For a long time, I had struggled with my own mental health. For years I have had my own self-esteem invested within what other people thought about me. I always felt like I had to strive for people's attention and appreciation, which explain why I was so invested in being a musical megastar, whom everyone adored and praised. It took years for me to shake off that desire. It felt so lonely to be within that mindset, to always to have the feeling that success comes through what people say about you than what you actually do. I am within a better state now, being unshackled from an unrealistic expectation of myself, allowing me to live more freely. I have also been depressed, seeking therapy to help with my mental state. While I was struggling with self-esteem issues, my parents were going through their own turmoil, being unable to make the relationship work between them. Once the divorce had gone through, it wrecked my mental state, putting me into a depressive state. For a couple years afterwards, I had gone through the stages of grief, and I am glad that I did fully. Coming through on the other side, I had found a proper foot hold on which to place myself in. From then on, I had become more religious, putting my stake in life more upon God rather than anything any person, or myself, could do within this life. I must say, i have become a better person after what I had gone through than who I was before.

Throughout my schooling, from elementary to college, I have joined and participated in volunteer service. Either through simple class trips to have us engage in service, participating in local outreach services that were designed by the school body, or multinational organizations like Samaritan's Purse and their volunteer opportunities. The schools that I have attended had a requirement to serve a certain amount of hours for respected non-profit organizations. These were academic requirements that were expected of me. It had begun as a requirement of me, but it has transformed into a desire and obligation of mine to support my fellow person. After all, that is the entire point: for a community to help a community. As of now, I have been volunteering at services that were made by my college or to help departments within the college. This past semester was spent helping build theater sets for the plays that are put on by the College of Arts and Media within the on-campus theater. I had learned a lot about the pre-production that go within a play, such as the building process and lighting. In fact, this is where I had learned to use a decent amount of carpentry and metalworking tools, like metal band saws for rebar and several other kinds of saws just for wood. I had met great people who work as production staff and other volunteers. During the Fall Semester, I had consistently, every week, volunteered at the local outreach service called City Serve. It was essentially a massive warehouse designed around and for local people who were unable to afford some amenities they need. These would be basic needs such as clothing to large pieces of furniture. They were able to acquire this through partnerships with e-commerce companies, like Amazon, where they would send returned or missing items to the warehouse instead of reselling them. Here, locals can come and get items for free according to their needs. I had fun with this organization and felt like I had been helping my neighbors as I volunteered. In the future, perhaps after I graduate or have my feet under me, I would like to start non-profit organizations myself. I am going into ministry as part of my major, thus, I have a compulsion to aid those in need. As I see it, this country needs extreme help. I'd hope that, through the aid my and local churches, I can begin and expand non-profit organizations as my contribution to the world. I cannot do anything by myself, so I will do it with the strength and aid of those around me.

Music is perhaps one of the most personal things in my life. It has been integrated and within my life since I was a baby. My mother claimed I would sing that young because I would seem to hum sometimes. However, I would still pursue music when I gained conscious thought, joining my school's choir as early as I could. This would mean that I was just the age of eight in the third grade when I would join my first choir. This would begin my deeper look into music, how it is made and what it does to a person, how it makes them feel and react. For every year I have been in school, with except to my seventh grade year, I have been in my school's choir program. When I have been in those choirs, I have meet many students and teachers that have influenced me along with the music they have introduced me to. This music would be something I cherish and hold on to, in order to extract and disect the meanings they hold. I have been known to listen to lyrics of songs more keenly than most others. This makes sense since I am a vocalist and an inspiring lyricist, so I would want to hear what the singer has to say. Through this, I have heard the thoughts and opinions of many people and how they see the world, what they think is important, displaying or dissecting what they think is good or bad. Because, I have had my views influenced and shaped by what I listen and interact with. I have lived rather sheltered from the rest of the world, only relatively recently have I stepped outside of that zone onto the greater depth of the world as I have developed political views. Because of this, my closest connection to the rest of the world was through music. People put their thoughts onto what they make, it is almost impossible not to do so, thus I have heard and listened the feelings and beliefs of many people. As I grew, this constant engagement with many different people made me come to realize how truly complex the world is. People, by nature, are hard to understand, and rightfully so with all the hopes, dreams, and wants that fill the character and actions of a person. However, through music, I explored people's reasoning, their logic on why they make those decisions, which further hammered the point that the world is beautifully, yet terrifyingly, messy and complex. People often do things for themselves or for their beliefs, which can explain many good and bad that has been expressed in the world. Some people are genuinely awful and feed into their worst and most barbaric desires, while others can be considered saints and work for the others rather than themselves, but it still falls upon how they lived and how they were taught. Music, for me, helped me realize how people are greatly influenced by others, even if it feeds into the "society bad" stereotype. Music is the great communicator, which should be used to point out and highlight what people do and why they do it.

Singing has been my most prominent talent ever since I could remember. I waited impatiently to grow older so that I could join the school's choir elective. The first time I would be in a choir is in 3rd grade for Harvest Christian School's Extreme Praise. I sang the songs heard on the radio, perform for those who would come, and sing at Forum Festivals so we could be ranked, I loved it. This brings me to an amazing yet frightening story of my life. I love to sing and I believe that it is my talent, but this would be put to the test when my high school choir would compete at ACSI held at Willaim Jessup University. This was a terrifying proposition. I have not done a competition before. What could happen? Are we good enough? Needless to say, it was a stressful bus ride for me. Though I had friends with me in the choir, I could not ignore this deep, underlying fear of what could happen. Besides ACSI setting up a performance with every choir combined into one, there was an honor choir, which I also had to do since I am a Section Leader. Being in San Fransisco was fun for the days we had before the competition, but I was still frightened. The day finally comes as we walk up into the University's auditorium. There must have been ten other choirs at designated tables. Throughout the day, we would hear choirs having their adjudication as we waited. They sounded beautiful, which only made me more scared since we only practiced for a few weeks before. The day ended and we had yet to be adjudicated, so we would have our's on the day of the grand performance. We sang our songs as best we could for the main director ACSI chose. We received pointers to make the songs better, then we were sent away so that the solo tryouts can happen. I could not do it since the solos were not in my vocal range. The performance came where we learned who would be singing. We made it to the individual choir performances. We would sing "For the Beauty of the Earth," being the stronger song of the two we tried with. Along with this, out of the four solo opportunities, our choir, Woodcrest Christian High School, earned three of them. The performance went on and everyone did wonderfully. The honor choir, with all of the choirs' best singers, managed to sound good despite we studied the song very little, forcing us to read the sheet music as we sang. After it was sent and done, we left happy with our ratings in hand. Out of the ten categories, 4 of them received an "Excellent" rating, and the other six received a "Superior" rating. I beamed with pride when I heard this. Excellent gratification for what you do. Within five years, I see myself with my degree, a Bachelor of Music, using it to make music of my own. Along with this beginning of my venture into the commercial use of my music, I want to move onto a teaching degree in music. I love what I do, thus I want to share it with the younger generation. I may not be a great explainer, I can definently teach by example.