My name is Jailyn Hughes and I plan on attending Arkansas Tech University in the fall and majoring in hospitality administration with an emphasis in events. I am graduating from high school a year early and entering college as a 17 year old. I’ve been extremely determined my whole life, and when I want to do something I stick with it all the way through. Growing up, I never started something I didn’t know that I could finish. This was extremely helpful when it came to things like school work and softball, but it worried me to think about how I was going to stick with on career for the rest of my life. I knew that I loved people, and that I was fast paced and driven, but I wasn’t sure how to implement that in my future, forever. Everything started to happen at once and as I turned over a new leaf, skipping 11th grade and heading straight into my senior year, I contemplated what I could see myself doing. I thought about things like cosmetology, baking, and even singing. I was all over the place. A few weeks before my senior year started, I attended a music festival in Oklahoma called Born and Raised. It was extremely surreal, and I was beyond intrigued by how someone could put on such an amazing show in such a small town. The details such as the food, the stage setups, and ticket booths were interesting to me. On the six hour ride home, it clicked. I wanted to be the magic behind the scenes of events like these. There is so much to be done, it is a high strung job but it has such a rewarding outcome. Events are the key memories in everybody’s lives: Concerts/festivals, weddings, and huge celebrations. I want to be able to make the dreams of others become reality, just as it was done for me and my family many times. I would benefit from this scholarship because being that I made the rather sudden decision to graduate early, my family did not have the time to prepare for college the way we should’ve. I want to be able to make my ideas come to life and I would be extremely grateful to receive the Sylvester Taylor "Invictus" hospitality scholarship.