I come from a long line of educated women. My mom, my grandma, my great-grandma. All of them had a college education. My great-grandma was a college professor of chemistry. My grandma went to 3 different colleges and got three different degrees. Education was always valued by that side of the family. That is not the case on my father's side. No one went to college until my aunt. But they have encouraged me to continue my education when I was a kid. My mother struggled with dyslexia as a student but her mother advocated for her. She made sure that my mother was in classes, programs, and tutors to make sure she got the education that she needed. She taught my mother how to study and encouraged her to play soccer, which led to a scholarship. My mother went on to get her masters in social work. She continued the tradition of being her daughters' advocate in education. She always made sure that me and my sister had access to classes, and books that I needed. I needed more challenging classes and my my sister needed specialized, smaller classes, so after the divorce, my mom moved our family to Georgia, where there were better special education programs. This move was a change that my mother made as she had to leave all her friends and the life she had built in her 15 years of living there. But she made the sacrifice for my sister and I's education. My mother had to struggle with her education, which I had not. I was fortunate enough that learning came naturally to me. However, my mother saw how my uncle struggled with studying and asking for help once he got to college. She made sure that I learned different studying methods, how to ask for help from tutors, teachers, and guidance counselors, and how to adapt to the course I was taking. This led me to be able to learn how to pass physics, a class that made no sense to me and her. She set me up with the tools to be able to ask for help from my teachers, find a tutor, and put in the work to be able to get a B in the class. While a B may not seem impressive, it was one of the first grades I had to actually work for. Before I didn't have to study much to be able to pass. My mother has always pushed for my education and this is the reason I am pursuing a college education. Her experience made her the perfect person to help me throughout my high school education and beyond.

Books have taught me about the world. They let me be able to learn more about different cultures, time periods, events, and locations. This fueled my love of travel and foreign languages. By reading, I can be transported to those seemingly far-off places, and imagine what it would be like there. Books like "Mother Of Strangers" and "Artemis" by Andy Weir made me a part of the place and made me wish to be there, to see what it would be like to be a part of that place's history. The world-building in "Mother of Strangers" makes the orange groves of Jaffa sound like a piece of paradise. The setting of "Artemis" makes the reader wish that they could go to the moon. Books have taught me about empathy. Reading books like "Brave Face" by Shaun David Hutchinson, and "The Benefits of Being an Octopus" gave me a look into the lives of other people, real and fictional, and showed the variety of people's lives. There are no two lives the same and books reflect that nature. Stories that show hardship and make you feel for the characters are the books with the most impact because you can see part of yourself in them. Not everyone has felt depressed but everyone has felt lonely and lost. Not everyone has had to live in a trailer or take care of their baby brother, but everyone has at some point wished to be an animal and to have all the cool features of that animal. Books have taught me about what being brave is all about. Yeah sure the heroics that can be found in books like "Percy Jackson" and "Six of Crow" are brave, there is the bravery of the small acts that can be taught to the readers. Percy standing up for Grover in the first book is an act of bravery that is just as impactful as his defeating Medusa. He showed this friendship for Grover as well as going against the biggest bully in the school, knowing that he would get in trouble. Not everyone can take down the Minotar but everyone can stand up for someone or some cause. Books have taught me about how to relax and focus. In the younger generations, being able to sit and focus enough to be able to read an entire book is almost unheard of, let alone finding it enjoyable. Which is a sad reality. People aren't having the attention span they used to, which is why reading books is important. They are a wonderful way to build up a tolerance of being able to focus on the words for hours to be able to finish a book, and they are a pretty fun way of doing it. Books allow you to escape from the struggle of your daily life and become a part of the lives of the characters from books like "The Smoke Thieves" and the "The Scrapgracers". Who wants to focus on school work when you could focus on the lives of 5 teenagers as their kingdoms are going to war, along with their love lives and so much more? Why watch the latest season of "The Bachelorette" when you could follow this coven of witches as they plan their revenge on those who have wronged them? Books have taught me so much and have made me a life long learner. This is why I want to go into law. I can help improve the lives of people and stand up for them and my beliefs. I want to be like the heroes I read about.

Being a leader calls more than wanting power. It calls for wanting to improve the world and the people around you. I have always been a person who wants to help people succeed. I have been a supportive best friend, I have been a community volunteer, I have been a tutor. All of these experiences have given me a chance to help people. Helping people has always been an important part of my life. That is why I donate blood at every blood drive my school hosts. That is why I volunteer at a local church to help run the children's ministry. Helping people has been one of my biggest goals and that is why I want to go into law to help improve the conditions of people's lives, one case at a time. Being a leader calls for never giving up. I have always been stubborn. It has been passed down from generation and generation of women in my family. We just don't know when to quit. I have tried to save a class that I loved, even though I was the only one. I spend all of my free time trying to get people to sign up and fall in love with art history. Sadly not enough people signed up but that experience of being rejected over and over was a valuable one as it taught me that sometimes you may not be able to change every outcome but you can always still fight for what you believe in. Being a leader calls for organizational skills. What good is a leader if they can never make a deadline or always lose their paperwork? I have always strived to be a neat person. I love to plan events out and make sure to think of the tiniest detail. This is why I was a great choice for my robotics officer job. I am in charge of planning and executing the events for community outreach, such as a can drive and mentoring a middle school team. Being able to make and do a plan is a skill that not everyone has yet is a great skill to learn as it is something that can be applied to everyday life, not just to leadership roles. Being a leader calls for being a friend. This means that you have to know the people you are leading. It may be great that you have all of these ideas but you market wrong to your people, it isn't going to go anywhere, I have always tried my best to make friends wherever I go. That is why I know who plays what sport, who likes to read true crime, who needs a friend. Being able to connect with people is important and has been something that I love doing. It is my favorite part of my retail job. I can learn more about the customers. I have tried my best to make it to all of my friends' games and to be the first person standing up and cheering. I'm not really sure how softball or football works, but my friend loves it so I love it. Being a leader calls for being yourself, and I have always been a leader.

I am a student who has seen the effects of bullying on my peers and myself. My experience left me anxious to go to school and feeling like my interests were stuck. This was harmful because I loved going to school. I would ask my mom when would school start back up during summer because I loved to learn about everything. This event in my life has encouraged me to be the kind of person that I wish I had around me when I was struggling. This is why I have worked to become an officer on the robotics team, and am an active member of my school's lacrosse team, so I can encourage my fellow teammates and be a supportive friend. I am also a part of my school's National Honor Society, which values leadership and volunteer work within my community. This scholarship will help me be able to continue my education and is vital as I come from a single-mother home who is unable to help me afford higher education. I want to go to law school and become a lawyer so that I can help improve the world through the legal system. Scholarships like this mean that I can focus on my education rather than having to worry about how I am going to be able to continue to afford my education. I have been a firm believer in anti-bullying programs that are done through the schools. They are a great step, but they are a small one. The problem with them is that they are done too late in children's devolvement and are not taught in a way that shows the effects and consequences of the actions of the students. There are two possible ways to fix this that when put together should provide a more effective plan of attack; start younger with a more cause-and-effect approach, and teach parents about their effects on children's behaviors. The older the child gets, the more they rely on their peers to tell them what is right and wrong. But If done younger, at a stage when children are more reliant on adults, the messages get across more effectively. By just saying bullying is bad, all the children hear are adults saying stuff they already know and, in some cases, don't care about. By giving real-world and extreme examples, children see the actual consequences of their actions. However, I feel that the biggest way to stop or decrease bullying is by getting through to the parents. Children, especially younger children, follow their parents' lead so whatever behavior the parent exhibits, the children mimic. It has been studied by psychologists and children developmental specialists that young children view their family's behavior as the moral and societal norms, so if the parent makes comments demeaning, criticizing, or harassing other individuals, the children will see that as normal and acceptable. Therefore, if the parents are taught and given guidance on how to act in front of children, the behavior of bullying is likely to decrease. Showing parents how their actions affect the actions of their children will be an eye-opening experience, as some people are not aware of how much children rely on adults to show the rules of society. If we set the foundations of a society that looks down on bullying and the behaviors reflect that, there would be less of a societal norm for bullying and it should, hopefully, not have a place in our world.

"He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: 'Wait and Hope.' ” (Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo). This quote provides guidance to live by - live life as you wish, without worries for the future, but with hopes. The writer uses the extreme of sorrow and joy to express the extremes within life. There will be times were everything goes right and there will be moments when you feel like you have lost everything. The loss of everything makes you appreciate joys all the more. The thing is you don't know what outcome is going to happen. This is why he then suggests to live and be happy. No matter what happens you can't plan for everything due to the unpredictable nature of the human spirit and of life in general. There will always be something that goes wrong, so there is no point in waiting for everything to be perfect because that is not going to happen. You never know when you may be given sorrow so it is best to be happy whenever you can. The reference to God is meant to remind men that we are not as all-knowing or infallible as we like to believe. We have no clue if we are going to live through the day, no clue what tomorrow will be like. We have no clue if something will happen until it happens. This goes back to the theme of enjoying the joys of life while you still can, because we can not predict how long it will last. This uncertainty is why men pray to gods, it is our way of trying to control the outcome, as if our wishes can influence an omnipotent being or change the universe. We do not know the plan so we try to act like we can plan for the universe, that is how it will go. Yet that is not what happens. We can not control how the world works and we can not control the circumstance we wish to be in. We can only control the circumstances that we are in as of right now, not the future and not the past. "All human wisdom..." refers to the fact that we can not accept not being in control so we come up with ideas on how to influence and control our lives. We learn how to best find food, water, and shelter, yet this will not stop a famine, drought, or flood. Our knowledge and skills do not prevent natural disasters any more than our prayers. The best we can do is to adapt to our surroundings. This means learning how to accept our surroundings. This ties into the message from earlier, accepting that you will feel deep sorrow and deep joy at some point. You will need to adapt to these emotional changes in your life as well as the physical changes. We can not control the outcome of an event or of a life. Yet we can hope and dream of better ones, despite how futile it seems. That is the beauty of the human nature. We can always hope for better circumstances. This hope makes us work harder to achieve that vision. That is what Dumas and his characters, like the Count want for the reader. The reader should walk away Understanding that life's unpredictableness means that we should live enjoying what we have and only hope for the future, not plan for it.

My mom and I are too similar. Though people say we look nothing alike now, when she was my age, we were carbon copies, besides my eyes. Our personalities are too similar as well. I got my stubbornness from her, my love of sweet tea from her, my drive from her, my love of true crime from her, my ambition from her, and my sarcasm from her. We were both eldest children, both goalies, both siblings, both redheads, and both Irish twins. We share too much to get along. We understand too much to get along. And yet, we can be together in a way. We know that this peace is tender and only works if we keep some things to ourselves. My mom and I have had our ups and downs. She has, at times, put a lot of pressure on me to do well in school, build a good college application, get to a good college, and get a good job. This has been an enormous push to do better. And I understand it. She was pushed hard by her mother to get a good education and because of that she has gotten a good job. Her mother put her in all of these programs to teach her how to study, how to write essays, and how to read. Because of all of her mother's pushing, she was able to get her B.S. and Master's in social work. She got a good job that supports my sister and me. She learned the value of education. Now my mom is passing it to me. She pushed me to be a better student because she knew that would make me a better person. My mom has given me opportunities that I was unable to get if she hadn't sacrificed. She moved away from all of her friends to give my sister and me the best possible education. She fought to ensure that my sister was given all the resources that she needed. She fought to ensure that I was being supported in school. She has worked overtime most weekends to make sure we have enough money. She spends most of her free time driving and supporting my sister and me at all of our events. She rarely goes to enjoy time for herself. She has given as much as she can for my sister and me and I want to help try to make sure she doesn't have to worry about me and my college. My mom has made me into a driven, empathetic, well-rounded, and independent person and leader.

My parents' divorce improved my access to education. Before the divorce, my family lived in rural Ohio, and as such, the school reflected that. They did not have the classes that my sister and I needed. She needed special education classes, and I needed gift classes that pushed me. But they didn't have that. We couldn't move because my father wanted to stay close to his family, even though we were nowhere near my mom's family. Once they divorced, my mom needed a better job, wanted to be closer to her family, and wanted me to receive the best possible education. So we moved to Georgia. In Georgia, my sister and I were able to get the classes we needed. She was able to move into a smaller classroom, and she learned to read. I was moved to the gifted program, and I was challenged for once in my classes. Moving to Georgia also meant that I would be able to go to a better college due to the HOPE and ZELL MILLER scholarships. Ohio didn't have anything like that, so I would have to get loans to be able to go to college. Here, I can get most of my tuition paid off. This scholarship will help me fully pay off all of my tuition and allow me to get a career that will help me support my sister and myself.   My mom was a firm believer in education, as was her mother, and her mother's mother. She struggled with a learning disorder and dyslexia, yet my grandmother made sure she was able to learn and get into college as prepared as her brothers. My mom was put into all of these extra programs that helped her succeed at college more than her classmates. She instilled the same beliefs that were instilled in her. Those beliefs were then passed down to me. It is because of her commitment to education that I am the person I am and I will become.  I want to be a lawyer. I have always had a strong sense of right and wrong. I have always been fascinated by the legal system, and my favorite shows highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the legal system. I want to help improve the legal system, like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, whom I have always looked up to. All of this hinges on me going to college and getting my law degree.

I am a queer student who has dealt with undiagnosed anxiety and depression through middle and high school. My parents divorced when I was 8 and we (my sister, mom, and me) moved from Ohio to Georgia when I was 9. This move greatly changed me as I had now felt like 2 people. Part of me was the Ohio me, the extroverted girl who was bubbly and a leader, and the other one was the Georgia me, sad, quiet, lonely, and wanting to be in the sun of my Ohio self. I split my time between these places and between these sleves. Trying to be both of these people was impossible. I couldn't spend most of the year miserable and wishing to be in a place that wasn't where my life was. And in Ohio, things weren't sunshine and rainbows, I was still forcing myself to be someone else, someone my catholic family up in Ohio would approve of. Realizing that my happy place, my confident place wasn't so happy, wasn't so confident made me feel even more miserable. And to make all of these negative feelings worse, I felt like I couldn't talk to anyone. I felt like I couldn't, shouldn't feel like this. So I pushed it all down and would cry at night, all by myself, softly so no one would hear. Of course, though, this isn't a foolproof plan, I couldn't always control my feelings and I lashed out at my family over the littlest things, because everything just felt like too much. And I didn't have anything that I was passionate about. I ran cross country, but that was just something I did, not really like. I read books, but to escape my life. I wasn't doing anything that I wanted or dreamed about when I was little. I couldn't keep spending all my time in Georgia trying not to cry and hating everything because I didn't like this new place and didn't know how to be myself. And I couldn't keep romanticizing Ohio. So I started to try to only be oneself, myself, someone who was confident and proud, who could talk about feelings and thoughts, someone who could be a leader all of the time, not just in a location. I learned how to tell people when something was upsetting me, when to ask for help, and what I enjoyed. It hasn't been easy. It was much easier to just go through high school and not do anything, to not be anything. To not push all of my feelings down. But if I did that, what would I say to the bright 8-year-old who had all of these dreams? She wanted to be something, do so much, see so much. She deserves to have a happy life she can be proud of.

I want to help improve the lives of people all around the world by helping pass laws that will help them gain access to medical care, housing, food, and child care. I have seen the effects when people are unable to afford to access these vital elements of everyday life, which has led me to feel that some human rights seem to be overlooked in our society. I have had friends and family members who have been forced to delay or never seek medical care for issues such as tooth infections, pain from injuries, and chronic illness. My father has lost multiple teeth due to being unable to afford to go to the dentist regularly in the past. My best friend has asked me to not call the ambulance if they get injured because their family couldn't afford to pay for the cost of it. Many people fear what will happen to themselves or their loved ones when they get sick. When someone gets a terminal illness, couples will choose to legally get a divorce because their medical debt will ned with them, rather than get passed on. Imagine how heart-wrenching it is to find out your partner is dying and you have to go through the divorce process. People shouldn't have to choose between their housing and/or their loved one and seeking medical relief. People should not have to be on the streets if they choose to seek medical assistance either. The fact that there is little to be done to help homeless people and the rise of anti-homeless infrastructure in cities with big homeless populations is sicking, especially since a lot of people are one injury, one bad economy, or one layoff away from being homeless themselves. Many homeless people just need some help to get back on their feet and shouldn't be criminalized. They should be treated with human respect and decency since that is what they are; they are human. They should be given somewhere safe to sleep and if that is on a park bench, then that says more of the "caring" nature of the city they are in, rather than on them. My beliefs are something that has always made me want to do something that would let me help people. I feel that working to change the system, while harder, is better than creating things that adapt to the system. I hope that once I start working for the government, I can pass bills and laws that will bring my beliefs to life.