I love and enjoy my hometown of Tallahassee, Florida. Even though majority of my community service was not in Tallahassee, I still love and appreciate my hometown. Not too far from Tallahassee is a town named Milton, Florida. I’ve been visiting Milton all of my life and still continue to visit Milton as I have family that reside there. Visiting my family, we attend a church name Isiah Chapel AME. Zion Church, that my family has been visiting since the church was first established. Visiting the church, I always contribute to the church as my family always been members of the establishment as we host food drives, charities, services, and shelter to those less fortunate. Over the years of visiting and doing service for the church, I have developed a relationship with the community as I meet others within the community with different backgrounds. One person I met is an older war veteran, who visit the church every so often and help sometimes with events. Meeting him was a blessing as he taught me things about life like communication and leadership skills, and he told me one time “That my confidence gives him hope for our future”. That comment really showed me that my impact is being made on this community. Also, seeing the joy and smile on people faces as they enjoy the events or service of the church shows that this church is full of love and support. Outside of the church, me and my family helps at the local community center as we host life lesson classes, meetings, toy drives, etc. We help clean the community center every month, so that everyone can enjoy a clean environment to hang out. I feel that my kindness and love made a positive impact on the community because Milton is a unheard community that doesn’t get a lot of funding, so I do my best give love to the less fortunate and give back to those within that community. I have had people in the community say that I made their day by showing up for their events and they love when I help with their event. It is a small town, so to hear it from the locals that I am making a positive impact on their community. Making a positive impact on their community, I’ve received an award from my church in Milton named Leadership and Kindness award signed by the pastor and one of the local council members of the city council.

Christianity has been in me since the day I was born. “Praise the lord” ,”Give god glory”, “One nation under god” are things you hear daily as a Christian in American. As a young black male that grew up in the south, Christian beliefs has played a huge role in my family growing up. Living the word of god through school and going to church every Sunday played a crucial role into who I am today as an African American Christian male. Many days I give up on trying and I decide to give the struggle to god or others, but a quote I remember is “God gives his strongest warriors, the toughest battles”. As of last year in 2023, I had two family members (Aunt and Uncle) pass away within 6 weeks of each other during my senior year of high school. My Uncle first passed away in September, then my Aunt passed away in October. It was a tough time for me as I struggled to get my thoughts together. I decided that I needed to talk to Jesus and ask him what do I do and how do I overcome this obstacle. That is when I had a conversation with Jesus and decided to put Jesus first and let him guide me through this difficult time. On the other hand, I had two project that i needed to complete before the end of the nine weeks and I have missed most of the important work for the project. Knowing me, I decided to push myself to catch back up to them, so they do not think that I am slowing them down. I stayed up late nights getting research information for my projects, including helping them with their papers. Doing two projects is not for the weak, but I managed to do it and get a successful grade on it. Within these 3 months, I put myself third because that is my character and who I am to make sure that I am not upsetting no one to the point that I feel that I am failing them. This impact affected me like a hole is in my body. It was a difficult impact to overcome as I didn’t know what to do as I cried, didn’t eat for some nights, and became sad for weeks. However, With family, friends, and Jesus, I overcome this obstacle and got back on the right track to graduate high school with a diploma. I plan on living with Christian principles as I help others, support, talk, and spread positivity throughout the community. I plan to attend church every Sunday to learn new teachings and go back home to spread the teachings to family and friends. Also, I plan to give other opportunities to see Jesus and let them guide them to a better place in life and recommend them to talk to someone that could trust or give them my phone number to contact me.

How many characters does a person have within themselves? You can have a nice joyful side of you, then switch around and you are upset angry the next minute. Instead, you can be a one character person keeping the same energy with everyone you communicate with. Me personally, I would have to go with the second one since I’m a gentle spirit when it comes to everyone. You can ask anybody in Tallahassee, Milton, Houston, and Quincy about my character and you’ll get the same response. I treat everyone with respect and dignity because what goes around comes around. I’ve always been positive about many things because life is too short to be selfish and disgusting with everything, including everyone not being in the position that I am in. I’ve always stay with that mindset because keeping that mindset can destroy your character and you can lose all of your success within seconds. Having a strong, positive, and supportive character I hope my character inspire others to become positive and do not let anything destroy your confidence to become successful. I believe my character inspire others to do the right things instead of taking the wrong route, having your own mindset, be determined and independent , stay positive in any situation, be humble, be patient, stay loyal to yourself, etc. My main trait about my character that I believe that inspire others is my smile. Nowadays, People do not smile or be happy like they used too and I believe with my smile that their confidence boosts up to say “ I want to smile like him”. Everyone says my smile lights up the room because my smile isn’t a regular smile, it is confident, strong, intelligent, naive, positive, kind, amazing smile. They’re a lot of things I can say about my character that truly inspire others, which this essay would never end, but I would like to say that this is a one in a lifetime character. The Career I have chosen is Architecture. The reason I chose Architecture is because I genuinely enjoy creating and designing infrastructure since I was a kid. Beginning at the age of 6, I always enjoyed playing with legos as I had a table full of buildings, cars, and people. To be exact, I had two table full of multiple sets of legos as I spent hours playing and building legos. Majority of my toys were legos and I didn’t really play with any other toys besides legos. Some legos that I created were the Michigan Wolverines football stadium, Empire State Building, and NASCAR pit stop kit. I was really creative as a kid and til this day, I am taking my creativity to Prairie View A&M University for Architecture. I’ve always dreamed of becoming an Architect, so I can create eye catching infrastructure. My first plan is to create a new office building in my hometown of Tallahassee, Florida in downtown because our downtown isn’t good to look at. Second, I plan to design better housing on the south side of Tallahassee, so the residents are paying for New York City housing. Another plan I have, Is to add more affordable apartments in Houston and Pensacola. For both cities, I will design decent size apartments for families to stay in. They’re tons of plans I want to accomplish after college, but you’ll see the results in the future.

Contributing to Society is like adding ingredients to a meal. We all have to contribute to something whether is it good or bad. Contributing to society is important to me because you can leave a mark in the world while getting to know others, doing good deeds, and promoting positivity. Especially in not so great areas, it is important to recognize others and help them out to know that they are important. With that being said, I have done community service with local communities in my home state of Florida. I have done a food drive at a church I visit frequently in Milton, Florida and helped at Jack McClain Park with cleaning and surveillance. Contributing to the community feels amazing knowing that you are helping others with their situation or helping them get on the right path to success. As I am becoming successful, these services will contribute to my resume as I apply for universities, jobs, and scholarships that will look at these services as a good deed that I am doing for my community and will help me move up the ladder in the future, so I can continue to give back to my community and others. On the other hand, contributing to society does not mean you only have to help others, but instead help family. Family is what life is about and it is valuable that you contribute your ideas and passion into your family. On my dad side of the family, we contribute love, ideas, money, and time to one another because we are a tight-knit community. As apart of the family, we actively help our elders in the family to ensure their safety, help our family business in real estate, Clean our local community Center, and throw annual gatherings to show support to one another. I will always contribute my life towards my family NO MATTER WHAT! Even after college, I will be involved in the community. In the future, I plan to leave in Phoenix, so I will be actively helping out in the community center by food drives, scholarships, lecture talk, and training. I will advocate for affordable housing and rehab centers in the local community as Phoenix is struggling with affordable housing and overdoses. I am going to be the people voice of the people who are not heard in the city of Phoenix. Also, I’ll help keep teens and kids out of the street life and focus them on what is important in life, which is family and faith.

In 2022, as a sophomore at James S. Rickards High School, I’ve decided that I wanted to do something different for myself and try out for baseball. I wasn’t the best player on the team, but I went out there and gave it my all every single day. Playing baseball has taught me a few things like teamwork, commitment, communication, patience, etc. Nonetheless, Baseball has helped me shaped my future career goals as a passionate up and coming Architect. You may question, what does baseball and architecture have to do with being similar to one another? A few things I learned was both required working with others to get a task done, long hours of commitment and dedication, creativity, and great money. Anyways, baseball paved a way towards my goals because if it was not for baseball, I probably would not be dedicated to my goals as I’m right now. Back in 2022, I was not the most dedicated or hard working student I never thought I could have become. Going to sleep after school, being on my phone all day, playing my game with friends, and never putting a lot of effort into school. I never had no motivation for school until I started playing baseball in early 2022, as I had to juggle school work and baseball conditioning. Being a student athlete, I realized I have to uphold myself to a high standard and complete all or my work, so I can continue to play the sport I was destined to try. It was not an easy task, as I had to change my schedule up to be more productive and innovative as an student athlete. Being an Student athlete really helped me with my future career goals as I have been accepted to Prairie View A&M as an undergraduate, majoring in Architecture. My future career goals is to either become a baseball player or Architect. One of my goals is to become financially stable to support others close to me. Another goal that I have set for myself is to start playing sports again in college to redeem myself and stay healthy through my college Journey. I have tons of future career goals that I have set for myself, and I have came to the conclusion that if I would’ve never became an student athlete while playing baseball, would I be in the position I’m in now? Hopefully, this essay gives sight to me being a student athlete and the challenges I overcame to be where I am at now.

My education and career goals are no different from any other successful students writing this essay, but I am passionate about my goals. My education goal is to acquire as much information about our nation’s economy, business, architecture, and have intellectual conversations with other well-mined people. I want to have enough education to teach others and give them information on things that will help the succeed in life or help spread the information to others. Education has always been important to me because majority of my family did not receive post-secondary education, and my duty always have been to break the family curse. I received A’s and B’s throughout my academic journey as a kid and hopefully will continue to this streak into college. Education has taught me life skills and valuable lessons that I will continue to use in college like being organized, ask for help, communicate, help others that need help, keep striving for greatness, and many more skill I’ve learned for education and the successful teachers that teach it. My career goal is to become a successful Architect and be apart of a successful company surrounded by other Architect, including business professionals. I want to design huge projects in my hometown of Tallahassee, Florida to change the infrastructure industry in a city that does not have many beautiful and creative infrastructures. One of my design is an office building in Downtown Tallahassee to have a new look in our city skyline, including entertainment centers, housing, stores, etc. It is really important that I leave a mark in the Architecture industry because there is no unique, creative, and innovative design in smaller cities that I have visited or lived in. I’ve have been accepted to Prairie View A&M as a freshman majoring in Architecture, as I begin my goal journey of becoming an Architect. This scholarship will help me reach these goals by giving me an easy path towards these goals as I am entering my first year of college as a freshman. Coming from a family that doesn’t live in wealth, has been a challenge, but we manage to make ends meet when necessary. A scholarship like this can help me financially with books, resources, lunch, etc. As of recently, I have been managing my money well as I have been spending my money on needs instead of wants. I really hope, I receive this scholarship and the values that come with it, so I can get through college easily with money in my pockets to buy essential items required for school.