On every college application, I say I have three parents. A mother, a father, and a stepmother. But that's not what it felt like as I was growing up. I didn't have an abundance of parental support, I had a 50% lack of it. While my dad married the woman who broke my family apart, my mom was left in ruins. I can't even blame a "homewrecker" for what happened to my childhood, the foundation of a home simply cannot be sustained when the man who helped build it never gave it his heart. If my father couldn't give my mother his heart, then how would he give it to the creation of their love? I stayed up countless nights, frustrated with my dad for how he left my mom and I. While him and his new life was filled with lavish houses, trips by airplanes, and other luxuries, my mom and I lived in a trailer park, and child support checks ended up supporting the both of us, even if it was the bare minimum. I always believed he would help us as much as possbible, though. On Christmas Eve in Chicago, my mom was driving me from our bad side to the pretty parts where my father lived. The ice on the roads was far too thick, and our beat-up car began to slide across the slippery grounds. She hit the brakes, a mistake we didn't realize at the time, and we crashed into a mailbox, before ending up in a ditch. I wouldn't say that was the Christmas spirit. I was scared, my baby brother in the backseat, who would be dead had the car hit the mailbox at a slightly different angle, which would shatter all of the glass near his head. I begged my mom to call Dad, but she shook her head angrily. She knew what I would have to learn the hard way, over and over again. He didn't help unless he was obligated to. And so, my life went on. I lived with my mom. We saw the lesser savory part of the world, always aware that things could be better, and our fate lied in the hands of a man who simply didn't realize this fact. On paper I may have three parents, but in my heart, I know only one who would go to the ends of the Earth for me, my mom, because she already has. For all of the jobs she worked, the pain she endured, the sleepless nights she wept, I have seen it. I want to take care of her when I'm older, by making sure she never has to sit at the kitchen table around midnight, surrounded by unpaid bills and utilities. It screws me over on my applications when my dad makes so much money that I can not qualify for aid, when in truth, I need it. Through scholarships which aim to help people like me, I see the good in the world, and I want to give back to it. I plan on funding scholarships when I'm older, visiting Title I schools and telling them my story and giving their schools donations. In a world where money changes so much, I want to use its power for good. When charity helps me, I will not be embarrassed about it. I simply want to pay it forward by helping little kids who were just like me.

My counselor sent me an email with a list of classes and told me, "You only need to pass these classes for graduation!" It was precisely half of my classes for my senior year, and each one was a core subject. And yet, the only class I truly felt like I succeeded in, the one which I found the easiest to muster the willpower to go to, was one not listed in that email at all: Ms. Hammond's Money Matters course. Almost every student my age wishes we learned about things that, for lack of better words, actually matter. Yes, we know about the New Deal policies and how ionic bonds compare to covalent ones, but what about taxes? How can we go about picking the right career pathway based on all the factors that have different levels of importance to each one of us? These practical teachings are not required by any sort of curriculum and it is beyond me how that is possible, and Ms. Hammond agrees with that sentiment. She teaches beyond what she needs to, which is even more critical as a CTE course. In her class, I've learned about taxes, retirement, different accounts and why to open them. Yes those are meant to be taught, but that is only what you see of the assignments when she puts them in the grade book. My experiences in her class have been far more enriching. She allows us to ask questions, and takes pride in not knowing everything, because she knows that as a class, we can learn something new in her room everyday. It's easy to be vulnerable in front of a teacher who cares about us and allows us to be curious kids. The world is our oyster, yes, but it feels like I was in summer camp, licking sticky popsicle juice off my elbow, just yesterday. An adult who understands just how daunting becoming an adult feels to us teenagers has given me the best support I could ask for these last few years of my high school career. That's not to say that she's not an adult controlling a rampage of teenagers, and some days definitely feel like a rodeo, for Ms. Hammond especially. We'll be flinging honey buns at each other, randomly asking her if second mortgage means the second payment on a house (short story, no), and a hundred other things that only teachers and students truly understand and cherish. But that is the true enjoyment of being in Ms. Hammond's class. We get to fulfill the stage of life we are currently in to the fullest, while also being guided by her on the next stage. In such a complex crisis of our life, when everything feels uncertain, and the people we've grown up with we may never see again, it is teachers like Ms. Hammond who help bring and keep us together.

I grew up in a trailer park but I will never qualify for financial aid. Life, with its sourly twisted humor, has rained down on me for most of my life, but I have been raised better than to be a lump of pessimism. My parents had divorced before I could form complete sentences, and that was only the beginning of a tornado of hatred between the two adults which would suck me in and consume me whole. As I grew up, each parent wanted me to egg on the other, to spew out vile insults and talk about how much the other one sucked. It wasn't like I wanted to, I just wanted my parents to love me; and it felt like I could only get love through hatred. The lies and manipulation each parent spoon fed me from my earliest years made me overly cautious of each one. My dad told me how my mother was pathetic, while my mom told me how he left her in the wind. The truth was, my dad left my mom for someone he met on a business trip to Brazil. He continued to shower his new wife in gifts and whatever fruitful plans he could fuel with his money. Meanwhile, my mom worked countless jobs, watching the unpaid bills and utilities on the kitchen table pile up, and little me would wake up around midnight, thirsty for a glass of water, just to watch her crying, hunched over the papers. From what I can gather about Treye Knorr, I can tell he would have been loved and cherished with open arms. The world can be unfair in so many ways, but at the end of the day, deciding who the villain is does not change the wreckage which they bring to your life. Sometimes, we can't even say there is any villain, the world is simply cruel in how it handles what should be the greatest blessings in peoples lives: a loving family. I grew up with broken love surrounding me, never truly coddling me, but rather suffocating me. I didn't want a family of my own when the definition of that word was so skewed in my household. I knew I was a trouble child, I couldn't sit still or focus on anything teachers taught me. I wouldn't be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder until I was seventeen, when my stepmother insisted I was too much for her to process. It always felt as if there was something wrong with me, because the only people who loved me were those who were obligated to, and even then, it felt conditional. That's where the power of service comes in, though. Regardless of what I've been through, I know I can help others. I plan to major in Public Administration for my Bachelor's degree, where I will learn more about how policy can help invigorate change. Kids who grew up like me, on the dangerous side of the tracks, who come from broken households, can have a chance. I want them to believe in themselves because I believe in them, and I can help them through changes which will last. Yes, my father's financial prosperity prevents me from qualifying for financial aid, but scholarships like this one give me a voice and another chance. There needs to be darkness in this world for the light to shine brighter. Yes, the world can prove to be cruel, but it can also give grace. Good things will always come to those who will do the best with it, and I hope my story resonates with that message. I will always keep faith in this world's blessings, and I will fight to help those who have seen the worst, to see the light at the end of the tunnel, just like I have.

My dad celebrated his one-year anniversary of his third marriage on a lavish trip, while my mom and I lived in a trailer park. The two sides of my coin of a childhood were clearly not the same. Being the child of divorced parents is becoming more and more normalized, but I think it should be ringing more alarm bells. I couldn't even speak at three years old, and yet I was supposed to cope with the fact that my "mama and dada" are not going to be there for me at the same time until my high school graduation. It's gut wrenching to have to be caught in the middle of a war between two adults, but even more so when you know you are the product of their best times, and the reason why they can't just leave each other in their pasts. I felt like a burden every day, and the only way to lessen it was to help them feel better. And how does one do that when they are a constant reminder to their parent about the person they hate the most? By joining in on the hatred. When my dad started antagonize my mom, I would lie and add gasoline to his fire. When my mom was crying to me about how my dad left her in ruins without a care in the world, I agreed with her on his selfishness. In both cases, I didn't fix the problem at its root. I gave them comfort, at the expense of my childhood. A therapist should have at least a master's degree, which I clearly didn't have in elementary school, but that clearly never occurred to the two most important adults in my life. It left me feeling an intense swirl of the utmost love and respect for my parents, but also churning rage for how they pulled me into their issues. But that is where the power of choice comes into play. I could hate them for the rest of my life, and allow it to drain me, or I could leave it in the past. I no longer entertain their games, I refuse to talk about the other parent when in presence of one. I am my own person, and I have my own choices to make. The silver lining of what I have went through are the morals which I have learned, and the standards I have created for myself. I still believe in love, and I won't let anyone take that away from me. I won't depend on anyone financially, as I have seen what that did to my mother, whose countless jobs never lessened the unpaid bills on our kitchen table. But I also won't let outside influences change how I view my loved ones, because I saw how that weakness of my father's allowed parasites to take him over. But they are both human, and that is the biggest lesson of all. They have each had their fair share of mistakes, and I make sure to learn from them so I don't have to figure it out the hard way. However painful their experiences have been, I won't allow myself to cower in fear at the joy that is life. I will continue to have passion, go to college, keep my heart open for love. Because the true success in life is not one where there is no pain and hardship; rather it is a life where you rise from the ashes and continue to evolve and learn.

On every college application, I say I have three parents. A mother, a father, and a stepmother. But that's not what it felt like as I was growing up. I didn't have an abundance of parental support, I had a 50% lack of it. While my dad married the woman who broke my family apart, my mom was left in ruins. I can't even blame a "homewrecker" for what happened to my childhood, the foundation of a home simply cannot be sustained when the man who helped build it never gave it his heart. If my father couldn't give my mother his heart, then how would he give it to the creation of their love? I stayed up countless nights, frustrated with my dad for how he left my mom and I. While him and his new life was filled with lavish houses, trips by airplanes, and other luxuries, my mom and I lived in a trailer park, and child support checks ended up supporting the both of us, even if it was the bare minimum. I always believed he could help us, though. On Christmas Eve in Chicago, my mom was driving me from our bad side to the pretty parts where my father lived. The ice on the roads was far too thick, and our beat-up car began to slide across the slippery grounds. She hit the brakes, a mistake we didn't realize, and we crashed into a mailbox, before ending up in a ditch. I wouldn't say that was the Christmas spirit. I was scared, my baby brother in the backseat, who would be dead had the car hit the mailbox at a slightly different angle, which would shatter all of the glass near his head. I begged my mom to call Dad, but she shook her head angrily. She knew what I would have to learn the hard way, over and over again. He didn't care unless he had to. And so, my life went on. I lived with my mom. We saw the lesser savory part of the world, always aware that things could be better, and our fate lied in the hands of a man who simply didn't realize this fact. On paper I may have three parents, but in my heart, I know only one who would go to the ends of the Earth for me, my mom, because she already has. For all of the jobs she worked, the pain she endured, the sleepless nights she wept, I have seen it. I want to take care of her when I'm older, by making sure she never has to sit at the kitchen table around midnight, surrounded by unpaid bills and utilities. It screws me over on my applications when my dad makes so much money that I can not qualify for aid, when in truth, I need it. Through scholarships which aim to help people like me, I see the good in the world, and I want to give back to it. I plan on funding scholarships when I'm older, visiting Title I schools and telling them my story and giving their schools donations. In a world where money changes so much, I want to use its power for good. When charity helps me, I will not be embarrassed about it. I simply want to pay it forward by helping little kids who were just like me.

Mental health can be just as debilitating or empowering as physical health. It can have you breaking down from a panic attack on your way to dropping off your kids to school in the morning, truly believing you will die paralyzed, with your kids in the backseat looking at you in horror, wondering if their mommy will be okay. Or it can be the release of endorphins during a workout, as you look at yourself in the mirror and think, "I am so proud of myself for getting up and working out even when I didn't want to." Both of these are stories that pertain to my life, me being the little kid in the backseat, but no doubt feeling my own terror and that of my mother. I have always been attuned to the emotions of others, which leaves me drained in particularly dramatic or tense situations. Carrying the brute of everyone else's emotions becomes tiring when it happens so often between my divorced parents. The separated pair have been involving me in their war of who is worse since I was just three years old. It wasn't only the heinous stories they each would tell me about the other; it was the support each one expected from me. I had to hate my own mother in front of my father, and my own father in front of my mother. At the end of the day, each adult was left feeling satisfied from the surface from my camaraderie, but no doubt, there were still feelings of hatred and doubt that I only saw the tip of the iceberg of. Regardless of that, at least the adults got some form of relief. But me? I was left alone as a child, unsure of whose side to take. I had said enough mean words about each parent when not in their company, that I felt immense guilt being around them both. I knew what each parent believed about the other, and I let myself believe those things as well. I was far too young to be the shoulder my parents leaned on, and it left me crushed with the weight of a totem pole on each side of me. I couldn't find the support I needed from my family when we felt too broken to even be considered such a concept of closeness and love. Each person is dealt with their own cards, but what we do with them determines how much we win. I've learned to forgive myself for my wrongdoings, and understand that it wasn't my fault. The world of fitness has helped me. When at first, my feelings were too big for me to handle, I just needed a numbing distraction which wouldn't veer me off course and hurt me. Weightlifting gave me that. But it's more than just the endorphins it releases, it's a community as well. Bodybuilders don't just give advice on macros and workout splits, they let you into their mind. I have learned what a healthier lifestyle is now, and how to work through my emotions. My physical health has blossomed from this hobby, but it has truly freed me because of the mental prosperity it brings me. It gives me my own identity, it gives me grace and the ability to forgive myself. These are the things in life which allow you to soar. Not only must your wings not be physically clipped, you must believe in yourself that you can fly. That is how mental health makes many stand apart from the rest.

Just a drop in the bucket. That's what everyone says to me about all of the small changes I try to make. I turn off my shower when I shampoo my hair, and even as I question my life, standing there on the cold tile with my body freezing, I know it's a small price to pay. It's the little things that make the biggest difference, it's the humility from a young age that will create the biggest investment in our planet. When you truly break down all of the things you can do to live more sustainably, every single aspect of your life can be thought about. It's mainly about conservation, about consuming only when you must, because many others can not even consume when they are dying out of necessity for it. Turning off my lights before I leave, lowering the air conditioning when needed, turning off the sink while brushing. These are baby habits but they save a lot of energy and supplies that I believe others need more than me. It's simply not enough to sympathize for the lesser fortunate. There is a clear imbalance in resources, privilege, and power between people like myself in economically developed countries versus those who lack the proper infrastructure, distribution, or even just access, to resources. Those human beings deserve to have heat in the cold nights, they deserve to have access to clean, drinking water. This all comes back to everyone living within their means. While many want to reduce their carbon footprint for a cleaner earth that will last the humans on it longer, I try to see it more from a humanistic perspective. Why was it that we wanted the world to last longer? For the rich and abundant to continue their disproportionate use of their resources? Or is it more likely that less carbon emissions will reduce global warming and the damage it causes especially to those who can not afford to muffle the catastrophes of our current world with their money, or lack thereof. Everything always comes back down to giving back to the Earth and I am a strong believer in karma. By choosing mild discomfort, run back the image of my shampoo mohawk as I stand motionlessly in my shower, I am helping others out of their lifetime of misery. By choosing to live more sustainably in the little things, they will add up and help countless other lives as well. It may seem to be only a drop in a bucket, one by one by one. But those little drops, provided by every single person, will stop the accumulating drops of our melting ice caps, they will slowly take back each drop in our rising sea levels. And with that comes the resurgence of health and prosperity of the struggling communities impacted most by the brazen actions of the privileged.