I never knew my father which isn't really all that unique. Not having him wasn't exactly a loss since I didn't have anything to compare it to. He's still alive out there, somewhere, I assume. Having a single mother didn't bother me as a child because we lived with family. I was always around people. I didn't even have the sense that I lacked a father figure because my uncle was always around. He was my hero. He was my mom's best friend. He was also troublingly addicted to alcohol. I didn't realize that as a child. I was too busy being a child, running through the woods with my uncle, learning how to camp and hunt. How could the idea of "going without" even cross my mind when my childhood was so full of fun and adventure? I will always cherish those times. Those times couldn't last forever. Something I found out about loss was that it hollows you out in an unexpected way. I can't compare the full feeling of loss to anything else. Somethings just aren't like anything else. They are unique in a way that even if I knew every word in the English language, I would be unable to string them together in a coherent way that would fully do it justice. Loss is one of those things. I was twelve. I came home from school. I walked up my grandfather's drive way to his house on top of the hill. My uncle's truck was not there. Somehow, I knew exactly what that meant. I stood in the gravel driveway, feeling disconnected from my body. I had to go inside. I had to ask where he was. I don't know how long I stood there, grappling with the fact that yesterday we were talking about archery and it was the last time I would ever see him. I don't remember going inside but I do remember my great grandma telling me, "Daniel left. Just took his things and left. Said he was going to Alaska." Since then, my adolescence was haunted by this sense of loss, this feeling of lack. Things I hadn't ever thought about before suddenly felt empty. It was a needling feeling that only served to draw my attention to the hole in my life even more. It hurts less now. Somedays it feels heavier than others. Thinking about him still creates tension in my chest. He's still alive out there, somewhere, I assume. I hope at least. I can't be sure if it caused my mom or me more pain. I suspect it was far more painful for her than she allowed me to see. Family was so important to us back then. I want family to be important to us now. My uncle instilled in me a deep curiosity and a sense of compassion for all people. My uncle was not a perfect man. Going into the future, I want to carry with me the best traits I saw in him. Where he made mistakes, I will be better. I am going to fight for the happiness and stability of my family. I don't ever want my mom to cry over a man again. With the compassion and reverence for history that my uncle taught me, I will fight for accessible education and improved curriculums. My uncle always had a talent for bringing people together. I will do here what he did not; I will water the grass around me until the community can have a garden.

While I don't think that I can single-handedly reverse the course of climate change, I do believe we have an individual responsibility to live our lives in ethical ways, especially when it comes to the health of the planet we live on. The three things I try to focus on most are buying locally sourced foods, limited my driving, and limiting or at least recycling packaging waste. These three things are important because they are things that consumers participate in everyday. We all have to eat, we all have to commute, and we all have to deal with companies fighting to have the best, most interesting packaging for their products. When it comes to food, the factory farming industry is a huge contributor to pollution and water consumption. Most of the meat that people in the US eat has to be butchered on a fast-paced assembly line by underpaid workers, then frozen and shipped all over the US. The shipping alone put out large amounts of air pollution. It isn't just meat either. The agriculture industry also consumes large amounts of water and energy while needing to ship its products hundreds and hundreds of miles away to grocery stores. It's a small thing but I like to think buying from a local butcher and finding local farmer's markets helps offset the need for all this extra movement. Farmer's markets and local butcher create far less food waste, which means they aren't consuming as much water and energy to create an excess amount of food goods nor do they need to burn large amounts of fuel to move their product four states away. As for driving, I live in a rural area and it's necessary for me to drive into the city for work and school. The public transportation in the area is severely lacking as well. I drive a small Toyota because the Toyota brand tends to be more efficient and clean than some of the western car brands. When I do make it to the city, I like to park my car in a garage and do most of my travel on foot. It's much more time consuming but it saves me money, keeps me healthy, and puts just a little bit less pollution into the air. The most difficult part is probably dealing with all the packaging. I try to stick with brands that use glass or recycled paper packaging but I will also settle for recyclable plastics. In my household we really try to limit any sort of styrofoam because our local recycling center doesn't accept it. We also try to support brands that have some sort of sustainability initiative. For example, we use Camille Rose hair products because that company has worked with sustainability consultant Dr. Tanya Rawal to develop their One Step Matters sustainability plan. They also have a long standing partnership with One Tree Planted. I know that these are small things done by one household. It won't be enough to reverse climate change but the idea of a lone great man changing the world is a myth. Great things are achieved by many people, doing many small things.

While I don't think that I can single-handedly reverse the course of climate change, I do believe we have an individual responsibility to live our lives in ethical ways, especially when it comes to the health of the planet we live on. The three things I try to focus on most are buying locally sourced foods, limited my driving, and limiting or at least recycling packaging waste. These three things are important because they are things that consumers participate in everyday. We all have to eat, we all have to commute, and we all have to deal with companies fighting to have the best, most interesting packaging for their products. When it comes to food, the factory farming industry is a huge contributor to pollution and water consumption. Most of the meat that people in the US eat has to be butchered on a fast-paced assembly line by underpaid workers, then frozen and shipped all over the US. The shipping alone put out large amounts of air pollution. It isn't just meat either. The agriculture industry also consumes large amounts of water and energy while needing to ship its products hundreds and hundreds of miles away to grocery stores. It's a small thing but I like to think buying from a local butcher and finding local farmer's markets helps offset the need for all this extra movement. Farmer's markets and local butcher create far less food waste, which means they aren't consuming as much water and energy to create an excess amount of food goods nor do they need to burn large amounts of fuel to move their product four states away. As for driving, I live in a rural area and it's necessary for me to drive into the city for work and school. The public transportation in the area is severely lacking as well. I drive a small Toyota because the Toyota brand tends to be more efficient and clean than some of the western car brands. When I do make it to the city, I like to park my car in a garage and do most of my travel on foot. It's much more time consuming but it saves me money, keeps me healthy, and puts just a little bit less pollution into the air. The most difficult part is probably dealing with all the packaging. I try to stick with brands that use glass or recycled paper packaging but I will also settle for recyclable plastics. In my household we really try to limit any sort of styrofoam because our local recycling center doesn't accept it. We also try to support brands that have some sort of sustainability initiative. For example, we use Camille Rose hair products because that company has worked with sustainability consultant Dr. Tanya Rawal to develop their One Step Matters sustainability plan. They also have a long standing partnership with One Tree Planted. I know that these are small things done by one household. It won't be enough to reverse climate change but the idea of a lone great man changing the world is a myth. Great things are achieved by many people, doing many small things.

Coming from a family that lacks financial literacy and long term savings goals, I was already in my adult life when I realized how difficult managing money can be. Without very much money to begin with, allocating my funds properly quite literally determined whether or not I could eat on any given day. I tried all of the cost cutting things a poor person can do: couponing, meal prepping at home, driving a used car, sharing a tiny apartment with 3 other people, etc. It was enough to get by but I still struggled to meaningfully save up any money. Living this way was incredibly stressful and eventually even this became untenable. I'm not ashamed to say that my mother and I now share a place so that both of us can save money. We live outside of the city where rent is substantially cheaper. It saves us money in the long run even if we're paying more in gas. I want to break this generational curse of poverty in my family so I am pursuing a master's degree while working at a job that offers partial tuition reimbursement. I try keep my spending down to a reasonable amount while still being able to eat healthy food and participate meaningfully in classes. I have managed to save up a small amount of money that I intend to invest because I understand that while it's fantastic to have a good income from your employment, passive income is practically necessary in the economy today. There was a jarringly sharp learning curb on learning how to budget. I was a young adult with no guidance and no idea of how to even begin making a budget. Learning how to manage my money has helped me gain a more stable position in life as well as enforce boundaries with myself and others. I think it takes time to learn the discipline necessary to say no to yourself but also to let yourself spend money when it is a good idea. When I am more financially stable in life and settled into a stable career, I want to start a family. I want to be able to give my future child a stable, safe childhood where they don't have to worry about how the household will afford food or utilities. I want to teach them how to responsibly spend money before they graduate high school and face the real world.

I do hope that plays can be considered books because if I could have everyone read one book it would be Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House". There are many books I'd recommend such as Terrence Real's "How Can I Get Through to You". "A Doll's House" is much shorter and I'd hate to be rude by taking up too much of everyone's time. Both books contain useful insights into the concepts of identity and gender expectations. From my, albeit limited, understanding of the world, I would venture to say that most people have experience with identity and gender expectations. I've read "A Doll's House" at least 8 times and I still find new concepts to consider each time. I think many people in the world feel a disconnect between their societal role and their inner selves. In some circumstances, the discrepancy between what is expected and what is true can be so painful it feels like it's breaking your heart. The story of "A Doll's House" calls into question what one might sacrifice for the sake of preserving an image that is approved of by society. It's a story about people doing what they believe is the best possible thing they can do and still being perceived as immoral because their needs are at odds with societal expectations. If nothing else, I believe it is a comforting thought to know that stories like this have been written for a long time. It shows people that they are not alone with these feelings. It also shows that society can change and that there are people who have compassion for these feelings. Ibsen is considered the father of Realism. He wrote plays that he believed reflected reality. When "A Doll's House" was staged, the story caused so much outrage that Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending that better suited the sensibilities of Europe at the time. Today, the play is usually performed with the original ending. Today, playwrights have written continuations of the story that explore what could become of each character. Today, people are more able to consider who they want to be outside of their societal role.

I have always been quite thin so everyone has always assumed I'm quite healthy. Since health was talked about so synonymously with being thin, I didn't take much time to consider what was actually happening to my body. More often than not, I would forget to eat because I was too busy. I didn't really notice my body losing more and more weight. Eventually, the state of my body became untenable. I was always cold. Standing up too quickly made my vision black out. I was so thin my ribs began sticking out. Despite existing in this body every day of my life, I was shocked one day when I looked in the mirror and notice how skeletal my arms looked when I wore short sleeved shirts. I was in denial for a short time. Problems like this just didn't happen to me. After all, I didn't have an eating disorder. I was just forgetful and busy. Even if I told myself these things, the fact remained that I was anemic and underweight. In an effort to take my health more seriously, I began setting alarms to remind myself to eat. I picked up hiking as an occasional hobby. Then, a family friend invited me to the dojo she attends. I thought I would go just to say that I did and then drop the subject. I enjoyed the exercise so much I barely realized that I just kept going until I was attending 11 classes a week. With some advice from the senior students, I changed my diet to better suit the kind of work we were doing. Since starting martial arts, I've gain approximately 20 pounds. More than just the physical benefits, I've found a very welcoming community of people who are very knowledgeable and always willing to offer advice. The dojo I attend is well connected in the martial arts realm so we have the privilege of having several skilled teachers visit us from other schools to teach us about their arts. I've had the opportunity to study Filipino Martial Arts, Isshin-Ryu Karate, and Toyama-Ryu Iaido. Each of these arts holds an important cultural significance which influenced my decision to pursue a graduate program. I came into the dojo expecting very little and then I had a life changing experience. Martial arts led me to care more about my body and to take my diet much more seriously. Beyond that, it sparked a curiosity in me which led me to study history, language, and anthropology in a much more profound way than I did in my undergraduate program.

I was feeling rather lost in life. I suppose that's how a good number of life changing moments start. I had just finished my undergraduate program in the midst of a pandemic. It wasn't the ideal time to change careers. Without college classes taking up my time, I could finally read the small pile of books I had that was doing its best to become a mountain. "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess" was just another book in the pile. I bought it on a whim because it seemed interesting and had a nice cover. I suppose that's how lots of people end up with life changing books. The book managed to touch on such a wide range of topics; history, philosophy, linguistics, and more. Its main focus was finding correlations between written language and the social and religious positions of women in society, which at first may sound oddly niche. I found myself delighted by every page. I became swept up in the flood of facts and stories written in such a compelling rhythm that the book never once felt boring or overly technical. I wanted to write like Leonard Shlain. This book taught me so much about such a variety of topics and it reignited my curiosity to learn more. I would credit this book with being the reason I applied to a graduate linguistics program. I hadn't even finished the book when I began writing my application essay. The flood gates were open and I ended up writing 16 page application essay on how ancient cultures used writing as propaganda. The research was so fun that I had to make a deal with myself to stop when my studies reached the year 0 in the historical narrative. While I had always enjoyed learning, I had never been so swept up in a subject before. I think this is a form of falling in love. If I had not read this book, I may have never considered subjects such as linguistic anthropology or the philosophy of language. If I had not read this book, I think I would have a little less love in my life. I may never have felt such racing excitement in doing a marathon of academic study. I want to spend my life with this kind of love. I hope that one day, after a great amount of effort and care, I can write a book that puts this kind of love into someone else's heart.

When I finally finished my undergrad in 2021, I was so energized and full of motivation. I had a plan. I had a degree. I had a job overseas. Unfortunately, the world was still suffering from the pandemic. Travel was difficult and recession was a looming fear. I tried to stay resilient as I watched my best laid plans crumble. I couldn't afford the flight ticket, my entry visa was only good for a couple months, and the requirements for travel were volatile. I was devastated when I had to give up my contract. I knew I wouldn't be able to have the life I was dreaming of at that moment. Unwilling to sit around and wait out the situation, I decided to apply for a graduate program. If I wasn't able to go teach overseas at the moment, I was going to work to become an even better teacher when the opportunity rose again. In 2022, was accepted into a graduate program for linguistics. With my first semester scheduled for the beginning of 2023, I began studying on my own time so I would be well prepared for the semester. I decided I was going to be resilient. I used to be the kind of person that would give up if my plan didn't work out. Plan A rarely ever works out. I didn't want to be the kind of person who would give up so easily and just accept their situation. I began thinking of long term goals in 2022. I saved money, paid down my student loans, and created a budget to finance this next academic step in my life. In order to keep a healthy balance in my life, I created a schedule which enabled me to work, study, participate in sports, and help my family. Through this incredibly uncertain and hectic time, I'm proud to say that I've kept myself together and worked on my goals. I've realized that if I take care of myself, I can take better care of those most important to me. Despite being busy, I've also become more present in the lives of my friends and family. I want to continue improving my life not just for myself but also for those I love. My friends and family have remained so very supportive through this entire journey and I want to show them how much that means to me by making the most of everything I have.

I come from a small town and a family with very little financial literacy. I didn't understand the gravity of the situation when I was growing up. I thought that this was just how the average American lived; only heating one room in the winter and buying clothes second hand. I was a teenager when a recession shocked the states. I remember it feeling very surreal because I was already living off of so little. The soaring gas prices caused me some anxiety but my life remained relatively unchanged because I was too poor to have anything to lose in a recession. Toward the end of my adolescence, I had such a bleak outlook on the world. I just assumed I would be poor forever and work until my body fell apart with no hope of retirement because that's just how things worked out in my family. I struggled to stay in college. It took me approximately 8 years to finish my undergrad because I didn't have the money to have a stable living arrangement. After a decent amount of therapy and self-help, I began to think that maybe I wasn't doomed to play out this role of impoverished worker forever. I started to take my classes more seriously and I made a budget. It was often disappointing that I couldn't afford to go out every time my friends wanted to but I managed to save some money. I started really taking care of my car because preventative care was far cheaper than buying another car. Once I started forming habits like that, my budget became a little easier to manage and I felt less anxiety. This lifestyle has come with a lot of sacrifices but by carefully living well within my means, I've managed to save a decent chunk of money and put me in a position to pursue a graduate degree. I want to break the cycle for my family. I think building generational wealth means that I have to make very careful decisions. I believe I can build generational wealth even with a modest income if I carefully invest and create strong connections in my family. If breaking the cycle means my mom and I live together, I think that's good. Families should support each other. Neither of us would let the other struggle unnecessarily. I hope that by keeping my cost of living so low and making my money work for me, I can one day have children who won't struggle the way I did. I believe generational wealth is about more than just money. I believe it comes with teaching your kids about finances from a young age so they're not completely naive as young adults. I want the next generation of my family to go into the world with a sense of stability, rather than having anxiety about how they might afford groceries. It's about more than just income. It's about your entire lifestyle and building a routine that you can handle.

It might be a small miracle that I grew to love education the way I do. I spent my childhood in a small town with an underfunded school and an outdated curriculum. It was the kind of town that only a few high school graduates ever leave. Most of the people that were born there will die there. I think that kind of life is perfectly respectable if that's what you want but I wanted to see the world. By the time I was in high school, my home life had fallen apart. It was a blessing and a curse. My mom sent me away to live with my aunt in a big city in Florida. I expected to feel some culture shock and the strangest thing was it never came. I felt more at ease in this big, diverse community than I ever did in my small town. I was only there for a single semester before the family instability uprooted my life again. Three high schools and one very intense summer semester later, I graduated high school with no idea how to integrate into the real world. I had no passions, no discipline, and no belief in the future. I struggled to stay in college sometimes because of depression but more often because of financial hardship. In what roughly amounted to my junior year of college, I got tired of just doing things because I thought that's what people were supposed to do. This was when the small miracle happened. There was no grand moment or revelatory conversation with a professor. There was just this moment when I looked at myself and realized I wasn't displaying any of the characteristics I valued. It was a small moment when I thought, "I don't have to live like this anymore." I didn't wake up the next day and just love learning. It was a slowly built love. I began taking my classes more seriously, investing in the subject as opposed to just getting a passing grade. The more I learned the more I realized how interconnected every subject is. Philosophy changed religion which changed politics which changed architecture and so on. I took as many classes as I could for the remaining time I had in undergrad and I studied any subject that interested me in my own time. Eventually, I realized I could read thousands of books but if that knowledge stopped with me, it wasn't doing very much. I began to deliberate so much about what to do that I paralyzed myself with indecision. I wonder if my martial arts instructor understood what I was feeling because one day he offered to let me lead the kid's class. The more classes I taught the more reverence I had for the skills of teaching. I couldn't just blandly tell this group of kids what to do. I had to make them excited to learn, give them opportunities to build self-esteem, and figure out how to collaborate with each student. I earned a minor in teaching English as a second language and now I am pursuing a graduate program in linguistics. According to government data, the percentage of English language learners in U.S. public school is around 9.2% to 10.4%, with more students identifying as ELLs in lower grades. Many of these students come from immigrant households. Often times, these students need extra support to succeed in academic programs taught in English. I believe that language is a useful tool to accessing opportunities. Given that English is assigned more value in business and higher academia, students would greatly benefit from having a good command of it. I want to focus on students who need this kind of extra support with language because I think education should be widely accessible.

Due to financial struggles and the mistakes that come with being young and inexperienced, I was in and out of college for 8 years. I struggled through depression and poverty while trying to stay in school. Finally, I finished my undergraduate program when I was 28. Despite being in and out of academia several times, I never stopped learning. I love studying history, philosophy, and language. Eventually my love of learning became a love of teaching. It became my dream to teach English overseas, preferably in a country that sorely needed educators. I felt that teaching English would be a great first step into teaching other subjects as well. Unfortunately, when I graduated, the world was suffering from the pandemic and travel was out of the question. I had so much motivation since I had finally accomplished graduating. I didn't want to give up so I decided to take some time and improve myself as a potential instructor. I was accepted into a graduate program where I will study more about teaching English as a foreign language as well as the conservation of endangered languages so that when I do go overseas, I will be able to teach English effectively and work on preserving native languages. I feel that despite any of the hardships I have faced, I have lead a very privileged life. I believe, maybe sometimes even naively, that education is the best way to improve the world. I believe that so strongly that I want to learn as much as I can so that I can take all of that knowledge into any classroom and find a way to get the students interested. I want to be so excited about the subject I'm teaching that the classroom can't help but get a little swept up in the momentum. I want the students to go home and tell their families even just one thing that they thought was cool because I believe that's the beginning of how people find their passion in life. I might have found my passion a little earlier if I had been exposed to more ideas like that. A good education means that people don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. A good education means that I can take knowledge that's been built up over hundreds of years and communicate it to several people over a comparatively short period of time. That's how the world gets even better ideas.