Everyone suffered during the social distancing of COVID-19, and many look back on those years with feelings of regret and remorse. I too suffered during what was supposed to be just a two-week break. In February of 2021, I was getting ready for my monthly trip to see my father when he went into the hospital for chest pains. They performed surgery on him that same night tearing him open, which allowed them to operate on his heart successfully, and everything seemed fine. However, during the procedure, the stress on his body had been too much, and he had a seizure. Little more than twenty days passed before I got the phone call that my father was dead. My father passed away unexpectedly at just fifty-one due to a heart condition no one knew about. I was fourteen at the time, just getting into the spring semester of my freshman year. How does one prepare for losing a parent? My mom was my comfort, and eventually, we had his funeral. I hated the world, and how everyone could go on functioning. I was fourteen years old, and my father had just passed away, in the most isolated moments of my life. COVID-19 made it so I couldn’t even see him in his last moments. I didn’t know how I could go on functioning in life, how does someone go on when life challenges them like this? Once we got back, I realized life will throw people unexpected scenarios, and it's up to them how to handle it. The challenge I was given was losing a parent. No matter what I do I will never see my father again. I will never hear my father again. Never again. Now, I am going into college at the University of Nevada Reno pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering as well as a minor in aerospace engineering. Before my dad died, I wanted to grow up to work on rockets and revolutionize the way we explore space. All throughout my childhood, I loved designing and creating crafts, and I often entertained new inventions I wanted to introduce to the world. I took three years of engineering and completed the CTE pathway at my high school, finally understanding what I really wanted to do with my life. I am fascinated with just the brief glimpses into the engineering and physics I was shown, and I plan to learn and expand those horizons of our understanding. Three years later that is still my mission. I did not give up, no matter how hard it was I knew my dad loved me and he did everything he could for me. He’s up there in heaven, watching over me, and it is my job to do him proud. I need money to achieve my mission and my dream, and this is why I am applying for this scholarship. I will not give up on my goals, and even with the difficulty of having only my mom to back me financially and emotionally in college, I will succeed. NASA doesn’t quit after a setback, and neither will I.

When NASA launches a rocket and it doesn’t explode, they state “Launch successful”. When I flew the planes we made in my engineering class, try after try after try, I eventually landed it, and it was a success. These events have in common the idea that a goal was set out, that goal was accomplished, and there was more to be done afterward. My time in high school has defined my life in various ways, both with my dreams of impacting Aerospace, and the hardest moment of my life, losing my father. I had my freshman year over Zoom, and then in February, my father died at just fifty years old. It shocked us all, but I pushed through, continuing to learn and push forward in life, it's what he would have wanted. NASA is not satisfied with just one launch, and I am not done with just high school engineering courses. My courses have given me a glimpse into fluid dynamics, mechanical forces, and thermodynamics, and my mind has been expanded to think more about how rockets and planes work. A goal I possess is to attend an institution that will provide me with further knowledge of our current understanding of aerospace mechanics. While going to college, I must work because my family can’t send me fully paid. If I have a scholarship, I can focus on my passion, to change the industry. I want to enter this industry and change it, so success in my job would look like me achieving this goal, leaving a lasting and impactful trace on the aerospace industry. I believe that some way I can work with materials as well as devise different designs for how to make our rockets safer, more fuel-efficient, and faster. I am passionate about space crafts and flight, and I can help a lot of people by revolutionizing that, but I need to gain knowledge from a university to achieve this. The reason I want to impact this industry is because I like rockets. I built model rockets both as a kid and a teen, and visiting museums with them has always been a great experience seeing these machines. I want to do more for this industry because that would be the most fun and fulfilling goal in my life. But these dreams of mine rely on me having the time to achieve them, and with how expensive college is, debt is certain to dissolve my plans. This is why I write, to ask for a scholarship to help me get through college and make a larger impact on this world than I can right now.

When NASA launches a rocket and it doesn’t explode, they state “Launch successful”. When I flew the planes we made in my engineering class and landed it, after try after try, it was a success. These events have in common the idea that a goal was set out, that goal was accomplished, and there was more to be done afterward. NASA is not satisfied with just one launch, and I am not done with just high school engineering courses. A goal I possess is to attend an institution that will provide me with knowledge of our current understanding of aerospace mechanics. Should I achieve that goal, I would have been successful in college. I then would have more ahead, and therefore this is what my first success would look like. This opportunity would help me achieve this first success because of the stress it takes off of me. While going to college, I must work because my family can’t send me fully paid. If I have a scholarship, then two stresses are gone. I would no longer stress about being in debt after college and have more time to focus on my studies to learn about aerospace. From here, all my future successes would build off this scholarship helping me achieve my first success. A bigger goal I have in mind is to use the knowledge I gain to completely reinvent some parts of aerospace for the better. I want to enter this industry and change it, so success in my job would look like me achieving this goal, leaving a lasting and impactful trace on the aerospace industry. The assumption is I would have accrued some amount of wealth by revolutionizing the industry, and if I do succeed, I could carry out my biggest goal. I want to help the children and adults caught in trafficking of all kinds around the world. All humans deserve a chance at life, and these people who were denied I want to assist. The ultimate success in my life would be achieving this dream, with enough money I know it will be possible to end slavery for real. My goal in life is to help people, and I can achieve this right now at a decent enough scale. I have worked on projects to create new infrastructure for the community through Eagle Scout projects led by myself and others, which have helped people. But to make the largest impact in this world, I need money. I am passionate about space crafts and flight, and I can help a lot of people by revolutionizing that, but I need to gain knowledge from a university to achieve this. Success in my life will be achieving my goal of helping people on a large scale in industry and community alike, and then I will continue to succeed by continuing to help people till I pass. But these dreams of mine rely on me having the time to achieve them, and with how expensive college is, debt is certain to dissolve my plans. This is why I write, to ask for a scholarship to help me get through college and make a larger impact on this world than I can right now.