While the pandemic may have affected everyone's lives in a negative way, I believe it allowed me to fully understand how hard I actually work. While in online school, my teachers would just assign the work that needed to be done during the week and the students needed it done by the weekend. For me, the idea became more of an opportunity to have a long weekend. On Monday mornings, I would figure out what I needed to do for each class and get to work going one class at a time. I usually spent over 12 hours working Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday, I was done with all of my work for the week. Then, I had Thursday to Sunday for a weekend. While that was happening, my parents became concerned because it seemed that I gave myself no breaks. When I explained the situation to them, however, they realized my motivation and applauded me for it. They understood my reasons and chose to let me keep doing what I was doing. I believe that is when they learned that I was ready to work hard for college and beyond.

Pursuing higher education means that I am able to provide for myself as well as others. I want to pursue actuarial science as my major because I love math and cannot see myself doing anything else in the future. Also, the actuarial industry is a combination of computer science as well which is one of my passions as well. When I begin my career as an actuary, I will be immersed in the idea of paying off any loans or debts so that the financial burden may be lifted from myself. When that occurs, I will be intent on giving back to my community. I plan to live my life that is humble but dedicated to philanthropy. The skills that I learned from my extracurricular activities will help me with my future endeavors as well. This year, I have managed to stay involved in extracurricular activities through participating on the varsity track team and acting as a vocal member of my school's Outdoor Club. Through the track season, I have learned that pain is temporary and that you need to push through it sometimes to get where you want in life. The ultimate goal of track is to get from point A to point B as fast as you possibly can. Therefore, you need to prepare for the physical and mental strain that you will have to go through while getting to point B. The preparation and striving for goals allows me to be prepared to do the same in the future. By participating the the Outdoor Club, I am able to work together with others to find ways to help the environment. The club makes choices based on group participation so I am able to collaborate and make decisions along with other members. Also, the club strives to be immersed in nature as often as possible so I have gained an immense appreciation for nature as a result. However, these activities are just a small fraction of how I like to spend my time. Outside of my usual activities, I spend my time with my other passions as often as possible. These passions include reading, music, and spending time with friends. Ever since I was in middle school, I have found the amazing ability of imagination through reading. As I grew up, my library grew to an impressive size. As a matter of fact, I am sitting right in front of my full bookshelf right now and fantasizing about the stories stored within the pages on the shelf. However, I have a guitar hanging above my head as well. Guitar, or music in general, is one of my larger passions as well. I started learning the guitar when I was 13 and have never looked back since. Some days, I find myself sitting in my room listening to music and I try to pick out how each instrument sounds and how they all come together into a single, cohesive unit. Although, music does not seem as great if there is no one to share music with. When I spend time with friends, there is, more than likely, a radio playing something great in the background. That is not all we do, however. I have found a group of friends that makes everything we do so much better if it is done with one another. I feel fortunate that my life is able to provide me with so much goodness and the ability to share that goodness with the others around me.

I would say that my experience with smartphones has a mixed history. It seems that my smartphone is equally distracting and productive. Typically, I will check emails from colleges and look up useful information for school on my smartphone. But, after a while, it tends to become a tool used to waste time that I could be using productively. There are some days where I will sit and look at my phone for hours on end and there are others I will look at my phone for an extremely small amount of time. In the day-to-day, I will check my phone once before school starts to make sure I did not miss anything important (phone calls, special text messages, etcetera. After that, I will not check my phone until I get out of school. Then, if I have downtime before an after-school practice, I will take the time to respond to certain messages and check my emails for college and scholarship information. After I have practice, or on a day that I have no practice, I will go straight home without checking anything except to play music from my phone through my car speakers. After, I get home, it really depends on the day if I will spend time looking through social media before doing homework or just get right down to the nitty-gritty. Once, I get my homework done, I will check my phone every once in a while for message and I respond to them. Before bed, I will check one last time to make sure I did not miss anything and I may check the weather for the following morning. Finally, I will put my phone on its charger and fall asleep. Personally, I believe that my life tends to become centered around my phone on certain days. Most nights, I will be on my phone looking at whatever I can see or doing some last-minute research. Although research says that limiting screen time before bed can help with sleep, I think that it does not have that much of an effect on me, personally. But, I will not really know until I try it for myself. While I am driving, my phone does not have that much of a hold on me. When driving, I tend to push out distractions. I keep the "Do Not Disturb While Driving" feature on and rarely look in the general direction of my phone. The only time I will look at my phone while driving is to change the song playing since I cannot change that from my stereo. Although, I have caught myself responding to messages a few times while behind the wheel and immediately put it away. When I catch myself doing that, it scares me a little bit because I would think I had a good hold over my habits while driving when I still need to police myself sometimes. All in all, while I do try to keep myself focused on the task at hand, my fingers tend to gravitate toward my phone and I need to practice more self-control to keep myself from being consumed in the small screen in my hands. While the phone has had many advancements since its invention, the unlimited access that a smartphone provides can be both a blessing and a curse.

Personally, I have many movies that I love to watch. Although, I would say that my all-time favorite movie is Rocky IV. The reason is because it stands to prove that you can have everything (money, fame, fitness) but that does not mean that everything is possible you. Ivan Drago used scientific equipment and steroids to become the model athlete. What does Rocky do? He uses his smaller stature and quick feet to even out the playing field and come out on top. Also, the movie does a great job of showing Rocky's internal struggle with fighting Ivan by displaying the strain it puts on his family and friendships. The scene where he recollects all of the people that he lost on his way to the top and the memories that he made with them causes me to fully sympathize with him and become fully invested in the movie. The soundtrack, actors, and plot come together seamlessly and display each others' strengths to allow the audience to get the most out of their experience.

COVID-19 has changed the world that we live in in so many ways that there would not be a long enough list to name it all. For me, the virus has changed my work ethic. Like many other people around the world, my home state, Michigan, got closed down in mid-March. I went to school without problems until the weekend of March 12 where we would have a long weekend for "deep cleaning" of the building. Before long, that long weekend turned the rest of my junior year into online learning. With the way that my school did online learning, I did not have the drive to fully participate in what I was doing and I lacked motivation. But, after a week or two, I learned that most of my teachers gave out assignments at the beginning of the week to be turned in by a certain day of that week. My response to this knowledge was that I decided to do as much as I possibly could for the first few days of the week and have nothing to do by Friday. Typically, I did schoolwork for over 12 hours a day from Monday to Wednesday. Then, on Thursday and Friday, I would be all done with my work so that I could have a longer weekend. Instead of procrastinating, I seemed to do the opposite. I would say that is what I learned about myself. I learned that I tend to work too hard, rather than procrastinate and rush at the last minute. But, it did not seem that the world would try to work as I do. The world had travesty after travesty that was not always COVID-related. But, the thing I saw the most of was the shifting of blame from one person or party to another. It seemed that no one was able to own up to their mistakes. In a realization, I came to learn that was how the world worked sometimes. Sometimes, people had to try to save their own skins by giving people a new target to criticize and hate for the way things are. I saw more finger pointing than at a finger-gun contest and it made me sad to see this is how the world operates. It gave a new meaning to the "dog-eat-dog" world that we live in today. Although, I did see the good that came from the bad. I saw people acting in a way toward others in a way that I could only call Christ-like. While some people were hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer, others were giving it away to their neighbors with no intention of getting anything in return. Where some people would shove blame off to someone other than themselves, others were taking full responsibility for their mistakes and making sure that those mistakes did not happen again. In conclusion, I learned that the world is full of bad things. But, from all of the bad, good always seems to find a way to manifest itself in a way that others are able to visualize and emulate in their own lives.

2020 will remain in my mind as one of the craziest years that I have had in my life. So much happened in so little time. At the beginning of the year, it seemed like everything was normal. There were a few cases of COVID-19 in China but that was not on my mind. The year was an election year and I was thinking more about how the candidates were going to make their case for a better country. Also, I lived the normal life of a high school student. I had classes every day and had track practice after school like always. In February, things became more interesting with COVID spreading farther across the globe and the wildfires in Australia. Then, during the first few weeks of March, my school had us go home for a long weekend to deeply clean the building. That long weekend turned into online school for the rest of the year. During that time, I became close to glued to the news. Everyone is freaking out about COVID and there seems to be an opinion about everything that has to do with it. The months blurred together as online school became more of an inconvenience than an actual learning experience. I gained the mentality of doing my schoolwork purely so I do not fail. After school was done, I started to work for my dad, who is a private carpenter. I spent every day I could over the summer working for him and the hot days were welcomed since there was nothing else to do. I lived my life that way until mid-August where I was allowed to go to school in-person. In-person learning lasted for about three months and we were online again. I developed the same mindset and treated school like a small thing. We managed to start the spring semester in-person, luckily, and I am back to the new normal. With 2020 as crazy as it was, I learned one of the most important lessons in life. That lesson was to occupy your time with something productive. With this lesson in mind, I managed to use my time wisely. When I was not in class, I was working out or doing homework. I studied for tests again. I read books that interested me. Almost everything that I did, I did for the betterment of myself. I created a stepping stone for success in my future through learning about my strengths and weaknesses and turning my weaknesses into more strengths. Also, the experiences that I had in 2020 will stick with me until my dying day. Everyone will remember the big and bad things that happened in 2020. While I may remember those, I will, also, remember the times that I spent working and gaining work experience. I will remember having lunch while sitting in my car because I did not want to sit in the house anymore. Also, I will think of the times that I sat in the shade with a good book and read the afternoon away lazily. With all of the bad things that happened this year, we have to take the time to remember the things that made us happy and gave us the will to persevere. 2020 has caused me to learn about the past, remember the present, and prepare my future. With all of the free time 2020 had, regrettably, thrown into my lap, I could not help but start to think more seriously about my future. I began to research what I wanted to do and where I would go to earn what I want. Now, I can say with truth that I want to be an actuary. While the "where" in that scenario is still more of a mystery, I can say for certain that, wherever I go, I will be happy there. All of the times that have led me to this point in my life has given me a new sense of purpose and appreciation for the world around me. My hope is that I allow others to do the same in the future. 2020 may have been a crazy year, but the crazy part is how much it has changed me for the better.

My dad will always tell me to earn what I need to succeed. That is why he is my greatest inspiration. He owns a small business that has allowed me to go to a Catholic high school and I am truly grateful for what he has sacrificed to let me go to school there. His life has been hard but he has learned to rise up from the hardships that has plagued his life. I believe that I have inherited his drive to work to succeed. He has managed to succeed with what he had and is able to help me succeed with my goals in my life. But, I cannot have my goals if I do nothing. I have to get the great grades to get into a great college to get a great career where there are great opportunities for myself and for whomever should arrive in my life later. I credit my dad for many things. Although, without him, I wouldn't be me and not only in the physical sense.

This meme is funny to me because I am one of those cross country kids. Everyone I know that does not run always asks my why I like running or make jokes about running. It just instills everyone's view of people that run for fun in one single image. Also, I made this meme so it's all the more reason to like it.

While I take my life for granted sometimes, I know of one person that counts every blessing that comes his way. That person is my dad. My dad is the youngest of six kids with divorced parents. He worked his way through high school and went to school to become an architect. But, he changed his career path to carpenter when he took a job to help put himself through college. Now, my dad is the owner of a small carpentry business where he works alongside his employees every day. I have never seen him come home with energy. Also, when he is not working on the job, he is working at home drawing plans and writing estimates for potential customers. With all of the stuff that he does, he still takes time to spend time with his family. Even if we watch television together, I can tell that my dad loves every second of it. Through his example, I have learned more about living life than he will know. He taught me to earn what I want rather than look for handouts, listen when someone has something to say, the only to achieve your dream is to make it for yourself, and many others. He inspired the drive I have within me to succeed. In school, I am never caught giving anything other than my best in everything that I do. In my time out of school, I am seen working in one way or another. I run track and cross country and I have the drive to take a role of leadership and work as hard as I can to make myself better. In my future, all of the good things that happen in my life will have the credit where it is due. The things that I earn will be earned honestly and I will help those that cannot help themselves. But, most importantly, I plan to pass on his values to my children and, hopefully, their children. Sometimes people will say that I look a lot like my dad. But, I know that we share much more than genetics.

I learned to play chess when I was about seven or eight years old. My dad had gotten a glass chess set for Christmas and my older brother and I were curious on how chess was played. My parents taught us over the course of a couple days until we got the hang of it. Whenever we played each other, my brother would always win because I did not have a full grasp of the game yet and he is six and a half years my elder. Although he would always win, I started to understand how a small move made closer to the beginning of the game became the ultimate downfall of my king. My ultimate takeaway from chess is that your moves in the beginning must have just as much thought as midway through the game. The same can be applied to life. If someone wants to become the CEO of a company without taking a lower job at that company, they will not achieve your goal. Or, if that person wants to create their own wealth through a business, they will not gain the wealth they want without starting that business so that it will succeed. What people must understand is that others like them are competing in the same way. They are thinking out exactly how they will succeed in life before even setting out to get what they want. The world thrives off of people like that. Without those that think things through, there would be too many risks in life to get anything done or, more likely, get anything done right. That is where I plan to enter the scene for most people. In my future, I want to become an actuary. As an actuary, I can manage and explain the risk to those that think things through. I have made sure to think everything through about how I will get there as well. My ultimate goal is to attend Purdue University to get my degree in actuarial science. The degree combined with the university I get it from will make me very desirable to companies and Purdue's program to become an actuary is well-known for how well they prepare their students for the certification exams they have to take. Speaking of exams, in college, I plan to complete two or three exams before I graduate so that I will be prepared to have an entry-level actuary career somewhere. Although, my goals have not been completely centered around my career. In life, I plan to live as a loving husband and father. Although, those things are impossible to plan if the concept is truly thought about. Aside from the unplannable, I want to be known as one who is all ears to someone's problems and someone who acts with the principle of aiding others that are on worse times than I am. I know that helping others is a way of helping yourself by giving your time to someone else. Time is precious. The ultimate gift would be giving time to those that have no one else. It will give them the strength to give their time to those that have it even worse. The ripple effect will take place that will envelop the world to make it a better place for all. Chess has made a big impact in my life in that way. When I play a game of chess with someone else, regardless of the outcome, I am sharing my time with my opponent. When reflecting on those memories with them, the outcome does not tend to be the detail remembered the most. The time spent together is the true fruit of our labor in that aspect. So when I say that chess is a part of my life for the better, saying that chess shaped my life would be the more accurate statement.

What a person studies in college can have an extremely large impact in how they form as a person. I do not only mean the career someone chooses but the way that they live as a person. Someone who chooses to study in a math or STEM-related field may have a more logical outlook on life and look toward how to fix things wrong with the world. But, someone in a different major may see ways to view the world in a way that suits their studies. For me, I see the world as a place where everything has value. That is why I have chosen to study actuarial science in college. The reason I have chosen this major is because I want to become an actuary for a career and the major I have chosen will make me the most equipped for that career. With my education, I plan to help people see the world as I do and teach them how they can protect the value that they have. When they have that protection, they have peace of mind. When they have peace of mind, they are able to live their lives to the fullest.

A legacy means something that someone wants to be a part of. To leave a legacy means to give others an example of what to live like and causing those people to take part in those same events that caused the legacy in the first place. If someone lived as a good person that constantly gave to the poor, that person's legacy will cause others to want to live as they did and actually start to live that way. Those that take part in that legacy are doing so to honor that person and to leave a legacy of their own for more to follow in their footsteps. The main goal of a legacy is to be unending in the world and to always stand the test of time. The amount of kinds of valuable legacies are unfathomable. Each legacy that is left behind is as unique as the original person that left it behind. As long as there are people that walk this earth, there will be a never ending supply of legacies that will be as unique as the people that left them. The legacy that I want to leave is one of selflessness. I want to be known as someone who always had the time for others. Those that know me today know, at least I hope they do, that I will do anything that I can to help them if they need it. This could mean anything from helping them with homework, manual labor, or just stepping back and listening to what they had to say. I want to be seen as the person that you can talk to with no fear of criticism or driving me away from them. It will all be worth it if even one person chooses to live with the legacy I leave for the world.

That cross-country kid: "I like running!" smh

"Don't let people tear down in an instant what took you a lifetime to build up." I do not remember exactly when or where I saw that quote, but I remember immediately feeling that I had the means to keep a level-head and take criticism with open arms. Before, I always hated any form of criticism. Not even constructive criticism from a friend or parent. It was to the point where I would sit by myself and constantly think about where I went wrong. It always made me feel a lot worse than it should have. Now, I live with the attitude that allows me to take criticism without having to feel bad about myself. If I feel particularly bad about something, I take the time to do something that I like to do. The simple things that make me happy alter my mood instantly and I make the words that I hear or see become a capsule that contains my potential greatness. I think of criticism as a way to better myself and bring others to the fullness of their true potential in the world. The experiences that make me feel bad about myself, I have learned, have become the greatest catalysts for my growth as a person. I am grateful for the good that has come from the bad.

In 2019, my family and I went out west for two weeks over the summer. While the drive out there made my joints ache from not moving, the many hikes that followed were enough to cure my aches while replacing them with new ones. More than once I almost fell off one of the cliffs from unsure footing. But, I have no regrets.