My experience with mental health has been full of extreme highs and lows. I’ve always enjoyed singing and have been since elementary. I remember a time when I had advanced to the highest choir class in high school called the Acapella choir. In my Senior year I was preparing to apply for a scholarship that would have given me a full ride to college. My teacher helped me prepare for an audition for one of the colleges that I was interested in. However, when I went before the judges, my anxiety took its toll over me. I began singing and my voice started shaking and cracking. I began to get nervous and from there my anxiety took full control over my body as well. This was one of many incidences where my mental health began to shape both my personal and career goals in life. Having to experience anxiety in my adolescence years has affected me severely in terms of pursuing my goals, dreams and aspirations. In the process, I became fearful and paralyzed into a mindset of not overcoming the challenges of my anxiety. I wanted to accomplish so much but I could not find the tools to help me manage my mental health. After a while of letting anxiety stop me from reaching my full potential and seizing every opportunity, I decided to take the necessary steps to fight towards overcoming it. Through the process of working to overcome my anxiety, I have worked diligently on pushing myself out of my comfort zone one step at a time. My experience surrounding my mental health has also significantly impacted my career choice of becoming a mental health counselor. I am now doing things such as pushing myself to meet new people by joining different organizations that have aided me in facing my anxiety head on. Somedays I do excellent at working towards overcoming my anxiety rather it be volunteering to tutor a child needing help with literacy, be the first to present a project in class, or simply just applying for other scholarships despite not being selected as a candidate. Although some days are hard, I continue to strive to progress in my journey in overcoming my anxiety. Anxiety has given me a deeper understanding of the things and people around me. Mental health and given me empathy towards people and situations even if they do not pertain to me. Pursuing a college degree will allow me to help others on their journey to overcome the challenges they may face due to their mental state. I have personally seen the effects that not getting or being able to afford help has created in people’s lives later. Getting a college degree will allow me to be effective in my field of study and provide people with affordable, and reliable healthcare services that will improve their lives.

Mental health is an important aspect of health that if not addressed can hinder people's lives. As a college student, I often suffered the consequences of not caring for my mental health. This has led to a decrease in concentration and focus. As someone who has struggled with mental health issues such as anxiety, I am a positive example that when these issues are addressed properly, a student can clearly demonstrate success. As a student, due to my parents being educators, it was expected of me to have high standards of achievement. This resulted in stress induced illness and anxiety that heavily impacted my academic performance. This caused me to be delayed in my progression and not able to maximize my protentional in other opportunities such as volunteering for different organizations or even joining study groups. Once I dealt with these issues I began to join clubs, be an advocate for students, and succeed with honors in my academics. Currently, I am an advocate for mental health awareness and support of college students by being a student ambassador on campus. I can directly talk to administrators and staff about the ongoing struggles that students may face on their campus surrounding their mental health. I have provided suggestions on mental health education and inform them on mental health awareness. I strive to be a role model amongst my peers and students I tutor by having a positive attitude. I am constantly encouraging positivity among others through peer involvement and openness with students and adults I encounter on campus and in my community. I also spread awareness by educating people on the topic of mental health awareness and how we can make positive change in our community. Through taking classes for my undergraduate degree, I have been able to see the direct impacts on how people are treated by society due to their issues with their mental state. Because of mental health issues, it is known to affect people economically and socially in our society. Mental health awareness is a topic that should be discussed more because of the effects it can have on one's physical and mental well-being. Although there have been more discussions surrounding the topic in previous years, I believe that the conversations should continue. People may see these discussions as common, but without them we would revert, and all the advances we have made surrounding this topic would have been to no avail.

My journey against overcoming my anxiety has been full of extreme highs and lows. I’ve always enjoyed singing and have been since elementary. Since that time, I had advanced to the highest choir class in high school called the Acapella choir. In my Senior year I was preparing to apply for a scholarship that would have given me a full ride to college. My teacher helped me prepare for an audition for one of the colleges that I was interested in. However, when I went before the judges, my anxiety took its toll over me. I began singing and my voice started shaking and cracking. I began to get nervous and from there my anxiety took full control over my body as well. This was one of many incidences where my anxiety got the best of me. Anxiety has affected me in many ways in terms of what opportunities I would get involved in. Therefore, it would be the determining factor in my everyday decisions. My anxiety has made it seem that going after my dreams and aspirations are far out of reach, leaving me sometimes to settle for things less than I am worth. I had lost hope and the ability to pursue my dream of performing in a college choir. This affected me severely in terms of pursuing other goals of mine in fear that I would embarrass myself like I did at my audition. Putting my dreams on hold took me down an endless cycle of feeling helpless. I wanted to accomplish so much but I could not find the tools to help me manage my mental health. After a while of letting anxiety stop me from reaching my full potential and seizing every opportunity, I decided to take the necessary steps to fight towards overcoming it. Through the process of working to overcome my anxiety, I have worked diligently on pushing myself out of my comfort zone one step at a time. Doing things such as pushing myself to meet new people by joining different organizations has aided me in facing my anxiety head on. Somedays I do excellent at working towards overcoming my anxiety rather it be volunteering to tutor a child needing help with literacy, be the first to present a project in class, or simply just applying for other scholarships despite not being selected as a candidate. Although some days are hard, I continue to strive to progress in my journey in overcoming my anxiety. My experience surrounding my mental health has also significantly impacted my career choice of mental health counselor. Anxiety has given me a deeper understanding of the things and people around me. Mental health and given me empathy towards people and situations even if they do not pertain to me. Pursuing a college degree will allow me to help others on their journey to overcome the challenges they may face due to their mental state. I have personally seen the effects that not getting or being able to afford help has created in people’s lives later. Getting a college degree will allow me to be effective in my field of study and provide people with affordable, and reliable healthcare services that will improve their lives.

In the place where I thought I was the safest I was a victim of a tragic situation which could have cost me my life. What little money I had saved to help me through college was now going towards finding a safer environment for my family to live. This made me want to give up and put my academic career on hold to focus on family matters. The anxiety that I already struggled with now heightened with the newfound problems in my life that this incident created. I thought I would never be able to recover and the scars on my legs were proof that I would not. Although there are certain difficulties in life that I wished I had never experienced, it is an unavoidable part of life that has helped shape me into the person that I am today. Even though this experience was incredibly challenging for me at that time, it has become the season of my life where I have had the most personal growth. At the time everything I did seemed to crumble, and everything bad that could happen to me, happened. My family and I were struck with a crisis which caused many issues with stress in my life when after a long week of finals took place. I was at home sleeping only to have woken up with gunfire outside my home. Our home was mistaken for the wrong address which caused us to be targeted by an unknown stranger. I suffered many injuries to my right leg which affected my ability to walk for weeks and had to be sent to the emergency room at my local hospital. This affected the stability that I once had in my household. Me and my family had to pick up and suddenly move from my childhood home to live place to place until we were finally able to find another home. This heavily impacted me thinking that I was not going to be able to finish college. With one month left of being at University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College, I was faced with the fear of whether I was going to get the opportunity to continue my undergraduate degree. In spite of this traumatic experience that I had faced, I was still determined to overcome this obstacle to continue to pursue my educational goals. In overcoming this adversity, I discovered a newfound resilience that I had never tapped into before. After what felt like months of feeling hopeless over the situation I decided to take matters into my own hands. I spent a lot of time working on myself and focusing on myself mentally and physically through various self-care practices such as mediation, therapy, and gardening to help relieve some of the stress and anxiety I had felt at that time. I also started working extremely hard in my school's tutoring lab whenever I got the chance to ensure that I got better grades, did more volunteering for various organizations, and became a highly active advocate for students at my school to be a voice and lending hand for anyone who may need it. This new profound purpose has helped significantly with my healing process. My journey to recovery has been truly transformative, highlighting that no adversity was too difficult to overcome.

Financial issues have affected my education by hindering not only my mental health but the resources that I could have used to continue it. Not only has it affected my transportation to school but also my access to resources for help such as needed supplies and materials that will help me to succeed such as getting a laptop to help me complete assignments and my ability to see tutors. All these things have deviated my focus from my studies which has caused many issues with my anxiety in terms of how I will succeed in my classes and pay for tuition. This scholarship will help me to achieve my dreams by giving me the chance to be among the first in my family to succeed in obtaining a college degree. Getting a bachelor's degree in psychology will bring me one step closer in the process of becoming a Mental health therapist. After receiving this degree, my plans are to apply for a master's degree program in social work and work in my field. With my masters, I will be able to gain experience in counseling, assist with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional pattern changes. This will let me help those who struggle with mental health affecting their daily lives. I can also become an advocate to help educate people on mental health and fight back against the stigmas of having them. After so many years of experience, I would open my own practice which will give me the ability to have a positive effect on society. I will do this by trying to implement affordable prices to those who cannot easily access mental health services and bridge the gap in providing mental health education. I will also be able to give quality services to my patients to ensure they have the best resources for combating mental health struggles within my community. The Veerappan Memorial Scholarship will not only provide me with an opportunity to help with a new computer, fuel for transportation to and from school, textbooks, and other tuition fees, but it will help alleviate the stress of paying for school and reduce my working hours outside of school. This will give me more study time to better pursue educational goals. It will also help me focus on my career goals to ensure that I have a good future and a first step in completing my educational goals toward becoming a Licensed Mental Health Worker.

Mental health impacts my academic performance and personal life by affecting the opportunities, decisions, and choices that I make that have a direct impact on my educational and private life. I have always been shy and timid as a child, and this has extended into adulthood. I have often struggled in terms of making new connections, letting my mental health affect my academics, and letting fear influence what choices I make academically and socially due to my social anxiety. My anxiety has often caused me to feel uneasy in many of my classes which causes me to overthink and stress. Overthinking has played hand and hand with my anxiety causing me to worry about every single detail of a discussion or assignment that I might have. I often spend hours doing assignments and tests constantly reviewing them to make sure that there are no mistakes. This has caused me many problems academically to the point where I have even second guessed myself right out the correct answers on assignments. My anxiety has influenced my social life by affecting the way I interact in old or new relationships. When making friends it has been hard for me to be able to be vulnerable enough to disclose in intimate conversations even with my long-term friends. I have often struggled to make friends because it has been hard for me to put myself in situations where I might not be accepted due to my social anxiety. This causes me to worry about how I am perceived by others in my friendships which can often lead to negative outcomes for my mental health and self-esteem. Opportunities that I have been qualified for I have often passed on due to mental health concerns. I have missed out on ways to help advance my career early as well as miss out on value information because of this. This has often caused me to feel left behind when it comes to my friends who have never spoken about dealing with anxiety. It appears they are way ahead of me in terms of opportunities and working for the advancement of their future. I also compare myself to previous versions of myself who did not struggle with anxiety as much and wonder where I could have been had I not let my social anxiety dictate my decisions on taking certain opportunities. I am actively working with counselors and therapists daily on helping me take baby steps in overcoming my fears and concerns with my anxiety. However, even though I struggle with anxiety sometimes, I can now use healthy coping tragedies to help me better overcome and manage my anxiety. I also have started to take more risk in terms of making friends by joining clubs and activities such as Trio, Student Ambassadors, and Phi Theta Kappa. These opportunities allow for me to help students with things such as enrollment issues, show students around campus, and assist faculty with student engagement. I have also been able to meet lots of new friends in Trio and Phi Theta Kappa during all our volunteering events and school trips. All these organizations have been great for helping me overcome my mental health problems. Anxiety no longer gets to dictate what opportunities, decisions, and choices I make in my life.

Success comes in many different shapes and forms. To me success looks like getting to achieve my goals and aspirations in and out of my career field and in my academic journey in pursuing a higher education. Being successful in obtaining my bachelor's and master's degree in psychology will open many doors for me such as being able to open my own practice and hopefully getting my Doctorates degree. All of which are huge accomplishments and milestones of success to me. My history with mental health has played a huge role in why I chose my specific major in psychology and has influenced my goals. Mental health has always been a serious topic for me due to it sometimes being a silent killer that I believe should be discussed more so that everyone can take the necessary steps to seek help. My career and educational goals will allow me to open my own clinic that will help me to provide patients with optimal care and support. It will also allow me to help make mental health services more accessible and affordable for people in my community. I have seen how it has sometimes negatively impacted my life choices and decisions. This has affected the opportunities that I could have taken to help better my future. I want to be able to better help those facing the same obstacles I once faced. Success would look like to me being able to decrease the amount of people who want help but are not able access resources because of lack of funds just like me. No one should have to struggle with the weight of having a bad mental state due to financial reasons. Success also looks like being able to achieve my goal in being able to spread awareness and resources to ensure that everyone seeking resources for help receives it. Using my degree, I will be able to better educate and teach others about the importance of mental health and how it affects our everyday life and decisions. This scholarship will allow me the chance to continue to take classes that will help me be better equipped for my field of study. As a future licenses mental health counselor this will also help give me the tools necessary to be able to succeed in helping my patients, which is the pinnacle of success to me. The Redefining Victory Scholarship will not only provide me with an opportunity to help purchase a new computer, transportation to and from school, textbooks, and other tuition fees, it would also help to alleviate the stress of paying for school and allow me to fully focus on continuing my education which will bring me one step closer to achieving my goals. This will allow me to have a more seamless transition in obtaining my degrees and give me the opportunity to be able to continue my education. It will also help me focus on my career goals to ensure that I have a good future and a first step in completing my educational goals toward becoming a licensed mental health counselor.

My career goals of becoming a licensed mental health worker and having my own practice will help me foster the social-emotional wellbeing of the intellectual needs of gifted children by providing them with a safe space to be able to voice their concerns about their everyday life. This will help to ensure that they have access to mental health resources. Mental health has always been important to me and has had a significant impact on my life. This has not only affected my social life but also my ability to do well in school. After obtaining my licenses I would love to open my own practice that will be able to help children alike who may struggle with mental health due to their personal circumstances. There are a lot of stigmas surrounding gifted children and their mental health. Such as them having it easier mentally when it comes to their studies or them knowing how to better navigate, and problem solve issues that may accrue in their life due to them being extremely mature for their age. Mental health can cause many problems for children, even those who are gifted that excel very well academically. This can negatively affect their grades, social life, and their confidence and resilience to succeed. Although gifted children often perform well academically their concerns about their own mental health and social well-being are just as valid. These pressures can come from the constant need to be perfect and perform well in school to being socially misunderstood by friends and peers. Many of my childhood friends who grew up being gifted were very smart but often struggled socially because of lack of understanding some of our classmates perceived about been a gifted student. Some classmates viewed it as a way for school to exclude students who the school system deemed as not being smart enough. This led to the persistent bullying of some of my friends which caused them to have self-esteem and mental health issues. Those students who once loved school no longer felt safe and no longer enjoyed learning. After seeing a few of them seek counseling, I started to see their self-esteem and confidence improve. The joy of learning returned to them as well as a newfound confidence in themselves that was not there before. I believe gifted children should be able to have access to mental health services that will burden and weight of what they could have achieved if only they had resources for help. My counseling services would give families of gifted children affordable access to mental health services that will help them to be able to continue to succeed and improve their overall social emotional well-being. Gifted children and students will have access to counseling services that will be accessible in and out of school for as long as needed. No matter the reason, no one deserves to struggle with mental health. In my practice I will use my Psychology degree to provide reliable, affordable, and exceptional mental health services for those with social emotional and intellectual challenges. The mental health struggles and challenges as it pertains to a gifted child's social emotional well-being, should no longer dictate a child's greatness to succeed intellectually.

I was always told you can achieve anything you want if you put your mind to it and that anything you want is out there for you and achievable if you work hard for it. I plan to apply these same principles to my dreams so that I may one day achieve them. Some of the dreams that I have for myself are becoming successful in my career field while using it to help others. I want to become a mental health counselor so that way I can help those who have faced the same obstacles I once had in terms of mental health. I also would love to purchase my own land where I can recuse animals that have been sent to animal shelters or come from abused backgrounds and rehabilitate them into therapy animals for emotional support for mental health patients. I am deeply passionate about my dreams because it is important for people to know how important mental health is and how much it impacts one's daily life. I am also passionate about fulfilling my dreams because it will give me the opportunity to gain experience and skills that will allow me to one day open my own practice. Another dream of mine is for everyone to have access to mental health care services. I want to help make services affordable so that everyone who is actively seeking help can afford the services they need to better their mental state. No one should have to suffer a mental health crisis due to not having enough funds to afford counseling and therapy services. I have often struggled throughout my life with anxiety, depression, and stress but was unable to get the help that I needed. This has affected my life in so many ways such as losing out on opportunities that could have benefited me in the future to even impacting my physical health. I believe mental health can play a huge role in one's health and can have significant impact not just on a person mentally but physically as well. I would also open a rehabilitation clinic for animals that would provide a safe environment, rehabilitation services, and care while helping others get well also. Mental health is a serious condition and sometimes a silent illness that should be discussed so that everyone can take the necessary steps to get help. Incorporating animals within my mental health clinic will provide patients with optimal care and support. Thats why my dreams are to open my own mental health practice and animal rescue facility to help my community have affordable mental health services that will provide the best quality. I believe that this will be a great way for others to learn about the importance of mental health and educate people while having affordable services.