I have always had a passion for the arts, and throughout high school, I spent a lot of time making, watching, and consuming different types of art. I’ve also tried out many different mediums, from printmaking to oil painting to papier mache. In my pursuit of knowledge through art, I’ve found myself drawn to animation, and I have decided to study digital art and media design at Penn State University to become an artist who can work with studios, businesses, and for myself. I will be able to create 2/D and 3/D animations and other various forms of digital art, being able to create simulations, video games, and films for people to enjoy. I will also be able to fuse my knowledge of art with my passions and experience with political and social sciences. I want, in my career, to encourage my generation to end the cycle of abuse in the world. There is a great deal of injustice in the world, and as younger generations become adults, there is a significant opportunity for change. Post-COVID, it seems like tensions throughout the world are thick as ice, traditionalists clash with non-traditionalists, and everyone seems to be fighting over each other’s lives. Since the Cold War and Vietnam, I think young people have tried to push the agenda. Young people want change, they want love. It seems that older generations forget “love” as time and suffering hardens them. As things grow uncertain, it is important that we hold to our basic values, whatever they may be. My art will enhance these points and advocate for acceptance and equality, providing a space for those who need it, addressing difficult topics, and making us more informed. I hope to not only inspire change, but also creativity, innovation, and emotional understanding in my art. Using my technical and artistic skills, I will contribute to society, allowing people’s ideas to come to life and encouraging humanity’s growth. Going to school for my bachelor’s will also give me lots of opportunities to help my community. Throughout my life, I have always known volunteer work to be a noble practice that everyone should do at least once. Making an impact on people’s lives in a direct way keeps communities strong, even in times of hardship. I am very eager to get my hands dirty and make an impact. Personally, I have assisted with church organizations like New Hope Ministries during the holiday to help people less fortunate during the demanding season and have been involved with numerous school events and galleries, setting up those events and helping teachers and classmates when they needed a hand or ear. I hope to do a lot more with my education, and through my ambitions, I hope I can make my community a better place.

Dealing with mental health as a child was difficult for me, as my parents were going through a divorce, which divided my family and made me feel lonely. I shut up all my feelings inside my heart and kept everything I felt stuck down my throat. In middle school, I struggled heavily with my self-image, and it made me feel further isolated. I moved from school to school, and so it was always hard to make friends because I felt I had no roots, no place to stand on. It was as if the ground beneath me was hollow, with rocky and dry soil. Bits of gravel crumbled away from my foundation, cracks forming at every quiver. I was fragile, like a dry plant, with no water to feed me, no sun to graze across my leaves. I was like a bottle fizzing up, then, and at certain points, I just imploded. Sobbing always when I felt low, I was always called a “crybaby”. All my emotions would spill out, so I tried to fix and patch each hole, not realizing all I had to do was turn off the faucet and breathe. It was through forming bonds with people and establishing outlets for my emotions that I began to find myself and experience happiness. I found friends who shared similar interests to mine, including a love for video games and weird art. I would spend quiet summer afternoons watching artistic low-budget films and video game experiences. I started to search for a personal style, and I found ways to express my emotions through the art I made. Over time, I became especially interested in animation and video game art. I realized my passion for life and living. Even though I carried my struggles with me, I had an appreciation for life that allowed me to conquer my challenges every day. I was especially tuned into politics at a young age because my parents were. With an appreciation of life, it made me want to fight for other people’s lives and rights. I have strong values with modern connections to philosophy, literature, and a global perspective. I have crafted my personal beliefs around empathy and science. My values influence a lot of my art, and I hope to communicate this with people in a meaningful way. Mental health has a long history of being ignored. Only in the century (or less) have humans begun to study the brain in-depth. For so long, people have used biases in their logic to present the mentally ill as unworthy of society. Through my education, I believe I can use my voice as a learner to encourage more empathy when talking about mental illness, and listening to patients and their feelings. We have had luck, so far, and more and more people are getting the proper help they need. The fight isn’t over yet, though, and I hope to contribute to that fight through my art and involvement in local/global political and social issues. Thank you for listening to my story and values.

Dealing with mental health as a child was difficult for me, as my parents were going through a divorce, which divided my family and made me feel lonely. I shut up all my feelings inside my heart and kept everything I felt stuck down my throat. In middle school, I struggled heavily with my self-image, and it made me feel further isolated. I moved from school to school, and so it was always hard to make friends because I felt I had no roots, no place to stand on. It was as if the ground underneath me was hollow and the soil was rocky and dry. Bits of gravel crumbled away from my foundation, cracks forming at every quiver. I was fragile, like a dry plant, with no water to feed me, no sun to graze across my leaves. I was like a bottle fizzing up, then, and at certain points, I just imploded. Sad tears rolled down my face when I felt at my lowest, I was always marked as a “crybaby”. All my emotions would spill out, so I tried to fix and patch each hole, not realizing all I had to do was turn off the faucet and breathe. It was through forming bonds with people and establishing outlets for my emotions that I began to find myself and experience happiness. I found friends who had similar interests to mine, sharing my love for video games and weird art. I would spend quiet summer afternoons watching artistic low-budget films and video game experiences. I started to search for a personal style, and I found ways to express my emotions through the art I made. Over time, I became especially interested in animation and video game art. I found passion in myself and my life. Even though I carried my struggles with me, I had an appreciation for life that allowed me to conquer my challenges every day. I was especially tuned into politics at a young age because my parents were. With an appreciation of life, it made me want to fight for other people’s lives and rights. Punk ideology really captured my attention, and with modern connections to philosophy, literature, and global perspective, I have crafted my personal beliefs around empathy and science. My values influence a lot of my art, and I hope to communicate with people in a meaningful way. Mental Illness is something that many people deal with, but I believe if we encourage others to share their feelings, perspectives, and promote open-mindedness, mental illness can be a fuel that we use to drive our passions. It is a part of us, but it isn’t who we are. For me, I have indulged in understanding my mental illness, and I use it as a tool for my art. Everyone is different, as long as we are kind and honest with each other, I feel we can have a more educated world. Thank you for hearing my story and giving me this opportunity.

What does going to college mean to you, and what are you trying to accomplish? Learning has always been important to me as the granddaughter of a teacher. My grandmother was an arts and math teacher in Szolnok, Hungary, and I’ve been told she was a fierce professor. Throughout my childhood, her memory loomed over me, guiding me through my passion for learning. When I entered high school, I became enthralled with all of the different aspects of humanity. Mostly literature and art captured my eye. My grandmother was a fantastic artist. She used oil pastels and paints to craft gorgeous landscapes and scenes. I had a passion for animation, in contrast, and my taste was more modern, but her soft blushes and blends of paste and color wormed their way into my art and bore its brilliance. I hope that I embody her, although I never knew her because she passed away from colon cancer when I was only a year or two old. She never got to see what I became. I watch my parents' baby videos of her and me, and I hope she knows I became an artist. I am her in that way. In college, I want to train in Digital Arts and Media Design at Penn State University, Main Campus. I am attending there this fall, and I am excited to start learning about things that I am passionate about. I want to create things that are revolutionary, pieces of art that pull the emotions out of people. Outside of college, my goals are fuzzy. I want to be an animator. What I want to make, really, I don’t know, but exploring what I love seems like a good start. I also want to participate in meaningful actions, like protesting, fundraisers, and food drives, so that I can help my community and people who are suffering. I am passionate about politics and social situations that affect everyday people, as well. I believe higher education will give me access to a lot of materials that will not only help me improve my craft and style, but also resources that I can use to advocate, educate, and fight for the world and its people. I am grateful to my grandmother for giving me her passion. I hope I can take it further, to inspire and change the world, but isn’t that everyone’s real goal: to influence? Maybe so, I will do everything I can to accomplish it in my own way. Thank you for listening to my story and allowing me to follow my passions of art and humanity with financial security.

My name is Isabella, which means “beautiful.” I don’t want to go over whether that’s true or not, but I will tell you what it means to me. I was named by my mother. Within the cooing and the crying and the sweat beading off her head after labor, she named me “beautiful”—beautiful in the slime-covered dampness of that hospital room. I always wanted to live up to that name, and I indulge in it. Graduating from high school, I am determined to find beauty in life, and I want to have a career that reflects that. I have worked throughout high school to learn about art, specifically animation and 2-D design, and it is what I plan to focus my efforts on in college. Animation combines all of my passions because it is truly limitless. There are so many things you can create and express with all the different kinds of animation. From top box office animated movies, to music, videos, to cartoons, to 3D films and VFX, there are no boundaries, and that mesmerizes me. Animation can also connect to people to different emotions and ideas that can’t be described by words or images. I hope my upcoming learning experiences will give me insight into beauty and what it may look like. I hope to inject it into this world, to give people hope, reason, a reason, to live – to die. Maybe just to express anything at all is inherently beautiful, then, because it is human. I must investigate this, for my own sake or the world’s. I hope the best of this world, and I want people to love each other and to spread love, maybe easier said than done. I hope my career will lead me in that direction. At any rate, I have worked a lot in my community to spread love and beauty as much a I could, by being an active member of my school, participating in galleries and starting the art club at my high school for all students to participate - my attempt at reviving possibilities of the art students there. I also did my duty to help with fundraisers available at my school, like the Four Diamonds Fund. I worked throughout high school to save money and build finances for college and gain experience in the world, too, interacting with all kinds of people and finding the beauty in that. I hope to continue to do good in the world, and I am excited to pursue my passions. Thank you for your consideration of this scholarship.

This coming fall, I am attending college for a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in animation and game design. I have always been fascinated by the world of animation. The way images can be manipulated and turned into an infinite number of things is almost unimaginable to me, but it’s real, and I am drawn to it. Possibilities are limitless with art, especially animation, and I have worked hard to learn about techniques and different applications needed to create higher-quality animations. In my art, I like to use influences from my life and personal beliefs. I am an advocate for feminism and other human rights movements, I enjoy educating people, learning how to make the world a better place, giving a helping hand to those in need, and making moves to take responsibility for atrocities that have happened throughout history. I feel it is our responsibility to care for the world and its people, so I learn and do as much as I can to work on this value of mine. I like conveying emotion, whether it be abuse, trauma, war, or other emotionally dense topics. I like my art to face people with the truth of suffering, the “calamity of so long life,” and how, noticing, living through suffering allows us to change. I also enjoy comedy and drama in the animated world; you can depict many dynamic emotions and scenarios, and there is no barrier. That’s why I’m so drawn to it all. In my pursuit of this education, I desire to exemplify these virtues and spread my ideology, while also gaining critical understanding of technical skills and mastery, in time. I love knowledge and I know I will do well in learning all I can to follow my passions, and do well for the world. I have seen the errors that this world has made to friends and family. For those like my brother, growing up in a continuously divided world, without me there to protect him, is almost too much for me to bear. With my art, I hope not only to work for companies and employers who encourage artistic and social growth in the world and their businesses, but also to inspire growth in the world, make things that beg for discussion, for change. I beg to bring great things, and I hope, through my endeavours, I will make strides. Thank you for this opportunity towards my goals.

Animation is my favorite type of art. From moving medical diagrams to 3D effects, to traditional, hand-painted movies, I believe they are all amazing ways to connect us more to art and each other. Moving pictures can let us see things that could only be imagined before. There are no limitations! Moving frames have been used to create movies and stories before cameras were ever conceived. From animation’s traditional roots to the mystical and absurd ways that images and frames can be manipulated today, I love what animation can do and how it represents the good parts of humanity. Using animation, you can make anything possible and inspire anyone about anything. The possibilities are like the nerves in your brain, they are endless little fissures with firing neurons going in every direction creating every possibility. There is nothing about animation that doesn’t mystify me in this regard. This is the reason I’ve decided to make a career out of it. Living out my passions, I will be attending school in the fall for a bachelor of fine arts in animation and game design/visual effects. I am so excited to learn about animation and indulge in the things I love most. I hope to use my political and humanitarian beliefs as an influence, as I am also very passionate about feminism and other forms of activism. Through my animation, I want to make sure that I spread the truth. We live in a world of a lot of misinformation and propaganda, I aim to offer a perspective from the working class, the woman, the person of color, the first-generation immigrant, and a political misfit - I have experience with these things, and therefore I feel I must highlight these experiences. I want people to feel connected to my work, not divided or misrepresented. While I don’t know what jobs I will do or what things I will create in the future, I know that I want to work for humanity and the betterment of society and the mind. In any art that I make, I want to offer originality and indulgence. I am honored to have been accepted to a number of different colleges for my portfolio. I tried to provide a range of physical and digital pieces and worked very hard to make them technically satisfactory. I added a digital 3D sculpture, some acrylic paintings, animations, and design works to show all the things I could do. I used my portfolio-making experience as a challenge to practice and learn more about different art styles. I love to learn and I am excited for the opportunity to spread the art that I love. I vow to create dialogue and inspire others through the things I make. I am excited to create and I am honored for this opportunity to share my story.

Throughout my life, I have craved oddities and absurdities. I am a lover of art and my favorites have always been the things that make people upset, uncomfortable, or disgusted. Imperfection is my favorite quality. Strangeness adds a new zest. Perhaps it was through the trauma of my parents’ separation, my struggles with mental health, or my experiences with abuse, it is not like I hadn’t had gore in my life. Whatever it may be, I’ve always enjoyed odd things, so with every morsel of my being (and without a care in the world), I craved to be different. While my hair is red, and my eyes are always painted black, I am not different because of how I look or what I paint. My mother is an immigrant from Hungary, she prevailed through a system that wasn’t made for her. She learned English, got an education, had a family, and lived her “American Dream”. I look to my mother when I face these decisions on what to do with my life and how to grow the world. She was brave and bold and I like to think that she raised me to be the same. During my last two years of high school, I have joined multiple school galleries to introduce myself to more people and get out into the art scene, I hope to be an animator after getting a degree in Animation and game design in college. I was proud to enter the Living Arts galleries at my school and a local high school's annual Diversity Gallery, to name a few key experiences. My experiences in these galleries introduced me to talented peers and brought me confidence when displaying my work. To further my confidence and experience, and have my peers benefit from each other's work, I started the art club at my school. Club members meet every other Tuesday to work on projects, collaborate with peers, meet with teachers, and more. I am proud to have made something that will last after I leave and pursue other things. When I go to college, I know my peers and teachers will keep the art club alive, I will continue to inspire others and create meaningful projects that will make an imprint on people. My absurd and Gorey art is not how I challenge societal norms and achieve great things, but my perseverance and desire to create meaningful impacts on people is, and I hope to continue on this path throughout my education. Thank you for this opportunity.

Throughout my childhood, imagination was never in short supply. I lived in a fantastical world where fairies existed, monsters were real, and magic did, too. Superheroes hid among us, and evil schemes were always at play, and I was the villain’s reckoner. I had always indulged in fantasy, and made worlds for myself to play in whenever I needed to escape. When I was a young girl, I had dealt with a lot of instability in my home. My parents’ love was fading and they would fight often, and when they were going through their divorce, I had a hard time coping with it. I found safety in my imagination and the mystical stories I made for myself. I plugged up my ears and went outside, I breathed in the sweet magical air. I collected flowers and surrounded myself in them. I used my powers to influence the natural world, I swirled around the wind and I fought the demons and I knew I was strong, and was it real? No. But in that moment, a girl found safety in her pretend strength and powers. This creativity and imagination, while more rational now, has never faded. I have a deep love for art and have been working on developing my style and beliefs since the start of my ninth year in school, when I first realized my passion for art, and my need to pursue it in my career. In learning more about art, I have found a specific love for animation and game design. The digital space is limitless and there are endless opportunities to create. This is why I’ve decided to focus my art career on animation and am working towards attending higher education for this purpose in the fall. In developing my portfolio, I used breadth and depth to show different schools my wide range of abilities and passion, not just with animation, but physical media as well. I hope to indulge in all modes of art throughout my career and am grateful to turn my passions into a living. While I have used art and my imagination as a way of escape in my young life, I vow to myself that it will not just be a safety net, but my whole home. I need to create, my soul begs me to make things, to imagine, to think differently, to express the inexpressible. I am grateful for this opportunity and thank you for your consideration so that I may achieve my goals with less financial burden.

My experiences with crime are by no means a comparison to Miss McClone, but I understand her tragedy. At around 10 years old, I was sexually assaulted by another peer. As a child who didn’t have any understanding about what happened, I never knew how to speak out about it. I buried it deep into my soul, in a cave, a tunnel that no one could ever find. I felt guilty, like I had done something wrong, even though it should have been the adults caring for me to prevent that kind of behavior from happening. While my attacker was another kid, it proves the disregard for individuals' bodily autonomy taught to children and the true infection that violent crime is in the world. Of course, I have had my struggles with mental health since this crime, but I am glad to say that I am learning to heal from it. I have hidden it from myself for a very long time and I am learning through therapy and self-work how to cope with it. I have always been a lover of art, and throughout the hardships I’ve experienced, I have found solace in developing my style of painting, sketching, and animation. It has been my favorite mode of expression, and being able to express things that are almost inexpressable through different forms of art is truly an honor. I find that infusing my art with my trauma provides a new perspective and I feel it is important for people to see it. This is why I have decided to pursue an art career. More specifically, I am pursuing a BFA in animation and game art starting in the fall so that I can infuse my passions into my career and daily life. In all, I feel that our world is too accustomed to violent crime. I have met too few women who haven’t been assaulted, too many men too, who have experienced the same. Homicide on the global scale is out of hand, and wars and corruption grant acceptance of it. No person should be harmed, it is idealistic, but a value that I don’t think should be jeopardized because it seems unrealistic. Getting an education will open doors and windows for me, allowing me to build a platform to spread my ideologies of peace. Life is a human right, I see the rise of violent crime as a plague, which must be terminated with a vaccine. The vaccine is empathy and I hope to administer a cool dose to everyone who sees my art. I hope that my work will make the world a better place, as I believe, art always says things we can’t. Humanity is an organism, I hope to prove we must stop killing ourselves. Thank you for the opportunity and I am honored to write something in honor of a brave and hardworking soul.

I had always been passionate about art, it has touched my soul in a part that has never been touched before. At a time in my youth (I’m not sure exactly when) I began feeling sparks- a highly poetic song lyric, a tragic ending to a novel, an astutely horrific painting, or a riveting animated film would influence them. The art I consumed jostled around in my head, not letting me think of anything else. There was something more for me; I had thoughts that weren’t the same as other people’s thoughts, and for my own sanity, they had to be translated. Plus, I had a natural desire to create, to think absurdly, to react in different ways. Naturally, I flowed softly into blots of paint and sketchy portraits. I tried to ignite the sparks, the spark made a flame on the embers of my eternal passion and my life’s work burned brighter. Now, I hope to dedicate my life to the connectedness I feel to the world when I create and consume art. There is something in influencing authenticity that draws out the glints of humanity into the world. There is no language barrier, there is no right answer, whatever art inspires people, there is importance in it all. It moves societies, it has created war, ended war - art asks questions. In studying it, I hope to become it. Learning about different careers in art, I looked to my love of animation. Cartoons, creepy 3D graphics, multimedia; it had always been a kind of art that I loved from a young age. I had always liked the unnatural, deadpan, weird adult animated films and cartoons. I am also fascinated about the technical side of animating, computer graphics, 3D modeling, and rigging. It is all an art to me. All of these passions have influenced me to indulge in the world of animation. I am going to school for a BFA in animation and game design in the fall. I am determined to watch my skills grow, but I am overwhelmed with the urge to see my style change and flourish. I know that I am entering the field in a time where there are a lot of tensions; writer’s strikes, fighting AI laws, and the effect of our divided nation. I hope to make changes in the art field, at the very least, and fight fof artists’ rights. The future of artistic careers is unknown, but I know that my passions will remain strong and art as a whole will continue to thrive, as it always has. My art will bring change, encourage unity, inspire love. Working towards my career, school is a big step in that direction. I remain hopeful about my goals and I thank you for your consideration.

A slow bassline hums on a dark screen. I saw a waiting figure through the fissures and secret whisperings of light. Her body was fizzling with madness. Her pale face was stretched wide and frozen in an eternal sob. Her mouth gaped open, and her tongue swished side to side, as if trying to find words in between the crooked gaps of her teeth. She wore nothing but a white gown. A knot came unloose in the back and I saw the smooth freckled skin of a girl. Her face had been burned from facing the horrors of life, her profile was pasty and scratched. Her face was an open wound, that horrid gaping mouth which glimmered a brilliant bloody red. Tendrils of saliva clung to her teeth and snapped when she moaned. As she moistened her lips for another wail, the tendrils reformed and the ordeal would continue for all time. Her gown was spotted with urine, feces, and blood. She rocked back and forth on a bug-infested mattress. She sank into the middle where she rocked. It was hard to tell where her body ended and the mattress began, but you could see something black skitter across her mattress/leg or her mattress/arm. Her hands were stuffed in her armpits and, for a moment, to swat away something in her eyes, she took them out. At the end of her wrists, bandaged lumps were where her hands should’ve been, and blood pooled at where the tips of her fingers should be. Others moaned and cried in the distance. I scanned my glazed eye over the rest of the blackness. I realized that the rocking figure was me and my consciousness faded away again. I awoke grappling with the demons, the slave-masters who kept me there. They injected me with something that felt like clouds and everything got fuzzy, but I was still there. Leather patches and buckles were holding my arms down at my side. I examined the worn silver and that! There was a mistake! A statistical error! One of the leather straps had come loose and my lazy gloved hand hung in its cradle. I did not see the demons, slave-masters anymore. I heard the awful sounds of someone being pinned down. With static in my eyes, I unbuckled the other strap. It took my whole strength to sit up and undo the knots on my legs. I flung my leg off the metal mattress and my legs gave in. My knees buckled, the fuzziness was still in my eyes and I felt weak. My body hit the floor with a loud thump and was followed by loud boots pounding on the concrete floors. They were quickening and coming closer to my body. With all the vigor left, flittering around in my heart, I ran. My tiny feet slapped on the floor as I ran down the hall. My heart was a big brass drum in my chest, an orchestra crescendoed. I saw a hole in the wall, the trash chute. It smiled at me with pity, I leaped into its mouth. I landed on a soft bed of soiled linens, bloody rags, and uneaten food. As I climbed out from the pile, I breathed in the wretched clean air, a green world stood before me like it was the first time. I gazed upon the glitters of the world. A bright light shone from above, it was the sun! “Oh, sweet sun!” I said “I had forgotten the brightness, the vigor! To think I compared you to a dying bulb in a cloud of buzzing, suicidal flies.” Below me was a little stream of crisp water leading into a clean lake. You may think I stooped to take a sip of the water, I was contemplating so. Instead, a surge of life rose from within the tombs of my heart. I leaped into the lake and was transported to the state of heaven. My blood turned into light and I was baptized of all that had come before. The dirt fizzled away and my mind was soft again. My face softened with the cold dew washed over my skin. My face was young and the wrinkles were memories. I bobbed on the surface of the water and let the purity enter my soul like a cold syringe. A fiery determination awoke inside of me, those demons, slave-masters were doing it a hundred times over every second. Another one was being pinned down and strapped up as I circled in this lake. My skin was cold and my breathing quickened, but the rush of fresh air reminded me that peace was real. I knew I must conquer that evil institution, for this is only how anyone should live their life! Hence was the beginning of my story

Art had a pivotal role in my mental health journey. Throughout middle school and high school, I became very depressed and had anxiety that caused me to have panic attacks. I had experienced traumatic events when I was young so it was a combination of this and moving to different school districts that weighed on me. I struggled with suicidal thoughts and self-harm and didn't have any friends to come forward to because I had just moved and didn't know anyone in my school. I also felt isolated from my parents during their separation. All of this was too much to deal with, but instead of giving up, I told my mom. Slowly, I started to crawl out of that pit and found myself again. I began to see a therapist and take a medication that works for me. The depression and anxiety I've experienced are part of me and, although I've gotten better, I know it will always be something I have to deal with. It took a lot of support from friends, family, and self-will to admit that I needed help. That is why I try to make sure mental health is always a priority. In the art club that I started with an art teacher in my junior year, I make sure that all students can express themselves and have a safe space to talk about their mental health. I love incorporating my struggles with mental health into my art. It provides an amazing outlet to express your emotions without boundaries and have something to put your heart into. Art is one of the main hobbies that helped pull me out of my depression. My medium is animation and through shows that I would rewatch over and over, I found myself in love with all the different styles of animation and what you can do with it. I also started to draw more and learn to paint. I had a lot to learn, but I had found something I was truly passionate about. I took many art classes and got an iPad so I could learn to animate, too. I am grateful for the things I've been able to do for myself, my friends, and my community when it comes to the acceptance and importance of mental health. I believe art is a healer and I want to continue to spread that message in my education, where I will be obtaining a BFA in animation. I am a senior this year and am excited to take this journey into learning in the next couple of months. It would be a great opportunity to win this scholarship to ease my financial burden when reaching my goals in these upcoming years. Thank you for your consideration.

Ella sounds like a strong soul and I am honored to apply for this scholarship opportunity. Throughout my life, I have always had a sort of cloud in my head. I have experienced sexual trauma and my parent's divorce at a young age, which deeply traumatized me. Over time, I became suicidal and depressed. I struggled with self-harm and needed professional help badly. I didn't have many friends at the beginning of eighth grade because I had just moved to a new school district, making things more sensitive, and my mental health got even worse at this point. I wish there were a sudden switch, an easy fix that pulled me up out from the grave, but honestly, it was like The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. The story is, essentially about a man who is condemned to roll a giant boulder up a mountain forever. It is said, though that in that silence, when the boulder rolls back down, he knows he has to do it again with all his might and he does. "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." Sisyphus, in the story, refuses to let it break him. Depression was a long and grueling 100,000-mile journey that I'm still on. I still lull in and out of depression sometimes and I'm still working on healing my trauma and becoming a better me. I have received help from a therapist and have found a medication that works for me. I try to surround myself with people who accept and relate to me and I am better off than I was four years ago. I have maintained a high-grade point average and have done well in school and learning because it is what I am most passionate about. I have grown a lot and I can finally say that I am strong, all people have room to grow, and I am no exception. I am so proud of how far I have come and I hope that I can keep growing and learning until the day I die. I will always change and learn something new, I know life will be hard because this kind of depression never really goes away. However, I have hope and I know my destiny is happy because I must try. I hope to become an animator after I get my BFA in animation and game design in the next couple of years. I hope that I can put in as much work as it takes to grow, into my animation. I want to give my whole life to this art and I hope that I can grow and change with my passion as I do so in my personal life. With this scholarship opportunity, I have hope that I can accomplish my higher education with less financial burden. Either way, I am as determined as ever. "...From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all."

As an eighth grader and freshman in high school, I became very depressed and struggled with social anxiety and self-harm. It took a lot of healing and self-acceptance to come forward to parents and guardians about my mental health struggles. It took even more to go to a doctor about my problems, start taking a medication that helped, and see a therapist regularly. I have even started to face my most traumatic experiences and learn more about myself. It wasn't easy to get better and I still have a lot of work to do. In other words, I know how it feels, and I want to always give people a safe space to talk about their mental health. We must destigmatize mental health issues and encourage good mental health as much as people encourage good development or physical health. Society has come a long way in this regard, especially with a growing knowledge of the brain. There are also more communities and spaces for people to talk about their mental health, but there are still things we can do to make the system better, especially for marginalized groups. In my junior year of high school, I started the art club with one of my art teachers, we made it clear that it was a safe environment for students to make art. Everyone is respected and knows that the art club is a safe space, this is one of the things I try to maintain in my community so that students can have a safe place to go if they need it. I will use my education as a platform to showcase mental illness and the reality of it in many people's lives. Mental health struggle is a big theme in the art I create and I love dissecting how emotions are felt and what that might look like. I am fascinated by the mind and I know it is complex. Therefore, it is important to always ask questions and to have an open mind with others because we are complex, too. I don't know everything about mental health, but I would never shame someone out of ignorance. One of the biggest things I am encouraged to spread awareness about is people who were/are victims of sexual or domestic abuse. Many people are ignorant of the manipulation that can take place in toxic relationships and it is important to provide a space for victims to heal and speak freely about the things they've experienced. It is especially important that we make sure male survivors have a voice, since, because of societal norms, many men have a hard time speaking up about domestic or sexual violence. This can include advocating and voting for more taxpayer dollars go to hospitals, care centers, and clinics. Mental health has always and will always matter and I hope to do everything I can to protect it because it is part of all of us. Everyone should have a space to

To me, empowerment is being unapologetic about who you are and getting angry about injustice. Women should live in this world without so much burden and hate. From domestic abuse rates, to rape culture, to the wage gap; women have been oppressed by men from the dawn of many societies. I believe that, through empowerment, people who try to exploit our system will be fought through reform and education. When I think of empowerment, I remember a moment when I was a little girl. My mother had me in her arms and slowly rocked me while singing a Hungarian lullaby that she learned when she was a girl. In that moment I knew what empowerment was. The femininity swirled around me and I felt safe in the hands of my strong mother. Since that time I have always known women are great and can be strong and empowered. I must be able to thrive, even in this patriarchal world and system. So, I would say that I am a feminist because of the empowerment I was taught as a girl. It lives in my heart and my mother's. Another time when I felt the reality of empowerment was election night in 2015. The prospect of having a female president was close to my heart. It made me feel strong and proud of being a girl. That glass ceiling was so close and I felt the cracks in it start to form. I felt like I could actually do anything because whether I knew it or not, I had seen the oppression in the world, and at the age of 8, was ready for change. I was eventually let down and another rich man won. My heart sank and I began to grow up in an America that was increasingly okay with misogyny, hate, and division. Then, growing up, having the same thing occur while I'm about to finish high school. It weighs on an empowered mind, even, and it makes my hope for a better world shake and quiver. I sometimes feel like giving up, but my grandmothers and my grandmothers' grandmothers deserved better, and so do I. Will we ever attain true equality? Maybe not, by like my grandmothers, and my grandmothers' grandmothers, I will keep fighting for as many generations as I live. That is maybe what empowerment is too, fighting for the justice of people, no matter how many times it seems hopeless or they knock you down.

Things are imagined that can never be born. Consciousness gives us unlimited space to bring things into the world. There is an irresistible feeling that I’ve been chasing for 17 years. It is this moment in which my soul vibrates with every atom around it. Me and the universe have a stream of consciousness that flows into the same river. I am a branch, a tiny branch, in a river. I bob and I spin and it seems, sometimes, that all the colors around me fizzle into one and the energy pours over me. All my hair stands on end because none of it really mattered. Everything is there in that moment and I am sure that life is real. It isn’t a matrix or a trick and all the horrible things I ever experienced were worth it because - in the end, my neurons fire, and I do have free will. “ I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” There are things that have been thought that will never be realized. That fizzle. That feeling is only something I have ever found in art. Whether it be music, cinematography, writing, or animation, it is the only thing that has ever given me such a connectivity with the world under my feet. If you were to take away my ability to think of art and cherish it, it would kill me as if you were to take out a heart or a lung, an artery, or my brain. My ability to create gives me my ability ro thrive and I know I am not the only one. There are so many ways to open conversations and provide understanding between people and I think there is not a person on this Earth who wouldn’t benefit from dissecting the philosophies of why people create and the meanings behind great works. Human nature is complex, the complexity, the fizzle, can be read or felt, like unconnected wires in all our brains; in the paint, the pixels, and the unrelenting purity that our art can hold. Art contains the secrets to our human nature and history, whether it be political theory, the secrets behind emotions, storytelling, entertainment, propaganda, etc. it all describes one human race. It transcends borders. My main medium is animation, I believe it is the truest way to incorporate evolution with art. Throughout history, time, and place, art is different and it changes, it evolves. Animation, in the same sort of way, evolves through images, combines plot and illustration, landscaping and rendering. I see animation as the combination of all art styles and abilities. Anything can be animated and made into a story. That is why it is my greatest passion and I hope that, in this way, I can create and produce media that furthers the human experience, provokes joy or emotional understanding, and creates a new perspective for others who like to fizzle. Wish I could show my animations, but I cannot submit a video on the application, hopefully, these pictures represent my work well.