I live in Austin, Texas in the South Congress neighborhood. Growing up in South Austin has inspired my love of music and vintage clothes. I have attended St. Andrews Episcopal School since the first grade, I am thankful to have made life long friends there. I have played soccer since the age of 4 and love spending time pursuing a number of other sports including rock climbing/ bouldering, weightlifting, and volleyball. I also enjoy writing and especially poetry. Recently I received a national award for my creative writing. Having lived in Austin, Texas my entire life, I am excited to go to college in another part of the country and have applied to lots of diverse colleges schools across the country. In college I hope to gain the skills to become an entrepreneur, and start a business that helps people become healthier and happier through physical fitness. Here is a writing sample I wrote about my Mom, Shauna Martin, who is a lifelong advocate for those affected by breast cancer. I have helped her raise lots of money for breast cancer organizations, and I plan to continue to help her as she launches her new foundation focused on the needs of women like her with metastatic breast cancer. Here is an essay I wrote about the impact that she has had on my life: Many of the people I have surrounded myself and grown up with have had a different idea of family life and family values than I have. My Mom, Shauna Martin, has had complicated underlying health issues my whole life due to her being diagnosed with stage two breast cancer on my first birthday and re-diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast cancer when I was thirteen. While I would say this changed my life and shaped me into the person I am today, I cannot because it has been present my whole school career and my whole teenage experience. I can say that my school experience and idea of family life and values have been significantly different from my peers because of my mom’s illness. From as early as I can truly remember, my sense of making time for my family was heightened compared to my fellow peers. While my peers could look at their family in a sound and non-moving way, I didn’t share the same luxury. I have always had to deal with the fact that my mom could be taken away from me at any given moment, making every moment I could spend with my Mom that much more important. As a result of my Mom’s diminishing health, I made the conscious decision to limit my social calendar, because I wanted to spend more time at home. This has ultimately been a blessing, because the fewer relationships I could maintain became deeper and stronger then they would have been if I had had the same social calendars as my peers. My mom has always inspired me through her perseverance not only to stay alive, but to try and create a better life for me with the time she has left. I try to model her tenacity and bravery in every endeavor that life may throw at me. All the way from the pewee swim team to my first day of high school and beyond. While everyone may have times in their life where they need perseverance to get through, not everyone has the right tools and may just not know how. The battle that my Mom faces everyday with a terminal disease gives me the strength to know that I can persevere through life.