My goals for the future are three-fold. I want to be able to raise a family. Entailed in this first goal is keeping a stable marriage and ensuring a good relationship with ny kids. Just this goal itself would be breaking a generational cycle. I feel like this would indicate a positive trend in my family as well as be a long-standing personal accomplishment. My second goal would be financial independence. As the economy becomes ever shaky and unstable, relying on a job for financial security has resulted in thousands of homes being reposesed and millions of people being plunged into poverty. I plan to achieve this goal by becoming a business owner in the SaaS cloud space. This would afford me the opportunity to earn a passive and more controllable income while affording me the freedom to spend time with my family. My third goal would be to become and author, becoming an author and writing my own book series is the oldest of my three goals. For as long as I could remember, I loved reading and I loved the way the words on the pages of a good book affected my perspective on life and the people around me. A good book can pull someone put of a bad situation or motivate them to take action and I like to be able to pen my social economic journey in a way where others can learn from what I did. To work towards this goal, I've set aside time each day to write a small story, and then I'd give that story to a friend or family member to critique. This has helped me to evolve my writing style and become a more personable communicator. So much has changed over the last 3 years. Between covid, the war in Ukraine, the economic downturn, displacement and relocation, I have been able to balance school, work, family and religious obligations in a way that I didn't think possible. Juggling is often seen as something we shouldn't do, but in the modern world it's a vital talent to have. The real concern is how efficient and how seemless can one maintain that juggling act and if you perceive it as something worthwhile or a waste of energy. Perspective is everything, and during the dramatic shift that were occurring in my life, I gained so much perspective on how to handle life disappointments and how to turn a loss into several wins by deconstructing the problematic situation and finding how to solve it, or how to bare through it. I've experienced homelessness off and on which still plagues me occasionally. But keeping my composure and learning how to not loose my focus has helped me stick to my goals despite anything that stands against me. Perseverance has brought me this far, and It will carry me forward to graduating day.

My uncle suffers from schizophrenia. Growing up, I thought my uncle was the world's most interesting man based on the vivid unbelievable stories he'd tell of his days in the Marines, or his adventures in El Savador trekking dense wilderness. The more he'd tell, the more I'd admire him. No one around me seemed to deny the legitimacy of his stories nor the accuracy of the things he claimed to have seen and heard. I remember him telling me that the 01 Acura Integra he tuned up was actually a an official race car that had been driven by Jeff Gordon himself or the time he'd tell me how he was being followed by the CIA. However, as I grew older and wiser, I started to question the things I heard. This, of course, included the stories of my childhood hero. Instead of listening to him in dull acceptance, I'd ponder and cross-examine it with evidence. When I first realized that alot of the stories my uncle would tell were untrue, at first I felt angry, lied to. Sometimes I'd challenge him on the recounting of his stories and point out gaps. This almost always made him upset or frustrated as he'd insist they were real. I didn't understand, why would this man lie? He already had my respect from his success in the IT industry, and I loved him as being family, what did he stand to gain by lying to me? After being turned away by several family members when I asked them why my uncle had lied to me for so long, my mom finally sat me down. She explained what mental illness was, how it affected people, and how that included my own uncle. She finally came out and told me, "Jordan, your uncle has Schizophrenia. But that doesn't make him a bad person. He just sees the world's differently than you and I". At that time, I didn't fully understand the gravity of what her words meant. How can you lie and be a good person? I kept asking my mom questions about the stories ny uncle would tell and surprisingly enough, many of the stories corresponded to things he watched on TV as a child, dreams he had or everyday experiences that had been morphed into very different memories. It appeared that the line between real and unreal was blurred for my uncle. As I worked to make sense of him, I'd still listen, but this time it wasn't to cross examine him nor was it to put him on a pedestal, but to listen. I'd listened to learn more about my uncle, the person behind the disability. It felt like I had met a new person and I found ways to communicate with him, doing what I could to keep his mind in-the-moment and not on his perceived past. The more of reality he'd experience, the more stability he found. In my middle school and Highschool years, I would often find myself an advocate for many fellow students who experienced mental illnesses becuase of the experience with my uncle. That experience taught me to get to know people for who they are, and not what they're perceived to be on the surface. Working with him has not only made me a better communicator, but also a better friend and till this day Im still thankful to call him my uncle.

A progressive legacy is the the highest form of wealth someone can attain. The hard truth is that everything we have, everything we know and all of our memories and connections we form dissipate once we pass away. The only thing that lives on is the memories those have of us and what we pass down of value. Although, personal gain and enjoyment is important, we don't want to forgo investing in our legacy. Apart of the legacy we pass down include the wellbeing of our children and thier children. Although you may find some success in this lifetime, if you don't invest in your legacy, those after you will not have gained anything from your efforts. My grandfather was a great man, he served his community and earned a honest living for his family building homes for those who needed it. In terms of being a responsible husband and father, he was exemplary. Although, with finances, my Grandfather never learned to invest. He worked towards inspiring a good work ethic for his children, but despite his wealth, never thought to set aside a college fund for his children or build an estate that could be passed down. Though the reputation portion of his legacy left a positive impact on us all, because the generational wealth aspect of his legacy was never passed down, we didn't benefit from his years of labor and what is the point of working so hard when you can't ensure some level of financial security for future generations? It is this question that expanded my mind on what all composes a legacy. My upbringing was very difficult. One reason being, my mom didn't have a financial platform or legacy from her father to get a headstart in life, so she was just entering the workforce when I was born. The close timing of these two major life events was a recipe for financial instability. And though I love my mom and grandparents with all my heart and thoroughly enjoyed my childhood still, I often times wonder what life would have been like growing up if my mom was given that early start she needed financially. Despite not having a legacy to build off of financially, it was my mother's hard-working attitude and amazing coping skills that inspired me to chose the path of following my passion into Information Technology. I can honestly say I would not be where I am in college if it hadn't been for my mom's persistent nature. She broke the cycle, and although she is still alive and supports me till this day, my mom has already begun building her legacy by continuing to feed into my career and college success. I intend to continue that cycle with my futuee children and I feel honored to be in a position where I can pass on the fruits of my labor so that for future generations, the world will appear that much more brighter in their eyes.

Growing up I didn't have many role models or healthy examples to look up to, so I relied heavily on my educators on being the ones who not only taught curriculum but were exemplary in the community. Often times the same individuals who were teachers in my community were also activists, politicians or even volunteer workers. It was thier selfless example that inspired me to develop a desire for improving people's lives. I want to help create a better world for my children and their children. The root of how the world is shaped lies within education. Just like a child can be taught math and science, they can be taught to love, they can be taught to question or they can be taught to hate, use critical thinking, or to be a hard-worker. What we put in our curriculum and the way that information is taught is a powerful thing. All it takes is one generation to influence where we are headed as a society. As education becomes increasingly more politicized, the classroom is being treated as a battleground instead of a place of growth. In the midst of these supercharged conversations, one important topic is absent from the conversation. Career Training. There is rarely focus being place on preparing children for the adult world whether that's financial literacy, on-the-job training, networking, professionalism or conflict resolution. The workforce of the future will be comprised of those who have prepared before college, before graduating highschool. Passions are usually discovered early in life. When our communities begin to capitalize on that period of time by promoting early career development, we'll grow not only a highly trained workforce but also a highly passionate workforce. And when we are passionate about what we do, we are more inclined to continually improve performance As an educator, I will seek to implement career opportunities and applications in the ciriculum. I'd find ways to collaborate with programs in my community for students interested in detain careers to take advantage of. I'd also work along with parents and help them nurture a pareion for career once it's been identified and making sure thier child is well informed of their options prior to the college experience. I feel that this would decrease the level of college dropout and increase the level of employment among young people. I'd also be interested in starting a program avaulable for students outside of my instutution so that there are no barriers to accessing the resources students need.

The song that has the most important message to me is 10000 Miles by Mary Chapin Carpenter. This song known for being the main soundtrack from the 1996 family film Fly Away Home. The song tugs at the heartstrings and is an emotional expression of loss and reunion. I recall fondly watching my mom get up from the sofa chair and sing it with my Grandad. She would sometimes sing it to me to help me go to sleep. It was a beautiful song then, but after loosing my Grandad the song has taken on so much more meaning to me. After my Grandad died, years passed and she'd refuse to sing it. But when my cousin passed. I heard her sing it again to comfort me. The part that resonated with me the most was the line "I'm going away... but I'll be back." This line reinforced my belief that even though they have died. There legacy and memories lives on and comes back to us when we need it the most.

For as long as I could remember it has always been me, my mother, and my sister. Growing up in the peak years of the recession, financial concerns were always something I carried with me, from school, to church and even when I played with friends. Despite being poor, I never viewed myself that way. From the sheer number of family activities, loving gestures and support, I felt wealthy. That was all due to the most steadfast person in my life, my mom. I never had to go to sleep wondering if I'd have a meal in the morning because despite only receiving $100 a month from my dad to help raise me, she worked her fingers to the bone to make sure I had what I needed to enjoy my childhood. When I stop to pick apart the long list of thing I'm grateful to my mom for, one tops the list. Work ethic. This aspect of her inspired me the most. My mom had a work ethic that impressed me even at that age. Since she's borderline COPD, she'd often come home exhausted and she had every right to sleep, but she pushed through it and cook dinner, make sure he have extracurricular exposure and ensured we finished our homework. She sacrificed a potential career in accounting all so we would be raised right. Sometimes I try to put myself in her shoes and envision how I would have tackles the struggles she's tackled. It amazes me that she is still hungry for her dreams and can juggle so many things while maintaining her self-growth. Her journey from a farming town in Florida to working in the finance industry here in NY inspired me to get back into college. One thing her Work Ethic has done is end the cycle of poverty in our family. Until her, ther had not been any forward progress. No one had ever explored outside of the traditions and religious beliefs we held for generations until my mom came to be. I watched my mom achive the things she did despite adversity and it pushed me to do the same. Growing up, I saw life as a series of events that befell us. But watching her take control of her own life and her own destiny. This gave me the confidence I needed to take the leap of faith into my current career and the determination to see thibgs through till the end. Because of her work ethic she never gave up on me and due to that, I'd never give up on myself.

I'm 24 years old, and have recently moved to New York where I live with my mom and sister. Originally, I'm from the small college town of Tallahassee, Florida. The neighborhood I was raised in was poverty-stricken but we were some resilient people and I still managed to make good memories there with my family. I took an interest in IT when I was around 10. It was the first time we had internet consistently and my uncle was working as an IT Specialist. It watch him create scripts and make a computer operate in a way I had never thought possible. I was fascinated, and was eager to learn more. From that point, my curiosity was born. Fast forward to my highchool years, I was an avid programmer, PC gamer and was always resolving tech issues for friends and family. It was a very enjoyable period of my life, however, I always wanted to share that enjoyment with others. Admittedly, many of my my peers didn't have positive mentorship like I did nor were they given an opportunity to explore thier talents when it came to career pathways. I was in the Robotics club but decided to create an ad-hoc IT Club where my fellow students and I could embrace our love of tech, learn new things, and discover what our passions were. At first, I didn't have high hopes for the ragtag after-school program but when our attendance ballooned from just 3 students to 18, I realized that I had filled a need. As time moved on an I graduated, I kept learning more and more about the industry. Now that I was a fuctional member of society and could see the bigger picture beyond school, I saw that this need wasn't isolated to just my school but was something my entire community struggled with. I felt like it was my duty to give back and help guide others the way I had been. Nowadays, I spend many of my weekends volunteering in my community, providing motivational content or technical training virtually to those who are interested in a career in tech. I even got a chance to speak at my old middle school for Career Day and provide insight about what the IT Industry is like. To my delight,, many of the students I spoke with were later empowered to pursue STEM related career training either with a trade school or university

The Wind Woman Jordan Young 11/27/2022 The cool rinse of Autumn breeze rustled the auburn leaves. Intense and auburn wreaths Embrace both sleeves of the wind woman The man name Rain departs the tower Awaiting his final hour The sands of his last steps The thumping of the sky Grate the red hairs of the wind woman A procession enters the city Hearts splintered and story gritty And expression devoid of pity Paints the eyes of the wind woman A grieving audience arise as two casket arrive Astounded, they widen thier eyes One had died, "whose the other?" They cried His father looked to both sides. He shook his head, in sadness, he said "your grief has made you seen lies" Declaring that our vision is false does -nothing to disguise. The vision that we share together, a woman of brown eyes He sleeves are thick and arms wieghed down, red hair brushed over her eyes Shocked, the father reached to the stand A picture worn with time It was a picture of his sons wife who died before her time He turned the photo to find fine writing "Until death or wrong, we will spin" But then he read further on "When Autumn comes, and thunder thumps, I'll join you in the wind" The father smiled, "I love my child, and even his witty grin - would sway the wind to speak of him as if more than a friend. He took the photo and held it up, but it was taken by the fray "He's joins the Wind Woman yet again, storms' thundered them away."

One change I want to see in my local community is equal access to higher education. And lower costs for higher education. I feel that this would allow people people pursue careers based on merit and hardwork than by generation wealth. To help achieve this, I offer training material for those who are interested in a career in IT as well as brief students on what scholarships and affordable options exist for them to enter the career they want.

My name is Jordan, I'm currently an undergraduate student at WGU, and a new resident of Buffalo, NY. My immediate family is small but close knitt, my mom, sister and Grandmother often look to me as the breadwinner now that my grandfather and father are not present in the family. It's not surprising that I sudenly found myself with alot of responsibilities placed on my shoulders. Now that I was the head of our household, I sought to position myself where I could provide for them while at the same time doing something I loved. With this logic I concluded that a STEM focused career would make my goal possible. I feel that pursuing degree in a STEM related field is needed for me to accomplish my goal with the greatest number of options. True, it's possible to enter the IT field without a degree, but there are areas and markets within IT that are closed to even the most experienced professionals without some level of college credential and education. Since I was a child, computer and computer networks had always been a fascinating subject for me but I struggled to find clubs or resources within my own school that would help me direct my interest towards a specific field and industry. I gained that trajectory in Highschol and was able to have in internship in an IT Department. I feelnlike it was this experience that solidified my interest in obtaining a degree in Information Technology. Going through the journey of finding my identity and trajectory was beneficial but was also very time consuming. Although I did eventually chart a course towards my goal, it was much later in my life than I initially anticipated and I wasn't as prepared as I could have been If I had access to the resources and mentorship needed to develop a career plan. Planning for any life changing decision can be the difference between success and struggling through a career that may not really be the one for you. When speaking to my peers, I identified that they had similar experiences in choosing a career. In considering thier experiences as well as that of my own, I identified a common dilemma that arose, each of us wished there were career resouces available to us earlier in school. Where there was a problem, I saw how I could be the one in my community to help impose a solution. Career options weren't explained to us at length until Highschool. College was the focus, but you can't decide what college program to pursue without knowing what career pathways speaks to you. One of the things I seek to achieve with a college degree in STEM is being able to offer opportunity to delve into prospect of IT as a career from as early as Elementary School. I believe this could be offered in the form of an educational program or website and I aim to issue something that is intuitive and easy to comprehend. I belive that this would not only help students in my community explore thier options more thoroughly but also allow them the time and information required to prepare for their desired career.

The past year was tumultuous. I lost my job, was displaced, went back to college to pursue my degree and I met my girlfriend and that's only the tip of the iceberg. So much has changed with my situation and so much of my personality has evolved that it felt like 10 years has passed. Although there were alot of unfortunate events overall, I felt like I've impacted positively by all the things that I was able to achieve. 2 years ago, I would not have seen myself being in New York or being in a position to become head of a household. I remember just a year ago I was stuck in a small rundown apartment with me, my mother, sister, uncle and grandmother in the poverty stricken town of Tallahassee, Florida with no a/c struggling to work from home with a slow internet connection and plumbing problems. I could not see a way out of my situation, but we took a risk. We left Florida with a little less than $100 in my pocket. I had just re-started my journey to obtaining a degree and my mom had accepted an offer with an Insurance company. If I hadn't took that leap of faith, I may have been stuck in the same situation. This dramatic shift in my life is what inspired my personal growth. One of the things that has changed during my journey Is my outlook on life. A year ago, I felt trapped. I was dejected, waiting on a mericle to happen that would somehow change my fortune. Loosing my job and moving to a different state woke me up to the reality that, until that point, I was in a period of inaction. There was no options readily available to me at the time. My future was foggy because I knew what I wanted but, in the first time in my life, I had no idea how I'd get there. In reality, I had all the options in the world, but I hadn't opened my mind. Getting my Bachelors and Master's degree was an option, but I didn't think it was something that was within my reach, I didn't think it was something I was capable of and that fed into my inaction. The one thing that remained the same was my identity, which I'm thankful for, because it's so easy to loose your sense of self when going through personal development. Once I realized the root causes of my inaction was my self-value and the limitations I placed on myself, the world opened up to me. The more I took care of myself and invested in myself the more confident I became and the more routes became visible.

I'm 24 years old and work full-time in the IT industry while attending university and taking care of my mother. Life wasn't easy and it took alot of hard work to get where I am now, even though it's still a long way from where I want to be. However, I can honesty say that I could have never predicted that I'd be completing my first year of college coursework. Growing up in the small town of Tallahassee, Florida, I noticed that I wasn't the only one who encountered obstacles to the college pathway. Like my peers, my parents didn't promote college and thought it was a waste of time. However, I viewed obtaining a college degree as a ticket into career options where college education was a barrier to entry. At a young age I had people take an interest in and mentor me, taking the time out of thier day to help me explore career options that were possible and showing me the attributes and skills I needed to embrace in school to prepare for a fruitful career after graduation. Alof of my peers didn't have that. I consider myself lucky to have poeple who cared enough to guided me towards healthy habits and a good work ethic. As I emerged into Highschool, it became evident who had a support circle and who didn't. As much as I'd try to help steer ad encourage those around me in a positive way there was only so much I could do. My interest in IT was born from an inate desire to help people and to change the systems in place around us for the better. As more and more careers become surrounded by tech, it's more important now than ever to become educated in how to utilize these systems and applications in a way to advanced a career or enter one. The new barrier to entry to many new roles isn't a college degree as it was a few years ago, but nowadays, it is the level of tech savvy and knowlegdge of information systems that separate job candidates from eachother. In the modern day job market, if you are unable to navigate your way on a computer or office suite, your job opportunities will be come increasingly narrow. To avoid this becoming the case for many in my community I plan to establish a tech mentorship program to ensure highschool have the tech skills needed to enter the professional job market or even realize thier own interest in becoming an IT professional.

I remember back in the summer of 2013, I took an internship at my local city Water Department working alongside the IT and Engineering team sorting through documentation and skematics and filing them into the new database. There were hundreds of thousands of files to sort through on the intranet and on the third day in I had hardly made a dent in the assignment. I couldn't see myself spending the summer sorting through documents and there were so many other projects I wanted to take part in but couldn't. I had to come up with an efficient solution to complete the assignment without breaking the rules. I took a gamble. Since we operated on a city network I couldn't do anything that would change access controls or manipulate the network in any way as the current configuration was imposed by government standards. So I created a list of needs and restrictions to ensure whatever solution I developed would not put my internship in jeopardy or harm any data. Access Controls prevented me from installing any compilers or frameworks for coding in C++ or Python and I couldn't introduce any foreign sorting applications so I had to come up with another solution. While tossing the idea around in my mind, I pulled up Command Prompt to run Task Manager after I noticed my computer getting slow and that's then it occurred to me, I had access to the command line. I knew there was some limited scripting abilities inherent within the command line. However, I had to run queries to see what formats and commands were permitted. Eventually I was able to narrow down a format that fit my specifications and ended up using a .VBS extension. I created a script that first sorted by file type, then sorted those into subdirectories. I had a final round that would removed duplicates and then order the files by date of creation. The whole process involved two scripts running concurrently. The whole process took 2 hours filing away a total of 200,000 design documents from the engineering team's local network and into subdirectories within the main intranet. Without these scripts the whole process would have taken at least 2 months of non-stop user manipulation to complete. U was worried at first that it would be received poorly by the IT Team but they were overjoyed because they had been working on that project for the last 2 months before I had arrived. They were so impressed they even offered me a permanent position after graduation which I would have accepted if I hadn't moved to a different city. They ended up using the same script for other inter-departmental data cleanup. I felt so fulfilled to not only make my job more efficient but help others as a byproduct.

Growing up in the small and rambunctious town of Tallahassee, Florida, few who looked like me in my neighborhood survived into adulthood free of the infamous Floridian prison pipeline or the local graveyard without having some kind of willpower. Being an African American with cross-cultural interests, I often found myself unable to find acceptance into any particular subset of my peers. It was a difficult time for me. Without a male role model to look up to as the ideal standard, finding who I was in a world where people only told me what I couldn't be was the biggest challenge I had ever faced. It was during this point in my life that I learned how to thrive with an indomitable will. My mom worked hard to ensure I went to a school where I could embrace the subjects I cared the most about, Computers, Robotics, and Aviation. Despite the hardships of finding people who were into the same things I were, I was able to connect to many long-time friends online and share idea and dreams. There were countless opportunities to drift into a life of drug dealing. Many of my classmates were arrested for selling drugs or weapons and they would always flash the money and clothes at school. I admit, there were times I'd wonder if I was heading in the right direction, I wanted to be successful. In the community I was raised in, success was measured by wealth and not by integrity. Because of this, I was tempted by the notion of solving my family's financial problems by just breaking a few rules. However, despite not having a father in my life, I had the best teachers and mentors who swayed me with logic, reason, and compassion. During days I was depressed, bullied, or hungry, focusing on my ultimate destination kept me from veering too far off course because I was concerned about a very different type of hunger. The willpower and dedication of my peers and my mother transferred over to me. It was that positive influence that helped me remain resolute and not be pulled into violence and criminality. There were days when I didn't see the way out and my vision was fogged to a point that I only saw one way out of my situation. It was those days I would just stop in place to remember who I was. One attribute I believe I could lean into more is being bold enough to take calculated risks. Living on the edge of poverty for the majority of my life, any level of risk was considered foolishness that could threaten the well-being of the family. My mom would often scold me for taking reasonable risks in an effort to ensure I wouldn't do something that I would later regret. However, I felt like this attitude was superimposed on me as a kid. There were some opportunities that I let pass me back due to them being too risky, but looking back, many of those opportunities could have been seized as calculated risks. Nowadays I look at people who are successful and they all have something in common, they took a risk. It's one thing to take a risk without any sort of planning or foresight, it's another thing to be selective about the level of risk tolerance. With my mom taking care of the home and bills, in hindsight, there was no real risk in taking on certain internships or programs that I initially assumed would be detrimental to us financially. Now that I see where I can improve in this avenue, I'm set to move full force ahead and revamp my career plan to include the calculated risk that would yield healthy rewards for me and my family. One of the biggest calculated risks I want to achieve in the next five years is homeownership. I want to be able to purchase a home where I could safely raise a family in an environment better than I was raised. Although the economic situation is still fairly tumultuous in the United States, there is always room for homeownership. Although the population may rise, there will never be new land available. This will be my first large-scale purchase but I don't intend to stop there. My second calculated risk would be creating an estate and by that, I mean investing in the free market to grow wealth for future generations to come. My last calculated risk would be marriage and raising a family. Although this is the third calculated risk on my list, it is the most important because what is wealth and health without being able to pass it on. However in order to build a legacy I have to take the risk and continue to thrive with an indomitable will

My favorite is Disney Character is Jim Hawkins from Treasure Planet. Like me, Jim comes from a single mother home with not that many prospects. But he's curious and seeks to help people. The treasure he yearns for is similar to any dream sought after at a young age. Although his mom doesn't see his vision like he does, she supports him anyway in his adventure. I received the same kind of selfless support from my mom when I began pursuing my dream. And like Jim, several life circumstances pushed me into a situation where there wasn't any viable option but to pursue my dreams. Like Jim, I did have some positive male influences in my life, for example Dr. Doppler. In Treasure Planet he not only showed faith in Jim's vision but helped fund it and even personally joined Jim on his journey to find this "Loot of a Thousand Words." As much as I draw similarities between me and Jim Hawkins, I also note the wanring examples - to avoid traits like selfishness or wrecklessness. The movie gave me a swarm of emotions from fear and uncertainly to love and determination. Jim went from being another trouble maker, to the hero of his town and a respected member of society and the armed forces. From his experienced he learned skills like sailing, being a captain, cooking, negotiation, navigation, problem solving, and came back home a changed man. He earned the respect of his mom and was even able to thank her for her support in the form of a new restaurant and home. The things that Jim was able to accomplish directly reflects how I want my own journey to impact me and those around me. Like Jim I want to be able to leave the word in a better place than how I entered it. And it's for these reasons why till this day I can honestly say Jim Hawkins remains my favorite Disney Character.

I'm interested in studying the area of Information Technology. There exists a wealth of systems and I believe harnesing them appropriately will allow for us to improve the way we communicate and the way we collaborate with eachother. The act of generating, interpreting, storing and transmitting data is as old as mankind itself, however, the technologies we use to achieve this is advancing on a scale unheard of. These large Information Systems are only a facet of Information Technology. With any complex system, there exists inherent flaws, vulnerabilities an hazards that could cripple a system and affect the data that syatem users depend on to achieve a goal. The majority of Information in our society, rely on the security of thier Information Technology. Without security, organizations that depend on these instruments would be harmed as well as the people who need these organizations. Institutions like Banks, Hospitals, Stock Exchanges, and even the Electric Grid all depend on cyber-security professionals to ensure the security of these systems. As long as there is Information of value, there will always exist bad actors who seek to steal or damage Information systems. With this in mind, it's fair to say that our priority as a society should not be to punish criminals after the damage has been done but position ourselves to prevent cyber attacks before they even happen with predictive analysis and threat monitoring technology. Also, we do well to harden our systems in response to these attacks and do so at a rapid scale. It well known that vulnerabilities and threats emerge faster than we as humans are able to patch them. What do we typically do as a society when faced with a task that is unable to met at a satisfactory pace? We find ways to automate it. What better way to automate threat protection than to utilize Artificial Intelligence. AI has taken a large burden from our everyday lives and uses machine learning capabilities to become smarter and more intuitive. When applied to matters of Information Security, this allows us to narrow down threat sectors and payload and deny access to data that count be harmful based on the structure of that data packet. And AI doesn't rely on signature based protection which is dwarfed by Zero-Day Threats, but makes decisions based on logic. The US is slammed with thousands of cyber attacks on a daily basis and there are just not enough qualified IT professionals to combat this. It's a problem that allows for many of these attacks to unforturnately prove successful. However, I plan to aquire a role in Cyber Forensics that would position me in an area where I could further develop and pioneer this technology. The act of lowering the risk of occurrence is less expensive than cleaning up in the aftermath of an attack. Implementing smarter tools to manage Information security will not only lessen the burden on the IT industry but also improve the way we communicate and the way we collaborate with eachother.

Even though I'm young, there have been many different hardships in my life. However, I don't dwell on those hardships. Instead I focus on the things I did to overcome them because out of the most difficult times comes advice I can give to those facing similar difficulties and the motivation to move forward past them. The first major hardship I encountered is the absence of my father in my life and how that affected my ability to find friends. For many years, it made me feel alone in the world; in a community and classroom where the majority of my pears had a father figure to look up to. I'd often find myself getting depressed and wondering if the situation was somehow my fault. When my mom noticed these feelings she worked with me to overcome them. I took the opportunity to seek out other kids who's fathers were absent from the household and it afforded me a support system. Even though there were no positive role models in my family, I looked towards those of my community and church. I realized that I decide for myself who I take on as a mentor, and that sometimes it might not be a parent. Opening my mind in this way allowed me to develop social skills that I wouldn't have if I had stayed inside my shell and sunk into the resentment of not having a father around me. My second major hardship was my lackluster success in school and my relationships with my academic advisorsand teachers. During my elementary years, there were times I came close to almost repeating a yesr becuase of how far my grades lagged behind my classmates. Oftentimes, this was due to the economic situation at home weighing on my mind, crowding the space I needed to utilize for academic excellence. The stress and worry at a young age affected my sleep and attendance and due to missed days or being absent minded I often would miss important lessons and points in class. Using recognizing this for myself and making the descision to improve. I worked along with my teachers to create a written plan that I could stick to. I would meet with my math and science eacher once a week at the end of the school day and spend the day studying, answering questions I may have missed and setting attainable SMART goals for the following week. Setting a disciplined plan for myself and surrounding myself woth peers and teachers who held me accountable for sticking with that plan helped me to become more proficient and disciplined in not only matters of schooling but other dilemmas like dieting. The final hardship I should mention, is that of getting into college. There was no guidebook or advice my mother could give me since she had not graduated from a traditional university and didn't see the need in obtaining a degree. Although she would later go on to support my educational journey, at the beginning I had to leap into the world of higher education with nothing but YouTube videos and the experiences of my peers to reference. Although it was a rough first year, I was able to join organizations and network with my peers to gain an understanding of what's expected of me at my university, how to make the best of my experience as well as some of the pitfalls to avoid. Being able to overcome this hardship has been the most rewarding because now I not only have hundreds of new friends but career opportunities.

The biggest goal is to be a home owner. Since my Grandfather, no other member of my family has has experienced the provide and pleasure that comes with owning a piece of the country they live in. Not only is owning a home something that would help me live a long and fulfilling life but I could also pass it down to future generations as a legacy.

It's important that we focus our consorted efforts on understanding the nature of our universe because the more we understand about it, the more we understand about ourselves and the delimas we encounter on a day to day basis. Many people think of our universe as being a wide expanse of unexplained and theorized phenaomena. What if the answers to alot of our current socio-economic or technological problems could be solved with understanding how our universe came to be and how it operates. Instead of thinking about our universe as an expanse of the unexplained, we stand to gain more by viewing it a database. The same way the Wright Brothers studied birds in nature when developing the first airplanes to solve the problem of efficient travel, we could observe things like the patterns in our solar system when facing mechanical problems. Animals in nature and insets were used as a model in similar ways when implementing aero-dynamics in cars and the list goes on. There are countless examples of humans using nature as a basis of technological advancement. But the lesser known benefits are the societal barriers we can solve with that same framework. Can understanding how ants work together help us understand how teams within a workforce can accomplish a task in the most effective manner? The universe is as chaotic as it is organized. In government, when we compar Democratic and Socialist models, Capitalism with Communism, we've grown to accept that comeplete uniformity doesn't nessesarily mean an ideal system. We've learn that, some chaos and conflict and competition is healthy for a system to continue to evolve and grow. By breaking down the why (goal) and how (method) of various systems within our universe, we can extract sub-systems our own. What better system to use as a model than out universe, it is the older and most reliable system we have to date. Of course, as with any system there is a guideline to follow when extracting data from such a system as well as what steps to follow to convert that data in usable information for people or even machines. Just like crystals or DNA contain the ability to hold information, are there other objects of information out there we can tap into? It's these types of questions I seek to find the answers to. As ironic as it sounds, one of the biggest mysteries in our universe is the human mind. Although being apart of us, there is so much about it that we still do not know. The human mind is one of the most powerful computers known to us despite the decade of research and development and billions poured into the field or engineering. By entering into a Information Technology field with a future leaning towards the Helth Informatics realm, I seek to establish meaning from the systems within the human brain. The way the brain works is with electric signals, these signals are essentially mathematic equations, with each signal, the brain finds a more efficient way to solve a set of problems. If we can clock these signals, we might be able to solve longstanding computer science problems of our own. My goal is to solve the biggest of these problems, the P Vs NP theoretical computer science problem. Solving this problem will allow computers to surpass thier current processing limitations and open a new door to quantum computing. I believe capturing and reverse engineering the subsystems of the mind are the key to this. It was a Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung who once said “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”. In the spirit of those words, we do well to listen not to our own answers but those that lay around us, waiting to be found. I believe that the universe hold a plethora of these answer. We just need to know where to look for them.

Generational wealth requires a great sense of selflessness, self-control and responsibility. Although the idea of building generational wealth is ideal ideal makes makes sense to most, in practice, many poeple in my community don't make the investment. My grandfather, a business owner and a board member to large land developers made 9 Million in his lifetime and owned 3 different estates, however, the future beyond his lifetime was never considered when investing. Sometimes I imagine how different my life and that of my mother's would be if just 20 percent of that wealth had changes hands to the next generation. To me, passing along or receiving generational wealth can be the difference between affording college and not affording it, between being in debt early in life or building a savings for a family. Generation wealth offers the security one would require to invest in the development of talents and skills early in life and the economic stability to launch your own career or even start a business without having to generate debt first. Many people assume that generational wealth is difficult to build, many assume that you have to be rich in order to accomplish this feat, but this is far from the truth. A simple investment today may be worth just a cup of coffee but could be enough to purchase a home 60 years down the road. I want to be someone my decendants can look back to and be thankful for. What is a well-lived life if those after you can't have that same enjoyment. It is that foresight that ensures that your kids don't have to fight the same barriers you did. Generation habits can be either healthy or unhealthy, being able to pass down wealth is the healthiest habit you can exemplify for others after you. I plan to achieve a pattern of generational wealth beginning with myself. Although I had to start from the bottom economically, I would not want the same for my children and thier children because that cycle brings no real progress in the grand scheme of things. There will always be some sort of limit or barriers imposed to what's achievable if there is nothing carrying over to the next generation. The steps to achieve this are simple and involve 3 overarching goals: 1.) Creating a Savings 2.) Creating investments and 3.) Contributing to Life insurance and property. A reputable savings account will allow me to create a foundation upon which I can combat emergency situations and utilize its funds as an instrument to build credit and invest. Investments will this put me in a position to generate passive income, and as a byproduct, offer the potential to create estates from market growth. Finally, Life Insureance and property make low-risk t / high-reward instruments of passing down wealth. Through a Life Insurance policy, my family won't be unnecessary burdened or setback financially upon my passing and may even receive the economic boost the needs to accomplish big goals like attending college or paying off a mortgage. Passing down property will allow my children to avoid having to rush into a field or situation due to economic pressure. They would also avoid having 20-50 percent of thier starter incomes swallowed by rent allowing them to be in a position to invest and plan early. By working towards these 3 goals I will have the highest chance of stopping the cycle of poverty and begin a new upward path of financial progression by setting the example for those who follow.

My mom, someone I often called my rock, has supported me the most in reaching my educational goals. As a kid, I had no solid educational plan, there was no father present to show me the skills I needed as a man exploring careers, and no college savings fund. The only person I had striving for me during those years was my mom. Even though I didn't have a solid platform planning wise, I did have a vision. My vision was to work in STEM, specifically, something that helped others. Watching my mom's self sacrificing spirit moved me to want to give of myself. One thing that is inherit with developing technologies, are methods and processes that are designed to solve problems. However, to reach that point, I had to overcome some large problems of my own. Without my mother around and her self-sacrificing spirit, this would not have been possible. There were times when my mom would sell items around the home to ensure she had the gas money to take me to a college prep school that was outside of the bus route. She would often work long hours to make sure I could participate in clubs like Robotics and Math Count so I would have the extracurricular exposure to STEM prior to pursuing it. I believe it was this investment of herself that gave me the headstart I needed to pursue Information Technology. There were days she'd come home after a 12 hour shift and fight sleep to ensure I got my Homework done and studied. It wasn't until I made it to high-school, when I became cognizant of how uncommon it was in my community for kids like me to receive the headstart that I did. One of the reason why I work as hard as I do today while going to school is because of my mom's exemplary work ethic. She kept me focus and didn't throw toys and distractions at me which kept me from procrastinating. It's that sharpened focus that has got me through most of my college coursework. One thing that I can say ai appreciate the most about her is that she never forced me to take any specific path but wanted me to follow my talents and vision. I remember fondly the months after the covid lockdowns when I was without a job. My mom was the only one who saw it was still worthwhile for me to chase after a Bachelors Degree and would call everyday just to encourage me. Even though I couldn't give back to her like I may have hoped, she supported me without expecting anything back in return. I made it this far with her support, and I have no doubt she'll continue to be my advocate until I've made it to the end of my educational journey.