When you start elementary school and the teacher tells the class that there is going to be an upcoming Career Day, the 25-30 children look at the teacher like they have three heads. What is Career Day? What does that mean? Upon discovering what Career Day actually means and they are asked the more simpler question of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" students almost immediately want to eagerly answer the question with all types of answers. You have the kids who want to be what their parents are because that's all they really know, you have the kids that want to be occupations that they discovered after finding something their interested in and, of course, you have the kids that want to be the most bizarre things. A superhero. A ninja. I fell into the category of being a kid who wanted to be something after finding interest in it. As I lined all my stuffed animals on the couch and stood in front of them showing them a homemade sign of the alphabet that I just learned in school, my family right away asked if I wanted to be a teacher. For the longest time, a teacher had always been a general statement for me. I want to be a teacher. Oh, but what kind of teacher. That answer for me always changed. Whatever my favorite subject that day or that month was, was the teacher that I wanted to be. Then moving past the subject, what grade do you want to teach, that was another broad statement, one that I didn't have a sedentary answer to. That was when I started doing volunteer services for my school, church and dance company where I would help teach the youth. I taught elementary aged dancers at my studio and learned that I couldn't deal with their craziness. I taught middle school aged students at my church and learned that it was hard to reach students at that age. I assisted tutoring at my school and knew that it was high school students that I felt most comfortable with because they were easier to teach and not as crazy as the other grade levels. I feel like Career Day should be held again to high schoolers and college students because I know many people who are still undecided. As time moved forward and I finally reached my junior year of high school, I knew exactly what I wanted to be. A high school history teacher. But how was I going to get there. Great, more questions. For high schoolers, everything is so undecided and all over the place, much like when we were elementary schoolers trying to answer these questions but now that we have a little bit more figured out, it's time to put it into action. Obtaining a scholarship will help me live out a childhood dream that I've had of what I imagined my career being. In order for me to become a teacher I need a college degree and I would like to expand my knowledge on the subject I want to teach.

Ever since I was little I have always been fascinated with history, American history and the innerworkings that history had to do with life. There is so much in history that is factual information that help shape lives and mold the idea of where our stories come from. I mean it also made sense that I was so enamored by history since my family vacations had always been to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. My dad also became a huge history buff at a young age and once discovering that I was into history as well, he started introducing me to tv shows, movies, books and even more places where history is prominently known. Our fascination was most exclusively for Civil War history because living in Maryland gave us so many easily accessible places to battle sites. I knew almost everything about the Battle of Gettysburg before I even started those lessons in school and when we reached those lessons in class, I was highly disappointed when they did not go in-depth about any of the Civil War battles. It wasn't my only concern as there had been some incredibly significant wars and events like the War of 1812, Reconstruction Era, the Space Race, and the Vietnam War that also were not covered in the classroom. The lack thereof lessons that I did not acquire in my middle and high school history classes made my desires to become a history teacher heighten. At a very young age, I knew I wanted to be a teacher but my subject interest was always different every other year. In elementary school when I liked math, because math had still been simple, I wanted to teach math. In middle school when I liked reading and writing, I wanted to teach english. But at the end of the day, history has always been something I have been very fond of. There was so much information about specific events that I wanted to expand my knowledge on and entering classes where teachers just skimmed over some of the most important moments in history made everything fall apart for my historical education but fall in place for my future. I am passionate about history and even more passionate about teaching the youth which makes perfect sense as to why I want to make change in the future by becoming a history teacher and teaching and expanding on the most important parts of history. Everyone knows that as long as history is taught, there is not going to be room for repeptition. While there are a lot of negative things that happen in history, especially American history, we can always make light of how far we came to reach this point of freedom today. I want to ensure that the youth is aware of the positives and negatives that shape the society and world that they are living in, in order for them to one day ensure peace and prosperity for the future.

I think the quality that I assign the best to my personality is leadership. I have always felt like a leader in everything that I do and I know that my possession of leadership skills is something that strongly defines who I am as a person. My leadership skills are shown most exclusively through the active guidance that I give to others. In school, I always try to take initiative on all the assignments because I want to assure that everything becomes accomplished. Not only do I wish to complete the tasks at hand but amid our work, I want to ensure that everyone in the group is a participant by comprehending the content that the assignments are on. In my personal life, I try my best to be the forerunner and show the path to others. I am the oldest sibling and cousin in my family so it has always felt in my nature to lead my younger siblings and cousins into the correct paths in life and direct them on how to get there. Having the skill of being a leader is one of my biggest strengths in my life because I know that there are so many career paths and options and opportunities that involve being a leader. The most prominent leadership responsibility is teaching. I feel that the influence a teacher has on a student is some of the most important mentoring that a student receives in their lifetime. It is teachers from my past that have guided me into pursuing the characteristics that I have today. When I was younger I was, like everyone else, timid but eventually, teachers helped me break out of that bubble and follow a life filled with confidence and leadership. Just like those teachers that gave me those chances to blossom into who I truly am today, I want to be that kind of mentor to students in the future. I want to be a teacher and use my leadership qualities to guide my students toward the paths they most desperately need to excel. In addition to guiding them in my classroom and in the school that I plan on teaching in the future, I want to encourage them in schools they attend after mine and in lives, they pursue afterward. I want to be the type of teacher who has advice that recollects in their minds for years after they have known me and later becomes people that possess high-quality characteristics that turn them into profound members of society. I've led so many family members, friends and peers toward accomplishing their life assignments and I wish to continue leading as many people as I can, especially in our youth.

Ever since I was little, I have always had a fascination with being a teacher. No one in my family is a teacher but before I reached kindergarten my grandmother homeschooled me to the point where I started to excel. There was no figure or crazy event that brought me into believing that I wanted to be a teacher, I just one day woke up and in my little elementary-aged mindset my answer to what I wanted to be when I grew up was that I wanted to be a teacher. Each year I continued to grow passionate about wanting to be a teacher and now as I start trying to pursue higher education, I want to carry on with teaching. The short response to how pursuing higher education would make a difference in my life is that I would be allowed to live out my dream. The selfish approach to the situation would be that I would be. I would be living out my dream if I went to college and received a degree to become a teacher. But over the years that I have learned that becoming a teacher has been my dream, I have also discovered that there are more reasons why I believe teaching is important to me. There has always been something in me that loves helping people and loves giving people the opportunities they deserve. I live in an area where I am surrounded by people who aren't given the same things that I am given and I've always felt a calling to help those people even though there isn't much I could do to support them. Recently I have been given the chance to intern as a part of my magnet program in high school and not only do I get first-hand interactions with what it's like to be a teacher but I also get insight into how students' lives function. I never knew that 5th graders could be going through so much at home but when they come to me and look for me to help as I attempt to be a role model to them, there's only so much that I can do as an assistant teacher. I've learned that I have an extent to which I can help them. I listen to them and try to give them advice on how to be proactive in school even if their home life can be crazy but I know that as soon as I become a teacher on my own and I encounter student's like these in the future, I know that I can give them greater opportunities to pursue their dreams and live out their lives to the fullest. Being a teacher is only a part of my dream and what makes it complete is seeing other people's dreams play out as well.

My career of choice is education in the subject area of social studies but at the same time I am also passionate about writing and I wish to pursue a type of writing career like becoming an author. Ever since I was little I wanted to teach because I always loved the idea of giving the youth your insight and encouraging them to pursue their best in life. By doing so I knew I could incorporate some of my favorite hobbies like history, reading and writing while also giving inspiration to kids through teaching. Writing, I've been passionate about it because I find it as an outlet and escape when I am feeling alone in the world. Something that I will say that I've had to sacrifice over the years because of my plans to achieve my goals seems kind of silly but it's the loss of many relationships in my lifetime. When I was in middle school and entering high school, I applied and was accepted to a magnet high school that offered a teacher academy program that has further advanced me in my studies to become a teacher. While the opportunity that I have now has been nothing but amazing, it was also troublesome to leave a lot of people behind while I chased these dreams. My middle school was filled with some of my closest friends with that I've grown relationships since kindergarten and because of my switch to a new school, I was about to leave all of them behind. There was no one else from my run-down, small-town middle school that planned on achieving anything more at the moment while I already knew what I wanted to be and how to get there. My first step was to go to this school in a different town even though it was out of the way from where I initially lived. It gave me so much college and career readiness that I don't think I would have received from my home public high school. Losing all of my friends and entering a high school where I had no friends, made my shy self incredibly insecure as I walked through the hallways and tried to befriend the right kids. Luckily I did. I know that again when I graduate high school another sacrifice will be made when I leave not only new friends and acquaintances that I made but also family and relationships that I've grown only to chase my dreams some more. I do know at the end of the day that although it's awful to leave so many loved ones behind, it seems selfish in a way, but it's worth it in the end. I've learned over my time being separated from so many losses that the people that love and care about you will hold on to your memories and wish to come back for your growing relationship. Those people will want you to go and chase dreams and grasp opportunities that you may only have one chance to grab.

As an aspiring teacher, it is my exact job title as an educator to educate the youth. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was little because I found it so intriguing to be able to give all of the knowledge that you know and give it to someone younger than you. In that way, they will take that information and begin to introduce it to the world as well. And that is exactly what I plan on doing. All of the information that I have learned in my 13 years of schooling and that I will continue to learn over the next few years in college, I will take that intellect and apply them to my teaching. Every student, in my opinion, should be allowed to learn about everything in life. Not just math and science and English but how to handle finances, build healthy relationships and mental survival skills. There is so much that can be taught between the lines that can easily be done for students but it is so overlooked in school systems. While education boards' only motivation for students to learn is to grasp the information enough to pass test scores, I want to become the type of educator that helps every single student achieve in life. I know that it takes a lot for one person to bring a series of complex lessons revolving around the basics of the real world to every student and every child but there is always hope. There is always hope that most of the kids are affected and take action in their futures just as I wish to. There is always hope that other educators and adults start impacting students in the same way. I plan on having a social studies classroom teaching students about the past which can impact their decision-making for the future by learning from their ancestors' mistakes. Others may teach math and implement financial and economic information into their classes. There are so many ways that teachers can already start assisting students but so many have failed to do so which is why as an educator in the future I plan to help the youth in the classroom to be able to bring those subject lessons to life.

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always had dogs running around my house. When I was born, my parents were still living with my grandparents and they had a dog. Then when I was about 4 years old, we moved out and got our own dog. She passed away when I was 10 and then at age 14 we have the dog that is currently still in my life. An all white English bulldog that has energy bursts like a border collie but is still a lazy bulldog at the end of the day. Everywhere I go when I take him for a walk, everyone becomes obsessed. I never understood how popular bulldogs are until recently when I took him around. My family and I go camping a lot and whenever we go on a nice walk, we always get stopped at least 10 times. Of course, my attention-loving puppy loves it and so do all the passersby who admire, pet, love, cuddle him. But when push comes to shove, he’s my dog. He’s my companion, snuggle buddy and everything in between. We’ve had a strong connection ever since he was a puppy because I was the one who held him on the 2 hour drive home. Not only does my dog receive love, care and appreciation but he also returns the favor by helping me through difficult times. My dog has been in my life so far throughout high school. High school has been rough for me and I’ve had a roller coaster of emotions every single day but at the end of each day, I go home to see my small tail-wagging, happy-to-see-me dog. I’ll get out of the car at home to see him sitting on the porch waiting for me. Then he’ll chase me upstairs waiting for any type of attention and once I give it to him, he’ll settle down. I take him for a walk as soon as I get home from school and he knows it. I washed his wrinkly face after he sat behind me in the bathroom watching me wash mine. I wrap him in a blanket at the foot of my bed at night and usually find him lying on my pillow next to me the following morning. My dog means the world to me and I would never wish to replace him for anything. It’s the little things that he does and doesn’t even realize he’s doing that makes his presence even more important to me. As a teenager, there is so much that goes on in life and sometimes there are things that never seem to be consistent in life. But I have faith in knowing that every single day I get home from school - whether it’s a good day or a bad one - I always have that excited pup eager to see me and eager to make me feel better. In a way, he seems like an emotional support animal. My emotional support animal. From one look, he makes my day instantly better. Like the time I had a really terrible day at school but when I got picked up by my dad, my dog was in the passenger seat. From one warm snuggle, he can make the entire week feel like there’s something worth it in the end. I never knew how powerful a dog’s presence would be in my life, but as an animal lover, I guess it makes sense. Dogs mean everything to me.

My favorite Disney character would have to be Nani from Lilo & Stitch. She’s a very underrated character which is one reason why she’s my favorite. In my opinion, she was the first character that really showcased female empowerment before the desperation for feminism was even needed. While today Disney creates lots of content with female main characters, society fails to recognize the characters that already promoted the important motives that made girls like me feel inspired. Nani is a very important character in the plot line of the movie and the way she is represented showcases her importance in the film. As a strong, independent homeowner and caretaker, she was the true representation of powerful feminism. Instead of my friends my age that watched the Disney princesses and aspired to be princesses themselves, I wanted to be just like Nani. And to an extent, I did become her. I didn’t become the primary caregiver to my little sister, but I still take care of her often and can’t even fathom the idea of having to take care of her while also trying to manage school and work and everything else that I have to do. As a woman and as an older sister, I relate to Nani so much and Disney embraced the reality of her being a regular female in society. Nani is my favorite character because of her love, care and protection for her sister as well as her feisty attitude towards anyone who interferes with that. Even as a little girl watching Lilo & Stitch, I thought that Nani was a really amazing character and even today I still admire her especially since I am able to relate to her more. There is so much to love about the underrated side character that Nani possesses in the movie but first and foremost I feel that her character is the best representation of traditional female empowerment especially exemplified in the lens of a minority. She was everything I wanted to be when I grew up and I still wish to embody some of her attributes.

Back in May I was in a terrible car accident that resulted in me breaking my foot. For my entire summer, I was stuck in a boot and was incapable of having a good time for one of my final summers before college. Being in a car accident is awful. I used to envy the people that mimicked the type of summer I was supposed to be having. I used to find distaste in people that found my problems insignificant. Little do people know the amount of damage that a car accident can cause. Yes, the car is wrecked and totaled. Yes, I received a serious injury. But then I have to hide the fact that otherwise I’m perfectly fine. A car accident can significantly damage a person’s mental health and cause people to feel less valued in life. I was definitely hit with a reality check that life is precious, that life must be lived like everyday is the last day. But at the same time, I also found myself succumbing to days that drove my idea of life in a different direction. What was life worth at this point? I used to consider it. Yet even though I lived each day in physical and mental pain, I still woke up the next morning. I woke up the next morning and the next and the following morning after that and finally learned on my own that I’m worth so much more than this. My life cannot be over after an idiotic driver who wasn’t paying attention hit me, there’s going to be so much more that knocks me down. There is going to be so much time in between my life that will knock me down. I picked myself up from those moments. I went through a lot of change in my life, having to escape from relationships that I felt entangled in and I embraced so, so much more in my life. The parts of my life that have changed has definitely been my stronger and more defensive mentality that has learned how to combat the evil that crosses my mind. I’ve embraced my self-worth by upholding activities that kept me occupied in my times of immobility. And now I continue to participate in those activities like reading, writing and drawing. The one thing that I will say hasn’t changed for me is my desire to drive. I’m a senior in high school and refuse to drive and sometimes refuse to even sit in a car if I don’t have to. Sometimes I tremble in the passenger seat when I think back at what happened in my car accident. Overall, I learned how to be accepting of the obstacles that life will throw at you and consider them in the realist way possible by understanding that positives can counter the negatives.

The Sunrise Tells a Story Just like it always had been, I know I’ve watched it all before But one morning was when my thoughts would begin. The bright, beating sun lightened the Earth, It made the grass look like emerald green, It made the sky look like water And the sunrise looked back at me to tell me what she has seen. Sure, she has seen the birds fly by It was spring after all, they were high in the sky, The flowers began to bloom all at once And I never once, wondered until now, why. On the next day, it was pink and orange sky The sun itself was magnificently gleaming, She again told me what she has seen It looked so magical, I thought I was dreaming. She saw me answer the knock on the door And the sparkling smile on my face, Then she lit up the sky like I’ve never seen before Warm colors all over the place. Colors that were expressive like a rainbow That came after a morning mist, Except it never rained that day Though I couldn’t see past when I was kissed. As each morning she turned the night into day, Summer arrived and her colors were glitter, I prayed for it to stay like this With the air crisp, the sun bitter. After the night I spent with him Everything very much seemed unique, She saw us entangled lying down Under the pine tree, next to the creek. Time after time, day after day, The morning awoke me with bliss, Then he and I would spend all day together And when it ended he would leave me with a kiss. When the leaves began to float to the ground, Why they would call this season ‘fall’, When leaves as golden as the morning sky Drift down from the trees and that’s all. The yellow-gold hue that colored the sky Every morning since the seasons changed, Made my love for him grow deeper With each and every look we exchanged. When winter arrived all the color was gone When morning came everything was white, No color to the sky, the ground, the air The snow would reflect and beam until night. After the pleasant winter, everything seemed fine The white eventually turned green, The flowers eventually bloomed And the sunrise came back as if born a teen. The birds, she saw, were flying by Spring arrived and they would fly so high, Early birds that caught the first worm In a background of red and purple sky. The sunrise told me the story of her past Telling me about what she has seen, Showing me life's greatest beauties But reminding me that I’m merely eighteen. But vile comes with the beauty Heartbreak, neglect, destruction, and pain, Spring is always seen for May and its flowers But it is always forgotten about April and its rain. That morning, she arose just like the rest, Throwing warmth into the air, But then dark clouds appeared And he just stopped all of his feelings, like he didn’t care. He had forgotten about my feelings Forgotten about what my life would entail, The ruinous skies encroached above me When the sunrise tells its horrid tale. The thunder like a hammer The rain like a flood, It transformed the sky with echoes It turned the green grass into mud. After that day when the clatter was made My heart was no longer open to the glory, My thoughts, that day, then would stop And I heard no longer, the sunrise tell a story.

This year I started a Dance Club at my school and though it has been a prolonged beginning, I always wanted to start this club. I’ve been dancing my entire life and for the longest time I was a part of a dance company until I had to surrender my full-filled attention from dance to high school. Once I was in high school, I missed dancing wholeheartedly but before any thoughts lingered in my head about the actuality of dancing again, COVID-19 struck and everything was halted. Finally getting back to normalcy in school again in my junior year of high school, it took a lot to get used to but by the end of the year I was ready to start the club. At the start of my senior year - this school year - I started the club that I’ve always wanted to start which truly has become a big schedule-filler. The Dance Club that I began, I started with the purpose of teaching dance. Plain and simple. But when you look between the lines at why I wished to start this club, there is a lot more that I wanted to accomplish. For starters, I wanted the club to have plenty of opportunities for dancers like me that had to quit the companies that became families to them only to balance school and work and everything else in their lives. But I also wanted to give opportunities for non-dancers as well. I know that despite I’m a dancer, I have plenty of friends who don’t know how to dance and a lot who wish they did know how to dance. My club becomes accustomed to both dancers and non-dancers alike because I am capable of adapting to whatever dance experience they have. I’ve been through several years of dance and following in my aunt's footsteps of being a choreographer and adjusting choreography to any and all types of dancers. The joy that I received after I introduced my club to the incoming freshman for the 2023-34 school year was so thrilling. It was exciting to see that people who wanted to come to the school that I admired so much had been persuaded just a little bit more because of the opportunities I would give them and pass down in the club for dancers to use their gift of expressing themselves through art. Dance is a lot more than just putting on music and moving around. Dance is about artistic expression of movements that flow into one another and create powerful messages to the audiences. I started dancing and I started the club with the intention of allowing at least one person to get the same feeling that I receive from dancing.

As an aspiring history teacher, the most important thing I believe that the entire world should have a better understanding of is history. History is such a powerful thing strictly because it’s your past. We are living today in the footsteps of ancestors who walked through our history. We cannot hide who our ancestors are and even if they were in the wrong, it is our responsibility to take hold of those facts and present them to the world. Like anyone would truly say, the best way to better yourself is to learn from your mistakes. Sometimes they weren’t even your mistakes that had to be made in order for you to learn about them. I believe that that is what history is all about. History is all about the comprehension of change and what the differences are between wrong and right. There are so many people that wish to escape history and quite frankly no longer wish to learn about history, but that doesn’t do any good for anyone. For example, one of the most important moments in American history is the Civil War. While to some it is one of the most celebratory historical events, to others it is only a reminder as to what normalcy used to be back in the day when it came to minorities. Everything about slavery was wrong but it doesn’t mean that it should be taken out of lessons for our future generations. If these topics are not covered in schools and they are not exercised in a way that probes students into learning lessons and not simple facts from them, then who knows what their generation will be held accountable for in the future. One day students are going to be the next generation in the history books and we absolutely cannot celebrate any type of repetition that the lack of historical education fails to accomplish. My plan to change the world is simple; to teach students history. To teach them about the good and the bad that made the society they stand in today. To teach them lessons that history has taught all of us to either embrace or stay away from. I want students to be fully educated on the most profound moments in history that will allow them to live every day through a different lens. I want students to be able to go out and change the world for themselves strictly because they want to change the way that the history book is supposed to play out. I may only be able to teach one class at a time, but reaching 30 students every day might just be enough to change the world. One history lesson at a time.

Writing. It’s plain and simple, I am passionate about writing. I’ve never really known why writing fascinates me so much but it does. Finding the perfect dark pen and clean white piece of paper that contradict each other. I didn’t know why I found it so mesmerizing to open a brand new notebook only to smother the lines with words. All types of words. Happy words, sad words, powerful words or insignificant ones. No matter what I wrote, it was all important to me because they were my stories that I was writing. I used to write all the time as a child which is probably why I am still obsessed with writing today but something really clicked in me around 5th grade. I came up with extraordinary ideas of creativity that only I envisioned. There was some type of switch that changed in me when I finally realized the power of writing, especially writing on your own. Everyone has their own mind, their own body, their own feelings, emotions, thoughts and expressions. I remember never understanding why exactly people wouldn’t fully comprehend some of my imaginative stories that I was telling them and that is solely because they weren’t living in my mind. Once middle school introduced me to the ideas of imagery and communication through words that can allow my imagination to come true, I wanted everything to do with writing. I really discovered who I truly was as a writer and as a person in middle school through my writing. I would write songs and poems and essays and short stories. They all came from my heart because I would write for fun meaning that I would write based on some of my most personal experiences which all seemed to be so drama-filled. But who cares that my personal life was so incredibly insane even up into high school, they made really good plots! The passions that formed my childhood and allowed me to escape and express myself when I never felt heard, lead me to continue writing even today and now I am proud to say that I wrote a novel. I am passionate about writing now and probably for the rest of my life all because of the idea that I love expressing myself and sometimes the only way for people to express themselves isn't through verbal representation. Sometimes people have to write, be creative and go out and write.

Writing is the best way to express your feelings, emotions and opinions when you are verbally incapable of doing so. When I was young, I really didn't talk to anyone. Sure, everyone has their story as a small child who wouldn't talk to strangers, but I completely didn't talk to anyone besides my parents. I honestly want to believe that maybe I was insecure about the way my voice sounded. I was insecure without knowing what insecure actually meant. While I shut the entire world out, I was left feeling unheard because there were so many things that I wanted to say and I needed to say, but for some reason, I refused to say it. Then I was introduced to writing, to pen and paper. Merely every child is obsessed with doodling but I liked to doodle with words. Especially when I got older and learned how to write in cursive, I started doodling words in different ways. I wrote my first story when I was in 5th grade and though it had been based as a sequel for one of my favorite books, it still didn’t diminish the fact that I loved to be creative and write things that were my own. By middle school, I eventually grew out of the mute phase strictly because I started to get bullied because of it. Even then, I began to talk little by little and I began to write more and more. From songs, to poems, to essays, to short stories, I couldn’t hide my love, my desire for writing. I loved writing so much that by the time I entered high school, I was inspired to write a novel. I can’t say that it’s an award-winning novel. I can’t say that it’s as good as a novel written by Jenny Han or Colleen Hoover. But I also can’t say that I don’t think it has a really fun plot. To me, writing is all about expressing yourself and being able to get out everything that is bottled up inside you and you can release it all on this insignificant piece of paper that you have the choice if other people will read it or not. The importance of writing in my opinion is strictly because the power of writing allowed me to get out of many troubling times in my life. Almost everyone can say that, almost everyone has stories like mine or worse or better. But just like writing in general, everyone has their own story and their own things to express. This is mine.