I am a first generation college student in more than just my parents being unable to attend college. Nobody in my family has ever attended college as far back as anyone knows. My mother is disabled without an education or job past high school, and my dad only had a high school diploma and works 60 hour weeks at least to get by. I am the first of my siblings to be able to graduate high school, even with my dad having two daughters that are 15 years older than me. I grew up as the oldest daughter in my family which put a lot of responsibility on me. My mom was a disabled single mother of three and my dad was the standard every other weekend dad. I experienced the effects of poverty at a young age and learned to live off donated food and clothes, and dumpster dive for toys. I raised my sisters and took care of our home as my mother was unable to. Even as we got older, I took care of my family in any way I could. Being a first generation college student is exhausting and scary. It is very difficult to navigate the system and financials and I don't have friends or family who have gone through this either. Going through the motions of being a first generation college student has influenced me in the sense that I want to make this easier for others. I want to be able to help my family when they need me and to find scholarships for others like me. I hope to continue to create a world where it is easier to attend college, and to do that, I have to do this first.

There are several traditional reasons why someone wants to be a doctor. Usually it is because the career is of high compensation, but other reasons entail stability or creating a better world. My reasoning for why I want to pursue becoming a doctor is a little more complex. When I was little, I decided I wanted to grow up to be a veterinarian. Children change their minds a lot as they age but I stayed with that choice. I didn't have any friends growing up because I was constantly moving schools due to foster care, so I played with bugs and stray animals. I grew a deep admiration for the living creatures of this earth. I joined Future Farmers of America and got myself a veterinary internship at two different clinics. I completed every available class concerning animal sciences and worked in the vet clinics for two years. In those years, I met a wonderful person. Doctor William (Bill) MacArthur. Working together, we were the dream team. He was the most brilliant mind I have had the pleasure of knowing. We handled the most complex cases our clinic has ever seen and we were unstoppable. Something a lot of people do not know about veterinarians, is that it is very tolling on the emotions and mental mindset. It is the highest for suicide rates of any medical profession, and I spent many days and nights questioning everything I had worked for. I decided to come to my best friend and mentor, Dr. MacArthur. He told me that I was too good for this profession, and my intellect was better suited for human medicine, maybe even medical research, as he wished he had done. He suggested that I pursue what I loved most in veterinary, and apply that to humans. What I loved most, was those complex cases. So we decided I should pursue internal medicine. Bill went on to work at the University of Arkansas, studying the effects of COVID on rats and we maintained our friendship while I helped him in his lab projects. I lost my best friend and mentor Bill in 2022, but his words stuck with me. Growing up with everything I experienced in foster care has made me want to help kids who are growing up how I did. I plan to use my knowledge to help the underprivileged receive medical care. I hope to use my future income to fund scholarships to put people through school in an effort to escape poverty. I want to honor my best friends wishes to use my intellect for work he wished he had pursued himself. I will forever be grateful to have met Bill, and I hope to continue his love for the pursuit of knowledge and dedication to fixing the world.

Empathy. To have empathy is to have the ability to understand on a deeper level than sympathy, even going as far as identifying with a person or situation. The world we live in has a lot of pain. Pain through poverty, starvation, abuse, neglect, and so much more. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Harley Six, and I consider myself to be empathetic as I have lived an interesting life in my twenty-three years on this earth. I grew up with divorced parents. My mother was a disabled single mom to three kids and my father worked two or three jobs at a time to stay afloat. I was the oldest of my siblings, so I learned at a young age to cook, clean, and raise kids. My mother had a variety of mental health issues that made her unable to care for us. There were times where the only meal I had to eat was at school and whatever we could scrounge together from food drives. We couldn't afford water so I often smelled and that resulted in bullying. My mother's neglect caused a lot of issues for me developmentally and allowed room for abuse from anyone in our lives from her boyfriends to neighbors I wandered off to in search of food. I went into foster care when I was 11 years old where the neglect didn't stop. I've been raped, assaulted, drugged, molested, and so much more while in foster care. I was depressed and struggled to see anything in my future. While in high school, I was kicked out of my foster family's house and had to live with an older gentleman who abused me too. I wasn't allowed friends or contact with my siblings or my dad. He withheld my birth certificate and my other important documents in order to keep me in his control. I was raped on a nightly basis and beaten if I tried to leave. I was finally able to gain contact with my dad and the day I graduated high school, I left everything behind to live with my dad. Since then, I have been working hard to build a life. I've worked many jobs, moved states to live with a boyfriend, and enrolled in college. I experienced a horrible situation with him and had to leave my life behind again and start over. I moved in with a coworker who I currently stay with until I can go to university where I will hopefully live on campus, as they'll be moving away and I will be homeless otherwise, as I have experienced before. Life has not been very kind to me, and I have made it my mission in life to bring kindness to others. I am pursuing a degree in biology so that I may go to med school to become a doctor. I hope to volunteer and use my knowledge to help the disadvantaged receive care. I am to help kids in foster care find stability and to sponsor scholarships to help push others through school. In my day to day I act with compassion and empathy, because I can relate to several stories and situations. I want to live in a better world, and therefore, I will create a better world. One step at a time.

Each person has their own story to tell, and my story is about how you can grow from nothing, into something. I was raised for part of my life with my parents. During the week I stayed with my mom, who was a disabled single mother of three. My dad was the only one who stayed around, and for that I am thankful. My dad got me every other weekend and was oftentimes tired after his long days working. He always had two or three jobs at a time. I lived off of food drives, donations, and church meals. All of my clothes were donated or off the clearance rack at Walmart. When I was eleven years old, I had to say goodbye to my mom for the last time, as my sisters and I went into foster care. We were eventually reunited with one family that we stayed with for six years. This family had people coming in and out all the time, and at one point had twenty-six people living under the one roof. You get left out in this sort of household, so I learned to cope by focusing on school. I didn't have many friends growing up as we moved at least once a year, so I spent a lot of my time volunteering with the Special Education kids. I became a part of several clubs, including National Honors Society, Future Farmers of America, Best Buddies, etc. I volunteered to help with our school theater productions, and other local productions, I worked with a haunted house charity event, spent some time at my local thrift store putting up the donated clothes. I had an internship where I volunteered at a veterinary clinic on the weekends helping around as well, and eventually secured a job working at another clinic. I even became a two time Borlaug scholar at World Food Prize. All of this was primarily while I was homeless as my foster family had kicked me out of my home. After graduation, I decided I wanted to leave veterinary medicine behind and pursue human medicine. I moved to Texas to where I was offered a home and began to study. Even while In college, I have worked to provide resources for those in need and volunteer my story to help promote new plans to contribute to ending the homeless crisis in Arkansas. I have a lot more to do, and I am unfortunately moving slow due to my own housing crisis, but I hope to someday use my degree to work in non profit to help the impoverished, and to sponsor my own scholarships for those in need since I cannot have my own children to put through school. I want to use the money I make to help the world be the place I want to see.

I chose to become a doctor for the betterment of my community. Growing up in poverty is tough. My mother was a disabled single woman of three children and my father often times worked two or three jobs at a time to stay afloat. Being the oldest child, I provided for my family in a lot of ways. I had to care for my home by keeping it as clean as a child can, and cooking food to the best of my abilities. We survived off of food drive donations and meals at church. With food drives, it is hard to live off of canned beans, mac and cheese, and little Debbie snacks. It was every kids dream to eat dessert for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was living that dream, but my whole family was very malnourished and all I wanted was a good home cooked meal. Even when I stayed with my dad, he was too tired from working to be able to cook more than pizza rolls. I entered the foster care system at 11 years old. From there I jumped from family to family, often times still neglected and providing for myself. I separated myself from my reality by fully committing myself to my classes. I had always wanted to be a veterinarian. So I worked hard to someday, hopefully, get out of the system that was working against me. About half of all homeless people are kids who aged out of the foster care system, and I wanted to be the half that makes it out. I became a member of National Honors Society, Future Farmers of America, Academic Competition of Education, and more clubs. I ended up graduating in 2020 and working in a Veterinary clinic as a technician. I was couch surfing to keep a roof over my head, but I was making it work. A very good colleague of mine, Doctor William MacArthur, thought I should pursue Human medicine instead, stating that with how we worked on some complex cases together, that I should join him in research at our local university someday. I took his advice. I moved to Texas with my at the time boyfriend and enrolled in school. Doctor MacArthur unfortunately passed shortly after I left, but he meant a lot in my personal, and professional life. Growing up how I did, and seeing the world we live in, made me choose this path. I want to be a doctor someday because of the love I have for education, a challenge, my friend Bill, and all I can do, made me pick this route. I hope that when I become a doctor, I can fund for a scholarship, just like this one for people like me. I want to do non profit work to help the impoverished. I want to help build a world that I am proud of. I hope to be more than a statistic.

Growing up jumping from home to home throughout childhood is a difficult thing to go through. My mother was a disabled single mom of three. For the little time I spent with her, we ate donations from the food drive, got toys donated from our church for Christmas, and a lonesome cupcake for our birthdays if we could manage. My father was the classic every other weekend dad, but I was fortunate enough to have one in my life at all. He was always working a few jobs at a time, pulling over sixty hour weeks just to make ends meet. When I was eleven years old, my sisters and I went into foster care. we were separated for some time, but eventually we were reunited before being separated again a few years later. In each home we lived in, we endured neglect and abuse. Each of us now live with friends or coworkers since we have nobody in our lives and we are separated by states. Growing up the way I did, and having to build up my life to have it broken down again has given me a desire for stability, and to help stabilize others. I am attending college in hopes that someday, I will never have to worry about losing my home and family again. I am working towards my degree to get accepted into med school. I aim to become a doctor in internal medicine for cardiology. With my education, I hope to be able to participate in providing healthcare to low income individuals through a non profit program, or perhaps to start my own. I am more than likely unable to have a child of my own, and would like to use the money I cannot spend on a family of my own, to donate to people who grew up like I did and sponsor scholarships such as this one to help fund the education of someone like me who doesn't have a family to be able to support them and pay their way through college. My life has made me especially caring and sensitive to people going through difficult times and I would be honored to pay it forward to several other people throughout my lifetime. I believe healthcare should be a human right, we as humans should make sure that others have food and shelter and a good support system. This ideology has admittedly gotten in the way of having some solid relationships as that kindness is often taken advantage of and abused, but regardless, I love without bounds. I hope the world can be a more loving and accepting place, and I will help change that.

Becoming a doctor is one of the most difficult pathways someone can take. Years of dedication for getting the degree, insanely difficult tests, and of course, the funding. Ever since I was a child, I knew I wanted to become a doctor. I grew up circling in and out of foster care in which my next meal was unknown. I hadn't seen a doctor from the age of 12 until just a few months ago when I qualified for government funded insurance. Growing up without parents for the majority of my life has led me to be self sufficient. Neither of my parents, nor extended family, has gone to college. In turn, I walk this path alone. Navigating applications, scheduling, scholarships, transfers, etc has been troubling. I am forever grateful for the resources that I have. Pursuing a doctorate degree, I knew I could help kids like me as a doctor. I could help people and volunteer as well as sponsoring scholarships. I even hope to adopt an older child to be able to fully fund their education as my way of giving back, as when I entered the foster care system for the final time, I was too old for people to feel as there was hope for me. I work hard to prove everyone wrong. That children who are "too old" are capable of extraordinary paths. I began an internship working for an animal hospital, and later landing a job at a separate veterinary clinic. I started as a kennel technician, caring for boarding animals and cleaning, and taught myself how to draw blood, run tests, give vaccines, and even work in emergency surgery in the span of a year. Working in the veterinary field, I discovered my love for a challenge and dedication for improvement. From advice from a former mentor and colleague of mine, Dr. William MacArthur, he directed me towards internal medicine as he felt my intelligence was above Veterinary sciences and his biggest regret was not pursuing human medicine. He unfortunately passed in 2022 but I continue on for him as well as myself. I moved to Texas in 2021 and have worked several jobs to push myself through college. A beauty advisor, a manager, a server, a daycare teacher, optician, and optical lab technician. I am currently employed full time as an Optician but work as a technician when necessary as I have taught myself how to do such. I briefly considered becoming an optometrist, but realized that is not where my passion sits. I have always had a passion for the human heart. I have created several sculptures and art pieces of the anatomical heart to capture the beauty of it. This love for the art that is the human heart, drove me to Cardiology. This path has its struggles, especially considering I am pushing myself through school alone. I hope to gain enough funding in scholarships to fully dedicate myself to my education and be able to stop working full time as well as attending school full time in order to achieve this.

My Name is Harley Six. A name doesn't say much about a person, just how to identify and address them. Allow me to give you a small look into who I am. For the first 11 years of my life, I lived with my mom. My mom was a disabled single mother of three, so naturally, I took on a lot of her responsibilities at an early age. I am the oldest of three. We survived on donations and food drives mostly. Eating Debbie snacks every day is every kid's dream but a very sad reality. We often lived in trailers, with relatives, or in homeless shelters. My mom wasn't able to take care of all of us so when I was 11 years old, we went into the foster care system. I have lived with many families in that time, many of which were damaging to my development. In high school, I primarily stayed with a family who had brought my physical health to an all-time low. The damage of prolonged malnourishment from prior to foster care and with the foster families has left me with a depleted health system. I was kicked out of my foster home when I was 16 years old and have had to live with whoever would take me ever since. I managed to graduate high school through the pandemic and I have started college in hopes of having a better life someday. I am currently finishing my prereq classes for the nursing program at my school. My end goal is to go back to school once I graduate to become an internal medicine physician. Growing up in poverty is an experience that has shaped me into the person I am today. I have grown to be a compassionate person. I love to help people in any way I can. I would love to use my education to work with nonprofit organizations or to provide care for people in need. I have volunteered at nearly every opportunity I have found and I have competed in events like the World Food Prize to do my part in helping to change the world. I have done immense amounts of research into ways to improve my life and I share that information with anyone who needs it. I would love to build a network of people with different resources to keep in my future office for anyone who may need it. My name only shares so much. I aspire to be more than just Harley Six someday. In just a couple of years, I'll be Nurse Harley, and then, Dr. Six.

Your life, in all its smallest parts, leads you to different places in life. I experienced vast amounts of neglect and abuse throughout my childhood, leading to being placed in foster care when I was 11. Fostercare in itself brought different forms of abuse and neglect. My foster family had kicked me out when I was 16 and from that point forward, I lived with whoever I was in a relationship with, which was also abusive. Thankfully, I am no longer in a place of abuse and I have been able to begin to move forward. I am a first-generation college student and the first of my siblings to have graduated high school. I used school life as an escape from home and really dived into my studies. I have always been an honor roll student and I was incredibly active in my school. I was in the National Honors Society, a two-time Bourloug scholar, I spent a lot of time in my school's Special Education Department, Future Farmers of America, Academic Competition in Education, Link-Den, and active in our theater department, and so much more. I spent my summers setting up Vacation Bible School decorations and was an actor in our skits and was a crafts teacher. As an adult, I still use school as a way of handling life's struggles and I currently have a 4.0 GPA. I jump to do any volunteer opportunity given to me and I am participating in planning to get approval for funding for a homeless society in Arkansas. I love to be educated in a little bit of everything, which is why my resume is very diverse. I was a Veterinary Technician for two years and left when I could not grow any further. I then moved to Texas and worked as a Beauty Consultant for another year and left once I knew everything and could not grow any further. I am now employed as a preschool teacher. My goal with everything I do is to be the best. With my childhood and my drive for education and perfection, I believe my end goal of having a degree in Internal Medicine as a physician will be the perfect mix of everything. You can continue your education as a doctor and working towards perfection leads to quality care. I think with my intense background, Having stability will help to heal that aspect of my life in which I can truly be healed. I hope to help open up the homeless society in Arkansas once I graduate so I can provide funding and medical attention to the residents. I want to give people the life I wish I had. This is what I will do once I graduate, and make my positive impact on the world.

My goal for college is to become an Internal Medicine Physician. In order to gain financial stability, I am doing my prerequisites for medical school and a nursing degree at the same time so I may work as a nurse while working towards my end goal degree. I want to become an internal medicine physician because I am passionate about helping people and solving complex problems. I found my passion while working as Veterinary Technician. Originally, I wanted to be a Veterinarian. While working as a tech, I learned I was skilled in complex cases. I worked with a doctor in our facility who is easily one of the most intelligent people in the field and was widely known for their skills. We had a case together in which the patient was walking in circles, not eating or drinking, and not responding to noises in any way. The doctor was able to determine the patient was blind and deaf, but could not understand why the kitten was not eating the wet food we had put in front of it. Once he had given up, I conducted an experiment and put the food directly in their mouth and the kitten began to eat. I was the one to discover it could not smell. That case lead to us being paired for several more complex cases that took us months to solve. Before I left, this doctor told me that veterinary was going downhill and the Veterinarians were losing their voices in the field, so I needed to take my passion somewhere else. This is why I am becoming a human doctor because he was right. In my last months, I witnessed the decline in service we were able to give and the turnover rate increase. I wanted to be able to provide quality service while being passionate. Financially, I will struggle to achieve my goals. I am the first of my siblings to graduate high school and the first in my extended family to attend college. I was placed in foster care when I was 11 and have been living with significant others since I was 16. The uncertainty of my living situation is why I am piling on college responsibilities for nursing and doctorates. I believe that my hardship in childhood and early adulthood will help me be a compassionate doctor. This is important to me because of the numerous reports coming out in recent years of neglectful doctors and undiagnosed chronic illnesses. I have always strived to be the best in anything I do and to know everything involved with my work. My past as well as my passion, I believe, is an effective mix for becoming an amazing doctor for future patients.

I believe you should be the change you wish to see in the world, this is why I am pursuing a degree in Nursing before I move on to become an Internal Medicine Physician. There are so many different people who report improper care and end up having life-threatening issues. I previously was a Veterinary Technician who was going to pursue a degree in veterinary medicine, but I quickly learned that there was very little I could do to help people in that role. I am absolutely fascinated by the science of the way our bodies function and how illness can begin. With my passion for helping people and my love for continued education, I switched career paths. I would love to help the world by helping to give voices to the voiceless, the ones who are neglected to be seen by many doctors. I would love to donate my time and skills to help people in need find medical care and volunteer at homeless shelters. I do plan to find other passionate people and team up to fund a permanent place for homeless people to stay. By building a tiny neighborhood and employing those it will house to build their houses, we give these individuals income, experience to fill gaps in their resumes and a place to call their own. The best way to end homelessness is to give them a home. You require a place of residency for several applications for jobs, so it is difficult to find one without it. Even without the financial standpoint being built, I have already partnered with a passionate person in Arkansas who is trying to execute the same plan I am. I interviewed for them about my experience in foster care and homelessness for them to bring up to the governor and ask for help funding this program we have thought up together. I want to help build a better society in which we care for those around us, even if we do not know them. I will use my degree to help fund this dream and be able to provide medical attention to homeless people. My dream may be far-fetched, and it may seem impossible or not worth it, but I do not wish to let anyone suffer the way I did throughout childhood. I want to make the world livable for everyone. There are already similar projects happening across the country that have proven to be a success. I do not care for fame or fortune. I care to be a better person today than I was yesterday.

I had been in and out of foster care my whole childhood. My biological mother was disabled and my biological father was not very present in my life. My mother was disabled from schizophrenia and was unmedicated so I suffered from several forms of abuse, and neglect, as well as malnourished. She eventually lost custody. I then permanently resided in the foster care system from the age of 11 years old until I was 16. At that point, my foster family kicked me out and left me homeless. This was for many reasons, including my newfound queer identity. I spent those formative years jumping between homes and school districts. I had difficulty making friends, receiving medical care, and forming relationships. Because of the constant change in living situations, I was oblivious to the queer community's existence, and my place in it. Foster care made it extremely difficult to learn and retain information due to constantly changing schools and the mental strain of home life. I was never able to pass a multiplication test or spelling test. In several aspects, I was far behind my peers. I missed several key courses, such as geography, that my peers all knew and excelled at. I did well in school considering that information and the only time I felt safe was when I was at school, so I buried myself in my studies. Once I reached junior high, I was only moving about once a year so I did much better in my classes. I started taking advanced courses in math, language, history, and science. My perspective on my future and education felt hopeless and unstable. Being in an unstable environment for so long has caused a dark look on life. I am pursuing a nursing degree until I am stable enough financially to pursue my dream career of becoming a doctor. My goals for the program I am currently enrolled in focus on building a safe space for LGBTQIA+ individuals and providing the comfort of being cared for by a fellow member. As a doctor, I hope to be able to help reduce the stigma surrounding affirmative care. Receiving this scholarship could help me achieve my dreams of feeling secure, and helping others feel that same comfort and safety. In the long term, I would love to volunteer my time and skills to help different organizations with what assistance they may need and spread information about affordable care.

Mental health is an undervalued type of healthcare that is growing in support, but in reality, is very inaccessible. I have been able to start therapy for the first time in years and my insurance only covered the first five sessions so I currently pay out of pocket on a minimum wage pay. A huge problem with accessing mental health care is largely due to financial issues. I believe that a way to help people who struggle with mental help would be by creating communities of therapists to create an informative starter packet of healthy coping mechanisms, trauma worksheets, and resources for affordable care. These starter packets can be available through anonymous meetings (similar to alcoholics anonymous) and for people who are able to attend therapy, each patient of these therapists can write down something that has been helpful for them to put in the packets. The therapists involved in the project can have individual pages that describe their specialties, goals, backgrounds, and their options for payment as well as if they offer a sliding scale and accept insurance. Through the packets, people can get a base level of information to begin healing and coping and get information from nearby or digital therapists and be able to find a good match that is affordable for them. This program would likely have to either be fully digital or implanted throughout different clinics. The work that therapists do is incredibly important and undervalued. I hope that this method could bring some amazing therapists some new clients and allow for them to move further in their careers by donating a few pages of writing.

I am an asexual, nonbinary, pan-romantic first-generation student in the south. I do not have any family that supports me and it is incredibly scary to be in a world where I think about if I will get hate-crimed today. My goals for my career are to be able to help create a safe environment for the queer community through providing support in the medical field. I am going to college to become an internal medicine physician and it is so important to have supportive providers in order to feel affirmed and safe. I am getting an associate's degree in nursing just to be able to be in a safe environment and I plan on caring for a few family members who are in the closet so that they may be able to also feel safe.

Dogs are some of the most loving and innocent creatures on the planet. They have very little understanding of good and bad, yet they continue to capture our hearts and we dedicate our lives to making theirs the most. I am sure if we could make our pets have a long, happy, and pain-free life, we would. I know I would. Coco, my 12-pound chihuahua, has saved my mental health and continues to cheer me up every single day. She never runs away when the front door is open and licks up my tears when I am distressed. She is incredibly protective of me and protects me when I sleep. She is full of love and smiles. Before I got her, I spent my days alone and shutting out anyone who wanted to help. I had a dog before her who was unfortunately neglected by my foster family while I was on summer visitation and she had passed. I was terrified to get another dog because I did not want any creature to face that same fate. Once I was able to live with my biological father again, I got Coco for my 16th birthday. After I brought her home, I felt so much safer in the world because she would let me know if I was in danger. I had emotional support and a living alarm system. She helped me grow into the confident person I am today and if I had any wish that could be granted, I would wish to give her the life she wants, whatever that may be.