“Practice makes perfect” a phrase that has been repeated to me thousands of times. By coaches, mentors, and family members. Perfection; used to be common in my everyday life. I was the perfect child, the perfect classmate, the perfect student, and the perfect sibling. I never realized how much it meant to me to be perfect, and I never gave thought to what would happen when I was unable to keep it up. My perfect grades had been the pride and joy of my childhood. Every report card that went on my mother’s fridge was followed by a celebration in the form of dinners at restaurants of my choosing. I never needed to work hard at keeping these grades even when I moved around and new school systems had new curriculums, I would maintain the status of my perfection. This continued all through junior high, as I coasted by collecting awards for my scholastic achievements and receiving praise from my teachers. High school was the first time I wasn’t perfect. My freshman year I had my first imperfect report card, a B in English, and in Geometry. I was devastated, I was no longer perfect and I didn’t know what to do about it. I cried for days, and though it seems silly now, my grades really meant that much to me. By the end of the year, I had all A’s aside from Geometry, which had moved down to a C. Even though my streak of perfection was lost, I learned something valuable that year. My work is only as good as the effort I put into it, perfect scores with no effort weren’t worth anything compared to hard work and the results from it. Practice makes perfect, and it was the practice that I needed, not the perfection. I learned to simply do my best at everything. I learned to give myself grace and to take care of myself more often. More importantly, I realized that it was unrealistic to expect perfection every time I did something, but that if I gave everything my best I would get the best results. Perfection is temporary, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and failure gives us the opportunity to learn what they are.

Music and writing were the first love’s of my life, telling stories and creating different harmonies brought me a sense of security I couldn’t get elsewhere. More than this I loved the way different people would interpret the same words, and rhythms differently - I loved how perspective could change everything. This love, in my childhood, became an admiration for commercials. I began to observe how different stories were displayed, and different products were the solution, occasionally coupled by a brand's jingle. My mother would explain to me how there were people who had to think of these storylines and chose everything, down to the color of the print on a commercial, to make people buy their products. Even as a child I was mesmerized by the way people understood how others thought and reacted to certain colors or sounds. I hadn’t realized it yet but I became engrossed in the idea of being able to convince others what they wanted or needed: of understanding the way they thought, learning the psychology behind our actions. I began to see, what I now know as, “marketing” as a superpower. It took me years before I understood that this was another job or potential career that I could have, and when I did I dove headlong into discovering more. I signed up for classes during the summer at UCLA that would teach me more about marketing. I applied for and was accepted into a 6-month course that taught me how to create and manage a business working from the ground up. Now, as I approach my senior year, I’ve looked at colleges and universities that would provide me with the skills to be the best in the marketing field. I am the youngest of my class, African American, and female, and because of this people underestimate me all the time. They deny my ability to go after what I want and claim that my dreams are unachievable. I’ve had counselors try to push me back a grade, claiming that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I’ve had mentors tell me that I should reconfigure my goals to be more attainable. I’ve even had family tell me to slow down, that I should rethink my ambitions. Despite how society has stacked many chips against me, I will do everything in my power to reach my goals, proving to those who doubted me just how wrong they were.

My role model is my mother. She, in my opinion, is a person who went through a lot in her life and has somehow found a way through it all to turn out as a generous, forgiving, and kind person. Though she has had her struggles, and every day can be one for her, she has never faltered and has persevered through optimistically. My mother is constantly trying to be better than she was yesterday or the day before. This mindset and drive for excellence lead to her being a first-generation college graduate in my family. She had me at a young age and wasn't completely ready for the way her life was about to turn. Though she is my parent I like to think that I have watched her grow just as much as she has me. Throughout my entire life, she has driven me to do and be my best. She used to tell me every day for the first ten years of my life that "I could tell her anything" and as I got older my mother became my closest friend. Her endless desire for more and her ceaseless passion to give to others has encouraged me to be who I am. Her story is one that she doesn't tell often and there are parts that I still don't know, but her strength in the face of it all is what I admire. No matter what hardship she is facing at any given time she always drops everything to help the people she cares about and those in need. Years ago, my mom was having a conversation with me about my birthday, I wanted a lot of things and was acting very brat-ish about getting them. After explaining to my 6 or 7-year-old self that there were kids that didn't get birthday parties, I told her that she should do something about it. From that small conversation, my mother took the dare and she started a nonprofit that helped give birthday parties to kids in shelters and foster care. That is the kind of person my mom is, if she found a way she could help people she would, she looks at every day in life as another day to make a change for the better. Another day to learn something, to gain new experiences, and another day to teach someone a lesson of value. This why she is my role model, I don't know anyone like her. My mother has always supported everything I've ever wanted to do, from music and dance to law and business. Her love has been the backbone of my tower of strength. I want to be just like my mother I want to take challenges from little kids to make the world a better place and then do it to a tee. I want to set goals and not just achieve them but surpass them in everything I do. I want to defy the statistics set on my life and do what I never thought myself capable of doing. I want to learn new things every day and try to help as many people as I can during my time on this earth. Thriving in any situation and giving everything my best shot, creating my own legacy to follow hers. I don't know what kind of person I would be without her guidance through life.

As a kid, I always had the biggest dreams. First I wanted to be a veterinarian, then a pop star in a band then I wanted to become a lawyer. As I got older I finally decided that what I really wanted was to go into business and be in the marketing field. I loved commercials and ads and being creative, it sounded like the perfect career for me. My only doubt about it was due to the fact that I was raised by two overachievers and have found myself constantly proving that I can follow in their footsteps throughout my high school years. In simple ways such as taking the hardest classes and filling up my schedule, I have been doing everything I can to make myself look impressive when I begin applying to college. Including taking summer courses on business and marketing topics. For the past two years, I have applied to and completed a UCLA certificate program specializing in business. The first year I learned from Felisa Israel, CEO and founder of 10fold entertainment, she taught us about the business side of sports, media, and entertainment. In the class, she gave us assignments to pitch ideas for promotive events, movie marketing partnerships, and podcasts. Doing these things within the class is what sent my spark of interest into a flame of passion for business and marketing. Since then my parents and family have been relatively supportive of this plan for my life and I've appreciated that, but somehow I always felt like I wasn't doing enough. This year, after the start of the pandemic I realized I wanted to do more than just appear impressive on paper I also wanted to make an impact on my community. After everything that happened over the course of this summer from the lockdown to the Black Lives Matter protest and the California fires, I wanted to make a change to my lifestyle. As a junior in high school, I realized that the best way for me to accomplish these things would be to commit to working within my school to build up my own community. This is why my friend and I decided to found the Black Culture Club at our school, we pulled together some of our friends to become the board and drafted an application, appealing to the need for this club in our school community. The established purpose and mission statement of our club is: educating our generation on black history and demolishing social stigmas surrounding African Americans. We plan to organize opportunities for community service in predominantly African American neighborhoods as well as other schools. In addition to this, I found it important to let our fellow club members see black culture in action and wanted to have some of our meetings at music and art festivals. I have been extremely excited to get this club up and running, and though the school year has only just begun I can't wait to watch both the club I've founded and the community I'm supporting grow together. Not only will it create a positive outlook on African American culture in my neighborhood but it will also allow me to become closer to my roots and understand my own history. Even though my dreams aren't the traditional ones of becoming a Lawyer, Engineer, or Doctor, my dreams and aspirations make me happy and excited for the future. Which in my opinion is the biggest dream anyone could have.