Why am I passionate about theater? When I was six years old I attended a musical theater summer camp and my life has not been the same since. Ever since then, I have not been able to see myself happy being anywhere else than the stage. The minute I step on any stage I get this rush of excitement that only increases when the lights go up and I hear the audience in the house. When I was very young I had an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and was prone to panic attacks and random anger outbursts. As soon as I got on stage everything bad just washed away. When people in the audience laugh the anger dissipates, when the lights come up the anxiety floats away. The stage is a place where the quiet can be loud and the loud can be vulnerable. Making people smile and laugh has always been something I am good at. I have learned over the years on stage that no matter the size of the role you always have to put your whole heart into it or when you get the lead others won’t put in the effort for you. Even when I am in the ensemble of a show I always give 110% because while it may not be my time to shine, that doesn’t mean that the leads deserve to have any less of a shining moment. I have always identified myself as an actor and performer even though I was not professional. Everyone who knows me knows that my dream is to do theater as long as I possibly can. There may not be a lot of money in what I want to do unless you are that one in a million, but as long as I do what I love which is to perform I will have all the wealth I need. Every chance I can I do something in the theater. I knew that even if I did not get cast in my last show due to my age, I was going to work for the tech crew. The theater is so much in my blood at this point that even if I could not act I had to be involved in some way. I was in a production of Shrek the Musical as the Wicked Witch and a week before opening I got very sick. I ended up going to the doctor and they told me I had laryngitis and was not contagious so I was able to go back to work on the show. I physically could not speak but I still went on during the last two dress rehearsals with someone else on the mike for me. I was lucky enough that by opening night I was able to speak a little bit and sing. Even though I could have stayed home and called in sick I went in and did everything I could to make sure that the show went on. Thank you for your consideration. The theater is so ingrained in who I am and what I do that I can’t see myself happy doing anything else.

I am lucky to not be one of the unfortunate who has struggled with cancer personally but I have lost people I love to it. My grandmother died of cancer after contracting COVID-19 in April 2020. We knew that she was going to be in the hospital for some routine treatment, but then she needed a blood transfusion. Ok, that's not abnormal. Then we got a call that she had a fever but that this happens with transfusions sometimes but they had to test her for COVID. When the test came back positive she was feeling fine and for a while, she was acting normal. Then all of a sudden she was unconscious and very unresponsive. She stayed like this for days until she eventually stopped breathing. Due to this, it is my personal belief that no one should have to lose someone without saying goodbye. She was in New Jersey and we are in Georgia. The last time I talked to her on the phone she was so tired that the nurse had to hang up because she had basically passed out. All of this took a heavy toll on my mental health and my relationship with those close to me. I shut everyone out and was in shock for days and could barely speak. As for career aspirations, I honestly am not sure what I want to do but I want to help people. I'm not sure yet if that just means starting a foundation to find a cure for cancer or if it means being one of the scientists in the lab to make sure that no one else has to lose someone the way I have. It has always interested me how there are so many different types of cancer that act all different ways but many of the treatments are the same. It doesn't matter if you have breast cancer or leukemia, you will likely still use chemotherapy to treat it even though they are so different. Does this mean that there is going to be one cure for all types of cancers or does this mean that we have to find so many different cures for the over 200 known types of cancer? If we have to find more than 200 cures what does this mean for distribution and accessibility? What about a preventative? We know that the HPV vaccine highly decreased the likelihood of getting cervical cancer but can we find something of the same persuasion for breast cancer or colon cancer? All of this is my experience with Cancer. It is an awful thing that we need to find a cure for and if there is not one we need to work until no one is losing people to this despicable illness.

The song that has the most important message to me is Seasons of Love from the musical Rent. The song talks about how many things come and go but love is the only way to measure the value of life. It touches on how different people measure the value of life such as “in truths that she learned or in times that he cried? In bridges he burned or the way that she died?” all the different characters have opinions on what matters to them in the end. They all come together to sing “ How about love” over and over. Near the end of the song they say to forget sorrow and “celebrate [and] remember a year I the life of friends” because to them their friends are their family and that is where the receive the love that allows them to go on. I started listening to the Rent soundtrack during COVID and after I had lost my grandmother, this song helped me remember that while she might be gone her life was so filled with love that it was a well lived life.

What is feminism? This is a question that has been asked since 1848 when the idea of feminism first came to light. To me, feminism is the belife that woman can do anything that they set their minds to. Historically speaking, women have been seen as less than their male counterparts in almost all aspects of life. These include intellectual prowess, physical capability, and the ability to support a family financially. In my life I have been seen as less than because of my gender identity. When I was younger and even now, people consider themselves able to beat me in a fight. At school people would talk about who could take on who and win. All of the guys assumed that because I am a thin young woman with not much muscle tone that they would be able to beat me. Little did they know that I had a blackbelt in martial arts and had been training since I was seven. When I mentioned this to them they were all shocked because even today people underestimate women. Some of the smartest women in history have been women. People (men) tend to forget that competent women did not just start existing when feminism what first brought up. Women like Hypatia existed less than 500 years after the common era started. She was a philosopher and astronomer in Alexandria, Egypt. As far as I am concerned this is evidence that not only are women capable of anything men are, but we have been for quite some time. Another woman that is forgotten is Ada Lovelace. She was the one who created the coding for the prototype digital computer made by Charles Babbage in the 1830’s. Without Ada I would not be typing on the computer that allows me to write this essay. Like Ada and Hypatia there have been other inspiring feminists in my life. My mother for one taught me from a young age that if I wanted to do something that was mostly done by the boys that I could do it just as well. This led to me growing up with the idea that no matter what any of the boys said I could do anything they could. Other than personal connections, people like Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have inspired me to not only stand up for myself as a woman, but to stand up for all of the women that I know and even the ones that I don’t. These three women prove that feminism is not just saying that women should be able to do everything because they deserve to be equal, they deserve to be equal because they are able to do everything.

Why do I love math? Math has always come very easy to me and it has been fun to dive deeper into the whys and hows of the things we do in math. Math allows us to make sense of the world around us. Honestly, I’m interested in a lot of things and math has always been a subject that even when hard I have found a way to make it fun and make it work for me. When I was in 7th grade I was placed in a math class that was far too easy. After a couple of classes I realized that if I wanted to have a good experience with this section of my education I needed to advocate for myself. I went on to talk with the school and the head of the mathematics department and get switched into the uppermost math course. This meant that I technically missed a year of math (pre algebra) and went straight into algebra one as a 7th grader. This caused some problems and confusion for me so I found that I just needed to work even harder than everyone else to get the same grades. After a couple of months I finally felt like I was in the right place and was content with this aspect of my education. As a freshman I am currently taking Geometry Trig and Algebra 2 at the same time. Many of my classmates chose not to continue into this course because it is notoriously very challenging. I decided that math was one of the things I was not going to comprise just to get the best grade possible. As a sophomore I plan to take pre calculus then calculus as a junior and possibly a college level class as a senior. Thank you so much for your consideration and I hope you were able to see how much of an affinity I have for mathematics.