Throughout high school, community service has always been something that I am very passionate about. I have been fortunate to be able to serve my community in many ways, my favorite of which was my first community service experience with The Michigan Santa House. The Michigan Santa House is a not for profit organization that offers a free opportunity during the Christmas season for kids to see Santa Claus. While they are visiting Santa Claus, kids are able to tell him their Christmas lists and receive a small gift from Santa himself. While volunteering my time at the Santa House, my objective was to dress as an elf and assist Santa by entertaining the children in line waiting to meet him. Because of my work, the children further enjoyed their trip to come see Santa and had an even more joyful Christmas season. I am glad to serve this organization with my time every Christmas season. This opportunity allowed me to get more than thirty hours of service for the children who wanted to meet their biggest hero, Santa Clause. I chose this opportunity to write about because I believe it had the biggest impact on me. Being able to see that I personally was able to make the lives of others better was the reason I decided to keep serving my community outside of the Christmas season. When Santa was gone, I looked for opportunities around my school where I could serve. This led me to a multitude of places where I could directly help the members of my school and community. Some of my opportunities included tutoring, volunteering to help with Track and Field meets, and an opportunity with the NFHS sports recording and streaming chapter at our school. All of these opportunities made me feel better as a person. I felt as though I was a part of something bigger and was actually making a difference in the lives of people. As well as the fulfilling feeling that volunteering gave me, I also learned many life skills that have served me very well. In almost every opportunity that I've had, I've learned how teamwork and working together to make something happen is extremely important. These experiences have also taught me how to better communicate with superiors and those I'm directly working with to make working a lot easier. Finally, the multiple volunteering opportunities that I have had have taught me to see the perspectives of others and to understand that the ideas of others can make everything even better. Overall, I'm very thankful that I decided to go dress up as a goofy elf. That crazy experience has changed my life forever for the better.

No matter what you do, keep working your tail off. That's what my dad always tells me. Looking at it now, that is the very best piece of financial information that I have ever received. Is my dad just trying to motivate me to excel in school by saying this? Most likely yes, but it also motivates me in my personal life. His words inspiring me to work hard are the reason I work hard to run a small business. Because I run my small business, I have personal experience with managing money. Though the money I manage is on a minuscule scale, I have learned the basic foundations of paying off debts that I incur, working to run my business on less than what it makes, and earning money that I worked my tail off for. Each of these principles that are used to run my business will apply to my own life in the future. I will have to live on less than I make so that I won't take on debt. I will have to pay off debt possibly in the form of student loans, a car payment, or a mortgage. Knowing what I do now about debt payments will help me to be knowledgeable on how to make future payments. The working experience, though different from the line of work I will do in the future, has shown me that you need to work hard to meet your financial goals. All of these important financial lessons; just because my dad told me to keep working my tail off.