When I was nine, I would paint rocks and hide them at my parents' workplace. I remember the day that my mother's student had found one, and he asked if it was the work of her daughter. I was overjoyed that I might have brightened up a stranger's day and promptly painted more to hide. When I was twelve, I stuck notes on the mirror in the girls bathroom at my middle school. They read, "You matter," and "You are loved," complete with small illustrations of people with open arms, bursting with love for whomever read my little messages. At fifteen, I helped organize a community service event in which fellow art students decorated Valentines for community members at the local police station, public library, and senior center. The lot of us contributed a few hundred Valentines to the town's members. Helping people, spreading kindness and love, and brightening up a person's day is everything to me, and I want to do my best to spread positivity for as long as I possibly can. Last year, I volunteered sixty hours of my summer to help with makeup and costuming for a local children's theater and organizing inventory at a local nonprofit consignment store. I genuinely enjoyed every minute, every second of that time spent helping others, and I hope that love for spreading kindness never fades from my life. When I get older, I hope to work in special education and art. In a special education career, I would hope to help students with Individualized Education Programs feel represented in their schools, welcomed by everybody with open arms and hearts, and understood by their peers. I want to be able to eliminate bullying, once and for all, so that kids know they matter and they are loved and understood, no matter their differences. In art, I hope to spread beauty wherever I go, like I tried to when I was nine. I want to paint murals for local businesses, paint portraits of passersby on the sidewalk and decorate that sidewalk with brightly-colored chalk and paint. I want to inspire, to excite people with my art, to show them there is beauty in the world and all you have to do is look for it. With these two dreams combined, I want to be a positivity powerhouse, a super spreader of love and joy in even strangers' lives, helping people through pain and unease with a little nudge that says, "I'm here for you," like those notes in the bathroom when I was twelve.

When I was five years old, the world around me was made of pure magic. In my bright, hopeful eyes, fairies were real but just waiting to be found, I could move things with my mind if I really tried hard enough, human flight simply had yet to be explored properly, and when I was all grown up, I was going to be the first person to uncover all of these secrets for the world. Now that I am seventeen—not quite a grown-up but much closer to being one than I was back then—I have much more realistic goals: to go to school, specialize in something useful, embark on a successful career path, and start a family. But just because I am much less faithful—but not less hopeful—in the potential for human flight or telekinesis does not mean there are not other mysteries to be solved in the universe. The secret to ending global warming: have we already uncovered it and just can't seem to fulfill it? Or are there a million mysteries we have yet to discover in healing our world? What does lie at the bottom of the Mariana Trench? How can plants evolve to appear like animals without the ability to see them? Why have humans been inclined to establish religions and believe in higher powers since the beginning of time? I have yet to decide upon what I will study in school, but I am highly interested in answering these questions for myself and others, not only to satiate my curiosity, but to better understand human nature, the environment, evolution, and the power of the human mind. To better understand the world around us could be the ability to better identify weather patterns, understand human nature and emotion, better understand the warning signs of climate change, prevent or postpone species extinctions, diversify agriculture, and so much more. But where to begin? Although it may seem that humankind has answered most of the world's questions, there is so much more to be fully explored. The key to even scratching the surface is maintaining the open mind I had at five, the bright eyes and hope I felt for new discoveries at such a young age, even if I don't believe in the same magic now. But even without an adamant belief in fairies or the capacity for human flight, there is still magic in the world around me and I still hope to make groundbreaking discoveries, simply for the sake of learning and knowing and understanding the sheer depth of the universe and its mysteries.

I never chose to love art. Instead art chose to love and nourish me. It has helped me through my darkest hours, given me something to become utterly and deeply obsessed with. It has inspired me and upset me, helped me and hurt me, and it is a most deep and personal part of my identity. When I first saw the works of John Singer Sargent at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I stopped and stared. I froze in thought and admiration. Haunting and kind faces alike, ghostly and beaming faces looked down at me. Mrs. Fiske Warren and Her Daughter enthralled me, welcomed me into their warm, swirling world of pinks. Sargent has a remarkable talent for capturing faces, even without fine detail. His faces are soft, yet stern. They are utterly captivating.

Growing up, I have only experienced the overwhelming beauty of Vermont. Green trees that burst into oranges and reds, rushing rivers and babbling streams across the street, thick white winters that muffle even the loudest of footsteps. What's more is the people who surround me. Beautiful old wrinkled faces that smile at me in the grocery store aisles, awkward young faces that beam up at me with runny noses. I am in love with the world around me, from every bright auburn leaf to every kind face. As an artist, I can only wish to capture this beauty on a canvas, as every artist might hope to do. I challenge myself to create something so beautiful that it reflects the world around me, but I may not ever do so, because my small, extraordinary world is too beautiful to truly render.