I am currently a high school senior dual enrolled at Indian River State College majoring in biology with the intent to become a nurse. I want to become a nurse to directly help people with their health and give back to the world. My strengths include my academics especially math, while history is a slight weakness. I am a very kind and patient person, however I need to work on reaching out and making stronger connections with friends and family. At a religious standpoint, I feel very close to God, however I can strengthen this relationship by learning more Surahs to become Hafiz. I am a Palestinian Muslim who is one of the few Palestinians fortunate enough to escape the torture of the Israelis. While I myself have never been able to see my home country a long with a lot of my family who still suffers, I am glad my grandparents moved to America to give our bloodline a second chance. I grew up in a small town in Florida where Islam is unheard of. It was a struggle to become open with my religion but I was able to get there with help from my family. Receiving this scholarship will help me attend and pay for part of my college in order to become a nurse. I want to fulfill my grandparents purpose of moving to America for a better life by showing them my diploma and nursing degree when I complete college. While in college, I plan on becoming a nurse and possibly escalating to becoming a doctor. I believe I chose this path because in the back of my mind, I am always concerned about my family in Palestine and feeling like there is nothing I can do to help. Through choosing this path, I feel like I am able to help people, even if they are not Palestinians and give back to the world in a way that not everyone is qualified to help. My favorite fictional book is the Hunger Games because of how some teenagers were able to retaliate against the government and fight for their rights. I like this book because all the characters came together from all different districts and all had something to sacrifice for the benefit of everyone. My greatest achievement is becoming proud of my religion and educating classmates at school about my religion. I had many people question their own beliefs and one person told me they wanted to become Muslim. Our town doesn’t have a Mosque, or even any Arab residents, much less any Muslims but I was happy to educate my friends and at least try to grow the Muslim population in my area.

One of the best times I had in my soccer career is when I was recruited to play on the older team in my club. I remember the head trainer of the club was watching my team play and he told me I didn’t look like I was being challenged enough when playing. With the permission of my parents, I played two years up on another team where I was constantly challenged and was barely able to score. I played with this team for 4 seasons before returning to my age group. When I returned to my age group I was team captain and scored at least 3 goals per game. I was constantly praised and helped train new teammates. I was extremely pleased with myself. One of the hardest times in my soccer career was when I was going into high school, I had to make a choice between playing competitively or spending my time studying. I chose to stay in recreational soccer and to go to the school that does not offer soccer while most of my friends moved on without me. To solve this problem, I decided to tryout for high school soccer my sophomore year after I adjusted to high school. Since my school did not have a team I tried out for the other schools team (where all my friends were) I made the team and was very satisfied with myself. Being on the team was one of the most fun times in my whole soccer career. This was to be followed by one of the worst times in my soccer career. My junior year there was a new coach who managed both the boys and girls team junior varsity and varsity. This gave him 4 teams to manage. He let us know that he would be accepting mostly freshmen and sophomores because they are young and have room to improve, while seniors and juniors would only have a year or two to learn and were less beneficial overall. I hoped that I would be one of the few players he accepted and spent the whole summer working out to make the team. Unfortunately, I made the junior varsity team which the coach paid no attention to. There was 25 players in the varsity team and 5 on the junior varsity team. We had our first game and he asked three players if they could play with jv this night since we need 8 in order to play. Three players down and zero substitutes we had all odds against us but took the lead in the first half. In the end we lost 2-1 and I realized that this would be a very different experience from last year. After the second game, our coach canceled the rest of the jv games to focus on varsity, wasting my time and destroying my confidence. I watched my friends go to practices and win their games. This was a truly humbling experience watching everyone having fun from the sidelines. This has shaped me as a person to be humble and at the same time it taught me confidence. I cannot please everyone and different coaches can view me as the opposite from the other. I became more aware of the real world and how situations are not always fair and no excuse that I make will ever fix the problem. Receiving this scholarship will make all of my hardships worth the struggle. With this scholarship, I can partially pay for college in order to become a nurse and help people when I graduate.

I am a Palestinian Muslim who is one of the few Palestinians fortunate enough to escape the torture of the Israelis. While I myself have never been able to see my home country a long with a lot of my family who still suffers, I am glad my grandparents moved to America to give our bloodline a second chance. I grew up in a small town in Florida where Islam is unheard of. Our town doesn’t have a Mosque, or even any Arab residents, much less any Muslims. This means growing up I was constantly surrounded by a culture I was not supposed to participate in. During primary school we would celebrate holidays that did not make sense to me, at the age of seven I was fasting which was weird to all my classmates. I knew my religion and never questioned it but it was never normalized in front of me and made me feel afraid of being judged. Some summers, I would fly across the country to visit my grandparents who set great examples of what Islam represents. They took me to the Mosque every Friday and I felt like I was finally where I belonged. By the time I was in eighth grade, I prayed 5 times a day on my own. I learned new Surahs monthly and became more proud of my religion. I began to dress more modestly stopped caring about how other people viewed me. Being a Muslim influenced my academics because I became less concerned with how to fit in and make friends. I was more concerned with learning more about my culture and religion and went to school solely to learn to get my degree. While in college, I plan on becoming a nurse and possibly escalating to becoming a doctor. I believe I chose this path because in the back of my mind, I am always concerned about my family in Palestine and feeling like there is nothing I can do to help. Through choosing this path, I feel like I am able to help people, even if they are not Palestinians and give back to the world in a way that not everyone is qualified to help. Receiving this scholarship will help me attend and pay for part of my college in order to become a nurse. I want to fulfill my grandparents purpose of moving to America for a better life by showing them my diploma and nursing degree when I complete college.

The first song that comes to my mind when I think of a song with a message behind it is “Stan”, by Eminem. This song was about Stan, he would always write to his biggest idol, Slim. He would write about news such as his girlfriend’s pregnancy, he would write about how Slim did not give his brother an autograph at his concert. Over the course of the letters, Stan is progressively getting more upset. He mentions how Slim told him at a concert that he would always reply but Stan is starting to think that was a lie. The main reason why Stan would look up to his is because he relates to the songs that Slim writes, they both had bad father figures. Unfortunately, near the end of the song Stan makes a bad decision that affects him, his girlfriend, and his unborn child. A few weeks later Slim goes through his mail and sees all the missed letters. This song in particular has the most important message behind it because I discovered it in a time where I was changing from middle to high school. I felt like I was losing touch with all my friends. I ended up going to a different school than everyone I grew up with. In this song, Stan got hurt for holding on to a connection that was not there. My friendships that lasted from kindergarten to eighth grade ended abruptly without any closure. I had to give myself distance from people and open my eyes to realize life goes on. The chorus of the song was “your picture on my wall reminds me that it’s not so bad”. To me, this is the memories I have created. They remind me to look past the bad and at the good.