independence. That might sound contradictory because so many of the sports that I am involved with are team sports, and don’t get me wrong, I am a team focused player. I have a role, I know my role, and I execute my role for the good of the team. However, I began participating in organized sports at the age of 3 through the local community and sports centers. I’ve always loved being active in sports, and from that age on I was always involved in some type of sport almost every season during the year. Because I love sports so much there were many times when my mom was driving me to three different team sports all in one day. When I was younger, this meant that often I would join a team and not know any of the kids on the team before that first practice. I feel that I gained independence, because I didn’t feel like I needed to know all the kids before I joined a team. Any of the sports that I played I chose because I wanted to play them, not just to be with my friends. I love being a part of the team no matter who my teammates are. During any given season, my teammates become my friends and that helps us to mesh better as a team. Because I am very shy, sports have been a saving grace for me socially. I love participating in athletics, and I am fortunate to be able to continue my track and field sport at Rose-Hulman this coming fall. Sports have given this shy athlete the ability to make friends out of strangers. This is a skill I can utilize my entire life.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last year as a junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. I’ve been accepted to Rose-Hulman where I will study Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were 10 years of Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I have a lot of volunteer experience with several community organizations such as Trails Alliance, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and Ouabache Land Conservancy. I feel it is important to try to improve things for the betterment of humanity and our resources. I want to use my engineering degree knowledge to help the environment. I have had a dream to be able to attend Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology ever since my first grade class took a field trip there. Rose is nationally renowned and is known for its academic rigor. I feel very blessed to have been accepted to such a prestigious engineering school. With its reputation however comes a hefty price tag. Yearly tuition is $52,000, and yearly room and board is an additional $17,000, so four years of attendance will cost over $276,000. Without scholarship money, I would not be able to financially afford to attend Rose-Hulman. Earning a Treye Knorr Memorial Scholarship can help me to cover these expenses. and fulfill my Rose-Hulman engineering degree dream.

While in high school, I have successfully juggled four varsity sports along with holding a 4.353 gpa on a 4.0 scale, sadly however, my small school does not have a golf team. Our high school enrollment is around 365 students grades 9-12 and sports-wise it only offers the basic sports and golf is not one of them. Although I enjoy the four varsity sports in which I participate, I always hoped we would add golf to one of our offerings. Because I am not able to play golf for a school team, I picked up golf for the first time last year as a leisure sport. Ever since that first crack at the game, I have fallen completely in love with it. In between my school sports, I go to the golf course every chance I get. I’ve had to teach myself several parts of it because I had no opportunities for things to be taught to me by a coach. I think that’s what has made it so exciting for me. It’s been a challenge all the way around, physically and mentally. I don’t merely play on one course; I play on several. I bought a WTHI golfing pass which gives me access to over 20 area golf courses at a discounted price. I was able to use that on the first course today as a matter of fact. I’m chomping at the bit to get to every course that is on that pass. That’s part of the allure to me in golf as well. Every course is unique. Unlike a baseball field or a basketball court, golf doesn’t confine you to a dimension or a time limit. You can make it your own. I also feel like as I age and perhaps my joints deteriorate, golf will be something that I can maintain even into old age. Golf is relaxing, it’s fun, but at the same time it’s a challenge. I am glad I finally discovered how enjoyable it is. As I age I know my body may get to the point where my school related sports of running basketball and baseball may not be so easy for me to participate physically. I really enjoy golfing and I am glad to know that I have the physical potential to play it as a recreational sport for the rest of my life. I also learned that you’re never too old to learn a new sport.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. I am the Valedictorian of my senior class, but merely earning straight A’s didn’t get me to that point. I have intentionally taken every AP and weighted class that my school has to offer to ensure that I have been academically challenged and prepared to attend college. I have always been inquisitive and love learning. I want to continue my education at the collegiate level so I can continue to fulfill my inquisitive nature and continue learning. I have committed to attending Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology to major in Mechanical Engineering. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. While in college, I hope to be able to continue with some type of intellectual competitive opportunities. Having the opportunity to take high school Algebra I as a seventh grader has allowed me to take both AP Calculus I and AP Calculus II courses. Taking these classes has given me ample exposure to them before tackling them at the college level. Last year I took AP Physics and fell completely in love with the subject. While it was definitely the hardest class I have ever taken, I’m going to miss staying up until midnight trying to solve physics homework problems with my friends. My career ambition of becoming an engineer is a direct result of my strength and interest in math and sciences. A college education will continue to foster my strengths in math and science. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last year as a junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. At Riverton Parke I am a four varsity sport athlete. As co-captain of my cross country team for the past four years, I have helped with the elementary age Runners Club. I help clear our woodsy cross country course before their meets, walk the visiting teams through the course pre-meet so they will know the path, and if kids are “lost on the course, I go out to locate them and run them in. As captain of my basketball the past 4 summers, I have volunteered to help run the summer boys’ grade school camp. At camp I teach small groups and individuals ball handling and shooting skills, and I talk to them about the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. One of my part-time jobs is also related to working with youth through sports. I referee for our county’s youth basketball league on Saturday’s during its season. As referee I do more than simply call the workings of the game. The kids are so young, I am also teaching them what they should be doing and re-directing them when they are out of place. I will be participating on the Rose-Hulman Track and field team. The nationally renowned Rose-Hulman has a hefty price tag, $52,000 yearly tuition and $17,000 yearly room and board.. Receiving scholarship money will help me to pay for the expenses to attend there.

The first Rocky movie (and the sequels of that franchise including the Creed movies) is a movie that has had a tremendous impact on me. I am very involved in organized sports in my school, so I can relate to some of its concepts. This is the one movie franchise that I like to binge watch on Netflix. I am very much into my own physical fitness. I play four varsity sports at my high school, and I am an avid weightlifter. Even though Rocky is based on the sport of boxing, which I don’t participate in, I still can relate to all of the intensity that the character goes through to get himself in shape for the match that he gets to fight against the reigning champion Apollo Creed. I appreciate the ingenuity of the impoverished Rocky Balboa punching the meat carcasses at the local meat market, and running up the steps in the famous scene of the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Watching these intense workouts motivates me to up the intensity of my own workouts. Most importantly, Rocky is the classic underdog story. His naively kind-hearted character makes us all want to root for him because he doesn’t have the same uniforms and expensive training equipment that Apollo Creed has at his fingertips. In the beginning of the movie Rocky is mocked and laughed at because early on people don’t believe he can defeat the champ. But as the movie moves on, we see through his pure grit and determination that maybe he can be a competitor. He allows us all to have that dream that we can accomplish anything if we work hard and believe in ourselves. I can relate to that underdog feeling that Rocky portrays. I am an active athlete, but I’m not necessarily always the best athlete on the team. My way to dazzle my coaches is always through my hard work and perseverance. My baseball coaches sometimes say to my teammates as we’re all running (either for conditioning or even disciplinary reasons), “You’re all going to run until Carson gets tired.” Because I’m a cross country runner, I have a lot of endurance. I’m sure the coaches are joking when they say that, but sometimes I think my teammates are afraid that they might be serious. My teammates well know how hard I am willing to push myself in athletic situations. I know from personal experience, being the underdog definitely motivates me to work that much harder, just like Rocky. I have a feeling that even Sylvester Stallone didn’t realize that this movie would ring true with so many people for so many years. Including Balboa, the Rocky franchise has 6 movies. And that final one didn’t come out until 30 years after its original. That’s pretty incredible. And que the Rocky theme song music……..

The first Rocky movie (and the sequels of that franchise including the Creed movies) is a movie that has had a tremendous impact on me. I am very involved in organized sports in my school, so I can relate to some of its concepts. This is the one movie I could keep watching all of my life. I am very much into my own physical fitness. I play four varsity sports at my high school, and I am an avid weightlifter. Even though Rocky is based on the sport of boxing, which I don’t participate in, I still can relate to all of the intensity that the character goes through to get himself in shape for the match that he gets to fight against the reigning champion Apollo Creed. I appreciate the ingenuity of the impoverished Rocky Balboa punching the meat carcasses at the local meat market, and running up the steps in the famous scene of the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Watching these intense workouts motivates me to up the intensity of my own workouts. Most importantly, Rocky is the classic underdog story. His naively kind-hearted character makes us all want to root for him because he doesn’t have the same uniforms and expensive training equipment that Apollo Creed has at his fingertips. In the beginning of the movie Rocky is mocked and laughed at because early on people don’t believe he can defeat the champ. But as the movie moves on, we see through his pure grit and determination that maybe he can be a competitor. He allows us all to have that dream that we can accomplish anything if we work hard and believe in ourselves. I can relate to that underdog feeling that Rocky portrays. I am an active athlete, but I’m not necessarily always the best athlete on the team. My way to dazzle my coaches is always through my hard work and perseverance. My baseball coaches sometimes say to my teammates as we’re all running (either for conditioning or even disciplinary reasons), “You’re all going to run until Carson gets tired.” Because I’m a cross country runner, I have a lot of endurance. I’m sure the coaches are joking when they say that, but sometimes I think my teammates are afraid that they might be serious. My teammates well know how hard I am willing to push myself in athletic situations. I know from personal experience, being the underdog definitely motivates me to work that much harder, just like Rocky. I have a feeling that even Sylvester Stallone didn’t realize that this movie would ring true with so many people for so many years. Including Balboa, the Rocky franchise has 6 movies. And that final one didn’t come out until 30 years after its original. That’s pretty incredible. And que the Rocky theme song music……..

The first Rocky movie (and the sequels of that franchise including the Creed movies) is a movie that has had a tremendous impact on me. I am very involved in organized sports in my school, so I can relate to some of its concepts. I am very much into my own physical fitness. I play four varsity sports at my high school, and I am an avid weightlifter. Even though Rocky is based on the sport of boxing, which I don’t participate in, I still can relate to all of the intensity that the character goes through to get himself in shape for the match that he gets to fight against the reigning champion Apollo Creed. I appreciate the ingenuity of the impoverished Rocky Balboa punching the meat carcasses at the local meat market, and running up the steps in the famous scene of the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Watching these intense workouts motivates me to up the intensity of my own workouts. Most importantly, Rocky is the classic underdog story. His naively kind-hearted character makes us all want to root for him because he doesn’t have the same uniforms and expensive training equipment that Apollo Creed has at his fingertips. In the beginning of the movie Rocky is mocked and laughed at because early on people don’t believe he can defeat the champ. But as the movie moves on, we see through his pure grit and determination that maybe he can be a competitor. He allows us all to have that dream that we can accomplish anything if we work hard and believe in ourselves. I can relate to that underdog feeling that Rocky portrays. I am an active athlete, but I’m not necessarily always the best athlete on the team. My way to dazzle my coaches is always through my hard work and perseverance. My baseball coaches sometimes say to my teammates as we’re all running (either for conditioning or even disciplinary reasons), “You’re all going to run until Carson gets tired.” Because I’m a cross country runner, I have a lot of endurance. I’m sure the coaches are joking when they say that, but sometimes I think my teammates are afraid that they might be serious. My teammates well know how hard I am willing to push myself in athletic situations. I know from personal experience, being the underdog definitely motivates me to work that much harder, just like Rocky. I have a feeling that even Sylvester Stallone didn’t realize that this movie would ring true with so many people for so many years. Including Balboa, the Rocky franchise has 6 movies. And that final one didn’t come out until 30 years after its original. That’s pretty incredible. And que the Rocky theme song music……..

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. While in high school, I have successfully juggled four varsity sports along with holding a 4.353 gpa on a 4.0 scale, sadly however, my small school does not have a golf team. Our high school enrollment is around 365 students grades 9-12 and sports-wise it only offers the basic sports and golf is not one of them. Although I enjoy the four varsity sports in which I participate, I always hoped we would add golf to one of our offerings. Because I am not able to play golf for a school team, I picked up golf for the first time last year as a leisure sport. Ever since that first crack at the game, I have fallen completely in love with it. In between my school sports, I go to the golf course every chance I get. I’ve had to teach myself several parts of it because I had no opportunities for things to be taught to me by a coach. I think that’s what has made it so exciting for me. It’s been a challenge all the way around, physically and mentally. I don’t merely play on one course; I play on several. I bought a WTHI golfing pass which gives me access to over 20 area golf courses at a discounted price. I was able to use that on the first course today as a matter of fact. I’m chomping at the bit to get to every course that is on that pass. That’s part of the allure to me in golf as well. Every course is unique. Unlike a baseball field or a basketball court, golf doesn’t confine you to a dimension or a time limit. You can make it your own. I also feel like as I age and perhaps my joints deteriorate, golf will be something that I can maintain even into old age. Golf is relaxing, it’s fun, but at the same time it’s a challenge. It's even a sport you can play all by yourself if you choose. I am glad I finally discovered how enjoyable it is.

I have played as many as 6 different sports starting from the age of 3, and I currently am a four varsity sport athlete at my high school. Although I enjoy all of my sports, basketball is hands down my favorite organized sport! I have been fortunate to be an active member of all the basketball teams that I have played on through the years. When I reached high school, I did have to split my time between both the junior varsity and varsity teams from grade 9-11, but I was happy to do that. That split time meant I got to play up to 5 quarters per event instead of the normal 4, and it also meant I was getting extra time on the court to help me improve my skills. In 2022 I was awarded the Riverton Parke MVP Defensive Player, and in 2023 I was awarded the MVP Offensive Player This year I was named Honorable Mention for the Academic All State Basketball Team. I love the fast paced nature of basketball. Being quick on my feet and having a lot of endurance has always been my strength. The endurance comes from my years of experience on our varsity cross country team. Running those miles in cross country has equated to high stamina when the basketball season rolls around. My expertise however is in the short sprints more so than the long runs, so that is right up my alley as a basketball player. I have been the captain of my basketball team for the past 3 years. I’m a naturally quiet person, so being placed into this position has pushed me to go beyond my comfort zone. I am tasked with calling the plays, redirecting teammates who are out of place and overall encouraging and calming my teammates as the situation requires. I like having been put into this captain role and the leadership qualities that it has developed within me are qualities I can use in all aspects of my life and career. Although athletics are second natural to me since I have been active with them for so long, I did have an obstacle to overcome. I have very poor eyesight. I got my first pair of glasses in kindergarten, and they are an extremely strong prescription due to Astigmatism. I can’t see without them. I was so involved in very physical sporting activities (including horseback competitions as I am a 10 year 4H Horse and Pony member), I needed a way to participate without the hindrance of eyeglasses. While participating in sports during grade school, my glasses would fall off, get knocked off, or fall down. I tried using sports goggles, but they were still a hindrance. There were events where my glasses would get knocked off, and break in the middle of a game. My mom always had to keep a spare pair with her in case that would happen. Once I was of age to try contacts, it was a year long trial of finding some that I could see with. I went through over a dozen different pairs, and I still couldn’t see, which would cause me to have severe headaches. Finally I found an eye specialist who was able to fit me with some specialty contact lenses to use during sports. With the contacts my vision will never be 20/20, but I can see well enough to use them for my activities that require physicality. This ordeal has taught me to never give up, and there are many ways that problems can be solved.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. These skills have definitely prepared me to enter an engineering program after high school. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last year as a junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to. I’ve been accepted to Rose-Hulman where I will study Mechanical Engineering. I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. I want to mesh that with my interest in Agriculture. I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were 10 years of Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. This experience has allowed me a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. My focus with agriculture and my education as an ME would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods like no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. Rose-Hulman is a prestigious and nationally renowned institution for engineering. I am very excited to have been accepted to it. That prestige however comes with a hefty price tag. Earning scholarship money will help me to pay for my tuition and housing while at Rose.

Success to me looks like a person striving as hard as they can to achieve a goal without necessarily being the one receiving all the attention for that goal. I am the type of person who puts 100% of myself into the things that I do. Attention and rewards should not be your sole focus when performing a task. Success comes from the inner motivation that you have when accomplishing the task itself. I am a four sport varsity athlete. I have been playing organized sports since the age of 3. I however am rarely the best athlete on the field or the court, but I’m still working just as hard as everyone else. I have come to understand that my best contribution in my sports is my ability to be a role player, be a good team member and to motivate my teammates. I am a four year high school varsity cross country, basketball and baseball player as well as a 3 year varsity track and field participant. My cross country team these past four years has been very successful as a team. I have been co-captain for those four years.I am not the number one runner. I’m not even the number 2, 3 or 4 runner. In cross country, the top 5 runners are the scorers. My role is to work as hard as I can, show up to every practice and run with the team so that we have enough scorers for us to perform well as a team. Our success for cross country has not only relied on our fastest runners. It has flourished because we work so well as a team. We cheer each other on, and we not only win as a team but we lose as a team too. Basketball is the same way. I am not the best player on the floor, but I have been team captain for the past three years. I don’t get noticed for scoring per say; in fact there are games where I haven’t scored. But, people notice my hustle and my good sportsmanship. To me, those things are sometimes much more important than the wins and losses. I realize that not everyone can be the “star” on the team. If there are too many “stars” then the teamwork part suffers because those wanting to be the star end up working against other team mates to capture the glory, rather than to sacrifice themselves for the success of the team. Playing baseball has taught me a lesson in patience. I have played varsity all four years in high school, but as with the other sports, I am there as a role player. As a freshman, I made the varsity based on my speed. They brought me on as a pinch runner which meant I spent a lot of time in the dugout while I was waiting to be subbed in. That was my role, and I did it with pride. I still had to wait for my chance at a starting position in the field as center fielder during my junior year. I was content to wait my turn, and I was proud to accept that and still work hard at all the practices. I guess you could say in terms of the definition of success, attitude is everything. If you simply expect things to happen without putting 100% of your effort in, you are going to be disappointed. I try to go into any venture seeing it as a privilege to have the opportunity. I have been fortunate to be a part of some teams that have been successful. The key is “team”. The sports I participate in require the need for team continuity to have success, and putting the good of the team above your own needs can make all the difference in how successful you will be. I have had a dream to go to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology since I took a class field trip there in the first grade. Rose is extremely prestigious and is a nationally ranked engineering school. I was super excited when I found out that I had been accepted to Rose. Although I am a strong student, and I have taken every AP and weighted course that my high school has to offer to best prepare me for a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, when I enter Rose, I will once again be starting from scratch. Rose attendees are very high achieving so I will not be the Star student at that school. I will have to work for my grades and my place. Being the underdog in several situations up to this point will keep me grounded and hopefully help me to have individual success while I am in college.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Having the opportunity to take high school Algebra I as a seventh grader has allowed me to take both AP Calculus I and AP Calculus II courses. Taking these classes will absolutely help me in passing them at the college level. Last year I took AP Physics and fell completely in love with the subject. On the other hand, sports have always been a big part of my life too. I am a four-sport athlete at Riverton Parke, and I have never taken any of them for granted. There is not a time in the school year where I don’t have some sort of practice after school. Whether it’s cross country, basketball, baseball, or track season, I will do whatever it takes to improve. Year round I am in the weight room (whether at the school or at my home) getting stronger and trying to better myself. In cross country, when the coach gives us the amount that we are expected to run at practice, I usually run an extra lap or two to push myself that much harder. I believe that participating in sports throughout my high school career will definitely help me in college. I have been placed in leadership roles and have had to motivate teammates into giving their best effort. I’ve heard some of my baseball coaches often say to my other teammates, “We’re going to keep running until Carson gets tired.” Even though they are saying it in humor, I think my teammates sometimes fear the coaches are being serious. I am a rather quiet person, and my involvement with sports, for my entire life, has helped to bring me out of my shell as well as my comfort zone. I have served as co-captain for my four years of cross country and captain for the past 3 of my four years of high school basketball. Being in the role of captain pushes me to lead my team by calling plays on the court, leading stretching and drills at practice and redirecting my teammates if they are in the wrong position during a play. I appreciate the respect and leadership that being an athlete has allotted me. I not only try to lead my teammates on the court, but off the court as well. I am Valedictorian of my class and hold a 4.353 gpa on a 4.0 scale. I tutor and help my teammates study for their academic tests because schooling comes easy to me. I want to help them strengthen not only their bodies but their minds as well because working as a team is the most important part of any sport. If my teammates fail a class and get suspended from the team, that affects our whole team. I want to do whatever I can to keep the team strong. Because I am very shy, sports have been a saving grace for me socially. I love participating in athletics, and I hope I may be able to continue at least one of my sports at the collegiate level.

Through technology I would like to increase our world’s ability to improve food sustainability in relation to an increasing population. I’m still trying to make a decision as to whether I want to go into Agricultural Engineering or Mechanical Engineering. I find Mechanical Engineering interesting because I like to design and figure out how individual mechanisms work within a system. I also know it is a multi-faceted area that can go in many different directions in the real world. As for Agricultural Engineering, I have 10 years of 4H experience. My main projects were 10 years of Horse and Pony and 10 years of Goat Clubs. I like to be outside, and I know Agricultural Engineering would lend itself to a lot of contact with nature and agriculture. (My father graduated with an Agricultural Engineering Degree from Purdue, so I’ve been able to observe the types of things with which he is involved.) My dad has instilled in me a love of nature, recycling and being kind to our planet. He is involved with several community organizations and their devotion to saving natural areas and helping with sustainability. I have also been volunteering with these same organizations since I was a child because I have always enjoyed accompanying my dad when he was volunteering. I have many, many hours of volunteerism with these types of groups and plan to continue with this work throughout my lifetime. Through the education that I will gain while receiving my Bachelor’s Degree in Agricultural Engineering, I envision the world food supply being more plentiful based on research and improved agricultural technology practices. My focus as an agricultural engineer would be to research and improve farming practices to help increase the world’s sustainability with its food crops. Our crop land is dwindling because of over development, exhaustion of our natural resources and global warming, and yet we have an ever increasing human population. As an Agricultural Engineer I could be tasked with working with other entities to create improved farming methods and technology for use with no till, double planting within a season and other things to help meet the need to increase our food production despite the decrease in tillable acreage. I see that the founders of groups that Dad and I work with such as Trails Alliance, Ouabache Land Conservancy and Audubon Society, are an aging population, so I realize the importance of the younger generations such as myself, not only learning from them but also grabbing the reins and continuing on with their goals and legacies.

The character on The Office that resonates most with me is Dwight Schrute. In fact, as a smaller child, my hair was cut similar to his, and my two older cousins would call me by his "The Office" character name. He's a quirky and awkward guy, yet his character (in his weird way) tries to do the right thing. I am a quiet person, and even though I am very involved in community and school activities and have a solid social network as a result, I sometimes feel a little awkward in social situations. I'm fortunate to be involved with so many school activities; I am a 10 year member of our community 4H program, and I am a four varsity level sports participant. These activities requires me to step out of my comfort zone to be socialized with other people. Dwight from The Office definitely spurs my sense of humor around others. I'm a bit on the dry side, and may not speak up much, but when I do, people are usually very ready to listen to what I have to say. I think since I don't talk a lot, they must figure that when I do speak, it must be something worthwhile. In junior high, I was voted the person that people most wanted to talk to because, especially then, I didn't say much.

School has always been a main priority for me, from keeping my grades up, to participating in extracurricular activities. I’ve set a goal to earn straight A’s my entire school career, and so far I’ve managed to do that. Math has always been my strong suit and favorite subject for the majority of my life. As a result, I have participated in Indiana Academic MATH Bowl every year beginning in grade school, and I am still on the team to this day. Our team qualified and competed in class 4 at the state level at Purdue for the first time last year which was a highlight of my high school career. I have also been a member of our school’s Academic Bowl Teams for Science, Social Studies and Interdisciplinary. Having the opportunity to take high school Algebra I as a seventh grader has allowed me to take both AP Calculus I and AP Calculus II courses. Taking these classes has allowed me ample exposure to them before tackling them at the college level. Last year I took AP Physics and fell completely in love with the subject. While it was definitely the hardest class I have ever taken, I’m going to miss staying up until midnight trying to solve physics homework problems with my friends. On the other hand, sports have always been a big part of my life too. I am a four-sport athlete at Riverton Parke, and I have never taken any of them for granted. There is not a time in the school year where I don’t have some sort of practice after school. Whether it’s varsity cross country, varsity basketball, varsity baseball, or varsity track season, I will do whatever it takes to improve. Year round I am in the weight room getting stronger and trying to better myself. In cross country, when the coach gives us the amount that we are expected to run at practice, I usually run an extra lap or two to push myself that much harder. I believe that the discipline of participating in sports throughout my high school career will definitely help me in college. I have been placed in leadership roles and have had to motivate teammates into giving their best effort. I’ve heard some of my baseball coaches often say to my other teammates, “We’re going to keep running until Carson gets tired.” Even though they are saying it in humor, I think my teammates sometimes fear the coaches are being serious. Growing up, I have always had aspirations to be an engineer; however, I was never sure that was actually what I wanted to do until I took Physics last year as a junior. I learned that I am great at problem solving, improvising, and working things out. Just from taking this class, I believe that I will thrive in college. While I love working out problems with other people, I am also more than capable of sitting down and doing them by myself. I consider myself a very disciplined person who will do whatever it takes to improve and excel in anything that I put my mind to.

I have had poor vision all my life; but when I was very young I didn’t realize what the problem was. Because as a child I didn’t really know that I had a problem, I didn’t know how to explain it. I had a lot of headaches as a child, and my mom said I would often say things looked “fuzzy”. That was my way of attempting to describe what I was experiencing. In the first grade I had my first eye examination and got a pair of glasses. Getting glasses made me realize how poor my vision was. The eye doctor said he was surprised my grades hadn’t suffered as a result. By the fourth grade, I started to get involved in sports. Wearing glasses was a great hindrance to my athletics. I’d get sweaty, and they would slide down my nose. Running track and cross country, I would have to push them back up with almost every stride. It’s hard enough to run a 5K, let alone having to hold your glasses up the whole time. As for basketball, that’s a high contact sport. Even with an eyeglass strap, they would often get knocked around or completely off and break right in the middle of a game. Finally, in junior high my eye doctor suggested contacts. That was an entirely new ordeal. My glasses prescription is so strong, the eye doctor could not find a set that would work for me. He would try one pair; I’d wear them for a couple of weeks, but I couldn’t see with them. I then would go through the whole process with another pair and still not be able to see. This went on for about a year and possibly a dozen different pairs of contacts. I was beginning to think I would never be able to wear contacts, and I had terrible headaches from all changes of the trial and error process. Once again, I really needed them to help me be able to see and be mobile during physical activities. That eye doctor finally suggested I would need to see a specialist. I was steered toward a vision center in Avon, Indiana which is about an hour and a half drive from our house. . At the first appointment, my mom had to sign off that we understood that the non-refundable fitting fee alone would cost $400 and there was no guarantee that it would work for my condition. I got lucky; they were able to fit me with contacts that work for my unique vision needs. I still do not have 20/20 vision, and I never will. In classes I have to sit close to the board or screen when a teacher is using them to teach. But I can see with them well enough to use them when I’m participating in sports, showing my 4H horses and other activities. And I have maintained a 4.0 and above gpa my entire school career. From the obstacle of my vision, I have learned that you should not give up. Sometimes obstacles might take time to learn how to cope. Often times you might have to try more than one avenue to get the desired outcome that you need.

I have had poor vision all my life; but when I was very young I didn’t realize what the problem was. Because as a child I didn’t really know that I had a problem, I didn’t know how to explain it. I had a lot of headaches as a child, and my mom said I would often say things looked “fuzzy”. That was my way of attempting to describe what I was experiencing. In the first grade I had my first eye examination and got a pair of glasses. Getting glasses made me realize how poor my vision was. The eye doctor said he was surprised my grades hadn’t suffered as a result. By the fourth grade, I started to get involved in sports. Wearing glasses was a great hindrance to my athletics. I’d get sweaty, and they would slide down my nose. Running track and cross country, I would have to push them back up with almost every stride. It’s hard enough to run a 5K, let alone having to hold your glasses up the whole time. As for basketball, that’s a high contact sport. Even with an eyeglass strap, they would often get knocked around or completely off and break right in the middle of a game. Finally, in junior high my eye doctor suggested contacts. That was an entirely new ordeal. My glasses prescription is so strong, the eye doctor could not find a set that would work for me. He would try one pair; I’d wear them for a couple of weeks, but I couldn’t see with them. I then would go through the whole process with another pair and still not be able to see. This went on for about a year and possibly a dozen different pairs of contacts. I was beginning to think I would never be able to wear contacts, and I had terrible headaches from all changes of the trial and error process. Once again, I really needed them to help me be able to see and be mobile during physical activities. That eye doctor finally suggested I would need to see a specialist. I was steered toward a vision center in Avon, Indiana which is about an hour and a half drive from our house. . At the first appointment, my mom had to sign off that we understood that the non-refundable fitting fee alone would cost $400 and there was no guarantee that it would work for my condition. I got lucky; they were able to fit me with contacts that work for my unique vision needs. I still do not have 20/20 vision, and I never will. In classes I have to sit close to the board or screen when a teacher is using them to teach. But I can see with them well enough to use them when I’m participating in sports, showing my 4H horses and other activities. And I have maintained a 4.0 and above gpa my entire school career. From the obstacle of my vision, I have learned that you should not give up. Sometimes obstacles might take time to learn how to cope. Often times you might have to try more than one avenue to get the desired outcome that you need.