September 7, 2017, it’s 7 pm, the first game of the season would soon commence. I saw the ball carrier running, and I went to make the tackle. Suddenly, the rock-hard helmet of another player rammed into my kneecap. With breathtaking speed, the flesh of my knee swelled and I fell to the ground. Quickly, I got up, hoping that nothing was wrong, and I continued to play until the athletic trainer pulled me aside due to my noticeable limp. The assisting physical therapist did a plethora of tests on my leg. Unsure about what was wrong with me, I was sent to a specialist at Duke. The rest of my night was spent praying that I would be alright. The next day, I woke up and I could barely straighten my leg, so my dad took me to the sports medicine clinic. After the visit, the following days were full of MRIs, follow-ups, and prayers that nothing was really wrong. At my last follow up it was determined that I had completely torn my ACL and that I would need to have surgery. Once the surgery was completed, I was sent home with excruciating pains and what felt like an eternity of suffering. It made me realize the importance of my body: you never miss being able to walk on your own until you can’t anymore. Every time I wanted to eat something, I couldn’t go get it by myself, and If I had to go to the bathroom, I had to get somebody to help me up. I was no longer autonomous. I usually never ask for help, but it became a necessity. The real work started when I began physical therapy. On the first visit, I didn’t have to do much, but he told me I would have to do my exercises ten times a day. I had six different exercises to do: I had to do leg-lifts with the brace on, leg-lifts with the brace off, leg-pulls to increase range of motion, a patellar mobility exercise, quadricep flexes, and walk around my house. It took me nearly twenty minutes to complete all of the exercises in one go. Having to do these exercises ten times a day meant I would have to do them hourly which proved itself to be a tiresome feat. Many times, I didn’t even want to move due to the pain, but I knew that the only way I could get better was to do what my physical therapist instructed me to do. After about a week of the seemingly simple workouts, I went back to school and my normal routine. At this point in my recovery, I was going to the gym every morning, I was going to Duke for physical therapy once a week, and I was to Hillside every weekday after school for physical therapy with the athletic trainer. At Hillside, the intensity of the workouts had reached an entirely different level; I would leave sweating as if I had participated in full-length football practice. Then, after doing that for three weeks, they switched my physical therapy to be at Duke. I walked into physical therapy looking for my regular physical therapist, but instead, I was met by a woman named Ciara. She gave me the hardest workout I have ever had in my life. I had to do things I had never thought of doing at that point in my recovery. I left Duke that day feeling like I had run a marathon. It was extremely difficult, but I had to work for it. My journey back to full health showed me that there was nothing that I couldn’t do if I persevered. I learned that resiliency is the key to achieving your goals, and hard work is fuel to the engine of success.

“He kinda looks like me,” I say to myself as this young boy’s face sits on my television screen. I don’t see the caption, I don’t hear the reporter speaking, all I see is this young boy’s face. At the young age of twelve, even I knew that anytime a black boy made the news, it was not for some great achievement, he was either dead or in jail. So, I sit on the couch, stuck, his image now burned into my brain, and hope that he is the outlier. I take another look at the tv and learn this young boy’s name is Tamir Rice. He was twelve years old, and he was killed by the police, confirming what I feared happened to him. My mind starts to race, and my brain starts to fill with thoughts like, we were the same age, we were in the same grade, we could have gone to the same school, he could have been my best friend, he could have been my brother, he could have been me. I spent the rest of my thanksgiving break thinking about Tamir. Hoping he would get justice, even though people who look like me and Tamir rarely do. It was a full year before I heard anything about what would happen to the officer that murdered Tamir. Enough time had passed that Tamir was not the trending topic anymore. I became increasingly tired of seeing stories of people who looked like myself, being killed, and never getting justice. This exhaustion soon turned to anger, which then turned into drive. I wasn’t sure what, but I knew I had to do something As time went on my path became clearer. I had always known I wanted to become a lawyer; however, it wasn’t until I became more active in my community that I decided I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. Activism became a big part of my life once I got to high school. I joined the human rights and activism club and started going to protests. I even got to help organize and even speak at a few of them. These experiences opened my eyes to the realm of social justice. I went from just seeing the problems in our society and being upset by them, to looking for solutions to those problems and seeing how I could play an active role in being part of those solutions Although protesting is one great way to foster change in society, protesting was not enough for me. I felt like I could do more. I have a desire to greatly impact the world. Too often in America, people of color have to endure great miscarriages of justice and I would like to play a part in righting and preventing these wrongs. Growing up as a black boy in Durham North Carolina, I have seen with my own eyes that there is a strong need for people to advocate for communities and individuals that are underrepresented and marginalized. I feel that we have become numb to injustice against people of color and we cannot continue like that. I want to play an active role in changing the condition of this world for people who look like me. A career as a civil rights attorney will help me to achieve the plan that I have to make a change in my community. My ultimate career goal is to open a fully Pro-Bono law firm where minorities and people from underprivileged communities can seek quality legal advice and representation