Success for me is not about how much money I make or how big my house is. In fact, the big house just means more space to have to keep clean and worry about. The ability to do what you want as you please or go wherever you want does require a considerable amount of money. But, the difference between me and so many other people is that, whether I do all those things or not is not a gauge for my success. How happy I am in the space I occupy, is the measure I aim to ascribe to. I once told my cousin that it was not always about the person's ability to travel with you, it is about their willingness to dream with you until you can. We were discussing partners and how some people who love to travel, marry partners who will not leave their towns much less the country. I told her that it would be enough if they dreamed with me, "if we won the lotto tomorrow, we would do x/y/z go to a/b/c." It is in that dreaming, that I find success. It is something to aim and work towards. It is not just a dream because while they are thinking of the grand vacation with the lottery winnings, they are also making memories in the smaller spaces with family and friends that sustain and support their mental health and intellect. My point was not that the non-dreamer was not successful but that there may be parts of the dreamer's soul that are not fed but rather suppressed. It is always the thought that counts. I want to be able to inspire others to dream, to always be aiming for what feeds us. As an educator, the main thing I hear people saying is, "thank you for your sacrifice" as if that is going to pay my bills. For me, the measure of success is how well I served my students. At least that is what it is the year. Next year, the play is different. Next year, I hope to be in a different headspace and working position. I hope to be more secure in my career to where I can step out and travel a bit more. I plan to start grad school this year and these funds will help to pay for that new degree, in a field that connects all my interests. While I am a great educator, I am also and phenomenal writer that can support students in their process. I have coached grad and PhD students in their writing assignments in fields I know nothing of mind you, but still hesitant to put myself out there with what I know I can do. Each day, month, minute I have stepped out a bit more...shared a piece here, entered a competition there. Success would be seeing my words in print of my own merit and not someone doing me a solid or it just being posted to social media. The ability to pursue a graduate degree in something I want, that I find value in, is in part the mark of success and I want to be able to continue to do that. As an educator, I encourage students to aim for more. It is always about the money, but if money 9earned legally) gets you out of a bad situation then we need to work towards earning that money and it is through reading and a solid education. This scholarship aims to put me in a better position to guide my students. Being well-educated means I have the means to move to a new district or state and command a better salary. Be in a place where Ic a continue to teach and start my writing and instructional business on the side. I friend asked me if, "my students' success was due to me being face-to-face or how I do it?" Then, I did not have an answer...now I think it is both. But I know I can harness that through the Instructional Design program I intend to start and learn how to "bottle" me for the remote student. If I can be successful in inspiring and reaching more then I have done well. Being digital also means I can afford (financially and mentally) to travel and inspire others to be dreamers too.

I remember the year President Obama was first elected I took a US Government course. My professor, a white male, said we should all care about how the election was going to play out. Not just because it looked like we would have our first African American president but because we (majority of the class) represented every "hot button" issue being debated. No one is too young for medicare! If you had a chronic illness, no matter how well-managed, Medicare would be in your future. So there I was, a black, immigrant, female, asthmatic...a living, breathing trigger warning for the debate stage...Did I mention I was also applying for citizenship then too? Yeah, everybody wants to "talk about me". My impact on the world will always be through my words...what you heard and what you read. I am an educator at heart and a "safe space" for wandering souls. In every job I have had, I have been the "trainer" either by choice or appointment. It is a role I cannot move away from. How could I when the very act of learning leads itself wholly to the teaching of what you know. I am always willing to share what I know. So teaching, adults or children, comes naturally to me. I have finally stopped fight the calling and stepped into the classroom and my hope is to save...wrong word but really the right one...to save some of my students from the life of ignorance the exist in. The world is more than your community, more than the violence, fighting and poverty! The world is vast, with cultures and experiences unknown to most but open to all...if only you look even in just a book. Sometimes I feel like I am bragging when I talk about my experiences abroad but it is because of those experiences that I am the kind of person, type of teacher I am in the classroom. I share knowledge and skills with students and peers. When I teach, I draw on it all: what happened to me in China, the experience in Singapore, when I traveled as a child to Barbados to do a youth exchange, the years as a travel agent, even the poetry and stories I write. Everything is fodder to encourage someone else's personal growth in intellect and spirit. A friend says that I am a collector, all the friends I have made (including her) are like "stray puppies" looking for shelter, for safe spaces. Whenever I meet a potential, I have to decide if their level of "crazy" worked with mine. If it did, there were no complaints to be had about their personality or character. It simply "was". However, if they did not "mesh" with me then I would need to limit interaction. Take people for who they are, work with it or not and encourage others to do the same. My aunt says I am a beacon. Once, the relief security guard, known for two days, was anxiously waiting for me to come to work because she needed to talk to me about the issues she had with her partner. Also, whilst in China, a friend called me to talk and cry about his grandfather's passing. He still had not told his other friends who had a relationship with his grandparents. I had only met him once! By this time, granddad had been gone about three months. My impact will always be being a safe space for all who seek me out but also drive curiosity to go beyond our borders in knowledge and success, to feed our wanderlust.

My mother has or had kidney disease. She had headache that would not go away and found out she was in renal failure. Though she had been told previously that there was an infection of sorts, the doctors could not find a cause. This continued for a few more years until the day of the headache. Medications did not help to bring her pressure down, in fact she is more lucky to have not had a stroke and died then than she is to have had a transplant. Once they got her pressure under control she returned to the US and was re-hospitalized, as the renal failure issue was still a thing. She was taken to surgery to put in a a central line and a port from which she would do dialysis. For almost six years if I remember, my mother was on dialysis. We received home delivery of the solutions. I was tasked with maintaining the storage. While the hospital ensures that your supply is constant and on time, it is up to the patient to maintain that supply. Rotating old and new, disposing of unused expired solutions, maintaining emergency supplies (different from regular solutions) for if or when we lose power. She did dialysis every night. First from 6.5-7 hours each night to about 11 at its peak. Throughout the disease, she did not stop, simply adjusted. We bought a carry-on that was a hardshell to transport the dialysis machine when we traveled. Every time we went to the airport, somebody would see me straining with the 40 pound luggage and fly off about how it was too heavy for the cabin and I had too many bags anyway. You ever notice how someone never seem to LISTEN when you talk...I had that often. It was like I had to shout at them at times or open the bag so they could "put eyes on" the medical device. "Yes, it is in fact heavy! And no, not too heavy for the cabin. Also no, it is not counted as my travel piece." She did not want my kidney...Her reasoning was that "God gave me two and this unknown disease took them both. You have your whole life ahead of you. If I take your spare and something should happen, what are you going to do?" She insisted I live my life, though she secretly wished I would not go, even if it meant I was moving to the other side of the world. All through the planning process, people asked how I could leave my mom, "what is she going to do without you, how will she manage?" Her response, if she heard was always the same, "I am no invalid! She have her whole life to live and is not like I don't have people nearby should anything happen." In fact, I had already tasked a close friend and mechanic to check on her regularly. He did the solutions inventory and stock when I left. I had also tapped a high school friend who lived 10 minutes away. She too would call, "just checking on you." So off I went, to the other side of the world! And when she got thee call that stuck, my new friends and coworkers celebrated with me. Sending well wishes to a woman they did not know, that she made it through surgery and had a functioning "new to her" kidney in her gut. It has been almost eight years now and her doctors still celebrate her continued health and resilience to not be held back by what was happening.

The life of my dreams is really the life of a digital nomad. I would love to be able to work and travel for a living. Be able to pack up and go somewhere for a few weeks or even a few months and not have to worry because so long as I have internet and a power supply, my employment is still secure. When I lived in China, almost every holiday worth traveling, my friends and I left town and "did something". At the end of the year, for Spring Festival, I left the country on what, for some, would be a dream vacation. From that life, I have visited quite a few countries in Southeast Asia and visited a UNESCO world heritage site in each one. My experiences have taught me what kind of life I want...the next step is figuring out how to achieve it and still support the minds of the learners I encounter. My dream life includes the job I enjoy doing and surrounded by friends and family, close by. Not a phone call away but close...I can show up on Saturday with a Pyrex dish of something and know I'm good. When covid started, I was still in China and they had already started restricting movements within the city to limit potential exposures. People could no longer get into communities unless escorted by a resident (which was further limited to how often) or the lived there. My friend lived walking distance and I would be there often enough that the regular guards told the "extra" police that I was fine to go in without a residential escort. In fact, they issued me a temporary pass for the building as if I lived there too. That is what I mean by "good", even the strangers know you belong to, with someone. My dreams has me living near water in a warm environment. I am happy with a pool, river or ocean nearby or on property. It would also look like my friend cooking for me seeing as I do not! While abroad, another friend got so tired of all of us just "showing up" she started announcing in our chats what and when she was cooking because inevitably we all would show up once we heard that another was already there. It because, "well since Tisha and JJ are there, I might as well come too. I'll stop for more food or drinks on the way." We were so often at her home that she paid for heating in the winter because the cold made me sick and she could not afford for me to get sick just because I was at her house. I offered to visit less, split the cost, wear more clothes to stay warm, anything to not make myself a burden but she insisted saying it's what friends do. The thought of offering any of that made her uncomfortable, I was "good". Now she and all my close friends are multi-hour plane rides away. We all dream of the that perfect life. While each is different, they all include having friends closer and flexible work. I might be closer to that life as an educator and writer...flexibility is quickly being hardwired into my industry.