The most challanging thing for me about the combination between being a student and a single parent is time and money. I work a full time job to pay the bills and often have to work overtime. I usually only have the money for my bills and a very strict budgeted amount of food. I have to make crafts and do photography to pay for school and while I have qualified for a pell grant it doesnt pay for all of the tuition. I sometimes feel like I dont have enough time to spend with my kids because I spend a lot of the extra time I have working on my school work or helping them with theirs. It has been a lifelong dream of mine to get a degree, and I feel like being able to acheive this will not only give me the opportunity to make more money but also to maybe one day have a career doing something I love. I hope that it will also give me the ability to work from home more and to spend more time with my kids and to be able to provide them with more opportunities in life. I also hope that they see that I never gave up, the importance of education and perserverance. I also hope that they will have the same drive to better themselves in every aspect of thier lives. I believe this is the way that this scholarship and other scholarship opportunities will help me pave the way in for my own future and the future of my children. I am a single mom of 4 kids and two of them are still in school. I also homeschool them and I feel a lot of pressure from that as well to make sure that they are getting the best education they can. So I spend a lot of my extra time planning that as well. I feel that watching me work so hard on my education and my degree in something I love has inspired my 10 year old to love learning too. Recently watching me create art projects in photoshop for my degree has led him to start asking me to teach him photoshop. The excitement he has when we do those lessons and the love of learning and his love for art that he has inherited from me makes every sacrafice I have taken to earn this degree worth it. It brings me joy when he comes to me to show me the things he has learned to create in photoshop and how excited he is to learn that next new thing. Hearing my daughter tell me how proud she is of me for going back to school and how much I have inspired her to do better in her college classes has also made any sacrafices I am making and will continue to make worth it. Just to know that what I am doing is having a positive impact on my family and their future is what keeps me going even when things get hard. And receiving this scholarship can help me to continue to do that.

If I could have everyone in the world read just one book it would be "Who Moved My Cheese" by Dr Spencer Johnson. When I first read this book is was life changing for me. And I think everyone in the world could benefit from this story. The book is about 4 characters who are in a maze. And all four of the characters love cheese and the story starts out where they had plenty of cheese and then suddenly they realize that the cheese is all gone. Two of the characters immediatly go out to find new cheese. And two of the characters stay where they are, in hopes that the cheese will just magically return. After a while and realizing that no cheese is magically returning, and that he is starving, one of the two characters that stayed behinds decides to set out and look for new cheese. He tries to talk his friend into joining him but his friend just wont believe that there is any new cheese out there and refuses to go and wants to stay behind to wait for the cheese to return. He decides to leave his friend behind and eventually he does find new cheese and also finds the first two characters there that had set out as soon as the old cheese disappeared. He enjoys the new cheese, wondering about the friend he left behind and wondering if he ever left to find new cheese hoping that he eventually did and that he will see him again someday. I think the core meaning of this story is that life is going to change. Things can be really good or really bad but eventually they will change and you have to learn to adapt. I believe no matter where where you live in the world, your life has changed in some way and the sooner you can accept the change and move on the better off you will be. The life changing thing about the story for me was the reason that the two characters stayed behind was because they more afraid that they wouldnt find new cheese than they were of starving to death waiting for the old cheese. But the one character continued to ask himself, "what would I do if I werent afraid" until he finally went for it and eventually discovered new cheese.

I live in Alabama and I am a 43 year old single mom of 4 going back to school for a major in graphic design and a minor in digital photography. I have loved Art all my life. My dad was an artist and watching him paint is one thing that inspired me to love art. When I was a kid we were really poor and there wasnt much to do and I used to have old video tapes of Bob Ross painting and I didnt have any paint brushes but I used to mimic the way he held the brush and how he did his paintings. Then when I was a little bit older I used to use old magazines and stickers to make little collages. I used to want to go the the American College of Art and Design when I was younger but when I was old enough to go to college my family situation wasnt so good and I couldnt go. I got married and had kids and homeschooled them and developed a love for photography and photoshop. I have learned to make digital collages and art and photography composites. In the same way some people can get lost in a good book, I get lost in the love of creating a scene with photographs. I am choosing to pursue an education in the arts because it has been my lifelong dream. In every way that it could be possible, art has been an outlet for me. And if there is a way that I can use my passion for art and my love for photography to no only earn a degree but also give me the ability to do something I love for a career, then that would be like a dream come true. My degree is currently graphic design and video game design and I would love to be a part of a team that creates a beautiful game like Zelda Breath of the Wild or the sims. I really want to create art that is inspiring. I hope to perfect my skills and learn new skills in order to teach others how to create composites and digital collages. But most of all I just want to create digital art that is remembered and inspiring in the way that the paintings of Bob Ross inspired me. I want to cultivate the love of art in the generation younger than me.

I'm a single mom of 4. I have always done my best to set a good example for my kids by working to continuously improve myself and demonstrating determination in the face of challenges. I hope to show my children the importance of personal growth and the value of perseverance. I also hope to show them that everything in life that is worth achieving and that makes you feel accomplished and successful is something that you have to work hard for. It is important to me for them to know that challenges will come. They will fail. They will make choices that aren’t always right. My hope is that by never giving up on my dreams, and working hard to achieve them, they can learn from me and be inspired. Not because of my achievements, but because I have always worked towards being my greatest self and that is the legacy I want to leave behind. I currently work full-time as a manager in a warehouse, I attend online college at SNHU pursuing my bachelor’s degree, and I homeschool two of my kids. I spend my free time making quilts and doing photography so that I can pay for college. I spent most of my life homeschooling my kids and being a stay at home wife. Two years ago, after 20 years of marriage, I went through a divorce, and both of my parents passed away. At first, I felt like my world was falling apart. I was living on my own for the first time in my life in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with all four of my kids. I quickly realized that even though what I was going through was hard, I still had to move forward, for them. I got the first job of my life as a warehouse associate, soon became an assistant manager and moved to a bigger apartment. I started doing photography and sellig crafts as a second income. I listened to motivational videos, and read books to learn how to be my best self. I decided to go back to college to get my degree so that I could move up in my company. And eventually own my own business. I am about to complete my first year of college with a 3.84 GPA, made the president's list for the spring, summer and fall terms, and also was promoted to manager at my job. My first son recently left for college on a full scholarship having scored a perfect score on his ACT, and my daughter got scholarship for her singing talent. Becoming the person that I am today and the person I want to be isn't an easy road. Recently I had to cut back to just one class per term because of my work schedule preventing me from being able to raise the money to pay for more than one class per term. But I am determined to keep pushing forward, no matter what obstacles I face and I want to instill that into my children as well. I will always strive to be my best self. To be someone they can be proud of and to achieve my goals. It has been my lifelong dream to have a college degree, and I may not have started in the traditional time frame, but I will have one, even if takes me longer to get there than it has others. I think in this way I am teaching them that no matter what life brings, or how long it takes, with determination they can persevere and they can live their dream.