I am a girl who loves spending her free time in her bed on her phone. I am a girl who loves doing girly things like playing dress up and shopping. I am a very loquacious person who can go on and on about the very minuscule details of her rather long day. I am a person who loves running track but only for the competition, not the actual exercise part. I am a girl who is infatuated with the idea of creating new things. I am a girl who often has crazy ideas but doesn’t quite know how to execute them. What motivates me to do all of the things that I do is other people’s perception. Way too often, I think about what other people will think of me, I think about other people's opinions and perceptions and it is my motivation. I shop a lot because I want new clothes and shoes, but why do I want them? I want other people to view me as a stylish person- a well put together person. I am super competitive in track and pretty much any other thing that I participate in. But why? I am motivated to win because I want people to think and know that I am fast, smart or skillful. My family praises me for being as smart as I am. They raise their expectations for me because they know what I am capable of, this motivates me the most. As the smart one in the family I am motivated everyday to live up to the name. I love being known as the smart one and I intend on doing amazing things in the STEM field to make my family proud of their smart girl. If I could do anything with my life I would travel the world. God created this massive planet and I have probably only seen about 5% of it. I want to try new foods, learn new cultures and see new things. What excites me the most about STEM is creation and knowledge. As mentioned earlier, I love the idea of creating. In STEM, I love that a person could come up with a random idea and make it logistical. I love that no matter how crazy anyone thinks your idea is, you could still create it using STEM. As for knowledge, STEM is the field that dabbles in a little bit of everything. It incorporates a few essential things to know and combines it into one field. In STEM, a person uses science, but in order to know science you need to know history, to know technology you need to know mechanics, computers and other systems. To know engineering, you need to know creativity and what it means to have it, and how to use it. Lastly, to know math you need to know the history of math, and how to apply mathematics to anything you are attempting to create. The complexity of STEM excites me the most. I find it quite astonishing that to be a STEM major, you have to learn the past and present of everything around you, in order to create something useful for the future. I feel that I could make a positive impact on the world through the use of information technology by bringing about change. Change is essential in any way of living. Technology may single handedly be mankind's greatest contribution. Without technology, we could not possibly advance and improve as a society. Technology brings change, and a job in informational technology would help me create the necessary change for a better way of living. The greatest challenge I have ever had to face dealt with my self-image. My life represented my teeth. Crooked and gapped yet fun and playful; it was all I’ve ever known, it was me. All my life people frequently had innocent comments about my teeth and I was unbothered by them. When high school came around, the comments became not so innocent. They stabbed my confidence leaving me with scars of insecurity that took so long to heal. Change often has a negative connotation behind it, but in my instance, it saved me. Society preaches this ideal way of living your life, saying things like “be who you are” or “never change for anyone”. This instruction is flawed. How does a 14-year-old girl be herself when herself is why she is frequently bullied? The answer is, she doesn’t. She adapts and evolves so that she is not hunted and killed. For 10 straight months my life spiraled out of control, and my confidence along with it. In month 11, I got braces and those wires became the sole source of my happiness. As my teeth straightened out, so did my life. My life was no longer crooked and my confidence was no longer gapped. By month 18 my life was straight and white, it was happy again. From then on I compelled myself to meet societal beauty standards. This is frowned upon, but it is necessary in today’s world. Adapting the theory of survival of the fittest is the best decision I've ever made. Compliments are my new obsession. Coming from being a girl who rarely got them, to a girl who gets them a lot, I believe it’s valid to say that kind words are my new favorite drug. I am not utterly consumed by changing my appearance, but ever so often I adjust myself so that the kind words can continue to fill my heart once more. Instead of “be who you are” and “never change for anyone” I would like to coin the phrase ‘be who you want to be, as long as it makes you happy’. Changing oneself does not have to be an unfavorable thing, I think my situation is an adequate example of that. For a long time I struggled with how I looked, I got bashed for it. I have overcome hurtful words and I am happier now because of it.

I tend to keep myself busy, and by doing so I have exposed myself to new relationships, fun experiences, and different opportunities. One day I volunteered with my Youth Choir to help feed people at a soup kitchen in Atlanta. I enjoyed every second of it because everyone was so appreciative of our help and it made me reflect on how fortunate I am. Ever since that day, I have made it routine to pray for "those who do not have" each time I consume a meal. Another time we visited a retirement home to spend time with elderly patients who do not often get visitors. We played, sang, and I listened to anyone willing to share their incredible stories. Throughout the year I do little service projects like cleaning up the trash around town or reading children's books at the library. During the holidays I donate what I can and around Christmas time I donate, pack and wrap toys for children in Indonesia. In school, I am a member of 3 community service clubs. These clubs provide service opportunities for points and I must receive a certain amount of points to stay in the club. In addition to community service, another thing that keeps me busy is athletics. I used to play club and school volleyball and run track but now I just run track. My involvement in both sports helped me to socialize, improve my work ethic, and most importantly it has supplied me with life-long friendships.

Feminism has a negative connotation. It is believed that feminists are a group of women who bash men to uplift themselves. To me, feminism is about justice for women. It is the ability for women to make their own choices, stand for their rights and voice them out. This concept is important to me because justice does not come to women, especially minority women, as often as it should. In society, a woman is at the bottom of the social chain. Being called a girl is an insult, it means you are sensitive and weak while being called a boy means you are strong. A man who portrays too much emotion will be called "too girly" and they will be told to "man up"- deeming women as lesser than. It is important to me that society breaks these ignorant insults because they are not true. Society has a way of separating women to fit beauty standards. Skinny is beautiful, fat is not. Being short is acceptable, but being tall is not. Women often obsess over how they look, and they try to change themselves to fit these beauty standards. Feminism is important because it enforces the idea that all women are beautiful and should be treated as such. They should not be separated or judged for how they look, instead, they should be accepted and treated fairly, regardless of how they look. Terminating these beauty standards allows women of all kinds to receive the same opportunities. Roxane Gay is a black feminist woman who inspires me. Gay has redirected my view on feminism as she changed the definition for me. Originally, I thought feminism was all about equality. I thought it was about women wanting to be treated the same as men, getting paid the same as men, and getting the same opportunities as men. Gay helped me see that feminism is not all about equality. Gay believes that we should not want to act like men and be held to the same standard as men because we are not men. Gay believes that we should not try to perpetuate the cycles that have oppressed us. Instead, we should fight for equality and change in each aspect of varying social justice movements, not just men. Mainstream feminism focuses specifically on gender equality but other injustices are still present. For example, feminists fighting for gender equality while African Americans are continuously being oppressed shows that feminism is meaningless. Gay feels that feminism is recognizing that fighting for racial injustice or any injustices means you are also fighting for women because a Black woman is still a woman, or an LGBTQ+ woman is still a woman. Many people are opposed to what Gay thinks, but she continues to share her perspectives and educate men and women on her ideals of feminism, and she inspires me to do the same. In my community, there is a clinic called Planned Parenthood where women go to have abortions. Every time I pass the clinic I see a group of protestors shaming women for choosing to have an abortion. As stated earlier, one part of feminism is the ability for women to make their own choices, and choosing to not have a child because you are not ready to have one is a valid choice. It troubled me that people were so angry at these women so I decided to bring my own sign and protest in favor of pro-choice. By doing this, I showed my support to those brave women and I also got a chance to educate those protestors on my meaning of feminism.

Resilience is a hard thing to accomplish. It is something a lot of people do not have, I was one of those people. As a child, I was always a confident and loquacious girl who cared little to none about what others thought of me. As I grew older, people around me grew meaner, and I found it quite difficult to pay no attention to them. I had an abundance of friends who frequently said nice things to me but occasionally I would hear whispers and giggles of not-so-nice things. Over time, that once so-confident girl became very insecure when she reached high school. For a while, I deeply struggled with my body image. The teasing and constant bullying caused my self-esteem to deteriorate so much that I became lost. Those unkind words allowed me to lose a sense of myself and my family noticed. They persistently reminded me that I was not being “myself” but at the time I no longer knew who “myself” was. I no longer enjoyed speaking, I no longer was confident and stepped out of my box. I was trapped in sed. I was lost. When time moved on, I accepted the fact that I was socially awkward and shy. These introverted qualities introduced me to isolation. My room was my only comfort space and it is where I spent the majority of my time. My parents finally stopped attempting to force me out, they accepted my introverted tendencies as well, but deep down I knew they missed their confident and loquacious little girl and I felt rather guilty for not being able to deliver her to them. Contrary to how many people feel, 2020 was a great year for me. As a newfound introvert, I thrived in isolation. I enjoyed not having to see anyone and being allowed to stay in the comfort of my room day in and day out. I was never bored. It was perfect for me. When my school opened back up, I was scared to touch the world again. After a year of reflection, I concluded that I was tired. I was tired of living in fear. I was tired of trying to change things that I couldn’t. I was tired of feeling anxious to speak to even my closest friends. I was tired of caring too much about others' perceptions of me. I was tired of it all. 2021 was a big milestone for me because I slowly allowed myself to stop caring. Of course, I still got teased, but this is where my resilience came into play. I could have easily chosen to give up and retreat to the comfort of my room after one mean comment, but I remained tough. I decided that those four walls were hurting me more than helping me so I learned to ignore the teasing. In doing so, my self-confidence returned, and my sense of self along with it. I was no longer lost. My confidence attracted great people, and now I have amazing friends on my side. I have a lot of little cousins that may experience bullying as they grow up. I have taught them affirmations that they can say to themselves to boost their confidence. I have inspired them to have confidence in themselves, despite what anyone thinks or says. I have inspired them to change for no one and to be true to themselves so that amazing people can levitate towards them.