When I think about the people who raised me, I cannot tell the story honestly by making one person the hero and another the villain. My family was more complicated than that, and I think I am better for understanding it. For most of my childhood, my mother raised my sister and me as a single parent, becoming a mom at 17. Up until around seventh grade, when she was at her most stable and supported, she gave us more than I understood at the time. She was incredibly wise, curious, funny, and capable of making the world fun and beautiful. She taught me to love animals and nature, took us for clean ups at beaches, and encouraged the curiosity and empathy that still define me today. She also struggled. Addiction and mental health challenges gradually changed our family and what my mother was capable of providing. Stability became harder to find, and I learned that loving someone and acknowledging the harm caused by their struggles can exist at the same time. Then, when I was 17, Chuck entered my life. Technically, he is my stepfather, but to me, he is my dad. Chuck changed the trajectory of my life by providing something I desperately needed: consistency. When I struggled to finish high school, he paid for tutoring and helped me earn my diploma. When I struggled to make it to my first semester of college classes, he bought me my first car-a little 2000 Honda Civic that gave me the feeling I could go anywhere. He showed up, pushed me when I needed pushing, and treated my future like something worth investing in. Even after his relationship with my mother ended, his relationship with me and my sister did not. That taught me more about family than almost anything else. My mother gave me much of the curiosity and compassion that shaped who I became. My dad showed me what real stability and support can make possible. Today, I am a first-generation college student pursuing a bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Management. After graduating, I plan to continue my education in Public History and build a career combining conservation, interpretation, history, and education in my home state of Florida. My mom taught me to look closely at the world around me and dad taught me not to give up on building a place for myself within it. I want to use both lessons to help people connect with the places and communities around them. Through state parks, historic sites, museums, conservation programs, or public education, I want to make information accessible and people curious. I want a child visiting a park to discover something that stays with them. I want residents to understand why their local history matters and why the natural places around them deserve protection. Above all else, I want my work to give people a stronger sense that they belong to something worth caring for. I do not know exactly what my career will look like twenty years from now. I hope it includes a lot of wild Florida, old stories, curious people, and opportunities to leave the places and communities I encounter a little better than I found them. There are pieces of both of my parents in that future. My mother's wisdom and wonder are always there. So is something my dad gave me that took much longer to cultivate: the belief that I was worth supporting and, eventually, the ability to show up for myself. Those are things worth carrying with me.

Mental health is important to me because I have learned that it rarely affects only one person, and silence does not protect a family from its consequences. Mental illness, addiction, and suicide have followed multiple generations of my family. My great-grandmother died by suicide, as did my great-grandfather when my grandmother was a child. Years later, my mother's brother died by suicide, followed by her youngest sister. My aunt's death affected me especially deeply. She was bold, creative, funny, and someone I felt safe with. Her death taught me something I have carried ever since: a person can seem larger than life and full of confidence while still carrying pain that other people cannot see. Those losses did not exist separately from the rest of our family life. My mother has struggled with her mental health and addiction for much of my life. My sister has faced her own struggles around autism and ADHD, and I have watched those challenges affect the people who love and depend on her. I have also had to confront my own anxiety and the ways growing up around instability shaped how I respond to stress, conflict, and uncertainty. For a long time, I thought being strong meant constantly adapting. You learn to read a room quickly. You anticipate someone's mood before speaking. You become good at functioning during chaos. Eventually, I realized there is a difference between resilience and becoming accustomed to dysfunction. As a student, anxiety can make concentrating difficult, and family problems do not wait until after an exam, work shift, or paper deadline. I have had to learn that I can care deeply about someone without allowing every crisis to become mine. Sometimes protecting my education means setting my phone down, opening my laptop, and allowing a family problem to remain unresolved for a few hours. I believe compassion and accountability have to exist together. Understanding why someone behaves a certain way does not mean pretending their behavior does not hurt others. Loving someone does not mean being able to heal them, and setting a boundary is not the opposite of empathy. That is also why I advocate for mental health: I talk about it often. I refuse to treat mental illness as a shameful family secret. I try to create relationships where difficult conversations are allowed, where someone can admit they are struggling without being treated as weak, and where seeking help is viewed as responsible rather than embarrassing. I also advocate for the people standing beside someone who is struggling. Their mental health matters, too. My education is part of my effort to change the narrative I inherited. I am a first-generation college student building a future in conservation, public history, recreation, and education. Staying in school has taught me that resilience is not simply surviving difficult circumstances. Sometimes resilience is deciding those circumstances will not be allowed to choose your future. I cannot change my family's history or make different choices for the people I love. But I can decide what I carry forward from it. I choose openness over secrecy, conversation over shame, boundaries over enabling, and asking for help over pretending everything is fine. Mental health matters to me because I have seen what can happen when pain remains hidden for too long. Sometimes changing a family's mental health narrative begins with someone finally being willing to talk about it.

Young women face many challenges while growing up and deciding who they want to become. For me, one of the greatest was learning to imagine a future beyond the circumstances I grew up in. My childhood was unstable. I was raised primarily by a single mother who struggled with addiction and her mental health, and much of my childhood was shaped by financial hardship, unstable housing, and periods when I was not in school when I should have been. My mother left school before her junior year of high school and carried a great deal of insecurity about her own education. She was incredibly wise when she was stable, but her struggles often meant she could not provide the consistency or encouragement I needed to develop confidence in my own education. I loved learning, but college and a career felt less like a plan and more like something meant for other people. Then, when I was 17, my stepfather entered my life. Today, I simply call him my dad, even though he and my mom are no longer together. He changed the trajectory of my life by giving me stability and treating my future as though it mattered. When I struggled to finish high school, he paid for tutoring and helped me earn my diploma. Over the years, he continued reminding me through his actions that I was capable of building a different life. My path through higher education has not been traditional. I worked, struggled financially, and started and stopped school. But my dad helped me understand that where I started did not have to determine where I finished. Now I am a first-generation college student pursuing my bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Management, with an expected graduation in 2028. My goal is a career combining conservation, environmental interpretation, education, and public history in my home state of Florida. After graduating, I intend to apply to Florida State University and pursue a master's in history with a major in Public History. For the first time in my life, my future is not just a fantasy. I have a plan for it. I work while attending school and fund my education through financial aid, scholarships, student loans, and my own income. My dad helps where he can. This scholarship would reduce what I need to earn or borrow and give me more time for coursework, volunteering, and gaining experience in my field. My dad changed my trajectory, but perhaps the greatest thing he gave me was the belief that my life was worth planning for. Now I am doing the planning myself. I cannot change the struggle I experienced as a young girl, but I can give her story a different ending: earn the education she never knew how to reach, build a life she could not yet imagine, and become a woman who knows exactly what she wants for herself. Someone once stepped into my life and decided my future was worth investing in. This scholarship would help me continue proving that he was right.

My long-term goal is to build a career in Florida that combines conservation, public history, environmental interpretation, and education. I want to work in state parks, historic sites, museums, or similar public institutions where I can help people understand the natural and cultural history of the places around them—and why those places are worth protecting. And I have a plan for getting there. My first step is completing my bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Management, which I expect to finish in 2028. Between now and then, I plan to continue working while actively looking for volunteer, internship, and entry-level opportunities involving parks, conservation, visitor services, museums, or interpretation. My schedule and finances mean I have to fit those opportunities around both school and employment, but graduating with practical experience is an important part of my plan. My next goal is Florida State University. I plan to apply to its Master's in History program with a major in Public History and, if accepted, continue my education as soon as possible after completing my bachelor's degree. Public History would add historical research, preservation, interpretation, and communication skills to my undergraduate background in parks and recreation. Together, the degrees would prepare me to work with both the landscapes we protect and the stories attached to them. That plan also requires relocation. If accepted to FSU, I intend to seek employment in the Tallahassee area while attending graduate school, ideally in a position related to parks, museums, government, conservation, or visitor services. That would allow my employment, graduate education, and professional experience to support the same long-term goal rather than compete with one another. Financially, I have to plan carefully. I do not have family members who can finance my education or co-sign private student loans. I am funding college through grants, federal student aid, scholarships, loans available to me independently, and income from working while enrolled. My budget prioritizes tuition and fees first, followed by books, transportation, technology, housing, and basic living expenses. I keep those expenses as low as possible and apply for scholarships to reduce how much I must earn or borrow. This $1,315 scholarship would go directly toward that plan. It could offset tuition and school expenses while giving me more flexibility to pursue volunteer or field experience instead of filling every available hour with paid work. Before graduate school, I will also research FSU assistantships, scholarships, financial aid, and employment opportunities to determine the most affordable route forward. I recognize that the plan depends on variables I cannot control, including admission to FSU and which jobs are available in 2028. If I am not accepted on my first attempt, I will continue working in the field, strengthen my experience, and reapply. If my first professional opportunity is in visitor services, recreation, park operations, interpretation, or a museum rather than my ideal position, I will use it to build toward the next one. Joe Gilroy's motto, “Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan,” describes exactly how I want to approach my future. My plan is not wrapped up in earning two degrees. It is to use every stage-work, volunteering, undergraduate study, graduate school, and whatever first opportunity opens its door-to build a career helping people understand Florida well enough to want to protect it. And when I finally get there, I want to be proud not only of where I ended up, but of how hard I worked and how carefully I planned to get there.

I grew up believing that Florida was wild. The Florida I knew was full of back roads, creeks, swamps, enormous live oaks, palmettos, wildlife, and places where development seemed very far away. As I got older, I began watching some of those places disappear. Forests became subdivisions. Native landscapes became irrigated lawns. Roads widened, traffic increased, and places that once felt remote suddenly had neighborhoods pressed against them. That change is a major reason I am pursuing a degree in Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Management and why I want to build a career in conservation, interpretation, and public lands. Florida's water is one of the clearest examples of why that work matters to me. Beneath our feet is an enormous resource most people rarely think about: the Floridan aquifer system. The water we pump from underground is connected to the springs, rivers, wetlands, and ecosystems we enjoy above it. One irrigated lawn may seem insignificant. Multiply that lawn by millions of homes, businesses, golf courses, and developments, and suddenly an individual choice becomes a statewide issue. The problem is that people cannot protect what they do not understand. That is where I hope my work can make a difference. I want to help connect Floridians with environmental information before the only evidence of a problem is something we have already lost. That can happen through interpretation and education in state parks, but it can also happen through public notices, community outreach, news coverage, public meetings, and partnerships with local organizations. Environmental information should not remain buried in technical reports that most citizens will never read. People should understand what is happening to the land and water around them and how decisions being made in their communities may affect it. State parks are especially powerful places for building that connection because they allow people to see what conservation actually protects. It is one thing to hear that an aquifer needs protection. It is another to stand beside a clear Florida spring and understand that the water coming from beneath your feet is part of the same system supplying homes and supporting ecosystems across the state. A statistic becomes much harder to ignore once you have a relationship with the place behind it. That connection can also change everyday behavior. A homeowner who understands Florida's water system may reconsider how much irrigation their landscape really needs. Someone who understands wildlife corridors may pay closer attention when a development proposal threatens one. A voter who understands why wetlands matter is better equipped to evaluate decisions about growth in their own community. That is the kind of sustainability I want to contribute to: not simply telling people what they should protect, but giving them enough knowledge to participate in protecting it. Eventually, I hope to continue my education in Public History because Florida's environmental and human histories are inseparable. How we have drained wetlands, redirected water, developed coastlines, protected public lands, and responded to growth has shaped the Florida we inherited. Understanding those choices can help us make better ones. I cannot know exactly what Florida will look like generations from now. But I want future Floridians to inherit more than photographs and stories of what used to be here. I want them to inherit clean water, connected wild spaces, native wildlife, and public lands they can experience for themselves. My contribution will be helping people understand that protecting Wild Florida is not somebody else's responsibility. It belongs to everyone who hopes there will still be something wild here to inherit.

I was born into a farming family, so animals were part of my world long before I understood that protecting them could become a career. Some of my earliest memories are with my grandfather, who grew up as a Florida cowboy and farmhand on a 2,000-acre produce farm and also raised livestock. I spent time on my uncle's horse farm and explored Florida's creeks and swamps with my mom, catching tadpoles, lizards, and snakes. Our home regularly became a temporary wildlife rehabilitation center. There were baby chickens under heat lamps, injured animals being nursed back to health, baby squirrels being bottle-fed, and once, tiny opossums tucked into the pockets of clothing hanging on our clothesline. My mother had an incredible ability with animals. If something was hurt, abandoned, or sick, she tried to help it. Watching her taught me very early that animals were not simply things living around us. They were lives worthy of our attention and care. Naturally, I grew up wanting to become a veterinarian. I eventually worked in a veterinary office and assisted with technician duties, which gave me firsthand experience caring for animals. I loved it, but as I got older, my idea of what it meant to help animals expanded. I became interested in protecting them before they ever needed rescuing. Today, I am pursuing a bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, and my passion is land and wildlife conservation. I believe animal welfare extends beyond veterinary offices and wildlife rehabilitation centers. Protecting habitat, preserving and expanding wildlife corridors, managing public lands responsibly, and teaching communities how to coexist with native species can improve the lives of thousands of animals at once. That is particularly urgent in my home state of Florida. Florida's wildlife is being asked to survive alongside extraordinary population growth, development, habitat fragmentation, traffic, and invasive species. The Florida panther needs enormous connected territories but survives in a fraction of its historic range. The Florida black bear is a unique subspecies that increasingly encounters expanding human communities. The American alligator, a keystone species that helps shape wetland ecosystems, is so familiar to Floridians that we affectionately call them “swamp puppies.” Unfortunately, affection can sometimes become a dangerous lack of respect. New residents and visitors need to understand both how ecologically important these animals are and how to coexist with powerful wildlife safely. That is where I see my future. I want to work through parks, conservation, responsible tourism, and environmental/historical interpretation to make people care about the wildlife living beyond their backyards. Regulations can protect an animal on paper, but long-term conservation also requires people who understand why that animal belongs there in the first place. My path changed from wanting to heal individual animals to wanting to protect the landscapes that allow entire populations to live wild. I still have the little girl in me who wants to pick up every injured creature and bring it home. I have simply developed a much bigger idea of what “home” means. Now, I want to help protect theirs.

For most of my childhood, my mother raised my sister and me as a single parent. She struggled financially and personally, and as her problems with alcohol became more significant, stability was not something I learned to take for granted. My educational journey reflected that instability. School was important, but when a family is focused on simply getting through the present, planning years into the future can feel like a luxury. For me, breaking that cycle has required tenacity more than anything else. The person I call my dad did not enter my life until I was seventeen. He did not have a biological obligation to take care of me or invest in my future, but he chose to. At a time when my mother's alcoholism increasingly created physical distance between us, he stayed with my sister and I and became the only steady parental presence in my life. He helped provide structure, encouraged me to believe I was capable of more, and treated my future like something worth planning for. That changed my life beyond words. What I eventually understood was that he could provide support and opportunity, but I still had to decide what to do with them. My education did not follow a straight path. I had setbacks, stopped and restarted, and spent years figuring out what I genuinely wanted from my life. Yet the expectation he helped instill in me—that my future was worth investing in—never completely disappeared. Today, I am a first-generation college student pursuing my bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism. I am particularly interested in conservation, responsible tourism, public history, and interpretation. Continuing my education means more to me than earning a credential. It represents breaking a pattern in which immediate struggles repeatedly pushed long-term possibilities aside. My upbringing has also shaped how I think about giving back. I know firsthand how much difference one person can make simply by deciding that another person's potential is worth their time. I experienced that in my own family, and I have seen it through community service as well. During my time with The Salvation Army, I worked directly with people in need and coordinated volunteers for a twice-weekly food distribution program. It reinforced my belief that helping a community does not always require a grand gesture. Often, it means consistently showing up. I plan to carry that philosophy into my career. I want to work in parks, historic sites, museums, or other public institutions where education, conservation, and community intersect. Public spaces can give people access to nature, history, recreation, and learning regardless of their income or background. I want to help protect those places while making them welcoming and meaningful to the communities they serve. Growing up in a single-parent household taught me how easily a child's future can become overshadowed by the problems immediately in front of them. Having someone enter my life and believe in that future taught me something equally important: cycles are powerful, but they are not permanent. Someone once decided I was worth investing in. The best way I know to honor that investment is to build a life in which I invest in others.

There are days when being a full-time college student means opening my laptop with sore legs, dirty work shoes by the door, and several hours of work already behind me. I am currently pursuing my bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism while working part-time. I work at a sporting goods store and help with my dad's landscaping business, something I have done every summer for 17 years. Working while attending college allows me to pay my bills and continue pursuing my degree, but it also means that school has to fit alongside work schedules, responsibilities, and the basic need to occasionally sleep. This summer has been the clearest example of how difficult that balance can become. Florida landscaping in August requires an early start for a reason. By late morning, the heat and humidity can be brutal. There have been days when I spent the morning mowing, edging, trimming, or hauling debris, came home physically exhausted, showered, and still needed to transition into being a student. On other days, I traded landscaping clothes for a retail uniform before coming home to assignments and reading. I attend an accelerated university where courses move quickly, so losing several days because I am tired is not an option. A reading assignment does not care that I spent the morning working outside, and a deadline does not move because my retail schedule changed. I learned to stop waiting for the mythical perfect afternoon when I would be completely rested, motivated, caught up, and ready to spend six uninterrupted hours studying. That afternoon rarely exists when you work your way through college. Instead, I learned to use the time I actually have. I read when I find an open block, plan assignments around my work schedule, and save coursework requiring the most concentration for my days off. Most importantly, I learned that being tired is not the same thing as being incapable. Working through school has required sacrifices, but it has also made me appreciate my education differently. It makes me appreciate how much my dad has sacrificed for me and how hard he works to provide whatever he can. I want to make something meaningful out of the opportunities and support he has given me. When I complete an assignment after working, I am making a deliberate decision about what I want my future to look like. My degree is leading me toward a career in parks, conservation, responsible tourism, and public history-work that I genuinely care about. As a low-income student, I am not working while attending college because I want to prove how much I can handle. I work because I need to. My bills still have to be paid while I build toward a future where I can support myself doing work that matters to me. I know I am capable of working my way through college because I am already doing it. But being capable of carrying a heavy load does not mean having some of that weight lifted would not matter. This scholarship would give me something difficult for a working student to buy-extra time. Extra time to study when I am not exhausted, give more of myself to my education, and keep moving toward the career I have worked so hard to reach. I will keep working either way. A little help would simply allow me to spend more of that energy becoming the person I am working for.

I want a career where success is measured, at least partly, by whether I leave a place better than I found it. I am currently pursuing my bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, with the goal of working in public service through parks, conservation, interpretation, and education. I have a particular love for my home state of Florida, and I want my career to help protect the natural and historic places that make this state extraordinary while helping other people understand why those places are worth protecting. Florida is one of the most visited places in the world, but the things I love most about it are often overshadowed by the things we have built here. Beyond the theme parks and resorts are springs, wetlands, mangrove forests, scrub, pine flatwoods, wildlife, historic communities, and thousands of years of human history. These places provide recreation and education, but they also give people something increasingly difficult to find: an opportunity to slow down and connect with the world around them. I want to help protect that. My greatest passion is finding the point where conservation and responsible tourism meet. I do not believe we have to choose between allowing people to experience beautiful places and protecting those places from being loved to death. Tourism can provide economic opportunities, fund preservation, and create lifelong connections to nature and history when it is managed responsibly. I want to be part of developing that balance. Education and interpretation are especially important to me because people are more likely to protect something once they understand it. A wetland can look like an empty swamp until someone explains the enormous role it plays in water quality, flood control, and wildlife habitat. An old building can look like an inconvenience standing in the way of development until someone tells the stories of the people who lived there. Sometimes protecting a place begins simply by giving someone a reason to care about it. That is the kind of impact I hope to make. I also believe parks and public lands improve people's lives in ways that cannot always be measured financially. People need places to walk, hike, exercise, learn, bring their children, watch wildlife, experience quiet, and simply breathe. Access to nature should not be a luxury reserved for people who can afford an expensive vacation. Well-managed public lands give entire communities access to experiences that belong to everyone. My long-term goal is to continue my education in public history and build a career that combines conservation with historical and environmental interpretation. Florida's natural and human histories cannot really be separated. Our water shaped where people settled. Our climate shaped how they lived. Our plants and wildlife shaped industries, traditions, recreation, and communities. I want to help people see those connections. I do not expect to single-handedly save Florida, and I think conservation works best when it is understood as a shared responsibility. My contribution can be protecting meaningful places, telling their stories well, and helping other people become invested in their future. I want people to leave a park, historic site, or natural area knowing more than they did when they arrived—and caring a little more, too. If my career can help accomplish that, I will have made my small piece of the world better.

I have always loved history, but the kind that interests me most does not stay neatly inside a textbook. I love history that you can stand in. There is something powerful about visiting a place and realizing that the landscape in front of you has witnessed lives, decisions, conflicts, disasters, and ordinary days long before you arrived. A building stops being just an old building. A trail is no longer simply a trail. Even an empty patch of land can become fascinating once you know what happened there. That connection between history and place is what I want to build my career around. I am currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, and my long-term goal is to continue my education in Public History. I hope to work in interpretation and education through parks, historic sites, museums, or heritage destinations, particularly in my home state of Florida. I want to help people experience history in the places where it actually happened. Florida gives me no shortage of material. Our history stretches far beyond the version of the state represented by beaches and theme parks. It includes Indigenous history, Spanish exploration and settlement, forts, wars, cattle ranching, fishing communities, railroads, agriculture, hurricanes, conservation, immigration, and generations of people adapting to a landscape that is beautiful but not always easy to live in. Much of that history still exists around us, but people can drive past it every day without knowing what they are looking at. That is why interpretation matters to me. A good interpreter does more than recite dates from a sign. They give visitors enough context to suddenly see a place differently. I love the idea that someone could arrive at a historic site knowing almost nothing about it and leave wanting to read a book, visit another site, ask their grandparents questions, or learn more about their own community. History becomes much harder to dismiss as boring when someone helps you recognize that you are standing inside it. My interest in history is also connected to conservation. Preserving a historic landscape and protecting a natural one often require the same basic decision: accepting that something has value beyond what can be built on top of it. Once a place is destroyed, paved over, or radically altered, we may lose ecological resources, but we can also lose pieces of our collective memory. I want my career to help people understand both. My years of community service and volunteer work have also taught me that knowledge is most valuable when it is shared. I previously worked with The Salvation Army, where I assisted people in need and recruited and coordinated volunteers for a twice-weekly food distribution program. That experience showed me how much communities depend on people who are willing to participate rather than simply observe. I want to bring that same philosophy into my future career. I do not want to study history only for myself. I want to translate it, preserve it, tell it well, and make people curious about the places around them. The best historical experience, to me, ends with someone looking at an ordinary landscape and realizing it is not ordinary at all.

College was never presented to me as the obvious next step in life. I am a first-generation college student, and my path to earning a degree has been anything but traditional. There were times when completing college felt less like a plan and more like something I hoped I might eventually figure out. I started, stopped, worked, moved, struggled financially, and started again. What never disappeared was the feeling that I was capable of building something more. Now I know exactly what I want to build. I am pursuing a bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, with the goal of building a career in Florida's parks, conservation, public history, and interpretation. Eventually, I hope to continue my education in public history and work in places where Florida's natural environment and human history intersect. Florida is much more than beaches, theme parks, and new development. It is springs, wetlands, scrub, pine forests, wildlife corridors, archaeological sites, historic communities, and stories that are very easy to lose when growth happens faster than preservation. I want to be one of the people helping visitors and residents understand what is here, why it matters, and why it is worth protecting. My long-term goal is to work in interpretation and education through parks, museums, historic sites, or other public institutions. I am especially interested in responsible tourism: the idea that welcoming people to a place should not require sacrificing the very environment, history, or community that made them want to visit in the first place. I want my career to help people experience Florida while also encouraging them to become better stewards of it. Getting there, however, requires more than ambition. As a first-generation student, I have had to learn much of the college process while already participating in it. I am balancing school with work and the ordinary expenses of adult life, which means that even relatively small educational costs matter. Tuition is only part of attending college. There are books, technology, transportation, fees, and the simple reality that every hour devoted to school is an hour that cannot always be devoted to earning money. This scholarship would give me something extremely valuable: breathing room. Financial assistance would allow me to devote more of my time and attention to my coursework instead of constantly calculating how education fits around the next expense. It would help me continue progressing toward my degree without allowing short-term financial pressure to derail a long-term goal. I used to think taking longer to reach college meant I was behind. I no longer see it that way. The route I took gave me a much clearer understanding of why I am here. I am not pursuing a degree simply because college is what comes after high school. I am pursuing one because I know what I want to do with it. I want to build a career protecting and interpreting the state I love, continue my education, and become the first person in my family to turn college from something that once seemed unreachable into something completed. This scholarship would not create that ambition, but it would help me keep moving toward it.

Mental illness has never felt like an abstract health issue to me. It has been woven through generations of my family, affecting not only the people who struggled directly, but everyone who loved them. My family has a long history of mental illness, addiction, and suicide. My great-grandparents died by suicide, as did two of my mother's siblings. My aunt's death was particularly significant to me. She was the youngest in her family, like I am in mine, and I adored her. She was creative, bold, funny, and had an incredible laugh. Her personality had a lasting influence on me, and so did the loss of her. But mental illness has affected my family in less final and more complicated ways, too. I grew up learning that one person's struggle can change the emotional climate of an entire household. When someone you love is struggling, everyone begins adapting. You learn to read moods, recognize changes in behavior, anticipate conflict, and sometimes make yourself smaller in an attempt to keep everything peaceful. For a long time, I thought being good at those things made me exceptionally understanding. In some ways, it did. It made me observant and compassionate. It taught me that behavior usually has something underneath it and that people are more complicated than their worst moments. It also taught me habits I eventually had to unlearn. Understanding why someone behaves a certain way does not mean accepting every behavior. Compassion does not require sacrificing your own stability. Loving someone does not mean you can heal them, and sometimes the healthiest thing you can do for yourself and another person is establishing a boundary. Those lessons took me years to understand. My own experiences with mental health have made that understanding even more personal. I know that struggling internally and functioning externally can happen simultaneously. A person can work, laugh, make plans, attend school, and appear capable while privately working very hard just to remain steady. Because of that, I try not to assume I know what another person is carrying simply because I know what their life looks like from the outside. I returned to college later than I originally planned and am now pursuing my bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism. My long-term goal is to work in public history, park interpretation, and conservation, helping people connect with Florida's natural and cultural heritage. Returning to school has required me to stop viewing my past as evidence that I fell behind and start recognizing what it taught me. Mental illness has affected my family profoundly, but I do not want it to define us solely by what we have lost. My family is also full of creativity, humor, perseverance, and people who kept moving forward through circumstances they did not always know how to talk about. I cannot rewrite my family's history. What I can do is understand it, speak about it honestly, and decide what I contribute to its next chapter.

Mental health has shaped my understanding of the world in a strange way: it has taught me to take seriously the things I cannot see. Suicide has existed in my family for generations. My great-grandmother, a well-known painter in Michigan, died by suicide. My great-grandfather did as well, when my grandmother was still a child. Years later, my mother's older brother would take his own life, and then so would her youngest sister, my Aunt Davette. These deaths happened in different generations and under different circumstances, but each one left behind people who had to continue living with the empty space that person once occupied. My Aunt Davette's death affected me most deeply. She was the youngest sibling in her family, just as I am in mine, and she was only thirteen years older than me. To me, she was bold, creative, beautiful, and completely herself. She had a phenomenal laugh. Introduced me to new dance moves and music. More importantly, she had an openness about her that made me feel safe around her. There are some adults you encounter as a child who make you feel as though you can relax and simply be yourself. She was one of those people for me. I am now older than she was when she died. There is something difficult to explain about passing the age someone was when you lost them. As a child, adults seem fully formed. Now I understand how young she actually was. I think about how much life I still hope to experience, how much I am still learning about myself, and how much possibility must have existed in her too. I also recognize pieces of her personality that influenced my own: creativity, humor, boldness, and a willingness to be a little unconventional. Her death taught me something else, though. A person's pain and a person's personality can exist at the same time. Someone can be funny and be suffering. Someone can be beautiful, talented, loved, surrounded by family, and still be struggling internally in ways the people around them may not fully understand. Mental illness does not always look the way we expect suffering to look. That realization has profoundly affected the way I approach other people. It has made me slower to assume that I know someone's whole story. My own experiences with mental health have reinforced that lesson. I know what it is like to carry difficult experiences forward while still going to work, attending school, laughing, making plans, and appearing perfectly functional to other people. I have learned that healing is rarely a straight line and that struggling does not erase ambition, intelligence, humor, or capability. Sometimes those things exist right beside one another. That understanding has shaped my relationships by making me value openness and emotional honesty. I want the people I love to know that difficult subjects are allowed in the room. I would rather have an uncomfortable conversation than create an environment where someone believes they must perform happiness to make everyone else comfortable. I cannot fix another person's mental health, and I have learned that loving someone does not give me the power to save them. What I can do is listen, take people seriously, encourage help, and refuse to treat mental illness as something shameful. It has also shaped my goals. I returned to college later than I once expected, and I am pursuing a career centered on public service, parks & recreation, history, and helping people connect with the places and communities around them. My experiences have made me care deeply about creating spaces where people feel that they belong. Whether that space is a park, a museum, a classroom, or simply a trail to walk down in order to gain clarity, I believe feeling connected to something outside ourselves matters. My family history has also taught me that silence does not protect families from mental illness or suicide. If anything, silence gives suffering more room to hide. Every generation that loses someone inherits questions, grief, and memories along with the loss. My grandmother carried the death of her parents from childhood onward. My mother lost two siblings. I lost an aunt whose laugh I can still remember. The effects do not end with the person who dies. Neither does the person's influence. When I think about my Aunt Davette now, I do not want suicide to become the most important fact about her life. It was the way her life ended; it was not the sum of who she was. She was funny. She was creative. She was brave enough to be herself. She made a younger version of me feel safe, and years later, some of what I admired in her still lives in the person I have become. My experience with mental health has therefore left me with both grief and responsibility. I cannot change what happened in the generations before me. I can choose what I carry forward from them. I choose the openness, the creativity, the laughter, and the willingness to talk about what hurts. Darkness becomes much harder to hide when we are willing to name it.

Selected passage- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 105: “People who know no self-restraint lead stormy and disordered lives, passing their time in a state of fear commensurate with the injuries they do to others, never able to relax.” Seneca’s argument in this passage is deceptively simple: when we live without self-restraint and cause harm to other people, we create our own punishment long before anyone else has the opportunity to punish us. The “stormy and disordered” life he describes is not necessarily one in which a person is publicly exposed, arrested, confronted, or even held accountable. The punishment is internal. A person who behaves badly must live with the knowledge of what he has done, the possibility of being discovered, and the exhausting work of protecting himself from consequences. In other words, Seneca suggests that peace of mind is one of the first things we sacrifice when we stop governing ourselves. I love this passage because it makes self-restraint sound much less boring than we usually make it sound. “Self-restraint” can bring to mind denying yourself dessert, biting your tongue during an argument, or forcing yourself to get out of bed instead of hitting snooze. I think Seneca is talking about something much bigger. He is describing the ability to govern your own behavior well enough that you do not have to spend your life managing the fallout from it. A person can technically get away with something and still never really get away from it. A lie, for example, rarely gets to remain one simple lie. Now the liar has to remember what was said, who heard it, and which version of the story was told to which person. Someone who treats people cruelly may begin expecting cruelty in return. Someone who betrays others may become suspicious that everyone around him is capable of the same betrayal. The external world has not necessarily changed at all. His internal world has. That is what I think Seneca means when he connects the injuries we cause with the amount of fear we experience. We begin imagining other people through the lens of our own behavior. If we are dishonest, we become more prepared to find dishonesty in others. If we are cruel, we have more reason to fear cruelty in return. The consequences of our behavior therefore extend beyond whatever immediate harm we have caused. They change the way we experience the world around us. There is something almost claustrophobic about that idea. You can leave a bad relationship. You can move to another town. You can change jobs, make new friends, delete phone numbers, and reinvent yourself. The one person who inconveniently comes along for every single one of those fresh starts is you. Seneca’s point is that there is no geographic escape from your own conscience. Or as my family always says, “Wherever you go, there you are.” I have found this to be one of the stranger realities of getting older: peace becomes more valuable. When I was younger, I probably would have defined freedom mostly in terms of what I was allowed to do. Freedom meant having options, going places, making my own decisions, and not having someone else tell me how to live. I think freedom also means having as little as possible that I need to hide from, explain away, or mentally outrun. There is tremendous freedom in being able to sit quietly with yourself and not immediately need a distraction from your own thoughts. In that sense, self-restraint is not really restriction at all. It is preventative maintenance for your life. That is where I think Seneca’s use of the phrase “never able to relax” is especially important. He is not simply warning that bad behavior might eventually bring consequences. He is describing the loss of tranquility itself as a consequence. A person without restraint is always creating another problem to manage, another fear to anticipate, or another desire that needs to be satisfied. The storm is not happening around that person. Eventually, the storm is happening within them. Seneca was writing almost two thousand years before smartphones, which is unfortunate because I would love to see what he would make of social media. We now have an almost perfect machine for creating the kind of restless comparison, envy, anger, oversharing, and impulsive behavior he repeatedly warns against. We can react to someone before we have finished thinking, tell strangers things we would once have reserved for close friends, and spend hours studying carefully selected pieces of other people’s lives. Then we wonder why everyone is anxious. Seneca would probably throw the phone in the Tiber River. The technology may be new, but the problem Seneca identifies is not. Human beings have always had impulses. What has changed is how quickly we can act on them. A thought that might once have disappeared after a few minutes can now become a comment, a message, a purchase, or a public argument in seconds. Self-restraint creates a small but important space between wanting to do something and actually doing it. That space gives us the opportunity to decide whether the temporary satisfaction of an impulse is worth whatever comes afterward. This is also why I do not think Seneca’s passage applies only to serious wrongdoing. A lack of self-restraint can create a disordered life through much smaller choices: spending money we do not have, repeatedly avoiding responsibilities, saying things in anger that cannot be unsaid, numbing ourselves instead of dealing with something uncomfortable, or continually choosing what feels good immediately over what we actually want for our future. These choices may not injure another person in the dramatic sense, but they can still create the kind of restless life Seneca describes. One impulsive decision rarely destroys a life. The problem is repetition. Small choices become habits, and habits gradually determine what kind of environment we create for ourselves. If we repeatedly avoid responsibilities, there is always something hanging over us. If we spend impulsively, money becomes a constant source of anxiety. If we speak without restraint, relationships become filled with things that need to be repaired. Eventually, we can find ourselves surrounded by problems that seem unrelated even though many of them grew from the same source. That is why self-restraint, as I understand Seneca, is not about becoming rigid or joyless. It is about reducing the amount of unnecessary disorder we create for ourselves and for other people. That idea also fits into the larger Stoic distinction between what we can and cannot control. Seneca does not promise that behaving well will give us a peaceful life in the sense that nothing difficult will happen. Obviously, it will. Other people will make choices that affect us. Plans will collapse. People will disappoint us. Bodies age. Money disappears. Jobs end. Storms arrive, sometimes literally. There is a huge amount of life over which we have almost no authority. But there is a smaller territory that belongs to us: what we choose to do next. Self-restraint protects that territory. We cannot prevent every difficult circumstance, but we can avoid adding some unnecessary ones of our own making. We cannot control whether someone lies to us, but we can decide whether we become dishonest in return. We cannot control every angry thought, but we can control whether every angry thought deserves to become a sentence spoken aloud. We cannot always control what we want, but we have some authority over whether wanting something automatically means pursuing it. The older I get, the less I see restraint as depriving myself of something and the more I see it as refusing to create unnecessary chaos. Life produces enough chaos for free. I do not need to manufacture additional installments. That is ultimately what I take from Seneca’s passage. A peaceful life is not simply something that happens to a fortunate person. Part of it is built through the choices we make when nobody is forcing us to behave one way or another. Self-restraint gives us the ability to consider not only what we want in the present moment, but what kind of life that choice will leave us with afterward. Every choice leaves us somewhere. When possible, I would rather choose the place where I can sleep.

I grew up in the public library system. In third grade, I rode my bike up the street to my local Elsie Quirk Public Library and got my very first library card.  To me, that little card meant independence. Suddenly, I could walk through the shelves and take home whatever I wanted to learn about. At the time, that usually meant books about manatees and dolphins, Florida pirates, history, and anything else that caught my attention. Looking back, books have always had a way of making the world feel larger to me. For a few hundred pages, you get to borrow someone else's eyes. You can live in another time, experience a place you've never been, understand someone you might never have understood otherwise, or return to somewhere familiar and suddenly see it completely differently. My favorite book of all time is A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith. I love it because it is a perfect example of what I think a great book can do. It takes something familiar to me and gives it an entirely new depth. Reading it changed the way I saw my home state of Florida, but it also changed the way I thought about history. Through generations of change, hardship, loss, and progress, ordinary landscapes become full of stories. It taught me that understanding what came before us can completely change how we see what is in front of us now. My close second is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It could hardly be more different from A Land Remembered, which is part of what I love about books. Completely different stories can leave you carrying lessons that somehow fit together. The Alchemist taught me about persistence, uncertainty, and continuing toward something meaningful even when the path there doesn't look the way you expected. That may be what I appreciate most about reading: a good book doesn't necessarily end when you finish the last page. Certain characters and ideas stay somewhere in the back of your mind and resurface years later. Books don't always have to give us answers, either. Sometimes their greatest value is leaving us with better questions. They make us wonder why people made certain choices, how a place became what it is, whose perspective is missing, or what we might have done differently. Books have also taught me how closely storytelling and history are connected. Facts can tell us what happened, but stories help us understand what those events meant to the people who lived through them. That realization has helped shape my goal of eventually pursuing public history and making the past feel human and accessible rather than distant or reduced to names and dates. More than anything, reading has taught me to stay curious. That curiosity started with a third grader riding her bike to the library for books about manatees and pirates. All these years later, I'm still following it-just with a much bigger reading list.

One of my earliest memories of connecting with nature is wandering through Florida’s swamps with my grandpa, a fifth-generation Floridian. As a kid, I was on a mission to pick every wildflower I saw. In my mind, that was just what you did when something was beautiful-you took it home, put it in a vase, and admired it on the kitchen table. My grandpa didn’t see it that way. He would gently tell me, over and over, to leave them alone. At first, I didn’t really understand it. I thought I was appreciating them. He explained that the bees and butterflies needed those flowers more than I did, and that the flowers already had a place. They weren’t meant to be collected. They were meant to stay where they were, doing what they were part of. That always stuck with me: sometimes the way you respect something is by not taking it. Nature doesn’t exist for us to collect piece by piece for ourselves. It works as a system, even when you’re too young to see it that way. As I’ve gotten older, that idea has only become more relevant. I’ve watched the Florida I grew up in change quickly. Forests and scrub turn into neighborhoods. Open land becomes roads, parking lots, and strip malls. Springs, rivers, estuaries, and coastlines all feel the pressure of development that didn’t exist at the same scale when I was a kid. And it’s hard not to notice how many people experience Florida only through its most commercialized spaces, without ever really seeing what’s underneath all of that. That awareness is a big part of why I went back to college. I’m pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism because I want my work to help people actually engage with Old Florida’s natural and cultural landscapes. After that, I plan to continue on to a master’s degree in public history and work in interpretation, education, conservation, or public lands. My goal is to help people understand the places in Florida they’re in well enough that they start to care about what happens to them. Because conservation doesn’t happen through information alone. It happens when people feel connected to a place. When they understand how it works. When they realize what’s at stake. Through my education and future work, I hope to help others see a fuller version of Florida—the springs, swamps, pine flatwoods, mangroves, scrub, wildlife, and native plants that exist outside of development and tourism. I still think about those walks with my grandpa. That lesson didn’t turn into some dramatic philosophy for me-it just became the way I pay attention to the world. Florida doesn’t need to be taken apart to be appreciated. It’s already enough as it is. And sometimes that starts with something simple: noticing what’s in front of you, and leaving it there.

When I think about the impact I want to make, I'm sometimes overwhelmed by where to begin. As a first-generation college student, there are moments when I question whether I can ever truly make a difference somewhere. But I've realized that not every meaningful impact has to be world-changing. Maybe my purpose is simply to help people experience the place they already call home in a more meaningful way—and sometimes, that's where lasting change begins. My home state of Florida is often known for its beaches, theme parks, and rapid development, but I've always been drawn to the parts that many people overlook—the trails, state parks, freshwater springs, biodiversity, and the very rich history that make Florida unlike anywhere else. Watching so much of that disappear in the last 10 years has inspired me to pursue a career where I can help protect it while sharing it with others. Through my education in Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Management, I hope to build a career that combines conservation, education, and community engagement. Whether I work in a state park, museum, historical site, or nature center, I want to create programs that encourage people to slow down, explore, and develop a genuine appreciation for the natural and cultural resources around them. I believe that when people understand the history of a place and experience its beauty firsthand, they become much more willing to protect it. I also want to make these spaces feel welcoming to everyone. Outdoor recreation and environmental education shouldn't be limited by someone's age, income, or life circumstances. I hope to develop programs for children, veterans, low-income families, and individuals facing challenges such as anxiety, PTSD, or addiction. Nature has a remarkable ability to heal, teach, and connect people, and I want to help create opportunities for others to experience those benefits. The people who inspire me are the park rangers, historians, educators, and volunteers who dedicate their lives to protecting places that future generations may never realize were almost lost. Their work often happens quietly, behind the scenes, but the impact lasts for decades. That is the kind of legacy I hope to leave. Ultimately, I don't measure success by titles or recognition. I hope my education allows me to preserve Florida's natural and cultural heritage while inspiring others to value it as much as I do. If I can help even a small number of people leave a park, museum, or community program with a deeper appreciation for the world around them, then I will know I've made a meaningful difference. I believe lasting change begins with education, curiosity, and helping people see that the places we protect today become the legacy we leave tomorrow.

Being a first-generation college student means proving to myself that where I started does not have to define where I end up. Growing up, college was never part of the conversation. I was raised by a single teenage mother, and generationally, my family focused on making ends meet and surviving rather than planning for higher education. No one could tell me how to apply for college, navigate financial aid, or choose a career path because they had never experienced it themselves. No one could co-sign on student loans and there was no college fund waiting when I graduated high school. Every step has been something I've had to learn on my own. My path to college has been anything but traditional. It has taken me years to reach a place where I could fully commit to earning my degree. Along the way, I've experienced financial instability, family challenges, and more setbacks than I can count. There were times when continuing my education felt like a frivolous goal, but I never stopped believing it was something I wanted and deserved for myself. No matter how many times I had to quit because of lack of funding, I always reminded myself that totally giving up was never on the table. Today, I am pursuing a bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Management because I want to dedicate my career to protecting Florida's natural and cultural heritage. Florida has always been home state, and watching so much of its wildlife, history, and natural beauty disappear has given me a strong sense of purpose. I want to work in state parks, museums, or public programs where I can educate others, create meaningful community experiences, and help people develop a deeper appreciation for the places around them. My long-term goal is to earn a master's degree in Public History from Florida State University and continue serving Florida through conservation and education. Receiving this scholarship would do far more than ease the financial burden of college. Like many first-generation students, I balance school with work and carefully budget every expense. This support would allow me to spend more time focusing on my education, gaining valuable experience through internships and volunteer opportunities, and preparing for a career where I can give back to my community. More than anything, I hope my journey demonstrates that success doesn't have an expiration date. Being a first-generation student, I often struggle with the idea that I can make a difference. But I've found this has become more about changing the direction of my own life and, hopefully, inspiring others to believe that they can do the same too. I may not have had the easiest start, but with determination, hard work, and the support of opportunities like this scholarship, I plan on making a good life for myself and the people around me.

1. What does being the first in your family to obtain a college degree mean to you? Being the first person in my family to earn a college degree means breaking a painful cycle and proving to myself that my family history does not determine my future. My sister and I were raised by a single teenage mother, who was also raised by a single, teenage mother and neither one graduated high school. College wasn't something anyone in my family had accomplished or even thought about. Generationally, life often revolved around making money and surviving rather than planning for the future. Going back to school at 37 has taught me that it's never too late to invest in yourself. Every class I complete represents years of perseverance, growth, and choosing not to give up on my goals. Earning my degree won't just be a personal achievement—to me it will represent generations of my family's resilience, hard work, and my personal belief that education can create opportunities that will last me a lifetime. I hope it also inspires others, especially in my family, who think they have missed their chance to pursue higher education. 2. What do you want to pursue in college? I am pursuing a bachelor's degree in Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Management because I want a career that combines conservation, community outreach, and education. I have always loved my home state of Florida's natural landscapes and history, and I want to help protect them while making them accessible to everyone. My goal is to work in state parks, museums, or other public spaces where I can educate visitors, develop community programs, and encourage people to appreciate the environment around them. I believe that when people form a personal connection to nature and local history, they are much more likely to protect those places for future generations. 3. What are your long-term goals? My long-term goal is to build a career dedicated to conservation, public education, and preserving Florida's natural and cultural heritage. After completing my bachelor's degree, I hope to continue my education by earning a master's degree in Public History so I can combine environmental education with historical interpretation. My ultimate goal is to earn that at Florida State University, which is something I have dreamed about since I was a kid. I want to create programs that make parks, museums, and outdoor recreation more welcoming and accessible, especially for children, low-income families, veterans, and individuals facing challenges such as PTSD, anxiety, or addiction. I also want to bring more historical context into Florida’s natural spaces so visitors can better understand the people, events, and cultures that shaped the land they’re exploring. I believe nature can support both physical and mental well-being, and that connecting it with history helps people see these places as more than scenery. I really just hope to help visitors to Florida better understand, appreciate, and take care of the places that makes the state unique.

When I think about something I want to build, it is not a building or a business. I want to build a stronger connection between people and the natural Florida that so many never get to experience. Too often, Florida is seen only through the lens of beaches, theme parks, and new development. While those places have their value, they don't tell the whole story. I want to help people discover the forests, springs, wetlands, wildlife, and history that make this state unique, and inspire them to care enough to protect it. As a Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Management student at Everglades University, my goal is to build a career that combines conservation, education, and community engagement. Whether I work in a state park, museum, nature center, or historical site, I want to create experiences that leave people with a greater appreciation for the places around them. I believe people are much more likely to protect something once they understand its value and feel personally connected to it. This goal is especially important to me because I have watched Florida change so much throughout my lifetime. I've seen forests replaced by subdivisions, wildlife lose habitat, and many people move here without ever learning about the ecosystems that existed long before the roads and shopping centers. While those changes can feel discouraging, they also motivate me. I don't want to spend my life simply mourning what has been lost. I want to be part of preserving what remains and helping others become good stewards of our public lands. I also hope to make the outdoors more accessible to people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to enjoy it. Whether it's introducing children from underserved communities to hiking and kayaking, creating educational programs for families, or helping veterans and older adults reconnect with nature, I believe our parks and public spaces should be welcoming to everyone. Spending time outdoors can improve physical health, mental well-being, and a person's sense of belonging within their community. Returning to college later in life has strengthened my commitment to this path. Every class I complete brings me closer to building a future centered on service, education, and conservation. My hope is that the work I do will leave Florida's communities not only with protected natural spaces, but with people who understand why those places are worth protecting for generations to come.

Being a first-generation college student has meant learning how to navigate life in a very hands-on way. I didn’t grow up with anyone in my family who had gone through college, so everything from financial aid to choosing a career path has been something I’ve had to figure out on my own. I was raised by a teenage mom who, who was a single parent, so stability wasn’t always there. Addiction became an issue for my mom and the challenges that come with that affected me deeply and contributed to periods of anxiety, especially during times when life felt uncertain or overwhelming. Over time, I’ve learned how important it is to understand and care for your mental health while still continuing to move forward in life. Because of everything I’ve seen, I’ve come to see education as something much deeper than just earning a degree. For me, education is stability, self-growth and freedom. It is one of the first real opportunities I’ve had to build something long-term and consistent for myself. College has helped me better understand not just academic material, but also how to manage responsibility, stress, and planning for the future in a healthier way. It has given me a sense of direction that I didn’t always have growing up, and a reminder that my circumstances do not define what I am capable of achieving. Living through loss and grief, difficult family situations, and managing my own anxiety has made me more aware that everyone is dealing with something you can’t always see. Because of that, I’ve learned to be more patient, more understanding, and less judgmental. I value genuine connections, and I’ve learned that strong relationships are built on empathy, communication, and showing up for people even when life is complicated. Those lessons are a big part of why I’m pursuing a degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at Everglades University. I’ve always felt a strong connection to Florida’s outdoors, especially through hiking the Florida Trail. Spending time on the trail has become something that helps me reset mentally and emotionally. Being in nature gives me space to manage anxiety, reflect, and find calm when life feels heavy. It has also strengthened my appreciation for Florida’s natural environment and my desire to help protect it. Looking forward, I want my career to reflect everything I’ve learned through both my education and my personal experiences. I am especially passionate about making natural and recreational spaces more accessible to underprivileged children and to people struggling with mental health challenges such as addiction, PTSD, depression, and anxiety. I believe outdoor spaces can be incredibly healing, offering peace, structure, and a sense of connection that many people may not otherwise have access to. I want to help create programs and environments where people from all backgrounds feel welcome and supported in experiencing nature. I also care deeply about mental health and believe that access to the outdoors can play a real role in helping people manage stress and improve overall well-being. Whether through parks, recreation programs, or community outreach, I want to be part of making those opportunities more available and inclusive. Ultimately, my goal is to build a life and career centered on resilience, empathy, and service. My personal struggles have not defined me, but they have shaped me into someone who values education, understands the importance of healing spaces, and wants to help others feel seen and supported. Through my degree, I hope to turn those lessons into a career that helps both people and wild Florida thrive.

Being a first-generation college student has meant figuring a lot of things out on my own. I didn’t grow up with anyone in my family who had gone through college, so everything from financial aid to class planning has been a learning process as I go. I was raised by my mom, who had me as a teen and raised me as a single parent, so life wasn’t always easy or predictable. On top of that, I’ve also dealt with family struggles over the years, including addiction issues in my household and the loss of close family members. Those experiences shaped me early on—they taught me how to adapt, stay grounded, and keep pushing forward even when life feels uncertain. Because of that, I’ve come to believe strongly that education is one of the most powerful tools a person can have. For me, education isn’t just about earning a degree—it’s about breaking cycles, creating stability, and opening doors that weren’t always available before. Being in college has shown me how much knowledge can change the way you see the world, especially when it comes to understanding people, communities, and the environment around you. It has also given me direction for something I care deeply about: protecting “Old Florida” for future generations. I’m currently pursuing a degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at Everglades University because I want to build a career that helps preserve the natural spaces and way of life that made me who I am. Growing up in Florida, some of my most meaningful memories come from fishing with my dad in Lemon Bay. We often fish for bass and redfish, and those moments on the water taught me patience, respect, and appreciation for the natural world. There’s something about early mornings on the water, surrounded by quiet and wildlife, that feels like the heart of Old Florida—simple, natural, and deeply connected to the land and water. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to realize how quickly that version of Florida is changing. Development, environmental stress, and lack of awareness can easily erase the spaces and traditions that define it. That’s why I want my education to be part of the solution. I want to use what I learn to help balance growth with conservation, making sure that natural spaces are protected and still accessible for future generations. My personal background has also shaped how seriously I take this responsibility. Growing up in a single-parent household with limited resources taught me the value of working hard and not taking opportunities for granted. There were also times of instability and loss that made life more difficult than most people see from the outside. Those experiences taught me resilience, but also gratitude—for stability, for opportunity, and for the chance to build something better. To me, leaving a legacy means more than personal success. It means protecting something bigger than myself. I want my legacy to be tied to preserving the natural beauty, culture, and identity of Old Florida—so that future generations can still experience the same sense of peace and connection I found fishing in Lemon Bay. Through education, I’m building the knowledge and tools to help make that possible. At the end of the day, I see education as the bridge between where I came from and the impact I want to leave behind.

Being a first-generation college student has meant figuring a lot of things out on my own. I didn’t grow up with anyone in my family who had gone through college, so everything from financial aid to class planning has been a learning process as I go. I was raised by my mom, who had me as a teen and raised me as a single parent, so life wasn’t always easy or predictable. On top of that, I’ve also dealt with family struggles over the years, including addiction issues in my household and the loss of close family members. Those experiences weren’t easy, but they shaped me into someone who has learned how to stay grounded, adapt, and understand people on a deeper level. Even with those challenges, I’ve stayed committed to building a future for myself through education. I’m currently pursuing a degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at Everglades University because I’ve always felt a strong connection to Florida’s outdoors. One of the most important influences in my life has been fishing with my dad in Lemon Bay. Those trips taught me patience, respect, and awareness—not just about nature, but about life. We usually fish for bass and redfish, and being on the water became a place where things felt steady even when life wasn’t. That time outdoors helped me understand how deeply people are connected to the environment and to each other, even in ways we don’t always realize. Growing up in a single-parent household with limited resources also taught me how to be independent and resourceful from an early age. There were times where things were uncertain or emotionally heavy, but I learned how to keep going anyway. Those experiences helped me develop resilience, but also empathy. I know what it feels like to go through life carrying things that others may not see, and that has made me more patient, understanding, and aware of the struggles people may be facing behind the surface. I believe those qualities are exactly what I can bring to building a more empathetic and understanding global community. Whether it’s through communication, shared spaces, or outdoor experiences, I’ve learned that people connect best when they feel seen and respected. My goal is to use my education in parks, recreation, and tourism to help create environments where people from different backgrounds can come together, feel welcome, and build mutual understanding. I’ve seen firsthand how important access to nature and recreation can be for mental and emotional well-being. I want to help make sure those opportunities are available to more communities, especially those that are often overlooked. I also care deeply about environmental justice and making sure that all people—not just some—have access to clean, safe outdoor spaces. I believe protecting the environment and building stronger communities go hand in hand. At the end of the day, my goal is to take everything I’ve lived through—the challenges, the lessons, and the moments of peace I’ve found in nature—and use it to help people connect more deeply with each other. I want to contribute to a world where empathy isn’t rare and where natural spaces are easily accessed.

Growing up as a multi-generational Floridian, I’ve always felt most like myself near the water. Some of my favorite memories are fishing with my dad—especially in Lemon Bay—where I learned not just how to catch fish, but how to slow down and appreciate the environment around me. I’ve always loved going after bass and redfish in particular. There’s something about those early mornings on the water, watching the tide and learning patience, that stuck with me and shaped how I see the world. Fishing has never just been a hobby for me—it’s where my respect for nature really began. That connection is what led me to pursue a degree in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at Everglades University. I want to protect the kinds of places that gave me those experiences, while also helping others access and enjoy them. Over time, I’ve become more aware of how fragile Florida’s ecosystems are. Changes in water quality, habitat loss, and overuse can have real impacts—not just on fish populations, but on the communities that depend on them. My goal is to be part of protecting these environments through sustainable practices and education, especially when it comes to responsible fishing and conservation. I’m also passionate about environmental justice. In Florida, not every community has equal access to clean water, safe outdoor spaces, or well-maintained parks. That’s something I want to help change. Through my education, I’m learning how recreation and tourism can either harm or help communities, depending on how they’re managed. I want to be involved in creating solutions that make outdoor spaces more accessible while also protecting the environment. Everyone should have the opportunity to experience nature the way I did growing up. While I don’t have a background playing baseball or softball, the game has still had a meaningful impact on me. I loved going to Tampa Bay Rays games whenever I could at Tropicana Field. Living nearby made those experiences even more special. I didn’t grow up playing the sport, but I taught myself how to follow it by using the free scorecards at the games—carefully keeping track of each play and learning the rules along the way. It made me feel more connected, not just to the game, but to the crowd and the shared energy in the stadium. I also worked at Ferg's Sports Bar & Grill, the unofficial pre-game gathering spot, where I saw how much baseball brings people together. Those experiences showed me that athletics are about more than playing—they’re about community, belonging, and shared moments. That ties into my interest in overall health, including nutrition and physical activity. I believe that access to outdoor recreation and education about healthy living can make a real difference in people’s lives. Whether it’s through parks, community programs, or conservation efforts, I want to help create opportunities for people to stay active and connected to their environment. This scholarship means a lot to me because it honors someone who loved fishing and the outdoors—something I deeply relate to. The lessons I learned fishing with my dad in Lemon Bay are the same ones guiding my future: respect the environment, be patient, and leave things better than you found them. With my degree, I plan to turn those values into action by protecting natural spaces, supporting communities, and helping others build the same kind of connection to the outdoors that shaped me.