Growing up, some of the most influential people in my life have been teachers. I always knew I wanted to be in a career where I could help people, but it took me a long time to figure out what that meant or how I could realistically do that in my everyday life. Teaching is the answer for me. In some of my most formative years, teachers have been there to help me navigate the rough waters and to learn and grow into the person I am today. I want to be able to help future students the way my teachers have helped me. That's why I want to be an educator, to help people understand concepts that they never thought they could. I think my most influential teachers have been my middle school teachers. Not that I haven’t had some amazing teachers in high school, just that by then I had already figured out a lot about myself, the way I think, and the I way study or learn best. All those very important things I’ve learned, I learned while in middle school. I’ve grown up a lot since then but the values I learned from those teachers; I still hold very close to my heart. I'm hoping to be a middle school teacher of English and social studies because that's the age level I think I will have the most impact on. I want to utilize my education to help others learn and grow. I'll begin my studies in middle childhood education with a focus on English and social studies in Fall 2020 at the University of Cincinnati and I'm very excited to get started. Education has always been something I've found so important. I think when were are younger, we often find school pointless and think of it as a collection of random things someone decided everyone should know years ago, but that's not what education is about at all. Education is what gives us the freedom to make informed choices and understand the choices we're making. Education in history prevents the same mistakes from being made again. Education in English allows us to be able to better express our throughts through vocabulary and grammar. Education is ever changing and growing as society changes and grows and it's so important that we continue to educate ourselves and each other.

When I was little, I used to wear a Sleeping Beauty costume everywhere. Every single day, I'd put on my princess costume and do pretty much anything I had to that day in it. I didn't care what other people thought back then. I had confidence in that princess dress. That's what confidence means to me, it means being able to truly be yourself without caring what other people think of you. Somewhere along the way through, I lost that. I went from being carefree and just wearing whatever made me happy to being insecure in everything I owned. I had gained a lot of weight after being put on steroids for an asthma attack and I felt ugly. I felt like everyone was staring at me when I would go out and thinking "Wow, that girl is so fat." I hated myself because I thought that since I had gained weight, I was less than. What I didn't realize back then was that confidence doesn't come from what other people think of you or from a number on a scale. I spent a long time being insecure and wearing clothes I hated because I thought I was "too fat" for the clothes I liked. I have since then been working on going back to the "princess dress" mentality of wearing whatever brings me joy and trying not to care about what other people think of me. When I go shopping, I try everything on- even things I think I'm too fat for and I find that a lot of clothes I would've never even tried on before make me happy. It's really difficult to let go of your insecurities but it's important because confidence changes how we perceive ourselves and for me, it lets me truly be myself.