Everything has some kind of process it goes through in its lifetime: the earth has seasons, plants go through photosynthesis, humans and animals have the circle of life. Each process may seem simple enough in an overview, but when you look for the “why” behind what happens, you come to an understanding of how amazing it is. You can find this with almost anything. Engine operation is extremely interesting. Anyone can learn the basics of the Brayton cycle or a four-stroke cycle, but it takes real passion to dive into why a turbine engine is most efficient when it bypasses eighty-five percent of its airflow around the engine. For the past ten months, I've attended the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics in my hometown of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I came into school purely because it’s a great, secure career field to go into that allows for major growth in a short amount of time. I didn’t know the fuselage from the nacelle on an aircraft when I signed up. I can now say I’ve successfully led the overhaul of a Continental O-470 engine. Getting to run it for the first time was one of the biggest payoffs I’ve ever experienced. Seeing the weight one’s actions carry in this line of work combined with how complex these machines get has put the fear of God in me. It’s not exactly like an aircraft can pull over if something goes wrong in flight. I plan to go into general aviation when I get my Airframe & Powerplant License. Everyone boasts about the money that can be made in the commercial side of the field, but over the past few months money has become less of my concern, and I’m more interested in learning everything I can about these machines. My dream would be to join a “go-team.” Most companies have some kind of professionals they can send out to the aircraft when the aircraft can’t get to a shop. I’d love the opportunity to see places all over the world while doing something I’m passionate about. I’m having to pay out of pocket to go through school. My student loans only cover about twenty-five percent of my tuition. Thanks to my dad, I waited a semester after graduating high school and worked sixty hours a week on average so in school I could focus on learning instead of bills. It was an excruciating wait at first, but I’m happy I did it. I work hard to make sure what I do is done right. My dad passed away this past April and one of the biggest things he emphasized to me was to finish what I start. He has been my encouragement throughout life, and even since his passing there have been days where the only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I know he wants this for me. Because of him my goal in life is to learn, stay humble, and finish whatever I start.

I love telling people about what I’m going to school for. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m not exactly the target demographic of the work field I’ve chosen. Coming from a small town in the armpit of South Carolina, I was raised in a tight-knit environment that left little room for growth. Growing up with four parents and six older sisters made home life a little chaotic, and oftentimes I’d be put on the back burner or somewhere in the background. In my junior and senior years of high school I attended a program school as an engineering major. Being there made me realize my options weren’t as limited as I thought. In my junior year I took a tour of Charleston Southern University’s campus and fell in love with the idea of attending their mechanical engineering program. I worked my butt off my whole school career to keep straight A’s but never got any third-party scholarships or grants. Going into my senior year of high school, I realized I needed to take an alternate route if I wanted to further my education. I tried to get my foot in the door with different companies looking for trainees in mechanical fields through friends of friends, but that path did not prove fruitful. I despised the idea of having to take out a loan that would put me in crushing debt for the next thirty years just to go to school, but the likelihood that I’d have to increased by the day. February came and I still had nothing. I was losing hope and felt completely discouraged. One day, I came into class and got to sit through a presentation about a trade school. This wasn’t out of the ordinary. We had done the same thing with a few different companies, so I wasn’t that invested at first. The longer the lady talked, the more I realized this school had the qualities I had been looking for. Needless to say, I applied and got into the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics. Because the program is only sixteen months, I wouldn’t get the South Carolina L.I.F.E scholarship I had worked so hard for, and since the school originated in Pennsylvania, I couldn’t get the South Carolina Workforce grants either. Unfortunately, federal loans only pay about half of my tuition. About two months before I was originally supposed to start school, my dad approached me with the idea of putting it off for another semester. This way, I could save up enough money to pay tuition out of pocket with the help of federal aid. Thankfully, everything transferred easily. After those four excruciating months, I got to start school, and I love it. I’ve been challenged and have learned so much. Getting to work on different projects like disassembling generators or wiring landing gear makes me so excited to join the workforce. Recently, my dad passed away from lung cancer. He was always my biggest supporter and the person I went to with any question. One of the biggest things he wanted me to know is how important it is to finish what I start. He encouraged me that even though we were going through a tough season, it would pass, and life would move on. I'm determined to finish school as strong as I can. God has had his hand on my life throughout this whole process. I'm ready to go wherever He calls me. To God be the glory.

My Testimony Life is tough and unforgiving. As a living, breathing human being, I can testify to it. With six older sisters making me the youngest in my family, I was often left on the backburner. My dad always said I was the ‘least problematic’ of my sisters. I think what he really meant was the quietest. My parents got divorced when I was two, which made homelife suck for my two biological sisters and me. I never tried to cause any problems for my parents: I worked hard to make straight A’s in school and didn’t have much of a social life because I never really connected with anyone that stuck around. My sisters practically raised me for the first half of my life because my parents worked so much to try and keep us afloat. I grew up with major social anxiety. I didn’t start to see it until well into middle school, but my stepmom says she noticed it for the first time when I was little. She saw habits I would default to that reminded her of how she dealt with anxiety. I was first exposed to pornography when I was eleven, and by the time I was twelve or thirteen years old, it became an addiction. I would go to it when I was stressed or overly anxious, and eventually it became an emotional crutch. Looking at it now, I believe my lack of connection with others drove me to try to fill the void of emotional intimacy I rarely experienced in other ways. This addiction paired with anxiety made me isolate myself. I became an overly angry person that didn’t know how to get along with others. The idea of having to sit in a crowd made me have panic attacks. I didn’t think people wanted me around anymore. I made myself invisible, disposable, and unimportant in my own eyes. I was fifteen years old when I started cutting myself. I did it when I was alone or in the shower in a spot that no one would see. It got to a point where I wanted to end my life but was too scared to go through with it. One of my sisters, my best friend, had lost her father to suicide just a few years prior. Every time the intrusive thoughts brought me to that point, I thought of the hurt I watched her go through and how I couldn’t put her through that again. There was one day in high school where I genuinely thought I was going to take my life. I was having a panic attack in the bathroom at school when my sister found me. I told her through the sobbing about what I had been doing. She sat there and held me while telling me she loved me and was so sorry I felt so alone that I couldn’t come to her with it. She’s the reason I stopped any self-harm after a full year. God made her the reason I’m alive today. Slowly but surely, it came out to the rest of my family. While the self-harm stopped, my addiction to self-pleasure didn’t. I grew closer to my family, started making friends, and was finally getting the connections I wanted, but I couldn’t shake my nasty habit. There were days I wouldn’t get out of bed because I saw no point to it. I continued to feel the emotional emptiness that drove me to cut myself and tried to fill that void through physical intimacy and relationships, but still nothing worked. During spring break of my senior year, I was staying at a beach house with some friends when I started watching a show called 'the Chosen'. It portrayed stories of Jesus’ life and ministry that I grew up hearing about in church but brought them to life in a way I had never seen. It made me want to read the dusty Bible that sat on my desk as nothing more to me than a glorified paper weight. It made me want to pray to see if God would answer. This show spoke to me in a way nothing ever had before. For the first time in my life, I truly felt seen by God. The more I pursued that connection, the more He showed Himself to me. He made me realize that my past, my anxiety, and my addiction had no power over me. I accepted Jesus into my heart a month before I turned eighteen. I had to learn to surrender and let Him change me from the inside out into who He made me to be. Today, I still struggle with fleeing from old temptations, but every time I fall, He’s there to pick me up, set me right, and tell me He loves me. In October of 2024, I lost my grandma to cancer. She was one of the motivators that pushed me to continually pursue God. Her loss hurt me deeply, but God is still good. In April of 2025, my dad passed away from cancer. He was my biggest supporter. I felt I could come to him with anything. Losing him has been the worst pain I’ve ever known and the biggest test of my faith I’ve experienced. I’ve had days where I couldn’t focus because he was all I could think about. There have been moments where I’ve sat alone, crying and screaming at God, questioning why He would ever let me go through this. God is still good. The thing about God is in situations where everything seems lost to the fire, He can bring beauty from the ashes. I can firmly say, I love God with all my heart. He has found me in the pain and comforted me. He constantly reminds me of His love for me. Whenever I call Him, He listens. Whenever I need Him, He's there for me. I’m not perfect by any means, but I’m His and that’s all that matters