I was never a student who measured my success in grades or good academic standing. I loathed it for years, saw it as a means to an end. The grades helped me in the long run but there was no success or joy in doing what was expected of me by everyone. Academics were where I struggled when my passion urged me to look the other way. I struggled with math but favored creation, I had barely passed physics yet concerned myself with the people around me. The sight of anything below a C scares me, the expectation weighs on you and you start to concern yourself with the how an the why. The academics failed to make me appreciative or invested in an education and that typical means to an end. I saw that kind of success and joy in relationships, in people. There is no greater thing in life than connections and sharing your joys with those you care about. That perfect test score or flawless attendance won't ever define me even though the weight of it to others makes it feel that way. I value my connections with my friends, people who have shared similar experiences to me. Being queer, being people of color, sharing hobbies, goofing around. It made everything more fulfilling. These kind of people bring out the best in a person, in me. I love to share things with them. They make me so appreciative, much more so than a perfect A. I like to give back, I tend to do that with either my affections or gifts. I think it's a beautiful thing to know someone so well you look at a video or a song, even a toy and think "This reminds me of you." Whether it was something someone had been wanting for a while, a gift catered to hobbies, or a simple act of kindness or generosity, seeing the reaction is always worth it. I have spent years of my life miserable and bitter, the stress of school and expectations was killing me. I was always being told what I have to do, what I should be doing. Go to school, go do this, go do that. It never made me feel seen, when I wanted to be called a different name, the people who should have cared would not see me as more than Jessica when I am not her. I took it as my aspiration for what not to do. Everyone is deserving of basic respect and their identities and wants being seen. Being in what felt like a two-way mirror made me want to see others, other people, other experiences. I strive for success not from academics, but from experiences. There is something new to learn from everyone, people deserve to live and be happy for it. I am here because I have found joy where I thought there was none. I am here because I want to follow my passions and share them with others. I am here because I want to see new people and places. I want to graduate, I want to write a book, I want to learn languages, move to another country, live my life the way I imagine. It's a hard thing to do when academics seem to follow you wherever you go yet my happiness is the driving force. I strive to do things for myself and for the people around me who deserve as much of the world's pleasures as I do, when I have the means I like to share what I can with others. The holiday season is here and I'm still budgeting and planning gifts for the most important people in my life. These people push me forward, I know they'll be happy for me once my success-at least in my eyes-is obtained. I like to sing, I enjoy art, I love writing stories and want to write for years to come, I want to move and share my new home with others, I don't want to have to worry. That's what success means to me and the most important part is having people to share it with. For my photo below, I am not someone who enjoys pictures so I do not have many. So I thought I would share a photo with one of my personal favorite books, The Persian Boy by Mary Renault, as I love to read as much as I love to write.

Coming from a low-income household has made me very aware of the value of money. My mother did not work and we lived in a one bedroom apartment in New York City until my mother divorced my father when I was eight years old. She did little things like Instacart on the side of pursuing her own college education throughout my middle school years. I had to go through school knowing I had to make it count because money for college was not on the table. There was no college fund started when I was small, no extra money put aside for higher education so I had to work hard. Because I had to earn that right and that money through financial aid and scholarships. I have a complicated experience of being low income and a person of color from a Latin American background as well as LGBTQ+. Knowing that experience, living this way, I want to represent and to support others in similar positions. I do this with my writing, I make many of my characters queer and Latin American; I enjoy writing about struggles that may be overlooked. Little things here and there that overlap and are so very real for many people in our lives. I study creative writing, I study it to keep doing what I love to do. I want to keep writing for myself, for others, for people like me who cannot see themselves in stories that do not always have us in mind. I want to make stories for us that normalize being this way and it starts with a degree that I can put to use and an education where I learn more than just how to write. I put in the work, the time, I plan to succeed in it.

We are all queer yet the word has different meanings for different people. When I say I am queer, I mean that I am a man who seems to exist in a world that wishes I did not. Discovering myself took years, I had to let go of a lot of ignorance bred from a mother who believed a child was too young to know that there were other people in the world who lived differently than she did. I learned I was not confined to the gender stereotypes and traditions thrust upon me since birth by parents who could not see past what is between my legs. I wished to explore when I learned there was more yet it was shut down. As most children do after, I did so in secret. I want to be a voice for queer storytelling and thus I pursued creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University after a year at Bloomfield. I stay living at school and I pursue a degree because those little glorified papers are a pick me up in the professional world that I could really use. Higher education is a need not a want. I go to school and I live having to know that people in the world, in this country, hate me for just existing, that they'd rather see me as a woman. I have to live knowing my mother will never call me another name because the name she gave her little girl was cherished and given to a girl instead of me. My voice is shut down in lieu of transgender women who seem to struggle more when we all have the struggle of being queer in a place where heteronormativity and religion back bigotry that is used to push us down. In this, I find my escape in stories. Where I can escape the pressure of having to be Jessica the girl for others' comfort. I love to read. I have since I was a child. I read many things but even I tire of not seeing myself represented in many mainstream storybooks. There was always the damsel in distress, the little boy that went on an adventure. As I grew older and more sure of my identity, I found that to be even less so. I had to really dig in order to find books with Latin American transgender men, transgender men in general, or queer relationships. This lack of representation was disappointing but not surprising. We value books of powerful and clever women or adventurous men where usually they end up in love with the opposite sex by the end of the book if it's a romantic story. So with this, I took to writing myself. I pursue creative writing due to my love for stories. I want to be that queer voice in story telling I hardly see. I want to join the voices that advocate for people like me to exist both in fiction and in reality. Books show us a lot of things that we consider normal, the more we tell diverse stories the more people can accept that these people are a normal part of living-of the human experience. It is okay for us to exist and it starts with them being the protagonists of their own story. Receiving this scholarship would ease a financial burden bred from a father who never had much money or activeness in my life and a mother who is putting two children through college at once. It would allow me to pursue my education worry free and keep advocating for us through literature.

I saw the movie when I went home for the first time since college had started. My mother wanted to spend time with me and I agreed to watch a movie with her. I ended up enjoying it so much I have seen it at least thrice. It is like Hamilton all over again. Aside from the unforgettable story, music, and characters the messaging in the film's story only blows you away. Elphaba grew up the 'black sheep' of her family. Her mother gave birth to a green child with untamed magical power. She was raised by the bear nanny due to her father's lack of want for her upon her birth. Elphaba's birth then caused her parents to take precautions for her younger sister who was then born early and unable to walk. Elphaba then became another person to care for her younger sister. She did not have much going for her. Before she even enrolled at Shiz, she was just taking care of her younger sister the way her father expected. He told her to see her off as she was going to attend the school. That takes me to an interpretation of Elphaba's character. She never truly gets to live for herself until Shiz. Shiz was a fresh start, away from her father's low expectations for her. Despite the initial reactions to her being green, she found a friend in her roommate. Glinda was everything Elphaba was not and I think that contrasting their characters and seeing the different backgrounds they came from makes their friendship much more interesting and touching. Elphaba seems so free until the end of the movie where even Glinda tries to hold her back. Once again Elphaba is a pawn being used on someone else's chess board. When she refused it, that was where things took a turn. Defying Gravity represents that in a beautiful way - aside from the wonderful song that it is. Defying Gravity is Elphaba freeing herself from whatever holds her down. Glinda was beginning to hold her back. Her father held her back, the wizard of Oz was going to essentially be the gravity weighing her down. What they were doing was something she did not believe in. When she sings the song she is on a broomstick flying, defying gravity in the literal sense. Not only is she defying gravity literally but she is also figuratively doing that by going against everything she was told and everything that was asked of her. In doing so she becomes the wicked witch of the west though she still stood her own ground. I think that is the beauty of Wicked. The complexities of relationships, growth, expectations, and doing what you think is right in spite of it all. The soundtrack really helps to put it all into perspective as well. From her loathing with Glinda to when she fled the Emerald City, what is not to love about it?