As a resident of Texas, I would often look around me and see people who were so beaten down and burdened by the suffocating political hegemony of the Republican Party. There is not an inherent problem with this being the dominant party despite my personal opinions; however, it did open my eyes to many valid complaints that those around me had regardless of their political orientation. There is a severe lack of supportive welfare programs for the working class in Texas, despite the fact that we are a crucial component of the United States economy. Coming to terms with this shortcoming, not to mention its enduring importance and historical resistance to being amended, I realized that I would have to make a change on my own without simply hoping or advocating for one. Thus, I eventually found the program I truly wanted to pursue within the field of political science: Ethics and Public Policy. At the University of Iowa, the university I will be attending, Ethics and Public Policy is a multidisciplinary program that includes elements from political science, philosophy, sociology, and economics. Prior to my decision, I was deliberating on majoring in political science or economics. When I discovered that there was a degree that incorporated both as major contributing factors, I was immediately sold. To be exact, the problems I have with the public sector of Texas and local government are the lack of financial support for those who are suffering under the weight of neoliberal economics and the precedent for the lack of regard for human life that the Reaganite "trickle-down" theory established that is maintained even today, falling in line with the dialectical materialist theory of the economic base vs. superstructure. The issue with Texas today is the susceptibility of its citizens to fall into the fatal pit of identity politics without actually perceiving the economic conditions that create division and make Democrats and Republicans (both falling within the current non-progressive Overton window of American politics) battle on the field of social policy, and this fact is the nutrient that feeds the wicked tree I intend to help uproot. By attending the University of Iowa and pursuing this degree, I have internship opportunities provided to me through the Iowan state government that give me hands-on experience in public government. It is true to say that I have very high aspirations, and yet the issue within our current political system is that we have no such visions for a fundamentally different world. Aided by the money that I would receive from this scholarship, I intend to pursue as many academic opportunities as possible, having the financial burden that I will assume lessened so that I can pursue these opportunities without concern for my well-being. I am looking forward to pursuing this degree and changing the system we operate within.

In 10th grade, I was trudging through one of the most aimless periods of my life. I was losing my passion for playing sports, and I was formally diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Additionally, that year was particularly slow as far as academics went. However, there was one major redeeming aspect that proved to be crucial to my development and endures even today: my English teacher, Mr. Pennington. Mr. Pennington was the epitome of a personable teacher to me. We liked the same music and liked the same movies, and I found that he was the first teacher that I felt was truly invested in my interests. We had an assignment where you had to design a tattoo. I have never entertained or even considered the idea of getting a tattoo, so I decided to keep it simple with "Stop Making Sense," an allusion to Talking Heads' song "Girlfriend is Better" and the name of their famous concert film. Upon seeing this, Mr. Pennington immediately struck up a conversation with me about my fandom, and that was when I knew that Mr. Pennington would be my favorite teacher that year. Even more, it would come to be that he would be one of the most personally influential teachers that I ever had. Throughout the course of the year, I realized that Mr. Pennington was something of a model for who I wanted to be. He loved his family, often showed us pictures of his wife, and was always somewhere doing something interesting or meeting somebody inexplicably. Something that often comes to mind when I think of him is when he randomly revealed to me and my best friend Aziz (another person deeply affected by him) that he had met Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips at the Smithsonian. He was almost like a cartoon character, and for a teacher, that inspired me. He was random, energetic, and did an insanely good impression of Barack Obama and Morrissey. He had great taste in the arts but also accommodated everybody and their interests. That was who I wanted to be. Energetic, unapologetically myself, but still catering to everybody's needs and aiding their development. That is when I realized that he was also inspiring something else in me; I wanted to become a teacher. Mr. Pennington's joviality and consideration were the model of what an educator should be. I realized that as the year passed, I watched how he interacted with my classmates and brought the best out of all of us, including me, of course. He was dedicated to the notion of improving the skills of the next generation, and I always found that was something I wanted to do when I was older, too. My new idea was to become a teacher. This dream of becoming a teacher has evolved slightly as I have too. I became more engaged in politics and history and wanted to dedicate myself to academia. I decided to pursue a doctorate as a feasible goal when I was older and become a professor, a professor like Mr. Pennington, but in a slightly loftier position, naturally. I realized you COULD be fun and a good educator at the same time, and you didn't have to compromise your own passions for the sake of it. This realization permeates all of my decisions now: where I will go to college, where I want to get my degree from, my volunteering, my tutoring, etc., and I have Mr. Pennington to thank for it.

As an LGBTQ+ writer in the American South, my family has been oppressive and inhospitable for me to explore my identity for as long as I can remember. Naturally, this is a kept secret; however, with the autonomy that comes with growing older, I found that my writing was an outlet to explore ideas and make criticisms of this culture of ignorance that has surrounded me my entire life. One of my first projects was a short novel called Sifted in the Heartland that was influenced by two major factors: the music of Townes Van Zandt and the environment I grew up in. Exploring themes of clandestine homosexuality in mid-20th-century Texas, I found that I was not simply writing a story but designing characters that I saw myself in and that I wanted to depict as strong, complex, and flawed; not for their identity, but for their actions that come as a consequence of the environment that they occupy and how this contradiction informs their thoughts. This was my first realization that writing was more than a matter of creation for me but also exploration. I was never able to disclose my identity to my family and felt constantly misunderstood and isolated to some degree, like I could never be authentic. I realized that the main character is a reflection of this, but with a cause for change and a history that brings nuance to his character. He discloses some secrets and pursues external ones but, likewise, hides many. I didn't simply want to create a story about this strong, perfect, uncompromising character that was notable simply for the fact that he had this unique identity and was successful despite it. He is far from it. He is like me; afraid, unaware, and entirely susceptible to mistakes that seem to "define" many of us. The important distinction is that this is part of him. His identity and his mistakes are not separate, and neither are mine. They all formulate and sharpen the contradictions within one another that result in genuine progress informed by the unique characteristics of all of us. This is what made me decide to resort to introspection and move to writing other content, such as memoirs and philosophical and political treatises. I realized that I am not only writing for other people but also for myself and that I want a young reader who feels entirely lost, whether they are in the same circumstances that I was in or feel isolated in general, to know that there are people out there who understand them and have lived it and that they can succeed despite it. I wish I had writers that I could relate to sooner in my life, such as Gore Vidal, Edmund White, etc., and I want to be that writer for the next generation.