Learning the risk of credit and debt is the most important thing you can do as a young adult going into the real world. Learning how to save over time for purchases you want rather than spending more money on debt through loans and credit card fees to get them immediately is extremely helpful in the long run. One thing that young adults don't fully understand is that credit cards are completely unnecessary. They can be helpful by building a credit score, but is that genuinely worth all of the debt you go into and the extra payments you have to make? You can get by in life just as effortlessly with a debit card by using the money you make and staying out of debt. You can avoid student loans by saving money over time and earning grants and scholarships to pay for your schooling rather than paying off student loans with the amounts of interest added to them. Not only that, but you should make big purchases with cash rather than credit. Buying a car upfront rather than choosing to make car payments saves you money on interest. However, even bigger purchases like a home would require a mortgage (which is much easier to pay off without credit card and student loan debt.

When my father returned from his deployment in Iraq in 2007, none of us knew how his presence would affect me. His physical condition and behavior indirectly caused me to develop anxiety, OCD, and an eating disorder when I was only nine years old, and it would dictate every decision I made until I finally found a path to recovery. My father came back with a parasite in his intestines, leaving him with noticeable digestive issues. There were days when he would incessantly stress and panic about "getting sick" and "throwing up." His constant fear of vomiting manifested into my subconscious, and I developed emetophobia: an extreme fear of vomiting. This fear later formed my intense anxiety and OCD toward food and germs, which then led to an eating disorder that controlled seven years of my life. I first noticed how these phobias affected my eating habits when I got sick at nine years old. I was vomiting for three days, and I was highly anxious when I returned to normal. I only ate small bowls of plain Cheerios and drank Sprite for two weeks because I believed I couldn't get sick if I stuck with those. If I vomited after eating a particular food or at a specific place, I developed an apprehension toward the food or location. I once threw up after eating a BLT for dinner, and I haven't even thought about trying another one in three years. When I stayed at my father's house for the first time after my parents divorced, I fell ill for two days and didn't go to school. After that, I unconsciously feared his home since I coincidentally got sick the first time I visited. As I grew, I would refuse to go on vacations, school trips, or even out to restaurants with my family. I couldn't risk getting sick, let alone in public or away from home. And if I did go on any trip away from home, I refused to eat or drink. At the most, I would suck on a Jolly Rancher every few hours just to keep my blood sugar up and avoid fainting. My disordered and avoidant eating has inhibited my own free will for years, but I'm finally starting to recover. Now that I have gone on medication for my anxiety and learned how to manage this phobia through therapy, I think I have a chance at living independently after high school. I have traveled away from home over ten times for sports in the last three years, and I have stayed overnight at least three times. Not only that, but I've learned that I can eat away from home. I have also gone on two different college visits in the last two years. I never thought I would even consider going to college away from home for the longest time. Society often overlooks eating disorders aside from anorexia and bulimia because they have very little representation. I want to raise awareness. I want to teach other adolescents with an eating disorder like mine that life does get easier. It is possible to live a normal life where you can eat when away from home. You don't have to have "safe foods," and you don't have to avoid foods that made you sick seven years ago. I never knew anyone else with my type of eating disorder, so it was extremely difficult to find a road to recovery; I want to be the one to provide that for others.

Since I was a kid, I've been a talented singer; I was practically singing just as quickly as I learned how to talk. It came naturally to me and allowed me to land the role of Annie in Annie Jr. at 12 years old with no professional vocal experience. But I was never satisfied with my skill being solely based on intuition. In my first year of high school, I decided to master my talent and began voice lessons. Everyone tried to keep me from doing voice lessons. They thought they would waste money and time and insisted that I didn't need them, but my mother believed in me. We met up with pianist Robert Pace that gave voice lessons at Chadron State College in my hometown and got to work. For only 30 minutes once a week, he helped me improve my skills before I even knew I wanted to put them toward my future career. He coached me through golden age musical theatre pieces for almost two years before moving on to songs of my choice. He would also help me with songs I performed in the winter musicals. If I hadn't chosen to take voice lessons with him, I never would have gotten the role of Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods or Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family. He also coached me as I recovered from a tonsillectomy because I had to relearn how to sing altogether. My tonsils were so large that they slightly restricted my airway, making singing much more manageable, so I lost all vocal control when I recovered. I would never have gotten back to normal without my vocal coach.

Since I was a kid, I've been a talented singer; I was practically singing just as quickly as I learned how to talk. It came naturally to me and allowed me to land the role of Annie in Annie Jr. at 12 years old with no professional vocal experience. But I was never satisfied with my skill being solely based on intuition. In my first year of high school, I decided to master my talent and began voice lessons. Everyone tried to keep me from doing voice lessons. They thought they would waste money and time and insisted that I didn't need them, but my mother believed in me. We met up with pianist Robert Pace that gave voice lessons at Chadron State College in my hometown and got to work. For only 30 minutes once a week, he helped me improve my skills before I even knew I wanted to put them toward my future career. He coached me through golden age musical theatre pieces for almost two years before moving on to songs of my choice. He would also help me with songs I performed in the winter musicals. If I hadn't chosen to take voice lessons with him, I never would have gotten the role of Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods or Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family. He also coached me as I recovered from a tonsillectomy because I had to relearn how to sing altogether. My tonsils were so large that they slightly restricted my airway, making singing much more manageable, so I lost all vocal control when I recovered. I would never have gotten back to normal without my vocal coach.

When my father returned from his deployment in Iraq in 2007, none of us knew how his presence would affect me. His physical condition and behavior indirectly caused me to develop an eating disorder when I was only nine years old, and it would dictate every decision I made until I finally found a path to recovery. My father came back with a parasite in his intestines, leaving him with noticeable digestive issues. There were days when he would incessantly stress and panic about "getting sick" and "throwing up." His constant fear of vomiting manifested into my subconscious, and I developed emetophobia: an extreme fear of vomiting. This fear later formed an eating disorder that controlled seven years of my life. I first noticed how this phobia affected my eating habits when I got sick at nine years old. I was vomiting for three days, and I was highly anxious when I returned to normal. I only ate small bowls of plain Cheerios and drank Sprite for two weeks because I believed I couldn't get sick if I stuck to those. If I vomited after eating a particular food or at a specific place, I developed an apprehension toward the food or location. I once threw up after eating a BLT for dinner, and I haven't even thought about trying another one in three years. When I stayed at my father's house for the first time after my parents divorced, I fell ill for two days and didn't go to school. After that, I unconsciously feared his home since I coincidentally got sick the first time I visited. As I grew, I would refuse to go on vacations, school trips, or even out to restaurants with my family. I couldn't risk getting sick, let alone in public or away from home. And if I did go on any trip away from home, I refused to eat or drink. At the most, I would suck on a Jolly Rancher every few hours just to keep my blood sugar up and avoid fainting. My disordered and avoidant eating has inhibited my own free will for years, but I'm finally starting to recover. Now that I have gone on medication for my anxiety and learned how to manage this phobia, I think I have a chance at living independently after high school. I have traveled away from home over ten times for sports in the last three years, and I have stayed overnight at least three times. Not only that, but I've learned that I can eat away from home. I have also gone on two different college visits in the last two years. I never thought I would even consider going to college away from home for the longest time. Society often overlooks eating disorders aside from anorexia and bulimia because they have very little representation. I want to raise awareness. I want to teach other adolescents with an eating disorder like mine that life does get easier. It is possible to live a normal life where you can eat when away from home. You don't have to have "safe foods," and you don't have to avoid foods that made you sick seven years ago. I never knew anyone else with my type of eating disorder, so it was extremely difficult to find a road to recovery; I want to be the one to provide that for others.

When I was a kid, I would cut a hole in a giant cardboard box and pretend that I was a news anchor giving my parents the latest "What's for Dinner?" forecast. Sometimes I would pretend our house was full of water and swim through doorways and up the stairs to my bedroom. Other days I would play with my friends and pretend we were in the circus. I was always pretending and playing make-believe, which grew into a love for acting (which is just the grownup version of pretending). When I rehearse a play or musical, all I do is think. I'm stuck in my head about every facial expression, every twitch of my body, every word spoken. I carefully calculate every breath and movement as I put together the perfect outcome. But when I perform for an audience, I feel. My mind shuts off completely, and I fly by the seat of my pants. Before every performance, I stand behind the curtain and relish in the adrenaline. The mixture of everything—the smell of the wooden set pieces, the bright lights, the heavy air, and the cold sweating in my palms—creates a moment that I wish I could live in forever. Suspense fills the claustrophobic walkway backstage as time walks me closer to my first entrance, tightening my body like a guitar string on its peg. The steel stretches and pulls, grinding and scraping until it's finally under enough stress to snap. I step on stage for the first time in the performance. The warm lights hug my body and introduce my figure to the audience. My heart runs a hundred miles a minute, but my mind stands still. The bright stage blinds me just enough to keep me from making out any faces in the audience. I dance through the scene as if perfectly choreographed, yet it all feels new. I feel like I'm floating outside of my body, watching myself from the audience until I exit from my first scene. I can finally breathe again as I step backstage, regaining full consciousness as the highest point of adrenaline has finally passed. I love acting because of the adrenaline rush I get before a performance. I wish I could feel that rush every second of the day: the want and the need to start, the suspense and tension. However, we can't stay in the beginning our entire lives. The show must go on.