"One person caring about another represents life's greatest value," Jim Rohn, an author and entrepreneur, once said. This is a quote that resonates with me deeply, because it captures an important trait of humanity: the ability to care for one another. As human beings, we were born with the gift to love, learn, grow, and most importantly, to empathize. Being blessed with these gifts, I’ve found a sense of responsibility to use them not only for myself, but to help better my community. This belief and my love for learning about human nature has led me to pursue a degree in psychology, and possibly another in criminology or sociology in the future. Through these fields, I plan to study human emotions and behavior to analyze and gain a better understanding of the complexity of individuals and societal structures to help build a more compassionate and inclusive society. I want to be able to understand people both collectively and individually. Above all, I want everyone that I encounter to feel seen, heard, and understood in a way that I and most people have never experienced. This passion for understanding others really stems from my own experiences of feeling unseen and unheard. My entire childhood, I did not grow up in an emotionally open environment. Because of this, expressing my feelings can be very difficult, and sometimes I bottle them up, keeping my thoughts and emotions to myself. When I did something that was deemed wrong or that strayed from what my parents knew and understood, I was never given the opportunity to explain myself or my actions. As an older sister, I had to always be understanding of my siblings, and as a child I wasn’t viewed as mature enough to be angry or comment on things that I didn’t like. The lack of emotional freedom makes it hard for me to open up about feelings of anger or uncomfortability. I was scared that expressing these thoughts would upset everyone. Growing up with these restrictions led me to focus more on making others feel the way I wanted to, allowing myself to change into the person I wanted and needed in my life, someone who allowed others to be seen and heard. This is something I want to continue to grow and develop, and I want to do that by becoming a criminal psychologist. Being able to talk to a group of people that is usually deemed “evil” or “bad” allows me to gain an understanding of the psychological and emotional roots within human behavior. I don’t see these people as their crimes, but I want to see the person shaped by their actions, choices, and trauma, and understand what led them here, why they did what they did, and see if I can help them change and grow as a person. This field allows me to help a group of people that have been condemned, dismissed, and probably have never felt understood by a single person in their life. It gives me the opportunity to hear them out and gauge an understanding of a variety of situations and how they can severely impact someone’s mental health and actions. I don’t want to excuse their actions or take away accountability, but to open a path for change and growth. All in all, I strive to be the person I once needed in my life; a person who’s there to care and understand. With my love for psychology and the sense of responsibility to empathize and care, I want to remind others that someone sees and hears them.