Where do I even begin, this topic really hits home for me. Well to start I should note that at the age of 14 I lost my father figure and best friend (My grandfather) to bladder cancer. The pain that i have endured from that day in 2016 is what I give my most credit to in the means of my passionate desire to be great in all I do. Specifically, to fulfill the promise to my grandfather that I made on his death bed in 2016 which was to play professional football someday. While dealing with the loss of my grandfather I too dealt with personal triumph and tragedy in my life as in 2018 just two years later I was injured in a football game my junior year of high school and the injury required surgery causing me to be bedridden for about a year. From the moment my grandfather passed I knew I had so much more work to do to get to my desires in life. When I returned to school my senior year and worked my way back into playing shape through months of rehabilitation in my knee and should (which was also injured and required surgery) I was able to earn 17 scholarship offers to play football which was a great accomplishment for me because the surgeon told me before the operations that there was a possibility that I would never return to the game i dearly loved. The loss of my grandfather also allowed me to truly understand what family meant to be, and it meant absolutely everything. The biggest motivator in being great and working as hard as I can is all the loved ones I've lost over the years, but I am very thankful and appreciative that I can continue doing what God blessed me to do. I will continue to fight until I can no longer in my attempt to fulfill and uphold my promise. Thank you for your time and have a wonderful day.

My Name is Devin Pinkard, and I am an African American collegiate student athlete that attends Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois. I participate in football and am pursuing a bachelor's degree in Exercise Science which is a degree I'm very interested in and intrigued by. I come from a small town of about 3500 people and a home of three boys (I am the oldest). Upon graduation I finished top 20 in the class academically which i am very proud of as well. Growing up in the small town i did really gave me a false sense of reality in terms of what the world had to offer. A young version of myself thought that after high school that was it, you went to work and started your family and that was all life was. After earning many scholarships both academically and for football I quickly realized that there were so many more possibilities out there for me. The pursuit of higher education is also important to me for other reasons too. My mother was a single mom that was very smart but having me at seventeen years old presented obstacles in her pursuit of her college degrees that she later obtained years after I came along. This gave me motivation to not give up along the time I was in high school (because school was not easy for me early on) and i struggled quite a bit with understanding how important it truly was. My dad struggled in school also and barely skimmed by with a high school diploma and my grandfather whom I learned majority of aspects to life from didn't get a diploma at all rather, he went and got his GED a while after being out of school. This was a motivator for me because I wanted to be different and make my family proud. Upon obtaining my bachelors in Exercise science I plan to make a positive impact in my community by hopefully helping in establishing health clinics within my hometown city (where currently there are none) instead of having people travel many miles to other cities to check on their health status. Another way I plan to make a great impact within my community is to work at clinics close to and providing knowledge that I can easily communicate to everyone I come in contact with to promote healthier lifestyle choices that will allow for better health outcomes in the near and long-term future.

First off I want to start out by saying I'm the oldest of three boys and that alone warrants high standard no matter what I am doing. I also am a first generation student that is out of state as well which has become a life changing experience all around. I came into college over a thousand miles away from my hometown having grown up in a city with no more than about 3500 people. Being off on my own for the first time was very different than I was used to operating. Having the closely knit family I had and not being able to be around my immediate family bothered me a lot but it also allowed for not only mental growth but physical growth. It went from my mother and grandparents doing everything for me to me doing everything virtually on my own. This is one way that being a first generation student has shaped my beliefs about life. That there are so many things out there in the world that if you apply yourself to you can accomplish. The small town I grew up in gave me a false sense of what reality was, it allowed me to come to understand that there is more to life than just normal jobs. That there are many opportunities for you to do things that you are passionate about and can get paid for. My beliefs on life also changed in the means of work ethic. I felt as though I had extreme work ethic prior to going off on my own to college however, I quickly found out that I had to push myself beyond my comfort zone to be successful in the classroom as the curriculum was completely different then what I learned in high school. I also was given the opportunity to be a first generation collegiate athlete as well which I am also very proud of. Being blessed with the opportunity to meet many people who come from all different walks of life is extremely important and it has greatly influenced my belief that everyone has a place in this world and that if we all work together towards our goals and respect each other the world as we know will become a better place that we can all be proud of. I know that I have grown physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually but I also know that this would not have been possible without me becoming the first in my family to go to college.