I believe that in everyone’s life, there are specific experiences that have the ability to change their life course. Being a child in foster care was one of those experiences for me, and I know my life is better for it. I became part of the foster care system for the first time when I was in pre-kindergarten with one of my sisters. My sister and I had to enter foster care when my mother was determined to be unfit to care for us by the court. I remember being nervous but glad my sister and I would still be together. Then, when we got to our new home, I remember feeling secure. There was an easy peace in my new home. There was never a worry about when my parent would be home or if there would be dinner tonight. The family that took us in was more than generous and compassionate in how they cared for my sister and me. They did not discount what we had been through, but at the same time helped us adjust to a new way of living. Foster care was where I learned to be a child, a good sister, and a student. I also was patiently taught how to ride a bike with training wheels and swim for the first time. Many years after leaving the foster care system my sisters and I were again impacted by the child welfare system. Once again, my mother was determined to be an unfit parent. This decision meant that we needed someone else to help raise us. This time around the three of us were teenage girls in middle and high school. Our older age and being a sibling set of three makes getting placed together in the foster care system more difficult. My grandmother selflessly decided she would take all three of us in while we navigated our later years of school. Being adopted was another one of those life-changing experiences for me. I believe that adoption changed my trajectory in life. For the first time since being in foster care, I felt that I was in a home that supported me. I am currently a junior at The Pennsylvania State University. I study neuroscience and psychology at college, and through these studies, I can better understand how critical becoming part of the foster care system at a young age was. I am beyond grateful to have had a family take my sister and myself in during such formative years for us as children. I am also grateful that those around my sisters and I were able to recognize that it was unsafe for us to stay in our environment. I witnessed first-hand the kindness of a family to take me in and care for me as their child. Because of this experience, I am more empathetic and compassionate towards others. I believe it is essential to treat everyone equally as their background may hold individual challenges that are not obvious to strangers. I apply this attitude in everyday life as well as my work as a nursing assistant. I find it easy to care for others in vulnerable positions as I think that I can relate as I have been in vulnerable positions through my experiences with child welfare. For me, the foster care system improved my life vastly, and I will always be grateful to the family that helped me.

I readily acknowledge that it has taken a community to get me to where I am today, a junior studying neurobiology at Penn State University. But within the community that has helped me get to where I am today, my grandma will always stand out. My grandma helped raise and care for my mother through her struggles with substance abuse. Although a great display of character for anyone her helping my mother stands out even more to me because they are not biological relatives. As many people may know it is not always easy to have a loved one that struggles with substance use. Despite those hardships, my grandma would repeatedly take my mother in over decades of relapses conveying her ability to forgive and love others. While aiding my mother through her journey, my grandma also raised three other children of her own. The majority of this time, she was a divorced single parent working hard to help her children succeed. She was not given the opportunity to attend college but obtained a cosmetology license to make a living. It has always been clear that she put her family first and took pride in the success of her children. The perseverance exhibited in the actions of my grandma told me that hard work is rewarded. I grew up with my mother until I was about 14 years old. As I entered eighth grade, it was decided that my sisters and I should not live with her any longer. When placing siblings, there is an emphasis that every effort should be put in to keep them together. This stipulation did not make my grandma hesitate even a moment before deciding she would adopt all three of us. She had already raised four children into adults and now was choosing to take on three teenage girls to raise by herself yet again. Adoption is a long, time-consuming process that she seemed more than willing to take part in for my siblings and me. She took time off to drive to messy court hearings and meet with social workers. She let state employees come into her home and questioned her about taking in three girls all so we could be given a better life. She showed she cared by helping us over-achieve in school and making us hold jobs to learn what hard work was like. There is nothing I am more grateful for than my grandma taking in my sisters and me at such a crucial time. My grandma was the first person to tell me that college was an option and that I could become whatever I liked if I put in the effort. When applying to colleges I was nervous about getting accepted, and I remember telling my grandma my concerns. She told me that I was the only thing holding myself back. At this time, my grandma made me realize that I am capable of so much more than I allow myself to believe. Being adopted, for me, was like being given a second chance. It felt like my grandma saw me and thought that I deserved better. There is no one that I look up to more than my grandma because of this. I am sure that if she had not adopted my sisters and me half a decade ago, I would not have learned to work hard at a job. I would not understand what it means to fully forgive others, and I would not be in college studying my dream major.

I believe that cancer is one of those things in life that has impacted everyone in some way. I have personally never had cancer, but I have experienced it through interactions with patients, friends, and family. The first time I think I understood the destruction that can come from cancer was when I was 12 years old. Throughout the later years of elementary school, a classmate had been diagnosed with leukemia, which is not something my classmates and I understood at the time. We saw our friend slowly lose weight, start to miss school, shave her head, then use crutches, and eventually, we visited her at the hospital. To everyone in our small town, there was no denying that despite all of her physical struggles brought on by her diagnosis she remained one of the sweetest girls in the class always smiling. I remember that when she passed away I was so confused as to why someone like her, who was kind even on her worst days, would be taken so young. This is when I realized that cancer was real and that it was not as nice as the people it takes. I am currently a junior at Pennsylvania State University and share the same joy and pride for the school as I am sure many other students and alumni, like Mr. Musto, have. While at school I am building the education that hopefully will set me up for a future in medicine. I have chosen to apply some of my education by working as a nursing assistant at a rehabilitation hospital. As a nursing assistant, I encounter patients from diverse backgrounds with various, complex medical histories. A commonality I have found among many patients diagnosed with cancer is that it has taken some of their favorite hobbies away from them. This supports the unfairness of the disease I first discovered when I was 12 years old. My interactions with patients diagnosed with cancer have also led me to believe that cancer patients seem to have resilience and kindness for others which is admirable. How I see cancer in the context of patient care has made me more passionate about becoming a physician so that I can hopefully provide more beneficial health care to them. The most impactful experience I have had with cancer is when my grandpa passed away in 2022 the day before the New Year. His cancer diagnosis and his death from it were quick and his change was severe. My grandpa lived just down the street from me, so I would commonly walk over unannounced, and he would always be excited to see me. He loved the outdoors, his horse Gracie, and his dog Moose, and more than anything I believe he loved his many grandkids, including myself. His cancer was aggressive and quick causing him to be put on hospice early on. It was extremely hard for me to see him in the same living room, where we would watch River Monsters not even a year prior, now in a hospital bed and so frail and small. I will always be sad that I did not go and see him more often in his last weeks and his death will always be with me. His death impacted every aspect of my life from my schooling to rearranging my walking route to avoid his house down the road. One of the good things that came from this experience with cancer is a greater ability to understand what it is like to lose someone you love to cancer.