I cried, hitting the last few balls. But knowing that I would have worse shots tomorrow if I gave in, I went to get another bucket from my coach’s room. My coach smiled at me noticing that I decided to get more practice, but I awkwardly smiled back, hiding the frustration that was eating me up inside. As I hit the last two balls of the second bucket the furthest on the range, all I could think about were the mistakes in the first bucket of balls. After finishing the last practice before the tournament, I came home with fear and anxiety. I tucked myself into bed earlier than usual. You’d think I’m writing specifically about one traumatic tournament, but this was basically how every tournament went when I first started. Unsurprisingly, I messed up another tournament. The bad shots that came up only once in a while on the range were the only ones that dominated throughout the tournament. Before I even finished the last hole, everything was blurry from my tears. Dead silence filled the car ride back home. I knew my mom wasn’t upset with me; I was angry at myself too. At home, I reflected on what went wrong during the game: where I messed up, and why I played the way I did. I wish the thoughts would stop there, but they didn’t. I dug myself into a deeper hole, wondering if I had wasted the past couple of years of my life doing something I had no hope in. Right when I was about to sink even deeper, I snapped out of it. I realized that having this mindset wasn’t going to change anything but ruin my game even more. Even though I knew that the old guys at the range knew nothing about golf, their compliments on my shots at the range boosted my confidence. I jumped out of my bed and ran to my parents in the living room. I told them never to let me quit golf even if I begged to. Then I started calling friends whom I trusted, one by one, never to let me go the easy path of dropping the sport. The next morning, I decided to analyze my practice routine. Realizing that I had been practicing my short game way less than everything else and that that was where I lost most of my points in tournaments. I decided to practice short games as much as, or even a little more than everything else. After a couple of months of those practices, came the night before another tournament. I climbed into bed early, turned off the lights, and started to think. Of course, I was still nervous, but this time, I anticipated the tournament to come, excited about putting my practice and hard work to the test. Upon making the last putt, I calculated my score. I tried not to smile too much, just in case my calculations of the scores were wrong, but I knew deep inside that I had done it. I glanced at the scoreboard and saw that I had won! I calmly shook hands with everyone and headed to the main lobby. Hearing the staff making the announcement, I felt my mom nudging my arm from the back. At home, I called and thanked all the friends I’d phoned before, telling them about the game I’d won. Confused, they asked why they were being thanked, and I laughed and talked until my phone got hot again. Soon, I got ready for bed early, preparing myself for another day of early morning practice.

Although in previous years, I’ve led many groups such as sports teams, volunteer organizations, and clubs, I’ve always thought of myself more of an in-the-crowd person because I thought I needed to be associated with a big title, such as “ASB President” or “Club Officer” to be an actual leader, which I didn’t have. However, last year, I was able to discover what it actually meant to be a leader. I learned that bringing school spirit to the people around me is also a form of leadership. Coming back to in-person learning last year and seeing how much I can encourage my friends by talking to them about school events and socials made me realize that there is so much more to leadership than just organizing an event or brainstorming ideas. I saw myself as a big influencer in my friend group, encouraging them to participate in rallies, homecoming, and spirit weeks. After this realization, I decided to put myself in an environment where I can use this skill for the people who need it most, which in this case, were the new and very scared Freshmen. Last fall, I was accepted to a program called Link Crew in School. Link Crew is a program where Juniors and Seniors are able to lead Incoming Freshmen into their first year in high school and help them along throughout the whole year. Here, I was able to help the new students to transition into high school with less fear and the biggest school spirit. I gave every freshman in my group my phone number and email address, telling them to reach out to me with any questions or concerns they had. I also provided them with the resources they needed for sports, school events, and even after-school classes. Through this program, I was not only able to help the freshmen but also learn the most important factor of leadership, leaving a positive influence. With Link Crew being the start, I have been able to experience a variety of leadership positions, such as an assistant coach for golf. To teach the players who were much younger and had little experience, I had to learn essential soft skills to teach them the sport while also keeping their interest and focus. Through all of these experiences, I have been able to learn not only the skills that come with leadership but also what leadership itself means. I now know that the value of a leader does not depend on their title, but on the effect, they leave on the people around them.

South Korea’s rigorous and high-stress education system was what made my parents move to California. For my education, they moved to one of the richest parts of California, Cupertino. My parents supported me by pretending we were just as rich as everyone else in the area. They found the cheapest house in the most expensive neighborhood and the best school in that neighborhood. While everyone around me worried about getting accepted into a good college, I worried about not having enough money to go, even if I was accepted into a good college. With my parents supporting me to the best of their abilities, I knew I needed to make the most out of what I had been given. My mom had found a golf camp that coached students for ten minutes and gave them a bucket of one hundred balls, for just ten dollars. The coach let the students take extra buckets of balls if they wanted to, but not many did. When all of the other students left after finishing their bucket of balls in an hour, I took all of the extra buckets that were left over, hitting them for 3 or maybe even 4 more hours. It became a tradition between me and my mom to stay and practice more after. Seeing this, my coach always brought out more buckets for me and coached me for a longer time. Although people didn’t think much about the ten-dollar-camp, thanks to it, I became the captain and MVP of my High School varsity team and won multiple outside state tournaments. Today, I plan on trying out for the golf team at Carnegie Mellon University, which I will be attending next year. Despite not being the best golf camp, I was able to make the most out of it, if not even more than what was given. For me, those 10-dollar camps led to something much bigger and more important. Now, it has finally come to the point where my parents cannot support me all the way. This scholarship would be a final push before I can fully support myself. Seeing how much I was able to achieve from the small push of the 10-dollar golf camp, I can only imagine how much more this scholarship will help me achieve. Thanks to my parents’ efforts and sacrifices, I have been able to get accepted to my dream college. My parents have done everything in their power to support me, and I believe that earning this scholarship will be a significant step in the path to supporting myself and my family in return. While also playing golf, my goal in college is to learn ways of applying physics to problems that are relevant today with the support from this scholarship, such as eliminating glares from laptop screens outdoors or thinking of ways to cool down driveways in front of houses in the summer heat. Beyond college, I hope to work in a field in which I can utilize my physics knowledge to come up with solutions for everyday problems and common annoyances like the ones I listed, while also competitively playing golf, which helped me find out the type of person I am. In the future, I hope to explore my curiosity, having money as a support and not as an obstacle.

The lazy talented always falls behind the hard working quick learner. I used to be told that very often by my coach. I started my golf career in the fifth grade and was a relatively fast learner. I joined a small camp with 10 other kids. We would each get ten minutes of coaching and would spend the rest of the time hitting the basket of balls that we were given. The ages of the students ranged from elementary school to high school. I remember looking up to one student in particular. Brooke. Her swing was nearly perfect and she effortlessly hit the ball over the 200-yard marker. I grabbed more baskets of balls hoping that one day, I would hit it as well as her. However, another thing I remembered about her was that she was lazy. When everyone was working on their basket of balls, she would sit, letting her dad finish the basket of balls for her. My ten-year-old self couldn’t understand why anyone would spend the effort and energy to come to the camp, only to sit on the sides for the majority of the time. Many years later, my mom signed me up for private lessons from the same coach. Around this time, however, my steady upward growth in skill was starting to level out. Joining tournaments for the first time, I noticed there were hundreds of other “Brooke"s playing in the tournament. While I was practicing every day to cut down one stroke, others were practicing just once a week and getting better scores than me. I started to lose hope that my skills would ever be able to catch up to the talent that some of the players had. However, after each tournament, it always annoyed me to see that all talented players took their talent for granted and were lazy. Instead of practicing, they relied on their talent, hoping that it would take them to the top. However, I knew that wasn’t the case. Talent without a solid foundation can only take you so far. I knew without practice, there was a limit to what they can achieve. This motivated me to work harder. Knowing this about them already gave me an advantage over them. I didn’t need to be discouraged by the talent that all of these other players had, since my hard work would be able to go further than theirs. Knowing this, I practiced harder every day, hoping for the day that I would beat them. All of the talented players broke down as soon as they had one bad day, but for me, I was used to it. Because of all the bad days I had, I knew how to fix my mistakes and improve myself based on that day. Then, it finally happened. I won my first tournament. In second place was a girl that I’d been playing with for several years, always trailing way behind her. My hard work provided me with a steady foundation. Steady enough for me to beat the players that wasted their talent away. I not only enjoy playing golf, but I’m also thankful for all the things that came along with it. Golf has given me community, competition, and motivation. I find relationships between golf players very interesting. Unlike other team sports, you are not restricted to the members of your team for a community. Everyone in the tournament is your competition, but also your motivation. Golf has taught me a valuable lesson on how to see my competitive peers as a stepping stone, not an obstacle.

Since the beginning of High School, my biggest interest has been in sciences. My physician pointed out that my favorite class every year had been a science class. After taking Biology, Chemistry, and Physics in High School, a pattern I noticed was that I was interested in studies that were related to things I could see in real life. This explained my biggest interest in physics. At the beginning of the year, physics was just a subject that I found relatively easy to learn and be tested on. However, when asked about the class, everyone else in my class would talk about how much they struggled and how difficult it was, which I found very interesting. I not only understood the subject but also wanted to dive deeper into the subject and learn at higher levels. Throughout my years in school, I’ve discovered a habit that I have, which is that I try to teach or tell other people about subjects I enjoy. I noticed myself doing exactly that to my classmates and my family throughout the year in physics. This year, a physics subject in particular that really amazed me was the study of light. As mentioned before, it was a subject that I could learn in class through a textbook, and then actually observe how it worked in real life, by simply opening my eyes. With light, it wasn’t just about the blinding sun outside, it was also about how I perceived all the colors around me. Visualizing the things that I learned in class right away blew my mind and brought value to what I was learning. My goal after high school is to learn things beyond, meaning not just general facts in the textbooks, but subjects that might be more relevant today, such as eliminating glares from laptop screens outdoors or thinking of ways to cool down driveways in front of houses in the summer heat. Beyond college, I hope to go on a path where I can utilize these real-life physics to come up with solutions for everyday problems and common annoyances like the ones I listed. I believe that optical physics has a bigger role in commonly used technologies than most people realize. With pollution always being a major problem, lights and lasers could be substituted for heavy machinery that produces large amounts of pollution. I plan on focusing my studies in physics on future technologies that are more efficient and eco-friendly.

“Blank Space” has always been the song for me and my friend since elementary school. ‘1989’ was my favorite album, coincidently also being the only CD we had in our family minivan. I remember listening to the album over and over, singing the beginning of the next song before it even started. Most days, I would press the now-worn-out ‘2’ button in the car, skipping to my favorite song: “Blank Space”. It was my go-to song when I didn’t know someone’s music taste, and it was always a hit of course. It was also the signature song for me and my best friend, Janet, all throughout our friendship. In elementary school, Janet and I decided that we were going to perform our favorite song at the school talent show. She came over to my house almost every day, brainstorming ideas about how we could perform it. We decided to change up some lyrics so it was funnier and more relevant to our class. Nights of having dinner together and using my dad’s computer to type out the lyrics became a core memory of our friendship. Although we ended up not performing after realizing we had to sing in front of the class, we still talk about the brainstorming sessions to this day and the silly lyrics we came up with together. The request sheet next to the DJ at a school dance never failed to have “Blank Space” written on it in my or Janet’s handwriting. The starting tune of the song would always be our cue to run out right next to the speaker and sing our hearts out. While everyone else was standing awkwardly, trying to keep their middle-school-coolness, Janet and I danced and sang the song like there was no one else there. In all of the dances we went to together, we always gave each other “the look”, racing up to the DJ to see who can write down our very special song first. In High School, Janet and I started to drift apart due to different interests. I started spending more time in sports, while she spent more time in the gaming community. Although we talked to each other once in a while at school, we didn’t hang out much outside of school anymore. An occasional comment on Instagram posts would be one of the few conversations we had. When we finally decided to hang out, we had the most basic conversations. Conversations that you would hear between strangers who are trying to fill the awkward void of silence. After many minutes of cold sweats, I queued up some songs in my playlist, “Blank Space” being right at the top of course. Immediately, we started singing the song, line after line, forgetting about the calm conversation we were having and completely going all out. It felt like I had found my best friend again. After the singing session, we talked to each other like how we used to, back when we hung out every day. We were even able to laugh about how awkward the earlier conversations were. Although it may just be a song for most people, “Blank Space” is what built a very valuable friendship with Janet. It became our inside joke, core memory, and what brought us back together. This song will always be a reminder that no matter how many new memories I make, the old ones will always have a place to stay in my heart. If my life had a theme song, it would be “Blank Space” By Taylor Swift.

I want to be a listener for those would are unhappy with our society, since that is sometimes all we need to make a difference and bring improvement to our society.

The lazy talented always falls behind the hard working quick learner. I used to be told that very often by my coach. I started my golf career in the fifth grade and was a relatively fast learner. I joined a small camp with 10 other kids. We would each get ten minutes of coaching and would spend the rest of the time hitting the basket of balls that we were given. The ages of the students ranged from elementary school to high school. I remember looking up to one student in particular. Brooke. Her swing was nearly perfect and she effortlessly hit the ball over the 200-yard marker. I grabbed more baskets of balls hoping that one day, I would hit it as well as her. However, another thing I remembered about her was that she was lazy. When everyone was working on their basket of balls, she would sit, letting her dad finish the basket of balls for her. My ten-year-old self couldn’t understand why anyone would spend the effort and energy to come to the camp, only to sit on the sides for the majority of the time. Many years later, my mom signed me up for private lessons from the same coach. Around this time, however, my steady upward growth in skill was starting to level out. Joining tournaments for the first time, I noticed there were hundreds of other “Brooke"s playing in the tournament. While I was practicing every day to cut down one stroke, others were practicing just once a week and getting better scores than me. I started to lose hope that my skills would ever be able to catch up to the talent that some of the players had. However, after each tournament, it always annoyed me to see that all talented players took their talent for granted and were lazy. Instead of practicing, they relied on their talent, hoping that it would take them to the top. However, I knew that wasn’t the case. Talent without a solid foundation can only take you so far. I knew without practice, there was a limit to what they can achieve. This motivated me to work harder. Knowing this about them already gave me an advantage over them. I didn’t need to be discouraged by the talent that all of these other players had, since my hard work would be able to go further than theirs. Knowing this, I practiced harder every day, hoping for the day that I would beat them. All of the talented players broke down as soon as they had one bad day, but for me, I was used to it. Because of all the bad days I had, I knew how to fix my mistakes and improve myself based on that day. Then, it finally happened. I won my first tournament. In second place was a girl that I’d been playing with for several years, always trailing way behind her. My hard work provided me with a steady foundation. Steady enough for me to beat the players that wasted their talent away. I not only enjoy playing golf, but I’m also thankful for all the things that came along with it. Golf has given me community, competition, and motivation. I find relationships between golf players very interesting. Unlike other team sports, you are not restricted to the members of your team for a community. Everyone in the tournament is your competition, but also your motivation. Golf has taught me a valuable lesson on how to see my competitive peers as a stepping stone, not an obstacle.

South Korea’s rigorous and high-stress education system was what made my parents move to California. For my education, they moved to one of the richest parts of California, Cupertino. My parents supported me by pretending we were just as rich as everyone else in the area. They found the cheapest house in the most expensive neighborhood and the best school in that neighborhood. While everyone around me worried about getting accepted into a good college, I worried about not having enough money to go, even if I was accepted into a good college. With my parents supporting me to the best of their abilities, I needed to make the most out of what I’d been given. My mom had found a golf camp that coached students for ten minutes and with a bucket of one hundred balls, for just ten dollars. The coach let the students take extra buckets of balls if they wanted to, but not many did. When all of the other students left after finishing their bucket of balls in an hour, I took the extra buckets that were left over, hitting them for 3 or maybe even 4 more hours. It became a tradition between me and my mom to stay and practice more after. Seeing this, my coach always brought out more buckets for me and coached me for a longer time. Although people didn’t think much about the ten-dollar-camp, thanks to it, I became the captain and MVP of my High School varsity team and won multiple outside state tournaments. Today, I plan on trying out for the golf team at Carnegie Mellon University, which I’ll be attending next year. Despite not being the best golf camp, I was able to make the most out of it, if not even more than what was given. For me, those 10-dollar camps led to something much bigger and more important. Now, it has come to the point where my parents cannot support me all the way. This scholarship would be a final push before I can fully support myself. Seeing how much I was able to achieve from the small push of the 10-dollar golf camp, I can only imagine how much this scholarship will help me achieve. Thanks to my parents’ sacrifices, I’ve been able to get accepted to my dream college. Earning this scholarship will be a significant step in the path to supporting myself and my family in return. I plan to study physics in college. One topic in particular that captivated me was the study of light. While reading the textbook in class, I found it intriguing, and when I observed how it worked in real life by simply opening my eyes, I realized that the study of light wasn’t just about investigating the blinding sun outside, but was also about how I perceived all the colors around me. Stepping outside the classroom and visualizing the diagrams I learned in class immediately blew my mind and brought value to what I was learning. With the support from this scholarship, my goal in college is to learn ways of applying physics to problems that are relevant today, such as eliminating glares from laptop screens outdoors or thinking of ways to cool down driveways in front of houses in the summer heat. Beyond college, I hope to work in a field in which I can utilize my physics knowledge to come up with solutions for everyday problems and common annoyances like the ones I listed. In the future, I hope to explore my curiosity, having money as a support and not as an obstacle.