I've always been the child sitting alone in the lunchroom. I am a member of the LGTBTQ+ community and thus have received hate and discrimination in my school and in society. I have been through so much in my short time on this earth, and some days are much more difficult than others. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression about a year and a half ago, but I hid from others for much longer. Even though some days it's near impossible to simply get out of bed, it has never permanently held me down. I have been forced to have a resilience like no other. For a brief background, both of my biological parents have passed, and my legal guardian's husband also passed away. It truly is like losing 2 parents. The death of my legal guardian/"father" was definitely the death that hit me the hardest, as I was the oldest and best understood it at that point. My legal guardian was also diagnosed with cancer over the summer. I don't want to tell a sob story, but these traumas, among others, have definitely put my resilience to the test. While it was difficult, I always managed to push through, for which I am grateful. I know many people also in very difficult situations, who seem to have given up or have turned to unhealthy habits as a coping mechanism, so I know that if anyone had been put in my situation, not all of them would have been able to push through. I have learned to use my traumas as a well to propel me forward, in fact. When I think about my lost loved ones, I push myself harder to be the best version of me, and the version I wish they would have gotten to see. They may not still be here, but I have to be able to bounce back from their losses so that I can live for them. My legal guardian/mother may not be at her healthiest, so I have to be able to bounce back and be healthy and live my best life for her. I know I haven't been dealt the best cards in life, but it does no good to dwell on them. Psychology has always been something of great interest and as my mental health struggled, my interest in why I act the way I do has thrived. It has taken some time to discover what degree best suits my interests, and my interest in psychology developed into an interest in helping people like me, and into pursuing a degree in human services. I want to either become a social worker or a counselor. I hope this will allow me to help people the way I wish someone would have helped me. Hopefully, I will be able to help people overcome grief and mental health illnesses or addiction and to give clients some of the resilience I have developed for these situations. I have pushed through loss, dealt with grief, and fought back against hate for simply being who I am, yet I have thrived from it. I have learned how to adapt. It's a unique and difficult skill that not all people have, nor should anyone be expected to have, but I am thankful to be able to push through all the obstacles thrown at me. I hope to someday be able to help others in the same way my own resilience has helped me.

I've always been the child sitting alone in the lunchroom. I am a member of the LGTBTQ+ community and thus have received hate and discrimination in my school and in society. I have been through so much in my short time on this earth, and some days are much more difficult than others. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression about a year and a half ago, but I hid from others for much longer. Even though some days it's near impossible to simply get out of bed, it has never permanently held me down. I have been forced to have a resilience like no other. For a brief background, both of my biological parents have passed, and my legal guardian's husband also passed away. It truly is like losing 2 parents. The death of my legal guardian/"father" was definitely the death that hit me the hardest, as I was the oldest and best understood it at that point. My legal guardian was also diagnosed with cancer over the summer. I don't want to tell a sob story, but these traumas, among others, have definitely put my resilience to the test. While it was difficult, I always managed to push through, for which I am grateful. I know many people also in very difficult situations, who seem to have given up or have turned to unhealthy habits as a coping mechanism, so I know that if anyone had been put in my situation, not all of them would have been able to push through. I have learned to use my traumas as a well to propel me forward, in fact. When I think about my lost loved ones, I push myself harder to be the best version of me, and the version I wish they would have gotten to see. They may not still be here, but I have to be able to bounce back from their losses so that I can live for them. My legal guardian/mother may not be at her healthiest, so I have to be able to bounce back and be healthy and live my best life for her. I know I haven't been dealt the best cards in life, but it does no good to dwell on them. Psychology has always been something of great interest and as my mental health struggled, my interest in why I act the way I do has thrived. It has taken some time to discover what degree best suits my interests, and my interest in psychology developed into an interest in helping people like me, and into pursuing a degree in human services. I want to either become a social worker or a counselor. I hope this will allow me to help people the way I wish someone would have helped me. Hopefully, I will be able to help people overcome grief and mental health illnesses or addiction and to give clients some of the resilience I have developed for these situations. I have pushed through loss, dealt with grief, and fought back against hate for simply being who I am, yet I have thrived from it. I have learned how to adapt. It's a unique and difficult skill that not all people have, nor should anyone be expected to have, but I am thankful to be able to push through all the obstacles thrown at me. I hope to someday be able to help others in the same way my own resilience has helped me.

Women have been fighting for their rights long before I was even born, and I have many amazing trailblazing women to thank for getting us where we are today, even though the battle is not completely won. To me, feminism is women supporting women. Not just women supporting women, but anyone supporting women's rights and fighting for what women deserve. Feminism is women feeling safe and confident in themselves no matter where they are. This is an ongoing battle. Women shouldn't have to be afraid to walk the streets, but at least we can vote, right? Wrong. While I am proud of all the progress the women before me have made, we still aren't where we need to be. My legal guardian is very inspirational to me, and she has greatly impacted my feminist views. I call her my mom, as she is the woman who raised me and has been my maternal figure for nearly all of my life. She may not consider herself a feminist, but she is most definitely not the stereotypical picture of a woman. This woman is strong, both mentally and physically. In addition to being a "small-town country girl", she also practically raised her and her sister from a very young age and grew up poor. She adopted those I consider my siblings and she has custody of and raised me. She also lost her husband of over 30 years about 8 years ago, but despite this, she pushed through to be a mother to her children. In addition to her other traumas, she won her battle with breast cancer this year, and I have never been more proud. Despite all this, she has still always been there to be the best mom she can be, and I am so grateful to have a woman like her in my life. In my eyes, she is the very definition of feminism, and she is the type of strong, independent woman I hope to be one day. I am very proud to get to call this amazing, trailblazing woman my mother, no matter how legal the term may be. I come from a very small, mostly agricultural community, where everyone knows everyone and helps everyone. This makes it easy to not just help women, but my entire community. I aid in the feminist movement regularly in somewhat smaller, yet still impactful ways. I do everything in my power to help other women in need and make sure they are cared for. Many people tell me I am an inspiration to others, especially my little niece, whose actions match many of my own, and make me very proud. I hope to be an inspiration to other young girls like her. In addition, I am a member of the LGBTQ community and have my own traumas, and have to work just a little harder every day to push through. However, I refuse to let my traumas don't stop me from being the best woman I can be.

When I think about myself, on the surface, I am smart, pretty, and mature, but I know I am so much more than that. I am also open-minded, dependable, and individualistic. Being open-minded has always been one of my strongest qualities. While I do have my own way of doing things, I am always open to other people’s ideas and opinions. This has always helped me immensely when working on group projects because this allows me to be inclusive of other people I’m working with. I know what it’s like to be the odd one out and I don’t want to ever make other’s feel that way, so being open-minded gives everyone else the opportunity to share their opinions as well. Open-mindedness also gives me the opportunity to learn in new ways or to learn new skills, which ensures my mind is constantly growing and I am constantly introduced to good change, which can help me develop as a person. This is something that will benefit me for my entire life. Another great trait of mine is that I am dependable. If someone needs help with anything, big or small, they know they can turn to me. If I say I’m going to do something for someone, I do it. I like being dependable, because I get the chance to prove myself time after time. All my friends and even adults know they can depend on me to get everything done as efficiently as possible and to the best of my ability. I believe this will help me throughout my life, because I know I can be depended on, and it is what makes me trustworthy. Whenever I am put in a situation where I am not able to perform my best, my dependability gives me the slight leeway I need to recoup so I can continue giving my best. Being a dependable student in high school is a very good trait to have. I was once in a situation where one of my teachers was made aware of the possibility that she’d have to go home due to a family situation, and this teacher pulled me aside and trusted me with the lesson plans in case they did have to go home. My dependability also proved to be very useful earlier in this school year when I had to miss a lot of school due to my mom having a very important surgery. I had to prioritize my family and my mother’s health, but all my teachers trusted me to get caught up as soon as possible despite this hardship. While I believe that my open-mindedness and dependability are very important traits, they have helped me be very individualistic. My independence is my greatest trait of all. While I have so many good traits, they all lead to me being entirely my own person. Each new skill I learn while being open-minded does not make me more like everyone else. With each new skill I learn, I make it my own and I do not strive to meet everyone’s standards. I am not like many people around me, and many have seen me as an outcast, or weird, but I am proud of that “weirdness”, because it is not truly “weirdness” at all. It is instead me being truly myself. I do not strive for good grades because it is expected of me; I get good grades because that is what I want for myself. I am not dependable because people want me to be; I am dependable because I like the feeling of knowing I am helping people.

I always help out my community to the very best of my ability. From volunteering at annual events, helping the community by making people feel seen, or offering to babysit or housesit for people in the community. Each year, I try to volunteer at the Eastman Annual Hog roast each year, which is an event run to help raise money for the volunteer fire station in the small town of Eastman, WI. My brother-in-law is a volunteer firefighter at that station, so it is near and dear to my heart, and I always do everything I can to help them out during their yearly events. Recently, I was doing a fruit sale fundraiser for FFA, and when I stopped at the home of one of my regular stops for fundraisers, they recommended me to one of their neighbors, of whom I have never stopped. I always worried about annoying people by asking them to buy from me, but when I stopped at the recommended person’s home, I learned that it had been years since anyone had stopped at their home for a fundraiser, and they missed people stopping by. I didn’t realize how much even just stopping door to door, especially to the elderly people in town, warmed their hearts, and they were usually eager to help my cause, or even just donate extra money. All summer, I babysit my sister’s children, and she recommended me to one of her friends, of whom is typically home by herself with her 3 children, as her husband travels for work. I now occasionally babysit this woman’s children, as well as I housesat for her for 2 weeks this past summer while her family was on vacation. Some of her neighbors still praise me and say she loved my housesitting job, and I’m ecstatic to hear about how much I was able to positively impact her, as well as the whole town. I am glad that word of my good reputation is spreading, and I plan to keep that reputation and further help my community. I’m eager to help out my community, and I plan to do everything in my power to continue to help the community, even as I pursue my education. I plan to do of the same I have been doing, as well as to even put some money into the community rather than just actions to help. I love my community, and I want to do my best to help them.

Why is it important to study the nature of the universe? The study of the nature of the universe is essential to mann kind for so many reasons. Without studying the universe, we wouldn’t know where we came from, what is essential to life, and we wouldn’t know any of the sciences and technological advancements we know now. Whether we know it or not, studying the universe is essential to mankind. It is very important to understand where we came from. We know that the human race has evolved from Neanderthals, but without studying our universe, we never would have known that. Our closest relatives are chimpanzees, sharing around 99% of our DNA with them, which we also wouldn’t know without studying nature. This knowledge gives us a great and humane way to understand ourselves. Studying the universe also helps us understand what we need to survive, and what is essential to life. We now know we need oxygen, a good atmosphere, the perfect temperature, for life to be supported on a planet. The only confirmed planet that can support life is earth, but with these studies we should soon be able to identify another planet that can support human life. Studying the universe, we have also learned that, in our own solar system, Venus and Mars might be able to support life. We have also identified planets in distant galaxies which may be able to support life. This could come in handy when our Sun burns out, or Earth is no longer habitable. Studying the universe will help us find possible future alternatives. If we didn’t know how the Earth and the Universe worked, we would not have many of the advancements in technology that we have today. If we didn’t understand how the universe worked, we wouldn’t know what would make a rocket survivable under our galaxy’s conditions. We wouldn’t know how to make energy efficient machines, or how to detect the atmosphere and how our actions are affecting it. Understanding the nature of the earth affects almost every technological advancement we have made. I believe it is so important to understand the world around us for all three of these reasons and so many more. The world around us is all that we have. It is everything we have. The universe makes up everything around us and it is essential to human life to understand it all.

Learning is critical to me for many reasons. Education promotes the quality of life, ties directly into my values, well-being, and quality of life, as well as helps develop critical thinking, and helps to promote gender equality by giving women such as myself more control over their own lives. I plan to use my mistakes and life experiences to guide me forward and educate me throughout my life, even once I’ve finished school. As an upcoming first-generation college student, I know better than most how important college is, because I want to make a better life for myself. In my family, everyone’s education thus far has ended with high school. Some of my family is doing okay financially, but others are struggling. I don’t want to just barely get by in life, I want a good education so I can get a high-paying job to help me make the most of my life. Sure, money isn’t everything, but I don’t want the burden of financial struggles on my shoulders. I truly believe lifelong learning ties into the quality of life because of these reasons. Education also aids in the development of essential critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is so important to everyone. It helps us better understand ourselves, allowing us to focus on our strengths and learn our negative behaviors, and how to prevent them. Critical thinking allows us to make decisions based purely on facts, which is important so we don’t make biased decisions. Critical thinking is an important skill to have, and learning throughout your life allows you continuously develop critical thinking, as well as other important problem-solving skills. In addition, lifelong education, especially for women, is important for gender equality. In history, women were only expected to be good mothers and housewives. Even today, men are still seen as the breadwinners, and I want to break that stigma. Lifelong education ties into gender equality for this as well, because the more we learn, the more successful we can be. It also gives women more control over their own lives. We can use our education to do things for ourselves, instead of relying on a man and his money. The more women learn, the more successful we can be. Even once we graduate high school and college, that doesn’t mean we stop learning. There are always learning opportunities in the workplace and at home with our family. Nobody is perfect and everybody makes mistakes, but we can also choose to learn from them and let those mistakes guide us in moving forward. Education doesn’t stop once we graduate, and we need to continue to exercise our brains and learn throughout our entire lives. In conclusion, education is important in so many ways, but developing critical thinking, gender equality, and improving quality of life are the most important to me. I will use every opportunity to learn something new throughout my life. Education will not end for me once I leave school.

In the current times, we’re in, I wish to see not only the end of all discrimination but the promotion of peace. All you see on the news nowadays are depressing stories of discrimination, politics, and violent crimes. Many of these violent crimes are even hate crimes based on someone’s culture, race, sexual identity, etc. There is discrimination around every corner. The news is filled with the Black Lives Matter movement or discrimination against other cultures and the LGBTQ+ community. I’m tired of hearing about all this discrimination day after day. I don’t think anyone who discriminates would like for the people they are discriminating against to turn around and treat them the same way. It simply isn’t fair. It is not who we are supposed to be as American people. We can do better than this. We know better than to discriminate. As a lesbian, I have experienced this discrimination firsthand. Since coming out, I have lost many friends, and everyone treats me differently. I hear homophobic slurs towards me from people I used to call my best friends. Even certain teachers have shown discrimination towards me. The school system is supposed to be a place to learn, not where you are discriminated against for your color, who you identify as, or who you love. It is extremely frustrating to be seen so much differently or be treated differently because of who I am. When we are young children, one of the first things we are taught is to treat others how we want to be treated. Where is it fair for us to teach our children this, but then discriminate against other people because of their color, gender identity, etc? We should follow the same principles that we teach our children. I know what it is like to be discriminated against, and because of this, I wish to pursue a career in human services. Depending on where life takes me in the next several years, my main goal is to become a counselor or therapist to help people who face discrimination and other mental health issues. Even if becoming a counselor becomes unachievable for me, I want my career to help people to the very best of my ability. This is something I have strived at for a very long time, especially with the direction society is taking, and I believe it is very important for me to be able to provide help to those in need.

All my life, I have been battling hardships. When I was four years old, my mother died. When I was six, my dad passed as well. I was lucky enough for a family I had known my whole life to take custody of me. Unfortunately, at nine, the father of that family suffered a massive heart attack and passed as well. Although to the legal system these were not my parents, I always took it as a second father had died. No child should have to lose 3 parents in their life, especially at such a young age, but that is precisely what happened to me. Due to losing so many people in my life, I really struggled to make and keep friends. I also struggled with not having a father figure in my life. Dealing with these losses has made me realize that I can't take anything for granted and I need to make the most out of my life. I work my hardest to be the best student I can possibly be, and am always taking educational opportunities to better my future. I do this because I want to be successful and be able to make a decent living, and then use that money to travel and have fun. In addition to working hard to be an aspiring student, I also take any opportunities to have fun and live my life. I typically try to tag along with my sister and her family on outings and family vacations, and I try to go on trips with my friends. Despite all the hardships I've suffered, I let it guide me in moving forward, and it has taught me to not let these hardships hold me back and to make the best of my life.