It would be nonsensical for us to dismiss the very real, very scientifically-proven reality that is climate change. Sustainability should be a priority in any field. We all do share the same planet now, don’t we? So why should we, in our best interests, dismiss that? I like living my life, and I’m sure that others do, too. Would I be the type of person to choose not to do anything of worth about a problem right after learning about it? No, because if anything, I am a person of action. And in the field that I am going into, I can strongly suspect that it will be a big player within the fight against climate change. That field would be the much under-appreciated accounting field. Yes, the “bean counters” of the world would prove to be incredibly essential when it comes to keeping track of the important expenditures that would arise from the implementation of renewable energy, as well as switching over our existing infrastructure, little by little, as we get used to our new world. That, as well as keeping track of the amount of money that would be lost from the negative impacts of climate change, such as the crops that could be affected by longer and ever-increasingly brutal heat waves, thereby raising food prices and increasing the strain on our global supply chain, the damage caused by wildfires and hurricanes that seem to make an ever-frequent appearance, and the displacement of many families from many different parts of the world that have been made all the more inhospitable by the dire consequences of global warming. We need important financial information that can be organized into comprehensible financial statements by those of us within my chosen field in order to inform us (and our politicians) of where our expenditures should go, and which ones we should cease, especially in regards to natural gas. Furthermore, these financial statements could help to inform various governments, as well as many corporations around the world on where to best focus our efforts and in introducing legislation to help get us closer to our vision of a sustainable world for many people (and other species) to thrive in. Accountants would prove to be a powerful weapon in our step towards attaining higher sustainability goals. I will use the skills and the knowledge that I attain during my time in school, as well as within my future accounting career, in order to lend a hand to the establishment of a bright future that welcomes the idea of sustainability with open arms and most importantly, put that idea into actual, effectual practice. Because talk is cheap - but action, however? Now that is more than its weight in gold. I can prove that with my wit and my bright spirit, as well as my unwavering sense of work ethic, discipline, ceaseless ambition, and drive to make the world a better place with my meticulous nature, that my contributions to furthering this cause will not be insignificant and that I can strive to do better and to put this scholarship surely to good use. Take this chance on me, and you will not regret it.

“The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.” - Confucius, The Great Learning Given my recent stint in Global Ethics class, I was briefly introduced to the works of Confucius and needless to say, I had found myself becoming increasingly fascinated with it. Namely, this excerpt from one of his writings that I had found perfectly encapsulates my recent life philosophy. This is the journey that I am currently on. To anybody that possesses the trained eye, the underlying meaning behind this excerpt would prove to be quite obvious. The first thing that comes to mind whenever I read this passage is that a lot of emphasis seems to be put on the idea of governance. Typically, governance of a people or the concept of running a kingdom, perhaps. Of course, during Confucius’ time, the idea of kingdoms was completely commonplace. Using this as an analogy is very important when setting into place the intended message that this excerpt hoped to send across. The message that I got from that was that if we were not able to manage ourselves and our own personal affairs, how are we able to manage anything bigger than that? The key to everything is the underlying attitude that drives you. Given that we cannot effectively “flip-flop” our approaches to everything within life (now, wouldn’t that be a massive headache?), our attitude is the key step to self-realization and ultimately, goal manifestation. Speaking of which, I always hear a lot about the topic of manifestation, but how many people actively decide to work for their goals and to really “manifest” that dream? Sitting around and “hoping” won’t get you closer to your goals, and that’s where the role of “attitude” starts. The very first step to self-growth and self-realization is to come to terms with the fact that you do not owe anyone anything. I am aware that to certain people, that sentiment sounds quite harsh, however, do allow me to explain. Achieving that step can get you closer to your goals, because in turn you will also come to the realization that nobody owes you anything, either. Now that is not so much a belief as it is a realization: given that most people are focused on their own self-interests, you cannot depend on people to achieve your dream for you. You cannot expect people to advocate for you and your rights, because they will inevitably disappoint you at any given time. You have to fend for yourself, you have to fight for yourself. Only you can choose to manage your own emotions, you cannot outsource that to anybody outside of yourself. Only you can choose to make things happen within your life, get the ball rolling, and that starts by coming to terms with the fact that only you can keep yourself safe. That, is one big step towards a radical attitude change and achieving self-realization. And thus, that takes you one step closer to being sincere in your thoughts and self, as Confucius mentioned within the excerpt. With that radical shift in attitude, you realize that knowledge doesn’t fly to you via osmosis and that you would need to go around searching for it. With that renewed drive, you learn to do things that benefit you, learn about the world around you, while also not being tied to the shackles of excessive social expectations that demand that you expend ungodly amounts of emotional labor in order to benefit the people that haven’t done their own work mentally in order to come to terms with the fact that they themselves are responsible for their own lives, that there is no shortcut to reaching their goals and sense of fulfillment in life. Choosing to stay within those shackles was all at the expense of you losing your personhood. With your attitude shift, you realize that those shackles no longer weigh you down and threaten to crush you into powder. Not anymore. When you start living life for yourself, living virtuously as Confucius intended, then that is when you really become beneficial to those around you and to society, because that is when you become a self-realized person and cease to eschew your own personhood any longer. You become a much stronger person, able to stand on her own two feet, being able to handle anything that comes her way. That, I believe is when you are finally able to start ruling your own kingdom with ceaseless virtue, but not without continuous effort, for nothing that is worth having in life would come easy.

Throughout much of my life, I had been lost on knowing what it is that I wanted to do, what career I wanted to pursue, and what the future would hold for me. Ironically those years of relative inaction would only serve to prepare me to start pursuing something different within my life. It wasn’t until after that period of inaction that I had started wondering to myself, “what would be the harm in taking risks? Where do we go from here?” Only from that sense of ennui did I start to really appreciate the process of learning, and feeling like I wanted to make a tangible difference out in the world instead of just consuming and existing. I wanted to explore the depths of my own potential, just to see how far it is that I can go. And only after an extended period of time that I had spent learning on my own, perusing career advice and financial podcasts that had served to empower women such as me with the information that was needed to become our absolute best, as well as engaging in a period of soul-searching and finally being able to come into myself, did I finally realize that my career interests and passions would happen to lie within the accounting/financial industry. This had inspired my drive to start the process of applying to college last summer. Fast-forward to now, in the middle of my first term at SNHU, with the skills that I have learned (and still continue to learn), I have put together a plan for myself. Obtain my bachelor’s, secure an internship at one of the “Big Four” accounting companies, sit for the CPA exam, then come back for my master’s and obtain a CPA licensure. My community service ambitions lie within my chosen field of study because of the very fact that accounting is extremely integral to many facets of our world. Especially when it comes to bookkeeping, which is a simple and integral part of accounting, and is the backbone of many businesses. Now, imagine that there were no bookkeeping or accounting processes? Then we wouldn’t be able to figure out “who owed what,” or be able to tell just how well a business is doing and what steps they can take in order to insure that they don’t sink into financial insolvency. And not just businesses, governments. Entire governments and nations could crash, as you would have no way of figuring out just where to funnel taxpayer funds into our much-needed programs, including infrastructure. And considering the fact that almost everything costs money, it would only be best for us to be able to keep track of where that money goes in order to keep society functioning. But sadly, not many people recognize the true value of the accounting industry and why it is imperative for myself and many others who wish to pursue this field. That is why my field of study and future career is so important. The career that I wish to break into would be integral to the world and to keep things running as they should. For instance, how else do we keep track of how much spending goes into needed scientific research to propel ourselves, as well as figure out ways to keep climate warming to a minimum? Keep track of how much that we spend on foreign aid (spoiler alert: it is really not that much)? And for that, I wish to become part of the backbone as to why society functions as well as it should, and for many years to come.

Mental health is the catalyst behind all of the things that we do and how well we do them, which explains exactly why it is important to me. My mental health makes all of the difference between how much I give of myself to my studies as opposed to just throwing my hands up in the air and drifting through the moment, or even just sulking in a corner about my hurt feelings (or rage), which would do wonders for my productivity. Sometimes when my anxiety gets bad enough, I feel firmly planted against my will where I am sitting or standing, struggling to do even the most basic of tasks, so my life feels as if it is in a standstill by then. So all of that is to say that it is doubly important for me to have the tools on hand to keep my brain from becoming my own worst enemy, and getting in my own way. I’ve become somebody that now likes to take time on things to perfect them, and school assignments are no exception. Just like this essay, I took time last night to create a bare-bones draft for this where in it I just let out a stream of consciousness, not worrying about flow or wordplay or how coherent my thoughts were, just typing out whatever came to mind in order for me to have a mess of ideas to glean off of as a form of inspiration for my final draft. I always believe that there’s room for improvement, but that wasn’t always the case. I used to let my anxiety overcome me and prevent me from taking time on things, always in “fight-or-flight” mode, never feeling grounded. Even now, I feel my anxiety try to creep up over me, but I believe being a few hours short on sleep doesn’t help, either. Sometimes, one of the things that does help is reminding myself that it is okay to recognize when I am mentally overwhelmed, those times where my mind starts going in 500 different directions and I get easily distracted. So I am someone that likes to exhaust all of my options before throwing my hands up in the air and “giving up” (giving up under quotations, meaning that I don’t really give up so much as I do decide to postpone things for a bit), so I am not afraid to ask for help should my techniques to self-manage my mental heath decide to become insufficient. Speaking of my techniques, one of the things that is most important, the most helpful yet the one thing that I often forget to do in the thick of things, is to just breathe. Deep breathing, to be exact. Whether I get so angry that it causes me to sulk at the expense of my productivity, indignant at all the unique societal and biological struggles that we women have to go through, so anxious and “on” that my mind is racing a million miles an hour, or just so sad and fearful that I just go throughout the day with a sick feeling in my stomach and a lump in my throat, I need to just let it out. Cry, breathe, write in a journal, or use the Finch app on my phone. Sometimes I need to let myself sit with my feelings in order to allow myself to move forward and to not prevent myself from doing the normal adult things that I need to complete as well as to take on additional opportunities that would better enrich my life.