My name is Cassara Yannarelli, and I am a high school senior at the Marine Academy of Science and Technology. Throughout my four years of high school, I have dipped my toe into many different opportunities and clubs and, in doing so, have found what interests me. I am a pole vaulter on my school’s track team and will continue the sport I love in college at Johns Hopkins University. Additionally, I have found quite an interest in learning Spanish. I am currently one of two people at my school who take Spanish 5, hold the Global Seal of Biliteracy in Spanish, and serve as President of the Spanish Honor Society. I love being involved in school, and besides the aforementioned extracurriculars, I am vice-president of our class, senior editor for the yearbook, and parliamentarian for the National Honor Society. I am a founding co-chair of a volunteer program at our school dubbed Toddler Tuesdays, where students volunteer at a daycare during lunch. Besides all of these activities, I have developed a love for research and marine science. I have been volunteering at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) since my sophomore year, where I have been involved in a wide variety of undergraduate and my own independent projects. I greatly enjoy presenting my projects at the regional and state-level science fairs, which I have done six times over the past four years, even qualifying for the national conference. Within this niche, I believe that I have gotten involved and taken steps towards making a positive impact on the world through making a change within my community. To start off with, I am president of the Marine and Environmental Science Club, where I help to lead local beach cleanups and events, and organize for guest speakers to teach our community. I also founded the Science Research Club at my school to foster individual projects to send to the science fairs, encouraging students to take time on their own to perform impactful investigations. I aided their projects by helping to design and execute them. The biggest step towards impacting my community, I believe I've taken, is starting a class at my local library called Science in the Environment. I had remembered going to the library for activities and classes when I was a kid, and wanted to now be the one teaching the kids. I taught young kids about environmental issues and marine topics that they didn’t learn at school. I helped to bring advocacy to environmental problems to young minds that could, in the future, continue the work I plan to do. In the future, I plan to perform marine and environmental research, as the mentors at my NOAA lab do. Not only do I want to answer questions regarding the inner workings of water systems that will benefit fisheries management and ecosystem understanding around the world, but instead I also want to make sure public advocacy is an integral part of my career. There are so many problems within marine and environmental science that the general population aren’t made aware of, and many of them we can take steps towards improvement very easily as a group. When I get involved with organizations that support this goal, I can continue to educate the public like I did with my class at the library, but hopefully at a larger scale. As a 17 year-old, I am not cemented on what I want to do specifically, but I do know that this will be my goal, whatever niche I find myself in.

Being a good citizen can be a very personal question, revealing different answers. For me, being a good citizen means doing three things. First, follow the rules, laws, and ideals of your community. Not only does this include the explicit rules, such as following the speed limit, no trespassing, and no theft, but also the simple, unspoken things to do. Avoid littering or driving recklessly in areas with children or animals. The laws and practices specific to your community have been shaped by the voices of citizens around you, and the respectful and empathetic thing to do is to follow them, as it is not just the government surrounding you but also the other inhabitants of your area. The second thing is getting involved in your community, at the local or even national level. Examples of this include going to local beach sweeps, volunteering at your alma mater elementary school, or even something as easy as supporting small businesses. Besides participating in preplanned activities, a good citizen takes action when they notice something that isn’t provided, and makes moves to add it. For instance, something that I believe is something that classifies myself as a good citizen is the class that I started at my local library. Noticing that the science classes at my previous elementary school, and the school that my little brother attends, have become less opportunistic as they were when I attended, I began a program at my local library, dubbed Science in the Environment. I taught biweekly classes on marine and environmental science that elementary students might not learn in school. Not only did this add value to my community, but it also gave me an opportunity to try something new. This is just one example, and there are many other different ways. The third and final aspect of a good citizen is someone who makes their voices heard. By making their opinions and thoughts heard, a good citizen drives positive change within their community. They make sure that decisions at the town level reflect the needs of the residents. Voting is integral in remaining a free nation because it empowers citizens to transform their surroundings. Society has a natural tendency to form a social hierarchy, and due to this, there is an asymmetry in power exhibited. Those in the government hold much power to make changes that benefit themselves and those closest to them, rather than those beneath them in the social hierarchy. By continuing to vote, the health of the community continues to prosper. When more people vote, a healthier community is created, which leads to the elected officials being held accountable to the community and voters themselves. Without voting, the government will likely make decisions that end up harming the community as a whole, as they have less of a well-rounded view on the current situation. With voting, all voices and opinions can be represented, making the occurring result closer to the true preference of the population as a whole. To me, the Constitution is a beginning to a neverending journey. It marks the beginning of keeping a community healthy, just, and representative of the community, but there are still more changes to go. Our country continues to evolve, and with this evolution comes the necessity for change and additions in our laws, practices, and values. The Constitution allows for this evolution, as it allows for amendments to be added, changed, or repealed, consequentially providing the opportunity for our community and country to work as well as it can, until the end of time.