When I was about 9, my family arrived home after a shopping trip to my great grandma passed out in the shower. She was alive, but not conscious. 911 was called and she was taken to the hospital. As it turns out, she had a stroke and passed out in the shower. I remember being in the ICU with her and seeing her hooked up to a lot of machines. She was lying there, unconscious and I knew that she was not in a good state. I could tell by the worry on my family's faces that this was not looking hopeful. I vividly remember her just slightly opening her eyes and having a little hope that she might wake up. Unfortunately, she never did. Her stroke was caught well after it had taken place and it had wreaked havoc on her brain. I remember my family mentioning that she had been having a lot of peripheral symptoms previously that had gone untreated and that this stroke likely could have been prevented if proper screening and education had been done. That is ultimately why making sure patients and families are well-informed is important. That is how I will positively impact the nursing profession, by educating patients and families on the conditions they have as well as relevant conditions that they are at risk for developing. If more education and intervention had been done for my great-grandma, then she may not have passed away so suddenly. By educating patients, a nurse may lessen suffering and prevent further exacerbation of the conditions they have. With proper education, a world of difference can be made to my patients. I plan to work in the ICU, and the patients there are not very medically stable. They have conditions that may easily end their lives. Education is something that is massively able to prevent a lot of the exacerbation and worsening of their state. Emphasizing the importance of looking out for the little symptoms before they become big symptoms is so crucially important. For many conditions, there are a lot of lifestyle changes that must be made to extend the possible years of life. Changes that are difficult, but important. Education on the rationale, and appropriate manner to make changes is vital. Going about changes the wrong way is not healthy for patients either and may ultimately worsen their condition. When I become a registered nurse, I want to positively impact the nursing profession by educating my patients thoroughly.

Affording school is a difficult task. In my endeavor for an education, I am working two jobs to fund my education, food, and a location to stay. I stay busy day in and day out, making sure I succeed in classes and have enough money to cover my expenses. There are days when it is difficult to know if any of it is sustainable for the rest of my schooling, and those are the rough days. The funding that this scholarship would provide would be crucial to my education. It would help me pursue an education where money is not the primary deciding factor. Especially as a Junior, it is getting harder and harder to afford each semester. That is to say, this scholarship would be instrumental in pursuing an education with less stress and a feeling of freedom. I am a Nursing major with a minor in Philosophy. In the field I am pursuing, there is a heavy lean on healing patients physically, but not so much mentally. That aspect is often overlooked. There is a tendency to put mental healing second to physical healing when it should be held in equal regard. Every single nurse should emphasize mental healing, but it is not common. When I become a registered nurse, I hope to put my Philosophy minor into my nursing care. Focusing on the rationale of my decisions, and making sure I mentally take care of my patients. I plan to work in the ICU, and this area has a lot of very traumatic events happening to patients. Events where it may be difficult to move past what has occurred. Where most of my nursing care will revolve around making sure the patient is medically stable. An important aspect to consider, though, is making sure that the patient is mentally stable as well. A patient who is not holistically taken care of may never heal. I personally want all of my patients to heal holistically and I will put in the work to make sure that is the outcome that is achieved. I hope to shape the hospital stay of my patients into one that is as positive as it could be. To achieve this, I will strive to create therapeutic relationships for my patients where they can feel supported and heard in their struggles. Working in healthcare positions that were not clinical, many patients were very willing to communicate the trauma and stress in their lives. I was there to listen and support them, but what this indicated was that they did not have anyone else to listen to their stories. When I become a nurse, I hope to be what these patients need. A nurse that holistically takes care of them, helping them work through their trauma and struggles while they physically recover.

When I told my parents I would like to pursue healthcare, one of their first questions was, "How much will that cost?" Financial struggles are something that everyone is familiar with to some extent. Growing up, I was unfortunately familiar and aware of this especially when my parents were stressed due to financial struggles. Both of my parents achieved a high school degree and did not have the opportunity to achieve an education higher than that. Especially as a minority, this has limited their labor opportunities to only manual labor. Which is not always the most stable nor highest-paying opportunity. This is why one of their first questions was about the cost of education because I would not be able to receive support if that cost was too high. I was limited in the opportunities I could pursue as anything past a baccalaureate degree would be too costly. Even now, the financial struggle and stress can be felt as I try to pay for my education with little assistance. Education will change my path forward by allowing me to achieve my passion for healthcare. In healthcare, there is typically some level of formal education required for any patient-centered role. With education, a lot of doors will be opened for me to be able to engage with my passion. Currently, I am a junior-year nursing student with a 3.9 GPA and am a first-generation college student. I am currently handling school well and am excited for so many new doors to open soon. Since I have specifically chosen nursing, I will have an incredible variety of options career-wise to pursue any passion I may enjoy whether it be at the bedside or otherwise. As a nurse, I will be directly giving back to society. I will be providing much-needed care for those in their time of need. As of right now, I am interested in being an ICU nurse. I plan to work with the sickest patients the hospital may have and bring them back to good health. That is a challenge I am willing to face, and a challenge that many others do not want to face. I will be giving back to society in this way, by supporting loved ones and their families as they recover from serious injuries and ailments. With nursing, I will also have the opportunities to have horizontal and vertical career movement opportunities. What this means is that I will be able to change into non-bedside positions in nursing in an office or as a consultant of some sort as far as horizontally goes. Vertically, I will be able to pursue more education to access roles that require a deeper understanding of nursing or medicine. As far as the vertical axis goes, I am interested in pursuing further education to become a nurse anesthetist which sounds incredibly interesting to me. I, unfortunately, cannot pursue my passion for healthcare to the fullest degree due to the financial barrier. Even now as I am nearing the end of schooling, I am finding it to be more and more difficult to fit work and school together. I work during the summer and school year to provide for myself. Even while working, I can see the financial difficulties catching up to me. In the future when I achieve my goals, I hope to support and mentor future generations through the struggles that I felt. I hope to support my community holistically to ensure I live in a world I can be proud of contributing to.

Living in a household where there was not always a lot of money for things to be affordable was difficult. Neither of my parents achieved higher than a high school education and thus did not get the best-paying jobs. Neither have had consistent jobs either, they have had to change jobs a couple of times while growing up. All of the times when they had to change jobs it was not by their choice. During those times, I could feel their stress and their struggle. Socioeconomic adversity is a common struggle and one that I have faced all my life. Currently, I am a Junior at Ball State University pursuing a degree in Nursing with a minor in philosophy. I am working two separate jobs to support myself financially. While in high school, I volunteered my time and led a Gardening Club for two years as the President to give the community opportunities to have fresh fruits and vegetables available to them. I worked hard in leading initiatives to expand the garden and obtain funding for new planting areas. While in college, I have volunteered at a food pantry helping prepare orders for needy communities, I have volunteered at an organization for those with mental disabilities, and I have volunteered my time to help students on campus who are struggling with chemistry. In my community, I plan to address socioeconomic adversity by becoming a nurse who cares for all patients equally. As a nurse, you receive patients from so many different walks of life. Patients who have been through it all, and are here to tell the story. I plan to provide unbiased care. I want the patients I care for to be healthy and have positive outcomes because of the care I provide. I hope to advocate and provide resources so that my patients may overcome their socioeconomic adversities. I hope to support them holistically while they are under my care, supporting them in their emotional and physical needs. Socioeconomic adversity has influenced my beliefs heavily. Growing up in a household where money was tight during some periods is quite tough. Being a minority has also influenced me as Hispanic people are not always welcome in certain social environments or treated equally. Growing up, there were moments where I could feel injustice or where I felt unsafe in the environment. All of this has made me incredibly empathetic to others who are in socioeconomic adversity. I want to help provide an easier future for them and do whatever I can to help support them in their current struggles. I want to provide resources and let them know that they are not alone in their fight. As far as relationships and future plans, my socioeconomic adversity has had impacts on those as well. I am always willing to help loved ones who are currently going through tough moments. I provide financial and emotional support whenever possible. As far as future plans, I have learned that playing it safe, especially financially, is a much better option. That is a part of the reason why I have chosen nursing as a career. While bedside nursing is the primary option, there is so much flexibility in the work I may do as a nurse. I have options to gain a higher degree or change fields while still retaining my status as an RN. Socioeconomic adversity is something I hope to face in the future with less stress than I have in the past. I hope to provide resources to the needy and contribute to a better future for everyone.

The nursing industry interests me as a career choice largely for its ability to positively impact the lives of patients. As a nurse, you are trusted to take care of patients. You must attend to all of their needs to provide a successful recovery. It is very rewarding to see patients who came in very ill, recover day by day and get back to daily life. In personally taking part in this, I will ensure that all of my patients can get thorough treatment so that they will be very prepared to get back to their lives. Ensuring that competent care is provided so that loved ones have one less thing to worry about is part of why I want to be a nurse. Nursing is a challenge, and that challenge is another reason why the nursing industry interests me. There is always a new scenario that you have not seen before, a person with their own story who wants to get back to their life. Each patient requires a different aspect of care to be emphasized. I am all here for the challenge of finding what works for each individual person I am privileged to care for. In my career, I have a few goals to keep in mind to be successful. I want to provide competent and human-first care. Providing experienced and knowledge-backed care is important to me. I truly want my patients to make a healthy and successful recovery. An important aspect of that is caring for them as a person as well. While I am treating their condition, I want to make sure that their personal needs are met. Whether it be hygiene, entertainment, or comfort I want those needs to be met. Another career goal is to become a nurse anesthetist. I want to achieve an advanced degree in an area that interests me. A stepping stone on the way to becoming a nurse anesthetist will be working in the ICU for a few years as a nurse to help me understand patient needs and give me experience. A personal accomplishment that has helped me pursue experience is finding employment as a Patient Care Novice. This position allows me to start providing basic care for patients and begin to build hands-on competence. My past medical experience has included employment in non-clinical roles within hospitals. I have worked as an Environmental Services Associate and a Food Services Ambassadors. Both of these roles have enhanced certain aspects of the care I will provide to patients. Whether it be enhancing cleanliness or the importance of a correct diet for a patient. In addition, a personal health situation has given me other medical experience. Due to a trampoline accident, I tore a meniscus, flipped a meniscus, and tore my ACL in my right knee. This caused surgery to be necessary to repair the area and gave me the experience of outpatient surgery. It interested me in the OR experience and helped guide me toward my interest in being a nurse anesthetist. As a nurse, I hope to provide passionate and nurturing care. I hope that all of my patients will make a successful recovery aided by a holistic approach to their needs. I plan to lead my care with a smile, making sure that patients know they are in trusted and safe hands.

My parents fled from El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War. My family saw bodies in the street and many others were wounded with a need to be cared for. Many were left to suffer because there were not enough nurses to provide for the many needing care. My aunt became a nurse during this war and helped provide care for the injured. She serves as an inspiration to me and a large part of why I want to become a nurse. She took up a career to nurse those most in need during a critical period. This is why I am interested in being an ICU nurse. I want to help those in the most dire need to help to recover from their ailments. I want to make a lasting positive impact on their recovery because of the care I will provide. I am passionate about this because getting to see the injured recover and get better day by day is a privilege. Being trusted to care for the most ill patients is a responsibility that I will gladly take. Nursing is a career filled with challenge after challenge. No two are the same, but they are all enriching experiences in their own right. Each challenge gives you more insight into how the human body works. Each challenge lets you give the next patient more competent care. This culminates in ultimately bettering the health of the community you live in. I am pursuing nursing to help the world become a healthier place. At this point in my nursing journey, I am about to begin my Junior year as a first-generation college student. I have completed my first semester of clinical rotations and have already reaped the reward of helping people take care of their everyday needs in a long-term care facility and while in a hospital. I have even taken up a job as a nurse's aide in a hospital which will help me provide more competent care when I become a nurse. These experiences have only further fueled my desire to help those in need. Pursuing nursing is more extensive than any surface benefits. To me, it is about positively impacting the lives of those I provide care for. Nursing is a combination of many of my interests wrapped into one career. I get to provide competent care, educate patients and families, and support those in need through their most difficult challenges. I will wield this privilege while smiling because I will be helping people recover and get back to living their lives.

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." — Nelson Mandela Higher education is such a beautiful thing. It is a unique environment, filled with educators, students, and people from all walks of life. It is ultimately one of the most fulfilling times in life people will have. It is important for an array of reasons. However, for me, those reasons are that education is powerful and enjoyable. Education truly is a weapon that can change the world, it can form new ways of thinking. It has so many unique and niche fields of study. There is a major for everyone out there. Higher education is empowerment, it is an ability to learn about anything you may be passionate about. Education finds a way to enable that passion and create a positive impact on the world with it. There is an insane amount of majors that one can find, each unique and each powerful in its own right. My passion is healthcare. Everything about it is caring and compassionate; I would love to be a part of that system. Higher education is important to me because, without it, I would not be able to be a significant part of the healthcare field. For so much of healthcare, a degree is required to be qualified and trustable. Earning a good education enables me to solidly be able to be a part of the healthcare field comfortably. My intended major is nursing, currently pre-nursing as I am just entering college. Without the availability of higher education, I would not at all be able to feasibly enter the healthcare industry. Higher education acts as a weapon as it can catapult you into places where you may have not been able to excel before. It hands you the tools to create your path in life, it enables all of those who chose its route. This is ultimately why education is such an important thing to not only myself but everyone. It gives those who are willing the tools to excel in their chosen field and be able to change the world in their positive way. There is no one definition of "positive change" it is all objective, it depends on who you ask. Higher education lets us make informed changes in the world, using that knowledge from the topics that we chose to study. Whatever one may be interested in, higher education of any form has options. It is an enjoyable and empowering experience. By the end of it, one will feel accomplished and proud that they have come so far to achieve their desired level of education. It is a privilege to get higher education, and it is a weapon worth wielding. In the end, education is a tool that is important in helping you positively change the world.

I am a Hispanic man who just graduated high school earlier this summer with the highest diploma possible, the FC Honors diploma. I attained this through persevering through challenging coursework and my commitment to a scholarly life. However, now I am enjoying my summer working full-time at a hospital as an Environmental Services Associate. And as summer is coming to a close, I look forward to becoming a college Freshman soon. I am entering college with 13 credit hours due to the credit I earned taking AP courses in high school. As for my character, I act as personable as I can be. I try to be joyful every day as I face today's world. I try to stay hopeful and know that my good character can carry me far. Every day I try to do what is right, by principal even if nobody is looking, that is who I am. I am a man of good character. With all this in mind, I am majoring in Nursing and hope to make a massively positive impact on the world through my medical career. My medical career will not begin in nursing, and it will not end with nursing. As of right now, I have begun to appreciate the medical world and all values it has. All the healthcare workers pushing for a positive future, helping those in need. I have been able to see this working EVS in a hospital, and it has taught me to have respect for life. Not only to respect life but to encourage it. I have seen so many staff members sincerely bringing care to the patients in the hospital, and I desire to have that same impact. That desire brought me to the realization that I can begin my medical career before becoming a nurse. It brought me to the realization that I can be a Patient Care Assistant or PCA. I intend to start with a training program this upcoming summer. That is where I will start my medical career. I want to start there because I do not want to wait to help people in 4 years, I want to help those patients in need sooner. That is where it will begin, with a desire to begin that positive impact on the world through my career. By becoming a PCA and further becoming a nurse, I will be able to help patients with tasks that require assistance, and I hope to help patients make a successful recovery. I yearn to aid in the process of healthcare. Especially when it comes to working with patients so closely. However, as I stated earlier, my medical career will not end in nursing. I hope to attend medical school and my highest dream is to become an Orthopedic Surgeon. I have this hope because there are people in need, in deep need of help. Becoming an Orthopedic Surgeon will allow me to make a significantly positive impact as I will be able to improve people's lives. No matter what, I desire a career in the medical field. No matter the role I play, I will make a positive impact. Through every little interaction, every caring act, and any little thing. It is my goal to make this world a better place, even if it is one patient at a time.

Life is insanity and a stroke of utter luck, it makes for a unique journey. In my journey, I have experienced plenty of things that have created and molded me into the person I currently am. I have gone from living in the Los Angeles ghettos to normal suburbs in Indiana. That has brought me up to this point as I am now a high school senior. Some important details about myself are that I am very hard-working, I am a successful student, and I have confidence in myself. My personality is quite kind and I try my best every day to give it my all and be as kind as can be to every person I meet. It makes my days much happier and it makes me a very gleeful person, by being kind I am creating my happiness. I prosper off the gratitude of others and that is what fuels me to make every day better than the last. In my activities in my life, I am currently the running President of our school's Gardening Club and have been for 2 years. Not only that, but I am a member of our school's chapter of the National Honor Society. Some other large things that I am currently doing is Pep Band and I am currently in our school's highest concert band, the Wind Ensemble. All of these defining activities make for quite a busy lifestyle. Those are all the details about me that define who I am, and with all of that experience that I have had leading up to this point, I want to give back to the world. The world and the community around me have supported me up to this point and in my lifestyle, I am going to give back. I plan to make a positive impact on the world through my career because of the positivity I will bring. In my future career, I aspire to be an Orthopedic Surgeon. I desire to work in healthcare because it creates this deep contentedness within me. Working as somebody who is there for the benefit of the people is exactly what I want to be. Throughout my career, I plan to help everybody in any way that I can, whether it be something as small as giving directions in the facility I work at, or whether it be performing surgery on a patient. I plan on making the healthcare I give as easy and affordable and as plausible as it can be to the patients I will be serving. I plan to make a positive impact by creating a positive atmosphere in my workplace and I hope to be making a positive impact through every single step that I take. In this way, the widest array of help that I can give will be given and I will be helping every single person that I can help. I want to be efficient in healthcare as the world deserves to be a better place and I desire to be a part and a giver of that positivity. I will be a giver of that positivity because of the place I will put myself in, I will make sure that I am making a positive impact through my career by helping people feel better. Easing the pain and all while being gleeful. I am going to make a positive impact on the world through my career because of the deservingness of the patients that I will be serving.

Struggle and adversity are common themes throughout our lives, and some of us face it more than others. Personally, this adversity came in the form of an injury. This adversity changed my outlook on life and it made me a much better person all because of it. I had torn my ACL and damaged a few meniscuses and underwent surgery that had a recovery time of a year. However, I overcame this adversity in a mere 9 months. I overcame this adversity through willpower, I was persistent in my recovery and I went on to make it a shorter recovery. Every day I worked on what the doctor had told me to work on, I was consistent with what I was doing. I was determined to make my recovery go as smoothly as possible. I powered through all the toughness that was ahead of me and I knew that it was only going to get easier. That proved itself to be true as it only got easier to use crutches, then it only got easier to use one crutch, and finally, it became easy to walk again. It was a long road of recovery but thanks to this adversity I was able to learn a lot from it. While difficult, I knew that all of it was possible. I knew that despite the challenge, I was ready to face it and learn from it, only to become stronger and better because of it. I was able to overcome that adversity also because of the community around me and their help. The people around me truly only wanted the best for me and wanted to help me all they could. I was able to secure my recovery thanks to the community that was there to support me. I had people there all the time able to help carry my things or offer condolences and advice. There was always somebody there to help me whenever I could use assistance. Due to this, I am all the more willing to give back to my community. I plan to do this in a multitude of ways, I hope to help in any way that I can and be able to support the people that were able to get me to the place I am currently. I plan on giving back to the community directly. I plan to help those that were in need as I was. I plan to create events that are inclusive and are all the more available to those that actually need them in their everyday lives. In the future, I hope to give back to my community by collaborating with groups of people and rallying people to support those that are in need. I hope to help in any little way. Not only that, but I also plan to give back to my community in any small ways that I can. Something as simple as opening a door for someone or leaving a nice tip or a note for someone. All of the simple things to help out those in need as well as the large events for those in need. Overall, I hope to aid the community in any way that I can possibly help in the future.

Injury is such a simple thing, but it has adverse effects. It creates adversity and I have had an injury that created adversity. I overcame that adversity and persevered, I have become a better person because of it. In a way, I am thankful for it. This adversity was when I injured myself and tore my ACL and damaged some of my meniscuses. I suffered from that injury and it created a large period of adversity in my life. I have recovered since then but on a long path of recovery. I had surgery and since had a 9 month recovery period which was originally supposed to be a year-long recovery. During that time I had a lockable knee brace on nearly the entire time and learned to use crutches, all just to relearn to walk. It made for an interesting freshman year of high school. I overcame the difficulty and had the persistence to make up for what I had lost and got it back in a shorter time than was originally planned for. This experience has shaped who I am because it has made me realize and appreciate so much in my life now. I realize how lucky I am to have been able to recover efficiently and be able to walk comfortably. I have learned to appreciate all the small things infinitely more than I had beforehand. It made me have much more sympathy for the handicapped and I learned to be a better person. As for my expectations for myself, those have only become higher as I know I can recover from something as difficult as that. I know that it is possible to recover from a large injury and be able to walk again. I have expectations that are much higher than they were before and I now know I am capable of much more. This has of course directly influenced my personal goals as I have made more expectations for myself. My personal goals do not seem much more feasible and I know that despite any challenge I may face, it is all completely plausible and possible to achieve whatever I dream of achieving. This experience has been such a learning experience and it makes me happy that it even happened to me in the first place and I am grateful for it. It has made me a better person overall and it has created this proudness that I had not had before. It makes me proud of all the experiences I have gained up to this point. It has influenced my life in a way I could not have imagined and has made me expand upon my personal goals much more. It has made me appreciate life itself infinitely more.

Truth is such a complex concept, it is very objective and even more complex when you try to define yourself with the truth. Staying true to yourself in one's daily life is getting more and more difficult as our society makes more and more changes. Conformity becomes such an easy thing and conformity often is not who we are. Thus, staying true to yourself becomes all the more important every single day. In my daily life, I stay true to myself by making choices of my own volition. I choose things that define me in my train of thought. In this day and age, it is so very easy to lose yourself just conforming to what this group would choose versus this other group. It is so easy to forget who you truly are and I have struggled with actually finding myself. I stay true to myself by making choices without any outside input, I choose what I would want without being influenced to choose it. It is such a simple but important thing to do as we have to stay true to ourselves if we want to live the life we want. I remain true to myself by actively enjoying the activities I always have enjoyed and tried new things whenever I feel like trying new things. I especially tend to avoid trends and simply live a life with as little societal influence, all to stay true to myself. Overall, to truly be yourself, one must make choices that define them. Choices that are entirely your own and this is how I stay true to myself. I make choices that are mine, not choices of society.

Independence creates our reality. It drives us to make decisions and it helps us realize our effects on the world around us. Independence means the ability to live an enjoyable life and sustain that life. It means being able to have the joy and virtue to make every day better than the last. It means creating your happiness. Independence makes all of us, it is an important characteristic we all carry. We all can be independent regardless of our life conditions at the current moment. We make our happiness, we supply that to ourselves and we can make ourselves an enjoyable life. Despite the challenge that may be, we are all plenty capable of it. The impact that independence has on me is that it makes me glad to see everything our world has to offer. I have independence because I can make my happiness, I am living an enjoyable life at the current moment and I am all the more thankful for it. Independence gives me gratitude for all the beauty I get to experience in our world. Overall independence is this utterly important idea in all of our lives. It is not impossible, nor is it all that far-fetched. It is something grounded in reality that you can make all on your own. Independence is beautiful and it is something we can all collectively appreciate.

Nature is a beauty that we will never truly understand. Everyone is surrounded by it, and we are all consumed by it. It is an utter phenomenon of life that will always be appreciated. I love nature because of the calm and peace it brings me. In my life, I try to appreciate nature by teaching others about nature. I am the President of the Gardening Club at my school and have been for 2 years. Nature is gorgeous to me and it is important in everything that I do. I appreciate it by cultivating it and propagating plants, I appreciate the beautiful and intricate ways that they grow. Everything about nature is perfect to me and it is all interesting in the ways it works. Not only this but I appreciate the peace that nature brings to me by going outside and enjoying that peace. Often I find myself driving and just looking and enjoying the beautiful sights right before my eyes. I go on walks to enjoy these sights and to more so just appreciate nature itself. I go on to life and enjoy all the sights before me. Throughout all my life nature has brought on this peace and calm within me that I cannot thank it enough for. I love nature for all of this, and throughout my life, I aim to teach people about nature and its beautiful ways. Whether it be through teaching them about gardening, or through taking them on a peaceful walk through the woods.

Persistence is key to everything in life and it defines me as a person. One time I used persistence to overcome an obstacle was when I had torn my ACL and damaged a few of my meniscuses. This was quite the injury for me and it created a lot of setbacks for me. It was quite a large obstacle. In this case, persistence helped me by making me much more efficient in my recovery from this injury. I had to learn to take it slow again and just relearn to walk. I had to learn how to use crutches and it was an interesting learning curve. I had to get used to having a brace on quite literally all the time for 9 months. Throughout all of this, I learned that persistence is key, I kept going for any opportunity for recovery. I was taking every chance I had to make my recovery all the easier. I used persistence to keep learning how to use crutches, to continue learning to use everything I had to make my recovery shorter. Persistence heavily aided me in doing what the physician had recommended and just doing the exercises that were recommended for me. I continued to get better and better and with the aid of persistence, I had made my 1-year recovery into a 9-month recovery. I overcame this battle using the tools at my disposal and the most important part of it was that I kept going for it, I kept furthering my recovery. Through the use of my will and my persistence, I overcame this obstacle with ease.

Main Essay Question "As with the butterfly, adversity is necessary to build character in people." -Joseph B. Wirthlin As we live our lives day to day there come moments of struggle and moments of ease in life. We are to learn from those tough moments, that adversity, and build on it. The adversity that I face in the pursuit of education is the difficulty of uncertainty and financial support. Uncertainty creates adversity for me because it makes me unsure of how the future will continue going. Since I am a first-generation college student it makes it harder to exactly know how any of this will end, it is difficult to say since this is the first time this has happened in my family. There is the uncertainty of something unforeseen and overall the difficulty with preparing for everything that college can bring. Not only that, but this also brings up the uncertainty of financial support through college. Financial support is this difficulty that my family and I will have to face as this is going to be quite the investment. Overall my family will likely be supporting themselves and my younger brother who will still be in high school. That will be their primary focus and so I do not expect a lot of financial support there, not only that, but I will be the main provider of my financial support for my education. I will keep working and studying all at the same time as I will be primarily paying for my education. This is large adversity as the financial support I receive will be based upon how well I will be able to balance work, education, and my personal life. I plan to navigate all this and am currently navigating all this by preparing for the future. I am currently working and saving as much money as I can to prepare for the cost of my education as this is the main source of my uncertainty. It is quite difficult to determine the future if I cannot pay for the education that will end up getting me to my life's goal. As of currently, I am balancing my current high school education with my job to best prepare me for the future ahead. All to minimize the uncertainty that I face as well as the financial struggle of supporting myself through college. Given this opportunity, I hope to continue my education with little worry or focus on the financial pieces of it and more so the actual education portion of it. I hope to continue living this brighter future I have in mind and live without the need to face these adversities. Given this opportunity, I will be given a chance at a life without adversity, without this uncertainty, and with much less financial troubles. I will be given an opportunity to truly stand up in this world and learn from it, I will be given an opportunity to become a successful first-generation scholar. I will be able to continue and become what I have dreamed of becoming and help those around me knowing that I was given a gift that has helped me get so far. Not only that, but I hope to build on my character along the way and become a better person despite the adversity that I face. That is what I hope to do given this opportunity. Short Answer Questions 1. What it means to me to get a college education is something deeper than the education itself. This means a chance at living a successful life, this means being able to have this experience of college and be able to improve the world we live in. Not only is it the education itself, but it is the opportunities I will gain from a college education. To get a college education means being educated, it means being a much more productive member of society, and it means being able to aptly support the world's future generations. 2. A typical week outside of school means a lot of work towards the future. Whenever I get breaks from school I often increase the hours I work at my job in order to be able to save more for the future. Those typical weeks often mean 30 hour work weeks in order to save up much more than I was able to beforehand, and in the future benefitting from that. Often times this means taking whatever leftover time I have besides that and taking it to actually experience my youth. When I am not working or doing school related activities I often find myself expressing myself creatively whether that be through common media entertainment such as video games or music. I tend to entertain myself while doing something that I feel builds on my character. 3. I feed my curiosity both inside and outside of a school environment. Within a school environment, I have learned to be a leader in my community. I am currently the Gardening Club's president in High School. This feeds my curiosity because it heavily involves a prime interest. I love gardening and I enjoy teaching others and leading others in this productive club for a common interest. I feed my curiosity from this by being able to enjoy and experiment with plants. I have learned what is best to take care of plants and it feeds my curiosity immensely. Not only that but I feed my curiosity through a lot of entertainment media. I have learned to seek things that are interesting to me and commonly those are concepts from our current reality. Whether it is galaxies in another star system that host life or something as simple as what does this moment from a current movie that just came out means. It all feeds my curiosity to learn about the environment around me throughout my entire life.

I have learned that some people do not have the same perception as I do. I have been able to realize that a lot of people do not see the world quite as I see it, and that utterly changed my perspective on how I am able to see everything. Literally and figuratively I have realized this. Literally I have realized that maybe people are not able to see the same color spectrum, maybe they are not able to see as well as I am, and maybe they do not have the same opportunities as I do. It is an interesting concept that I have come to terms with. I realize that maybe something as simple as that is able to change a life massively, as the same opportunities are not presented to that person with altered perception. Figuratively, I have realized that everyone is nowhere near the exact same as I am. I have learned that it is hard to fit the same opinions into someone with a vastly different upbringing. It is insane how many things we all have in common coupled with the fact that we all come with different lives with different details. This idea utterly changes how you have your perception of the world and of your environment. Both of these realizations have made me realize how lucky I am. It makes me grateful for every event up to this point, the learning of this fact has changed my life all for the better. I am not able to appreciate the differences we all have. Perception allows for different opinions and different ways of seeing things. One may see it this way while the other sees it another. It provides for a good grip on the world we live in this day and age.