If I had $1000 right now, I’d start by jumping for joy! I’m working every day to try and pay for my education, and the support I’d have from this scholarship would alleviate so much financial burden for me. With $1000, I would have an estimated extra 90 hours of time to spend in the classroom studying instead of at my workplace trying to pay for school. As an ADHD student who needs time more than any other resource to be successful in school, those 90 hours are priceless to me! This $1000 is worth four months of groceries for me, or two months of rent, or my textbooks for the entire year. Every dollar toward my education has a massive impact on my ability to be successful and allows me to invest my energy and my time as a student where they belong: learning.

My name is Graci, and I believe I am the right candidate for this scholarship because I deeply identify with Dylan's ambition and determination to learn regardless of his diagnosis. Learning is and always has been my passion, and because of my ADHD, I have had to fight hard to pursue an education. It's been my dream since early childhood to pursue higher education and to be a lifelong learner. After spending the last two years working in the bookstore on my local college campus and wandering through the STEM building on lunch breaks imagining myself sitting in on lectures, I've been accepted to the institution and will begin my studies this Fall! I was the first girl in my family to graduate high school on time, and the only child in my family who hadn’t yet been diagnosed with ADHD, despite showing numerous symptoms since early childhood. I wondered why my passion for learning wasn’t enough, as my grades only sometimes matched my enthusiasm. I constantly asked myself, “If you love to learn, why can't you complete your work?”. After graduating high school and moving into my early college years I was still unaware of my ADHD; I started school at a Community College working on a transfer degree for Computer Science, and I white-knuckled my way through a poor attention span for the first few weeks. Willpower, however, is a finite resource, and it ran out quickly when I experienced diversity in my personal life; I dropped out of school not long after beginning. All this to say, my inability to focus was never a lack of ambition or interest, I later discovered it was a learning disability impacting my executive function. Over the last four years, I have committed to personal growth to set myself up for success when the time came that I could try again. I have sought and received my diagnosis of ADHD, been prescribed as-needed medication to help with my executive function, and learned numerous tools to create positive outcomes through years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Neurofeedback Therapy. I have read many books to help compile tools and strategies for success, my favorite being On Course: Strategies for Success in College, Career and Life by Skip Downing and Jonathan Brennan. Some of my favorite tools that have made the most impact on my executive function have been hand making my own personalized planners, setting and writing down annual and monthly goals and checking in with myself on them weekly, setting timers to work on projects incrementally and help maintain my focus, studying with friends and mentors who will help keep me accountable and on task, and taking breaks in nature to help reset my brain when I need them. These examples are a few of many I use to honor my unique brain for what it is while nurturing my vision for what it can be. Positive reinforcement and consistency are my ultimate keys to success. One of my favorite sections that I read from On Course: Strategies for Success in College, Career and Life, was in chapter 2: Discovering Self Motivation. Downing and Brennan write about a formula for success. To paraphrase it, value multiplied by expectation equals motivation. I have never doubted the value in pursuing an education: my expectation for success was what needed nurturing. I can now say after years of hard work, I both value schooling deeply, and fully expect that I will succeed. I can also state with confidence that should I be chosen for this scholarship, I wouldn’t dream of taking the privilege for granted.

My experience with mental health struggles has been the most significant obstacle in pursuing my education. Growing up, my father struggled with untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder; and it caused a lot of harm to my family and me. As a young child, my dad had unrealistic expectations for my success; always insisting that if I did 'just a little better' then he would be proud of me. This pressure made me feel as though no accolade or accomplishment would be enough, and as a straight A student, I still felt like a failure. At the same time, his explosive and unpredictable behavior resulted in my own diagnoses of Anxiety, Depression, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. By eleven years old, I was agoraphobic, malnourished, and had planned my suicide. I am lucky to be alive. My early teen years were some of the hardest of my life, and I'm so relieved to have come out the other side. With therapy and support from friends, I plugged on. Every small improvement compounded, and I found myself in a very different place by high school. While I still had a long way to go, I had the blessing of a wonderful group of friends who encouraged and challenged one another, and I spent very little time at home with my dad. But I was still in an unhealthy situation, and it continued to hinder my education and my goals. Despite some of the highest test scores in my state, I was consistently being placed into the least challenging classes, as teachers and faculty noticed I struggled with my attitude toward authority figures as well as my ability to turn in homework assignments. I could no longer maintain my straight A grades, and I was crushed. I experienced so much cognitive dissonance during this time. I frequently received the same feedback from many of my teachers: "You are so smart, why won't you apply yourself? If you would just pay attention and complete your work, you would succeed. Why are you choosing to be lazy?". I carried so much shame throughout my educational career because I didn't understand why I couldn't do what looked so easy for other students. In my head, I gave myself the same speech my teachers did when I sat at the dinner table one night, staring at my homework and unable to put anything on paper, while my dad shouted at me for being a failure. My education was not all bad, however. In spite of my struggles, I loved to learn. My favorite early childhood memories were sitting at the computer, learning reading and mathematics with my ClueFinders and Sesame Street computer games. In my teens, I loved to read and did so for hours a day, spending every spare moment in the school courtyard with a book. I spent countless hours poring over ceramic projects in art class, music theory in choir, and teaching myself computer programming in the library. As long as I can remember, my dream has been to go to college and study whatever I wanted to, and to get as many degrees as I wanted to! Because of my trouble in school, and the identity pushed on me as a failure, I didn't believe my dream was possible. One major obstacle was the cost of college: with my 2.5 high school GPA, I did not qualify for many scholarships, and though my parents made great money in my late teens, my dad spent it faster than it could be earned. This meant at the time that I qualified for no FAFSA support, even though our utilities were frequently shut off for days at a time. So, after high school, all plans of college were derailed by stress-related health issues and financial strain. But I refused to let it stop me. I moved out of my parent's house and in with my older brother; my best friend. Determined not to let our experiences define us, we both pursued Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Neurofeedback, massage therapy, prayer and meditation, and combed through every book on healing from trauma we could find(one of my favorites is "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kolk). My brother and I still set goals together and keep one another accountable, and we support our mom and sisters on their journey to heal as well. We also pray for my dad, though we have not seen or spoken with him in years, and we choose to love him for who he was and forgive him for who he wasn't, while maintaining the boundaries we need in order to be safe. Now, years later, I am a different person; and so are my siblings and my mom. My ability to set goals and follow through has given me so much confidence, and I root my identity in my faith and the love of my family, which we have rebuilt together from the ground up. I speak to myself with so much more grace and kindness than I did as a child, and I have learned to have the courage to fail at new things without labeling myself as a failure. I have also learned that I am incredibly ambitious and resilient, and I am so overjoyed to pick up where I left off and pursue my dream of getting an education. In one of my favorite books, On Course: Strategies for Success in College, Career, and Life, authors Skip Downing and Jonathan Brennan write about a formula for success. To paraphrase it: value multiplied by expectation for success equals motivation. I have never lacked any value in pursuing an education, my expectation for success was what needed nurturing. I can now say after years of hard work, I both value schooling deeply, and fully expect that I will succeed. I can also state with confidence that should I receive this scholarship, I wouldn't dream of taking the privilege for granted.

As a woman studying Digital Technology and Culture, with a certificate in Game Development and Design, the technologies that inspired my educational and career goals were the educational computer games I played in early childhood. My family bought our first computer when I was around five years old, and some of my greatest memories of my childhood were learning to read on my Sesame Street game, and learning addition and subtraction with Clue Finders. As an ADHD student, my brain often requires extra stimulation to maintain the same level of focus a neurotypical student can manifest on their own, and as a child, I often found my attention waning in my traditional school classes. This made my discovery of online learning so groundbreaking, as I could remain actively engaged for much longer periods of time and retain what I had learned much easier. This inspired me to create similar online resources for the next generation of learners. My dream is to develop my own educational games that engage and challenge students of all grade levels, and to include coding lessons in particular that increase in difficulty as the student progresses in age and brain development, as I wish so much that I had learned to program as part of my own early childhood education. I believe that raising the next generation of students with this additional educational resource can help many students with learning disabilities such as ADHD to learn at the same pace as their peers, and to foster a generation overall that loves to learn. I want to create resources that work with our brains rather than against them. I particularly believe that there is so much value in teaching students Computer Programming, which encompasses many vital processes to brain development: such as critical thinking, attention to detail, advanced math skills, and writing skills.

Growing up, I was the youngest of four siblings in a deeply impoverished family. My dad was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer when I was two years old. My family spent many months surviving on casseroles from the congregates of our local church and my mother worked hard to care for my dad and her four children; the oldest being nine years old at the time. When my father was declared cancer-free, he went back to work; but he was left disabled and money was also still very tight. My clothes were hand-me-downs and my lunches were Maruchan Cup of Noodles or Kraft Mac N' Cheese. My favorite activities were making mud pies in the backyard with my sisters and sliding down the staircase in laundry baskets(Thankfully mom didn't catch us doing that!). In spite of the struggles of cancer and tight finances, I had a lot to be grateful for. The church community really took care of my family, and we never missed a meal. My dad has also been cancer-free for twenty years now. As an adult I have spent the last few years keeping a gratitude journal, writing down a few things every day that I'm grateful for and taking a few minutes to meditate on my gratitude. Sometimes I'm grateful for what I have; whether that be as significant as reliable transportation or as seemingly insignificant as a hot cup of coffee with that perfect coffee-to-cream ratio. Other times, I'm grateful for the loving people in my life, including mentors, my siblings(who are my best friends!), or my mom. Sometimes, I'm grateful for who I'm becoming: someone who is brilliant and kind and compassionate. Blessings that are easy to overlook, like a stable home and running water, are priceless, and I am beyond grateful for them.

When I look from my perspective at the world post-COVID, the biggest problem I see is divided and lonely people. I see a lack of community that I believe was brought on by more than two years in and out of quarantine: Constant digital connection to the state of events in the entire world is a development from the last 20 years, and has created a sense of loneliness and compassion overwhelm in many people. When there is so much going on in the world, how can we begin to help? I believe we start by caring for and connecting with our immediate communities -- and we can use social pressure to do it. Social pressure often holds as much power in modern day society as a court ruling - anyone who lost their family and career overnight because of pressure from Twitter can argue that point better than I can. But social pressure can also be used for good, as evidenced by the accountability in Alcoholics Anonymous that helps people quit drinking, or pressure from friends to see a psychologist. What if good social pressure was harnessed in TikTok videos encouraging people to invite one person in their daily life out for a coffee with their phones off? Maybe my new rule for myself is that I can't open Instagram until I've spent an hour chatting with someone I love in person today. In our current social climate, people are most likely to behave in the way that is the most socially acceptable. It makes sense that making person to person contact the most socially acceptable activity may solve the problem of widespread loneliness, and compound to help build a culture of small communities that care for one another in times of joy and times of trouble.

I love to try on hobbies! My favorite hobbies are constantly evolving along with me, and I love the challenge of trying something new and improving with time. I have enjoyed singing, playing the bass guitar and the trumpet, knitting, embroidering, hiking, drawing, sculpting, painting, playing video games, reading, writing, creating art journals, cooking, meditating, and raising puppies as service animals. Of course, the most valuable hobbies are the hobbies that you stick with. Many of the above I did for a year, many I do every day, and a few are somewhere in between. It's incredibly valuable for the brain to be introduced to new activities and skills regularly, and it personally helps me to find what gives me joy and direction in life. The hobbies that impact me the most at my current stage of life are singing, reading, hiking, and painting. I haven't gone a day without singing since I had strep throat around 7 years ago, and not for several years before then either-- I have participated in choral groups, jazz groups, and put on some thoroughly impressive concerts alone in my car as well. In the moments I'm not singing, I'm usually reading. I'm never without a fiction and a non-fiction go-to. (Currently, my fiction book is The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss, and my non-fiction is The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis!) Painting and hiking came to me around the beginning of the pandemic, and have made an otherwise uncertain time much more peaceful. A native of the Pacific Northwest, I'm never more than 15 minutes from a trail, and my favorite trails are up in the Cascade Mountains near the waterfalls. Whether I'm painting the scenery, singing in my car, or reading a book, my hobbies give my life profound joy.

Being independent has always meant being a self-motivator to me, and I definitely got an early start on it! My earliest memory is sitting on my mother's bed at six am around the age of 18 months, waiting for her to wake up so I could gleefully tell her I got a banana all on my own. At eight years old, I decided I wanted to wear my favorite shirt more often, so I asked my mom to teach me to do my own laundry. I remember feeling so exhilarated at the thought of fresh laundry being up to me! I never looked back. This drive to create the life I wanted continued on throughout adolescence, teaching myself not to bite my nails at eleven, becoming an avid reader at twelve, and becoming president of the high school environmental club at fourteen. As a previously undiagnosed ADHD student, I was the first girl of three in my family to graduate high school in four years, and I fought hard to do so; I was as proud of the 2.5 GPA I'd managed without medication or accommodation as a 4.0 honor student. I'm still proud of my GPA, knowing I worked as hard as I could with the disadvantages I had at the time, and I'm eager to see how well I can do now that I have accommodations and medication available to me! As an adult, my strive for independence still stands. I spent years working in Urban Forestry, a male-dominated occupation, undaunted and loving my work as a Permit Technician. I taught myself how to paint during the pandemic, an outlet I enjoy deeply. Now, I'm fighting hard to pursue my dream of obtaining a degree in Computer Science! Fostering my independence is helping me build my dream future.

As a late-diagnosed ADHD student, my favorite way to help others in my community and on my campus is by working in the Access Center at my school. I have the pleasure of meeting other students with disabilities and being a friendly face who can understand and share their experiences. Working in the WSUV Access Center allows me to help my fellow students learn how to advocate for themselves, and gives me the joy of watching as these students grow in confidence throughout the year. When I help these students set up accommodations, I am participating in their journey to become the best versions of themselves by providing the support they require to reach their full potential. When I'm not working in the Access Center, I love to help others in my community by picking up shelf-stable foods that are no longer salable from the campus bookstore and donating them to the local food bank. This has been a wonderful way for me to contribute to the health of my community when I don't always have the resources myself. It also saves tons of waste as the food would otherwise have to be thrown out! While I love working in the Access Center and donating to my local food bank, some of the most impactful ways I get to help others are by reaching out in small ways. In a recently reopened world post-COVID, many students and staff are lonelier than they have ever been, and a quick hug or encouragement can be so meaningful. I do this in little ways, buying someone's parking pass or grabbing them a cup of coffee. A kind word, listening ear, or meaningful conversation might be the best way I can help my community while we all re-enter the world and our campuses again.

My favorite book, Watership Down, made me a passionate reader. Like most of my fifth grade class in 2006, I groaned when our teacher passed out our newest incredibly boring-looking required reading book; I was convinced the only subject that could produce more apathy in me than a story about wild rabbits was perhaps some riveting material on the state of the economy. I'm glad to say I was not the only nine-year-old who had to eat my bad attitude as we progressed through this treasure of a book. Watership Down accomplished the legendary task of turning a classroom of unsuspecting children into avid readers. It can be argued that all of the best stories are of deep friendships and communities: and Watership Down is built on this foundation. This uncomplicated story of a group of ordinary outsiders making their way to a new home is beautifully told. Each rabbit holds the same qualities one would find in themselves or people they've met before: A confident decision-maker with a bit of a temper, a character of quiet integrity who is hesitant to step into their leadership role, a brilliant problem-solver struggling to reign in their know-it-all tendencies. Author Richard Adams walks the fine line of communicating true human strengths and faults without falling into the rut of stereotyping and the result is relatable and comforting relationship dynamics. Watching these dynamics unfold under stress, joy, and uncertainty is a pleasure, and Adams takes his time telling the story; spending long passages describing the changing of the seasons or the peaceful feeling of a cool breeze on a hot day. I also love that the story holds no deeper meaning or forced symbolism: Watership Down is no more than a tale Richard Adams told to his daughters on a long road trip.