The most profound impact on my decision to pursue a career in education and currently teaching History and Economics did not come from a person, but from where I grew up and the challenges I faced. I was born and raised in Burma/Myanmar, a small Southeast Asian country bordered by Thailand and Laos. Growing up, I faced many hardships. My dad was in another country for work, so it was just my mom and me. Our country did not have the freedom to teach the subjects that mattered. Instead, everything was shaped by government propaganda. Education was not about inspiring kids to think for themselves, but about teaching them what the government wanted them to know. Because of this, a lot of kids just gave up on school. They drop out before they finished high school, sometimes getting married at a young age instead of pursuing their dreams. I saw all this and realized how much it affected the future of so many kids. Without education, they did not know the value of learning and how it could open doors for them. They could not see beyond their present circumstances. Watching this, I felt deeply motivated. For this reason, I wanted to make a difference. I knew I could not just stand by. I work hard, and I want to be the person who encourages young people to value education, to show them how powerful learning can be for their future. This is what led me to want to be a teacher. I wanted to teach younger kids about the importance of education and how it can shape their lives. Everything changed for my family when Burma went through a military coup. Our lives were in danger, so we fled the country and sought asylum through the UN agency in Malaysia. That's where our journey to America began after 6 years living in Malaysia. When we were given the chance to move to the U.S., everything opened up for me. In America, I could study anything I wanted. I could be whoever I wanted to be as long as I worked hard for it. This was a completely new world for me-one where I was not limited by what the government allowed. I could finally learn freely. The opportunity to learn and grow in a place that values education was life-changing. It showed me just how important education is for changing lives. Now, I want to use my story to encourage others to pursue their education and dreams. I want to be the teacher who helps students see how much they can achieve with the right knowledge and determination. I want them to know and understand that education is not just a requirement- it's a tool that will help them become whoever they want to be in life. My experiences have shaped my desire to impact the next generation, and I am committed to helping my future students understand the value of education. I want them to know that education is the key to unlocking their potential, just as it was for me. By becoming a teacher, I hope to give students the chance to believe in themselves and realize they can shape their future in life.

Just like many other teenagers, I always seek what had been my purpose in this world? What can I do to help this world, even when it is an insignificant thing. A person like me who does not know and fluently speak English had a small chance to achieve my goal in a world full of significant demand structures. However, it is also a world full of opportunities for people who tried harder than many other people to achieve their goals forget out of their comfort world. As I search for my purpose and career, I became to understand that I passionately love learning about history and understood how significant it is to learn about our past even though most people find it a very difficult subject because it involved so much reading. The more I learned about history, I became realized that I also wanted to be a teacher because as we get into a generation where our lives greatly depend on the internet, more children and teenagers rapidly get away their attention to school and especially toward history because when they heard the history, they imagine as a very boring subject and insignificant things to learned and therefore they lack great knowledge information. Therefore, my goal is to become a teacher and make my students understand of our roots and how we can learn how past societies, systems, ideologies, governments, cultures, and technologies were built, how they operated, and how they have changed in the past because the rich history of the world helps us to paint a detailed picture of where we stand today.

Becoming a social studies teacher has always been a passion of mine. Ever since I was in my Sophomore year in high school, I always imagined that one day, I will be standing in my room that fills with all my students and have a moral discussion topic about the history and our current events. To be able to become a secondary history teacher; I have to go to college and get Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees to march on to the journey of Education fields. As everything has a starting point of why we choose our career; mine was when I was in our country Burma. We live in a very poverty village and almost all of our schools only taught English, Math, and History. Within involved in our school community, I started to realize that our school system was very destructive and we do not have enough teachers and staff members to develop our school system. There is not a stable occupation for our parents and the only thing that we could rely on is our agriculture farming. For that reason, my parent could not afford us to go to higher education like many other children. As time goes by, my dad decided that we will be going to leave Burma and escape to Malaysia because they’ve heard that there is a refugee camp that accepts refugee people. The journey was unimaginable. There is no rest, we keep on walking, hiding in the middle of the night because we are an illegal civilian who crosses the border of Myanmar and Thailand just to get to Malaysia. As a young girl, I always cried because I missed my parent while they put us in a different prison. Our journey to Malaysia had taught me that I have to be determined and not lacking a precious of our time while we still breathing because life is a journey of discovery and facing a challenge. There is a moment on a mountaintop and a moment in the valley. Our challenge and the risk that we take are the purpose of human life to perceive in grander. When we get to the United States, the decision that I made in my junior year of high school was one day, I want to become a teacher and teach our younger generation about our history. As much as I want to go to university, I know that both my parent would not be able to pay my tuition fee because in our family I was the first person that plan to go to university. My parent had encouraged me that "when you pursue your dream; one day, your sibling will follow in your footstep. Be the first person in our family that got to go to college.” When I listen to my parent's advice, it gave me the courage to go to college and pursue my dreams. When I was in the middle of choosing which college to applied, I’ve come across Indiana State University. The reason why I choose Indiana State University is that the professor and a staff member were understanding and had many resources that I could have asked for. My love of learning history has inspired me to become a teacher and sacrifice my life and dedication to the students to teach them to understand our world history and current events. For this reason, I am pursuing a career in the education field and major in Social Studies Education here at Indiana State University.

Becoming a social studies teacher has always been a passion of mine. Ever since I was in my Sophomore years in high school, I always imagined that one day, I will be standing in my room that fills with all my students and have a moral discussion topic about the history and our current events. To be able to become a secondary history teacher; I have to go to college and get Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees to march on to the journey of Education fields. As everything has a starting point of why we choose our career; mine was when I was in our country Burma. We live in a very poverty village and almost all of our school was only teaching English, Math, and History. Within involved in our school community, I started to realize that our school system was very destructive and we do not have enough teachers and staff members to develop our school system. As we know, our country is ruled by a military dictatorship and for education, in every first grade to high school, parents had to pay for school fees, teacher salary, and student textbooks. Life is rough in Myanmar. There is not a stable occupation for our parents and the only thing that we could rely on is our agriculture farming. For that reason, my parent could not afford us to go to higher education like many other children. As time goes by, my dad decided that we will be going to leave Burma and flee to Malaysia because they’ve heard that there is a refugee camp that accepts refugee people. The journey was unimaginable. There is no rest, we keep on walking, hiding in the middle of the night because we are an illegal civilian who crosses the border of Myanmar and Thailand just to get to Malaysia. While we’re on our journey toward our destination, we got caught by Thai police and we were put in jail for more than two months. As a young kid, I always cried because I missed my parent while they put us in a different cell. Within our journey to Malaysia had taught me that I have to be determined and not lacking a precious of our time while we still breathing because life is a journey of discovery and facing a challenge. There is a moment on a mountaintop and a moment in the valley. Our challenge and the risk that we take are the purpose of human life to perceive in grander. As the year went by, we got a call from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (U.N.H.C.R.) told us that we can finally leave Malaysia and went to America. That day was one of our happiest moments in life for our family; we imagine that our family got such a great opportunity to live in the promised land; a land of freedom. God had blessed us that we got a great opportunity for our family to live in America. When I got to the United States, I started my education in seventh grade at Perry Meridian Middle School. The decision that I made in my junior year of high school was one of the toughest decisions that I made but I did not regret it. As much as we imagine a prosperous country of freedom, live for a low-income family is still not change. I decided that I’m not going to college instead, I planned to help out pay my parent their bill in working at the warehouse because both of my brother and sister were married and I’m a middle child that gets to help out my parent. However, my parent did not agree with the decision that I made because my mom told me that “we have been suffered a lot in our own country of not having a proper occupation; now we have the opportunity that we got to live here in America, a place where we can pursue anything we want as long as we keep on thriving. Not only that when you pursue your dream; one day, your sibling will follow in your footstep. Be the first person in our family that got to go to college.” When I listen to my mom’s advice, it gave me the courage to go to college and pursue my dreams. When I was in the middle of choosing which college to applied, I’ve come across Indiana State University. The reason why I choose Indiana State University is that the professor and a staff member were great. Not only that, this university had opened a lot of community involvement and the tuition itself is affordable for a student who experienced difficulty in financial aid and who wanted to go to college. Within having witnessed of how our difficulty living life in our education systems in our country, my love of learning history has inspired me to become a teacher and sacrifice my life and dedication to the students to teach them to understand our world history and current events. Becoming a teacher job will not be an easy road to take but nothing in this world is not worth living if we do not take risks. For this reason, I am pursuing a career in the education field and major in Social Studies Education here at Indiana State University.

Inspiring Song: A Million Dreams by Ziv Zaifman, Hugh Jackman, and Michelle Williams This song of A Million Dream is in the movies of The Greatest Showman that sing by the artist of Ziv Zaifman, Hugh Jackman, and Michelle Williams. The reason why I choose this song of "A Million Dreams" is that whenever I listen to this song, it gave me the strength to go keep on going in the journey and the vision of my dream to achieve. It's also reminded me that people will going to think our visions, our dream are impossible but nothing is impossible.

Everyone has a story of a time they had to overcome adversity. Within those hardships, we need someone who can push us to try our best and motivate us to keep on going to achieve our goals that's why we need a role model to look up to. Growing up in a low-income family, life can be very difficult to imagine for the future. When we first came here to the United State as Refugees, it very hard for me to make friends and it is very difficult to understand the cultural life of America. When I first started my high school years in 2017, math had been my biggest fear of a subject and failed so many times. The highest score I could get on the Math test was D+, when I was in my lowest point of life, I look up to Youtube to listen to some life advice to encourage me to keep on going on the journey of my high school years. After listening to Jack Ma's life advice, he motivated me that life is not about having an easy road and become successful but through all difficulties and failure make us build who we are in the future. Jack Ma is China Chinese business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate. Throughout his life, he had applied to Harvard University ten times and failed, applied for thirty jobs and got rejected, and decided to do something about the internet and all of his colleagues had a doubt about his ideas because they think that his ideas about creating more meaningful of using the internet could be never be benefitted. Even with all doubt, he had within his colleagues because he had crazy different ideas that seem impossible he never quit because of his colleagues. After listening to his life advice on YouTube, he had encouraged me to pursue my dream and in life because life is a journey of discovery and there are moments on mountains tops and moments in Valleys. Challenges are a sign of our life. Within those set in mind, I stayed after school to meet my teacher and asked for something that I did not understand and all my fears of asking help from my teacher had now gone, and after forward, I stayed at the library to get help for my homework. Within winter times, I had to walk for twenty minutes from school to my house because both of my parents are working and I have no one to pick me up after school. Even though I spent all my Freshman years and Sophomore years trying to build up my grade and walking from school was really worth it. Throughout my high school years, I also participated in sports such as Soccer and Softball. As we compete with other schools, I've learned that it's not about being the top in the team but to build a strong bond with the teams and work together to achieve one goal. As started my senior year in high school, I truly wanted to become a high school Social Studies teacher and pursue my dream career at Indiana State University and major in Social Studies Education. Throughout my high school journey of life, Jack Ma had helped me to keep on going even when life gets very difficult and seems that I may have failed but through all that failure that I made it is a good investment and revenue for the future.

In this world, we're all born and have a different purpose and different lifestyle or a different kind of clothing we want to wears. Even within our uniqueness, people still be judging one another. In this world, we are not born to be following the same path as everyone else, being different and uniques from everyone is also a blessing. However, life could be very scary and isolating for feeling like an outsider. When I first came here to the United State in the summer of 2014, I do not know how to speak fluent English and it is very difficult for me to have a conversation with other people. At the end of July 2014, I started my middle school years. It was one of the most tragic and most isolating experiences of my life. As an Asian person, who dresses up like a guy's' tomboy', no one in my classroom do not want to hang out with me. I know my ethnicity is different and the way how I dressed and the way how I speak a broken English had brought me down to my life to the point I want to drop off middle school. One of the tragic moment of my life in middle school years was 'Lunch Period' it's have given me anxiety and stress when the bell ring for the lunch period. One morning, I woke up at 5:00 A.M., I cooked two packed of noodles and put in my lunch box with a fork. When the bell ring for lunch period, I went to my locker and wait for everyone to leave, so that I could go to the restroom to eat my noodles. After when everyone left, I quickly ran over to the restroom and I started eating the noodles that I made in the morning; while I ate my noodles, I felt my tears drop down my cheek and I started to sob and grieve. I asked myself, "Is this why I live in this world to feel this loneliness in my life?" it was one of the lonely moments of my life. At that moment, I stood up and make a promise to myself, "I'll be doing great than others, I'll try working harder than the rest, I will not be given up this life" as I motivated myself, I learned to speak fluent English by watching Friends and I focus more on my goal, which is becoming a high school history teacher. As the years went by, I started high school and join sports teams in women's soccer and women softball to push myself and not letting my dreams be torn into pieces. Throughout my soccer practice, it helps me make new friends and achieve the most improved and the most defense award in the teams. Also in my softball practice, it helps me to understand how to be myself and act the way how I wanted. Throughout my high school years, I have learned that we do not have to change our difference just to be friends with other people. I also learned that the right people will love us the way we are. Right now in my freshman years of college, pursuing my dream career, I have my best-friend who understand all my past and still love me no matter what kind of person I am and I love her even when our personality, trait are different. Therefore, even when we are a misfit in this world, we do not have to change ourselves to be fit with everyone else. We should express our thought and feeling to change the world instead of agreeing with what everyone else doing.

When I was 14 years of age, I started writing a song that comes in my mind without developing a full song. It was all a started with my big brother who love playing guitars. My brother and his friends sometimes sing a song at the porch’s of our house with a joy in their face and a laughter when they sometimes made a mistake. When I look at my brother the way he play guitar chords, it inspired me to play just like him because I want expressed my feeling through music and a songs. However, in our culture, it is embarrassing for a girl to play guitar and people looks down on their family. I asked my brother if he could teaches me some easy keys to plays but he screamed at me saying “you are a girl, you don’t have to know how to play guitar just do some house chords!” I was really hurt when he said to me like that. However, I do not give up on how much I love playing guitar. Whenever my brother went to work, I look at YouTube to search, ‘how to play guitar for beginners’ and I learned how to hold D, G, C, Em, A, and F major chords. As the years went by, I can fully know how to play guitar. Even though my parent told me not to play, I do not listened to them. They’re also tired of telling me not to play so I could play when I’m done with the house chords, I play guitar. One day, while I played guitar, the song called “One Day-Matisyahu” was popped in my head and as soon as I played that song, it has has inspired me that in his lyrics it’s said that “Sometimes in my tears I drown but I never let it get me down so when negativity surrounds, I know some day it’ll all turn around...” While I sing this song the tears of joys come down to my face and it encourages me to write some song. It was July 23 on Sunday night, I was requested to sing solo at our church and I finally sing the songs that I writes. After when church done, my mom asked me if wrote that song and instantly hugged me. From that day on, I started to write some song and improved my skilled of playing guitar. Before I went to college, my mom and dad surprised me a gifted of Taylor GS Mini guitars. It was the first time I have my own guitar and when I feel stressed and have anxiety, I played guitar and expressed my feeling and it’s gave me peace.

When I was around 8 to 9 years of ages, I was put in to jailed with my big sister and her husband because we were trying to escape away from our destructive countries. Back in our country we did not have a good educational system. Only rich kid can attended from kindergarten to high school. Moreover, we did not have a clinic in our village and when we need to go to clinical, we have to marched with our barefoot about 34miles in a bigger city. Therefore, my sister and her husband decided that we will escape our country to be there in Malaysia as a refugee with my parents. In our journey from Burma to Thailand, we were caught by the police and they put us in a concentrated place because we are illegal residents. We were in jailed for 3 to 4 month without having a proper food or drinks. I always cried at night to the point all my eyes were swollen; I really missed my parent and I prayed to God that I could see my parents in some days. The place where they put us in jailed was so disgusting. In every night, I could see a rat crawling in our body and a mosquito biting and swallow my bloods. It was one of a tragic memories that I had experienced. As the day went by, they released us from jailed and we finally met our parents, it was one of the best feeling I’ve had when I saw my mom, I can feel my tears drop, a tears of happiness and a tears of joys touching my face and I hugged my mom so tight. From experiencing all this trauma, it gave me a new perspective of life that I am not the only person who had experience these. However, I talked to my self that if I work hard, if I achieve a higher education, I could also help the people who are also in my situation and people who need support. For that experience in my life, it opens up my eyes to work harder think for the future to help for others.

This pictures was taken last year of my Junior years in High School at Terre Haute. The reason why I used this image is because it is our last games for the season for softball and It was one of the best memories that I made for hitting two Home Run. The second reason was that before I join softball, I was very scared that the teams might bullied me because I am Asian 4”11 tall that never played softball in my entire life. However, I face my fears and I overcome the challenges.