I initially became excited about the field of psychology because of a class on critical thinking. It showed me a way to develop and push myself towards growth. I was fascinated with the idea that I could restructure my belief system and thinking patterns to change my perceptions and improve my outcomes in life. Before then I was static and slow changing but, after being shown a new way of thinking the world has opened up. I became dynamic. I set out to learn everything I could to understand how behavior change works. I want to help others feel the limitlessness that I felt when I finally understood what it meant to use my mind as a tool. In my current role as a Graduate Research Assistant with NIU Project Flex, I expanded my practical experience by designing and conducting sport and exercise leadership sessions for incarcerated youth. These sessions aimed to teach crucial life skills and facilitate positive transformations, by incorporating the life skills into sports games. We tailor the life skills we teach to the youth to show them new perspectives on current situations. It is inspiring to see them maturing and see the world in a new light as we work with them. In addition to my work with NIU Project Flex, I volunteered with the Lost Boyz and the Good Athlete project. During their winter tutoring sessions, I conducted Life Skill Workshops for the youth, focusing on skills like emotional intelligence, resilience, and growth mindset. These workshops aim to equip the youth with skills they can apply to gain an advantage and mental edge. I worked with 2nd graders, and they surprised me with how much they knew and the hunger they had when learning about these new topics. They loved the presentations and as young kids do, they asked reflective questions that sparked deeper conversations on the subject. The youth in the Lost Boyz program are from South Shore. Their mission is to provide sports-based youth development to help boys and girls in Chicago’s under-resourced neighborhoods. I lived in South Shore, went to high school in a similar neighborhood, and grew up on the south side of Chicago. I was blessed to have good mentors and role models to pass wisdom and experience on to me. Working with the Lost Boyz was my chance to directly affect the lives of young black men early on in their lives. This summer I had the opportunity to work with the White Sox and their charity organization White Sox ACE. A youth development and travel baseball program. I played for this team during my high school years, and it was amazing to work with the athletes alongside the White Sox's Sports Psychologist. We gave 4 workshops on mental skills that would help the players in-game but, also in life as they begin to transition into college. In all of these experiences, I have had the chance to combine teaching life/mental skills and working with populations that look like me and have been where I have been. While I have improved, I also get to mentor and help others younger than me to improve their lives. As I seek to further my education and pursue a career in sports psychology and performance optimization, I am excited about the potential to bring my knowledge, skills, and insights to make a meaningful impact on mental health and well-being. I want to continue to work with the younger generation and reach back to show them the power of their minds.

When I was younger, I was a bit of a rebellious child. Being the youngest, it often seemed that my older sibling was the favored one, excelling in areas where I struggled. Academic achievement was highly valued in our house, and he had set the bar high. Instead of competing with him, I took a different route. While I performed well academically, I frequently found myself in trouble for distracting classmates and being sent out to the hallway. In my first year of middle school, I taught myself 6th-grade math on YouTube and got an A in the class. One day, my dad had a conversation with me, he said If I could just give a pinky worth of effort in the classroom, I would be all right. Looking back, I see how my self-created tribulations taught me to figure things out and build confidence in my ability to do that. My self-education would not always work out and it led to more struggle and stress than it did success. But, along the way, I learned independence and confidence in my ability to figure things out. This is also something I learned on the baseball field. While I was not perfect in the classroom, I excelled on the field. I paid attention to detail with my craft of hitting and improving myself. I taught myself how to hit off a Twitter account in my first year of high school, which led me to make the varsity team. It changed the course of my career; I went from being an average hitter to becoming the MVP the next year and leading my team to our first state regional championship my senior year. Through baseball I learned other skills that I now apply to my life, leadership, confidence, resilience, dedication, charisma, along with how to be successful. Through the game of baseball, I learned and formed my identity. The conversation with my dad stuck to me and has allowed me to make a paradigm shift in how I approach my work. Now that I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and am studying for my master's in sports psychology, I understand that to make change all you need is to take small steps. When we look at success it is vastly different from person to person. Your definition of success is as unique as your DNA or signature. Success to me is not the end goal but, a process of small steps we need to take to achieve the goals we are striving for. This difference from “end goal” to “process” allows us to identify the ingredients that are needed for each person. It helps us to focus on things that are in our control instead of an outcome like “success” that is not. The culmination of this realization happened to me when I read “Never Finished” By David Goggins, in the book he talked about how most people's level of standard is mediocrity and just doing the bare minimum. This shook me to my core. I had not been truly applying myself in life. So, I asked myself what does “my best” look like? I started looking for how I do more than just the bare minimum. In my coursework, I applied the mindset of giving “my best.” For quality control of the work I would submit, I would check and ask if this was “my best” work. The other fascinating thing about “my best” is that it is a forever evolving and changing scale, as you improve academically and learn updated content you can apply a new level of “best” to your work. As you improve, so does the " best " level you can give. Success is a habit we can all cultivate in our lives; it is a process of doing small things like striving for your “best.” Currently in my master's program, I am a graduate assistant and the program I work for has given me the blessed opportunity to work with incarcerated youth. We facilitate group sessions with the juvenile detention center, where we combine life/mental skills that we learn in our classroom and sports that we all love to play. I have learned just as much from the kids, and they have gotten from me. Writing this essay has helped me to reflect on my life and how I learned through my own path. Securing this opportunity would help me pay for school and pay back the loan I took out for graduate school. It would allow me to continue to learn new ways to be resilient, give me new challenges to conquer, and help to continue to show others my “best.”

Over the past year, I have experienced significant growth and development in several key areas. As a senior in college, this year has been a time of reflection and transition, and the lessons that I have learned have been particularly valuable as I prepare to embark on the next phase of my life. One of the most important lessons that I have learned over the past year is the realization that perfection is a trap, and that striving for perfection can often hold us back and prevent us from making progress. In the past, I have struggled with procrastination and the fear of not being perfect, which has held me back in my studies, athletic performance, and other areas of my life. But now, I have learned to push beyond that fear and to focus on making progress and taking action rather than striving for perfection. This has required me to develop discipline and to take action even when I am not feeling motivated or confident. By doing so, I have been able to become more focused and productive and achieve success in my studies and other areas of my life. One of the most important lessons that I have learned is the importance of embracing failure and understanding that it is not a setback, but rather a stepping stone to growth and learning. As a college baseball player, I have experienced failure many times on the field. In the past, I would let failure distract me and prevent me from seeing the potential opportunities it presents. But now, I approach failure with an open and curious mindset, looking beyond the initial frustration to understand what I can learn from it and how I can use that knowledge to improve my skills. This has helped me to become more resilient and bounce back from setbacks, and it has also enabled me to approach challenges with a more optimistic attitude. Another area of growth for me has been in self-examination and self-discovery. I have spent a lot of time over the past year exploring my thoughts, feelings, and values, which has helped me gain a deeper understanding of who I am and what I want from life. This process of self-examination and self-discovery has also challenged me to take more risks and step outside of my comfort zone, and it has helped me to grow and develop in ways that I never could have imagined. By learning more about myself, I have been able to eliminate many of the fears that I had about life and become more confident in myself and my abilities. In addition to these lessons, I have also learned the value of framing problems as solvable questions and of using a growth mindset to approach challenges and obstacles. This has allowed me to break down complex problems into manageable pieces and to find creative and effective solutions. This has been particularly helpful in my studies, where I have been able to approach difficult problems with a more positive and productive attitude. Overall, the past year has been a time of significant growth and development for me, and I am grateful for the lessons that I have learned and the progress that I have made. I am excited to continue to apply these lessons and to take on new challenges and opportunities in the future. I am confident that the lessons that I have learned over the past year will help me to be successful in the path I choose to pursue after graduation.

Coming into Clark Atlanta University, the 2019 recruiting class for the baseball team was one that made up the majority number of the people on the team. We had nine incoming freshmen on the team. As a freshman on the team, I had many responsibilities like taking care of team equipment, our home field, and helping to lead the other freshman. Before, I became an effective leader. I first had to listen, learn to be empathetic, and follow. As a freshman, you do not have much authority. You get yelled at for not having experience in the new team system. You have to conform to the system that you are a part of. These things mold you into someone who can eventually lead and lead effectively. I spent my time under the guidance of one of our more vocal leaders, learning from when he would speak up and help other players or when he would sit back and watch them. Watching someone else's role would eventually help me change how I would lead. This past semester we played our first full year of baseball because of the recent Covid quarantines. I was selected, to our "Leadership Committee." This title means I was officially a leader, an exciting time. The tools of empathy, listening first, not being reactive, having composure, and being vocal would now be put to use. We had a new freshman class ready to be led and groomed for the upcoming season. The new class was nothing like our class. They were more rebellious and less willing to do the freshman tasks. They were harder to lead and less responsive to my leadership style. Everyone is different, and people react differently to each action. I had to learn what they needed from me. The 2025 class needed someone to rally behind, a person with energy and passion. They did not need a second parent that told them what to do. I did not understand that initially, this caused many unnecessary arguments. I created a separation between myself and the freshman. That affected the team's chemistry. I had to observe myself and adapt to what was needed. I saw that they needed a teammate and not an egomaniac. Once I realized this, our season turned around. Being a leader doesn't stop on the field for me. I feel like it is in me. I enjoy finding solutions. I enjoy listening if people need someone to talk to and vent. Being empathic and what people need are skills that help with all relationships, not just ones on the field. Being a glue guy also has these characteristics they hold the team together, make the sacrifice plays, compromise, and find the middle ground for the group. An effective leader is also a glue person. I am all of these items. I want to find or create the solution, even if I am part of the problem. Removing myself for the betterment of the team is something that I understand and value.

Mental health care and advocacy for the black community will help to improve our community. Our inner success will come from these things. My vision for our community is one that supports itself, that is happy and proud, that uplifts each other and reaches back to help the other, that values each block and takes pride in being from the same community. The black community, as it stands now, is largely separated. We have very successful members and others that are not as successful. There is a huge imbalance between the lifestyle of black people in our community. The imbalance between black people is due to the social injustice that our community has gone through. Social injustice against our community includes the war on drugs and the mass incarceration during the 70s. The war on drugs does not make sense. You can't mobilize against an object that can't fight back. Consequently, the war on drugs led to the mass incarceration of black men; the heads of our households. Structural racism has also negatively impacted our community. It keeps some of our community from reaching the dreams that they dream. Without the proper resources in place, the black community lacks the education to achieve those dreams. Students turn into minimum wage job workers whose mental healths suffers. Thus this is the same as those growing up in poverty from not having a complete household. Mental health in the black community suffers because of the residual effects of mass incarceration and the war on drugs. These effects have grown into structured racism. No person should work over 40 hours doing meaningless work. However, this is the reality for some of those in our community. Trading their time to make barely survive in the economy. Trading time for money will cause a decline in the mental health of the person. In my utopia, I want to see the members of our community doing the things they love. So instead of a decline in mental health, there is an incline because they love their jobs. I want in elementary school for the building blocks of emotional intelligence taught. More emotional intelligence will lead to more empathetic adults, more active listeners, and more ways to assess their mental health. Higher emotional intelligence leads to more and better leaders. It will lead to a healthier community. I want to see the acceptance of therapy. Being able to accept therapy will also lead to a healthier community. Therapy will also lead to a more mindful community. A person that can understand oneself mentally can rise above challenges and obstacles that others cannot. The Black community has many forces that prevent mass success. I want to eliminate those forces by healing our generational trauma. We can reach that by teaching emotional intelligence and advocating for more therapy. Although, structured racism does exist. If we invest in the mental health of our youth, we will see massive changes in the future. They will have toughness and resilience but, they will also be mindful. They will lead us into tomorrow.