I try to demonstrate leadership in all ways in my every day life, whether by leading by example or taking the lead when the situation calls for it. I think leading by example is the epitome of good leadership, and I strive to provide a good example in all of my classes with an attentive attitude, punctuality, and completing everything assigned with enthusiasm and creativity when called for. That being said, sometimes people aren't able to lead themselves. Group projects can become a nightmare when nobody is willing to step up and make final decisions or develop plans, and although I don't intend to step on anybody's toes, I find people are often more than happy to have someone give concrete roles and direction rather than endless bickering. I thrive on organization, so I don't mind doing the "boring" stuff like developing schedules, organizing meeting times, and reminding everybody about their duties so that our final project can turn out well for everyone and by everyone. I would say the truest example of my leadership skills was acting as the assistant director for a friend's movie. She owns a costume shop and is the kind of 'artistic' type of person that can lead a project to never get completed, so when she asked me to help her keep it together for her idea to make this movie, I knew there would be a lot of reconciling artistic fantasy to realistic constraints. Together, we turned the idea in her head into a workable script, and while she went into a flurry of costume making and dragging people in as actors, I found us a cinematographer, sound guy, and editor, and worked out our shot list, filming schedule, and storyboard. On the day of filming, I was in early, setting up the set and food for the actors and crew, directing people to their costumes and places (and bathrooms), and getting the final schedule reworked for last minute changes. I was an extra in every scene, reminding the director of forgotten lines and continuity as well as missing plot points, running to get missing actors, and getting everyone ready for the upcoming scenes. We managed to get the entire thing filmed in a day and edited in a month, ready for the show day which was just last weekend. In the future I intend to use my leadership skills to do what I have always wanted to do; make the world a better place. My goal in my education is to become a habitat restoration engineer. I want to use my education to help our natural world heal from human induced ecological disasters, as well as natural disasters aggravated by climate change. I fully believe that there is a way for humans to help the natural world as much as it has helped us, for us to have a mutual relationship built on respect and cooperation. But that begins with righting our wrongs and repairing the damage that we have done, as well as preserving and protecting what we have not yet harmed. Habitat restoration is a huge project, requiring many teams of highly trained people. I hope to work my way up to lead one of these teams and help younger engineers apply their skills and hone their crafts, so we can continue our work for many more generations. The effects of climate change need to not only be stopped, but reversed. I hope there is a day in the future when the job I do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side.

Success can be described on many levels, so I will start with my academic success. I am something of an overachiever, so I don't like to accept less than A's (or at least, A quality work on my part) in my classes, but more important than that to me is what I learn in the class. If I feel I understand the material and am able to relate it to the world around me, and put it into practice in my field, that is more what academic success means to me than a grade, or even a degree. Luckily, it just so happens that most professors also equate understanding the material with good grades. The opportunity of this scholarship would provide me with more time to be able to focus on my work and review, as well as allow me the opportunity to work with my teachers and classmates to gain a greater understanding of the course material. With having to work so much to support myself on my own, it's all I can do to keep up with my work, and I often feel it doesn't stick in my head as well or as long as it should with my brain having to spend so much focus elsewhere. In terms of career success, to me success means to constantly be learning. It means to move the world in a better direction, and leave it a better place than you found it. I am taking that quite literally, with my goal of becoming habitat restoration engineer. My desire to pursue the path of becoming a habitat restoration engineer is rooted in the deep desire to give back to the community that I call my family and the land that I call my home. I was born and raised in northern California, way out in the country, and have seen the damage done to our natural ecosystems by corporate development as well as natural disasters. I have seen natural places that I played in as a kid torn apart, animals and bugs that were a child's friend killed or forced from their homes to inhospitable concrete, and I have felt hopeless to stop it. But now, I see the tides of environmental reform turning, changing towards a future of living in harmony with the world around us, and the way that begins is by lending our hands and our hearts towards healing the damage that has already been done. I sincerely hope there is a day in the future when the job I hope to do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side. I see my role today as the first tentative, daring step towards that bright new world. As this is a career path that requires a degree (not that I would trust myself or anyone without a degree to do it), this scholarship will allow me to continue my education in order to achieve this goal. Another definition of success is personal success. Healthy habits, personal fulfillment, etc., etc. To me this is similar to career success, as in the goal is to leave this world better than you found it. I am proud to say I have already found success in this department, although I would like to do more. I pride myself on being a supportive friend, a good partner, a reliable employee, and a loving sister and daughter. I put my time towards moving my life in a positive direction, adding to my education and working a job that helps foster a relationship between people and plants. My mental health is not ideal, however. Supporting myself on half an income is not easy, especially with today’s massively inflating housing and food prices, and doing a full time load of STEM classes while working 20 hours a week is even harder. I first began taking medication for anxiety and depression when I was 15, and although most days are okay, my schedule often leaves me extremely overwhelmed. Getting to this point of intense, chronic burnout is the only thing that gets me to the point of feeling suicidal these days. Sometimes I can’t get to sleep because of the panic attacks, knowing I will have to wake up the next day and keep living the way that I have been. Getting some relief from this scholarship would help me free up some time in my schedule to schedule therapy appointments, and relieve some of the constant, chest squeezing money anxiety that I have felt since I started classes again. Finally, there is monetary success. As people using your money to give back to the community and help the world move to a better place, I'm sure I don't have to tell you what success means in that regard.

When I was 11, I moved from a tiny town in Northern California, with less than 500 people, to a major city in the Bay Area. To say it was a difficult transition would be an understatement. I had absolutely no idea how to handle being around so many people. I hadn't had to introduce myself to anybody since I was 5. To make matters worse, I was hitting puberty, starting my period, and making the switch from the elementary school system to the junior high school system. Andrea told me much later on that when I walked into the band room, flute in hand, several months into the school year, that she decided she was going to be my friend. She never gave up on me, even when I struggled to make conversation, even when I couldn't hang out on the weekends because of the custody agreement. She invited me to lunch, introduced me to her friends, and made me feel welcome, wanted, and understood. Ever since then, I have been able to rely on her being my best friend, no matter what. If we aren't able to see each other, it's okay. If we disagree on something, we support each other. If we are going out to do something, we're doing it together. As school friendships go, there's not many left from those days. Most have moved on, and many I haven't talked to since graduation. But Andrea is still there. After graduation, I moved into her house with her, and we even shared a room for nearly a year. When my dad died, she convinced her dad to let me take in my dad's dog into the house (although the dog also passed away just a couple months later). When her dad began to spiral into alcoholism and we started seeing eviction notices on the door, we found another place together, our very first home of our own. She is always the person I can count on to have a good time with, the person who doesn't want to get drunk or go out, but would rather watch movies or play board games or do jigsaw puzzles. Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to get drunk, but she's that special person who will do all the weird stuff with me. We never miss dressing up for a Dicken's Fair, or going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, or going to the beach. We even still go trick or treating for Halloween, even if no one else wants to and the adults give us weird looks. I have never missed a single one of her dance performances, and she is ready to jump in whenever the costume shop I work at needs an extra body for a show, or a model to try on a new costume. Since her dad died a few months ago, lost to the same sickness as mine, she feels more like a sister than ever. She has this dedication to friendship that is incredibly hard to find, and she is one of the kindest, most caring souls I know. She is my partner in life, the one that is there time and time again and shows up no matter what. I wouldn't give up her steady heart and easy smile for the world.

One of my closest friends in the world has been going through a very tough time recently. Only a few months after getting his bachelor's degree in Psychology, his father passed away, and only a couple months after that, his boyfriend of 3 years broke up with him. He has been deeply suffering and at a crossroads in his life, unsure whether to go into a master's program, get a job, or commit suicide. I realize I say that with what might be perceived as flippancy, but it is simply the naked truth. The process of this journey was not over the course of one conversation, but midnight talks over the course of months, coupled with hours of simply trying to distract him from what he is feeling. That is the most important part of providing guidance in a situation like that, I believe; simply to be there. To make it known to the other person that they have support, and that, no matter what, there is someone at their side. The second most important part is to find what it is that the person actually wants. Deep down, when someone seems so stuck on a decision like this, one of the options is the one that they really want, or that they know is going to be best for them. Or, if that isn't the case, sometimes if someone seems stuck between a rock and a hard place, they just need another person to show them that there is another way that they might have been too wrapped up in their troubles to realize. Either way, providing guidance to me is less telling someone what to do and more helping them decide what their own personal best path in life would be. That is how together, over many months of grieving the loss of his father and his relationship, my friend and I came to the decision that he would start with focusing on his mental health. He is taking the time to get himself into therapy, and using the rest to find things that he enjoys, things that make him feel like his life is worth living. It will not be until he is in a more stable headspace that he will make a decision on education or work, or both. It is important to me to make sure my friends understand that what is important is what works best for them in their lives, rather than what looks the best on paper, or to society, or to their parents. I consider this a total success, because my friend is still alive, and very slowly, I can see him getting a little happier every day. I have had two main challenges that I have faced in STEM that tie into each other, and unfortunately my recommendations for these challenges are opposite. The first is a classic; money. As a reentry student, I missed out on a lot of scholarship and grant opportunities I could have taken advantage of if I had gone into schooling straight out of high school. In addition, overall cost of living and college education would have been lower had I gone back before the pandemic, and I might have been able to save money by living with my mother. That is, unfortunately, no longer an option. My advice on navigating this would be to go into college right out of high school, and to cut costs where you can, whether by getting food from our college food bank or continue to live with parents. That leads me into my second challenge, which was making the decision to become a STEM major in the first place. The reason I did not go straight to college out of high school was because I, frankly, did not want to. I had no direction I wanted to take, no idea of what I would do with a degree or what I would study, and it seemed pointless to spend four years and thousands of dollars on something I didn’t even want to do. Instead, I went into the work force, and spent the last five years learning who I am, what I want to do, and falling in love with the science of plant biology. I don’t regret for a moment taking the time that I did, even though it has put a much more major hurdle in my path in the form of money. I believe even more strongly now than I did as a high school graduate that there is no point in going to college if you don’t want to. College requires a self discipline and a commitment that normal schooling does not, especially when the factor of money comes into play. I never would have gotten as far as I have now had I gone into college straight from high school, and it would have made me never want to come back. My advice for someone struggling with commitment and direction would be to take the time to learn the real world, to discover who you are when you aren’t being forced into a certain path, and to fall in love with your education. So yeah, my advice is opposite from each other, but there is no one right way to live, or go to college, or study STEM. Everyone in every situation is going to need different advice, and I am perfectly happy with the choices and the path I have taken.

I'll do my best to do a quick recap of my life so far; my name is Kaye, I was born almost 24 years ago. I have an older sister and we grew up with my mom and dad in a tiny little town in northern California. As a kid my favorite thing to do in the world was go out exploring, run off into the forest, climb trees and build bridges over creeks and find the bottoms of ravines. My sister was often put in charge of keeping an eye on me, as I had (and still do have) a habit of disappearing whenever we went on walks. When I was 8, my mom left my dad, and a couple years later moved us to a much larger city in the bay area. We still visited my dad (who stayed behind in the town that was now hours away) every weekend, and the drastic change matched with the inability to create a stable social life with the custody arrangement quickly took its toll on me. I lost my creative passion and descended into depression and anxiety, and started on medication and therapy at 15. When I graduated, I decided to go into the work force and dive right into the real world, as I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at that moment. We had never had much money, so college seemed out of the question anyway. That was when my dad died. His alcoholism had spiraled out of control when my sister and I went off on our own, and quickly led to his death. Not long after that, Covid hit, and I came closer than ever before or since to suicide. When the dust settled and I began to really try to find joy and meaning in my life, I found myself gravitating towards careers centered around plants, first at a florist and then at a sustainable nursery. I studied on my own and fell in love with the science of plant biology, and what it could mean for healing the world I felt so hopeless to fix in the midst of Covid. It led me back to school, on the path to become a habitat restoration engineer, to try to recreate the places that I loved so much as a child in the carnage of the world I saw around me. My desire to pursue the path of becoming a habitat restoration engineer is rooted in the deep desire to give back to the community that I call my family and the land that I call my home. I was born and raised in northern California, way out in the country, and have seen the damage done to our natural ecosystems by corporate development as well as natural disasters. I have seen natural places that I played in as a kid torn apart, animals and bugs that were a child's friend killed or forced from their homes to inhospitable concrete, and I have felt hopeless to stop it. But now, I see the tides of environmental reform turning, changing towards a future of living in harmony with the world around us, and the way that begins is by lending our hands and our hearts towards healing the damage that has already been done. I sincerely hope there is a day in the future when the job I hope to do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side. I see my role today as the first tentative, daring step towards that bright new world.

Living sustainably is at the core of nearly every choice in my life. As a Biology student with a focus in Conservation and Ecology (with the goal of becoming a habitat restoration engineer), my passion in life is finding ways that humanity and the natural world can live and flourish together, and I live my life by that goal. I chose to go fully vegetarian about five years ago for this reason. The current system of meat production is simply completely unsustainable at this point, although I am not against eating meat if that system were to change. But at the core of our problems is an issue with resource management. We simply use too many resources for our planet to be able to keep up, and at the end of the day, it takes more land, water, and fossil fuels (and also produces more waste and methane) to raise a cow than it does to grow a soybean plant. The agriculture industry is extremely damaging as well, however, contributing to 21% of emissions. I do my best to garden my own food and buy from local farmers markets, but trying to support myself on half an income while I go to school full time has made that impossible, so I've had to support myself on food bank food for a while now. I cut down my plastic waste as much as I can manage it. I have made my life a practice of minimalism, and I make it a habit not to buy things I don't need in the first place. For things I do need, I do my best to make them myself. I make my own toothpaste, deodorant, mouthwash, facial cleanser, and cleaning supplies. I also make all my food at home, so I don't have to get packaged take out or contribute to food waste as much as possible. And, of course, I thrift all my clothes. I even changed jobs because I couldn't justify giving my labor to an industry that is so damaging to the environment. I used to work at a floral wholesale facility, which would get in cut flowers from all over the world, from vast monoculture farms that would cover the plants in pesticides and breed all of the genetic diversity out of them. I left that job for a lower paying job at a local sustainable nursery, and now spend my days helping my community take food back into their own hands. In my area, traveling by public transportation is unfeasible at best, so although I do drive I advocate and vote as much as I can for a more robust system of public transportation. And of course, I am also a board member on the local nonprofit Forests Unlimited. Our organization is dedicated to preserving our state's old growth forests, whether by education, community action, or legislation. Currently, we are trying to push an update to our state's oak tree protection ordinances. I am working on getting some of my classmates together to speak with the politicians who will be voting and putting together petitions. I realize all this may sound a bit extreme. People have often told me as much. But every being on this planet makes an impact on the world, whether they understand the full effects of it or not. Every choice or action we take is a vote that we cast for the world that we want to live in. And it is my highest priority to vote every day for a world where we give to the land as much as it gives us.

Well, to start out, my current goal is to get my associate's in Natural Sciences from SRJC, then transfer to San Francisco State University to finish my bachelor's in Biology with a focus in Conservation and Ecology. The reason I chose this path is to align with my goal of becoming a habitat restoration engineer, although I also know that any career relating to this major would be something that would be enjoyable and fulfilling to me. The most important thing in the world to me is protecting and preserving the environment, and I believe that has to be done from many different angles. While protecting the natural habitats we have left is very important, if that is all we do, we will only remain in the same place in our fight to save our world, and our time is running out very quickly. I am not motivated by fear, however. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California, surrounded by miles of open forest right on the edge of the sprawling coast of the Pacific Ocean. My childhood was rather lonely when it came to human companions, but I spent so much time exploring ravines and cliff sides and hollowed out tree trunks (and collecting an impressive quantity of bones) that I can't remember feeling it very often. My goal in becoming a habitat restoration engineer is to give back to the land that I call home, which is why it is my goal to stay local in California. I want to make the change from landscapes blasted with strip mining, clear cutting, oil drilling, and even natural disasters amplified by climate change. I also hope to make a good living from this career, enough that I can give back to the community that has always supported me. I would especially like to be able to donate to support homeless queer youth, and help provide them with mental health care. I know firsthand how many bright queer lives are taken every day from suicide and addiction. When I came out as bisexual when I was 13, it opened a whole new world that I never could have imagined. Not only did I find a home in this new community, I found lifelong friends who supported and guided me through the journey of this bright new world, and in the journey of learning who I was without fear and without judgement. Nearly every queer person I know, including myself, has battled with suicidal tendencies on and off for as long as we can remember. As freeing as it is to be able to embrace yourself exactly as you are, to be able to shout it to the world, having to face the battle of being queer in this world every day can feel like it wears you down to nothing. I want to do my part to help preserve the queer voices of our future generations.

I grew up in a tiny little town way up in the boondocks of Northern California. With so few people and so many miles of woodlands and beaches around me, it was natural that I spent nearly all of my time exploring ravines, cliff sides, caves, and forests (redwood stumps struck by lightning make the perfect basis for a fort, and often have the bonus of a huckleberry bush growing inside them). When I was 8 years old and my mom left my dad, she moved my sister and I from this tiny little town to a city in the Bay Area that had more people and less trees than we thought possible. As much as I cannot regret the life I have lived here and all of the friends I have made, a part of me yearns for that wildness, and it hurts my heart to see the beautiful Northern California that has always been a home to me reduced to ash and rubble before the force of wildfires, clear cutting, strip mining, and many other industrial and climate change induced forces. I truly believe there is a way for man and nature to coexist peacefully, for both to be able to thrive side by side, rather than one hurting the other in order to get ahead. That's why what I want to do more than anything is become a habitat restoration engineer. I want to use the intellect that humans have been given, whether by some higher power or some accident of nature, to help the world repair itself from the damage we have done. STEM has always been fascinating to me, from a little kid obsessed with dinosaurs to an adult obsessed with plants. It's like one beautiful system when taken all together. Science and mathematics are the fields that unravel the mysteries of the world, help us understand the universe around us. Engineering and technology give them the tools to do so, and are the key to moving forward with that knowledge that we gain. It is also fascinating to think how far we have come, how much everything we know is a culmination of the hard work of hundreds of years of scientists, and how far we can go even within my own lifetime. I'm so excited to see what more we know, what more we can create, by the time I even finish schooling and get into the field. It has always been human's desire, and even need, to find meaning in the world around us, but now that we've finally started to crack the code, we have only discovered just how much we truly don't know. Part of that is scary, part of it is awe-inspiring. In terms of information technology, I did have an idea of creating a plant identification app that actually works. Most are very bad, only relying on what a plant looks like at that moment to basically make the technological equivalent of a wild guess. This is not only disappointing to see people who want to like plants get discouraged, but it can also be very dangerous, if someone thinks these plants are safe to handle or even eat based on a misidentification. My idea was to create an app that would more accurately identify a plant based on location, time of year, flower structure, etc., by answering a series of questions and looking in a database. This would be much more helpful for people to cure their 'plant-blindness' and really get into the exciting world of plant identification. My greatest challenge was losing my father at 18. After my mom left, he spiraled into alcoholism that he never fully recovered from. It got much worse when my sister and I graduated and moved out. He would often go quiet for many days, and even suffered withdrawal-induced seizures. An accident at home put him in the hospital, and his damaged body was never able to recover. He never woke up after my uncle found him, and a day later, we pulled the plug without ever getting to say goodbye. I don't have to tell you how hard it is to lose a parent, especially at that age. I don't have to explain how much it rocks the foundation that your very world is built on. But it also opened my eyes to how very close we are to losing ourselves, whether to death or to a disease that can take away the person that you are. I found comfort in my mom, and my sister, both of whom I had distanced myself from at that point, and now our relationship is closer than it ever would have been. I learned to see the man behind the father, and I learned to forgive. I learned to see my mother, my sister, and everyone else, as just people. I am a better person for losing him, and I honor his memory every day by working towards his dream of seeing both of his daughters graduate college.

My family has never had much money. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California with my older sister and my mom and dad. My mom was a teacher, and my dad did construction. We had enough to pay rent and put food on the table, as far as I remember. When I was 8, however, my mom left my dad, and this sent my family into a financial tailspin. First crippled by the expensive process of a divorce (which ended up taking over 5 years), the house they had bought together not long before was foreclosed in the housing crisis. My mom moved my sister and I to a city in the Bay Area that was almost inconceivable to our small-town minds. My dad stayed behind, watching the jobs dry up in my hometown and nursing a growing alcohol addiction. By the time he lost the battle when I was 18, he had been on unemployment for years, and mostly fed himself on leftovers from the local school's lunches. Mom had trouble finding work too, and I remember our summer breaks sandwiched with helping her set up and break down her classrooms to move to a new school year after year. When I was 17, with no clear plan for the future, I went into the workforce and moved out on my own. I've always been good with money, so I've been able to support myself ever since, through soaring housing prices, COVID, and the hyperinflation that followed. Even still, I was barely making ends meet, and the decision to go back to school was no easy choice. The years between high school and college made my transcript, while a nearly perfect academic record, useless for applying for scholarships, and I was not able to use my own tax information for financial aid. This left me with no choice but to keep full time work hours and do full time school. It wasn't easy, but I put in the work, and I think my grades speak for themselves. Receiving this scholarship would give me time to focus more on my studies and allow me to prioritize (somewhat) my own mental health. My goal is to transfer to San Francisco State University to finish my bachelor's in in Biology with a focus in Conservation and Ecology. The reason I chose this path is to align with my goal of becoming a habitat restoration engineer, although I also know that any career relating to this major would be something that would be fulfilling. The most important thing in the world to me is protecting and preserving the environment, and I believe that has to be done from many different angles. While protecting the natural habitats we have left is very important, if that is all we do, we will only remain in the same place in our fight to save our world, and our time is running out very quickly. I am not motivated by fear, however. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California, surrounded by miles of open forest right on the edge of the sprawling coast of the Pacific Ocean. My childhood was rather lonely when it came to human companions, but I spent so much time exploring ravines and cliff sides and hollowed out tree trunks (and collecting an impressive quantity of bones) that I can't remember feeling it very often. My goal in becoming a habitat restoration engineer is to give back to the land that I call home, which is why it is my goal to stay local in California.

My family has never had much money. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California with my older sister and my mom and dad. My mom was a teacher, and my dad did construction. We had enough to pay rent and put food on the table, as far as I remember. When I was 8, however, my mom left my dad, and this sent my family into a financial tailspin. First crippled by the expensive process of a divorce (which ended up taking over 5 years), the house they had bought together not long before was foreclosed in the housing crisis. My mom moved my sister and I to a city in the Bay Area that was almost inconceivable to our small-town minds. My dad stayed behind, watching the jobs dry up in my hometown and nursing a growing alcohol addiction. By the time he lost the battle when I was 18, he had been on unemployment for years, and mostly fed himself on leftovers from the local school's lunches. Mom had trouble finding work too, and I remember our summer breaks sandwiched with helping her set up and break down her classrooms to move to a new school year after year. When I was 17, with no clear plan for the future, I went into the workforce and moved out on my own. I've always been good with money, so I've been able to support myself ever since, through soaring housing prices, COVID, and the hyperinflation that followed. Even still, I was barely making ends meet, and the decision to go back to school was no easy choice. The years between high school and college made my transcript, while a nearly perfect academic record, useless for applying for scholarships, and I was not able to use my own tax information for financial aid. This left me with no choice but to keep full time work hours and do full time school. It wasn't easy, but I put in the work, and I think my grades speak for themselves. Receiving this scholarship would give me time to focus more on my studies and allow me to prioritize (somewhat) my own mental health. My goal is to transfer to San Francisco State University to finish my bachelor's in in Biology with a focus in Conservation and Ecology. The reason I chose this path is to align with my goal of becoming a habitat restoration engineer, although I also know that any career relating to this major would be something that would be fulfilling. The most important thing in the world to me is protecting and preserving the environment, and I believe that has to be done from many different angles. While protecting the natural habitats we have left is very important, if that is all we do, we will only remain in the same place in our fight to save our world, and our time is running out very quickly. I am not motivated by fear, however. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California, surrounded by miles of open forest right on the edge of the sprawling coast of the Pacific Ocean. My childhood was rather lonely when it came to human companions, but I spent so much time exploring ravines and cliff sides and hollowed out tree trunks (and collecting an impressive quantity of bones) that I can't remember feeling it very often. My goal in becoming a habitat restoration engineer is to give back to the land that I call home, which is why it is my goal to stay local in California.

I lost my dad when I was 18 years old. After my mom left him when I was 8, he spiraled into alcoholism that he never fully recovered from. It ran wildly out of control when my sister and I graduated and moved out. We would often not hear from him for days and have a neighbor tell us he was in bed surrounded by bottles. When he would leave to come see us he was quiet, shaky, and often had to leave to go to the bathroom for long periods of time. There was even one memorable occasion he was helping my sister pack up her things to move to a new house and suffered from an withdrawal induced seizure. On December 14th of 2018, my sister texted our group chat with some family members and friends who still lived near him, asking them to check on him because she hadn't heard from him in a few days. They found him on the floor next to his bed, and called in a helicopter when he wouldn't wake up. He never did wake up. By about 3pm on December 15th, on advice from doctors and knowledge of his wishes, we let the nurse pull the plug. My dad loved and believed in my sister and I fiercely, and from the earliest I can remember he was pushing us to achieve. He taught us the value of hard and good work, punctuality, realistic expectations, and more than anything else, education. For my entire school career, my GPA has never been lower than a 3.8. And that doesn't come by accident. My dad taught me to show up and put in the work every single day, and I have never stopped doing so. I am driven not only by my own determination to achieve what I have set out to do, but with the intention of fulfilling my father's dream of seeing both of his daughters graduate college. My dad always knew that we were capable of anything with the right drive and enough hard work, and damn it I am going to do what it takes. Losing him showed me how close we always are to losing ourselves, whether to death or to a disease that can take your life away while you still breathe, and I have found my ability to keep going in the family that I still have living. Not only has this led me to cultivate a deeper bond with the rest of my family than I ever would have had if my father were still alive, it has also made me determined to do what I can while I am still here. It doesn't have to be everything, and it doesn't have to be all at once, but while I live and breathe I will keep moving forward. And that is for you, dad.

Well, to start out, my current goal is to get my associate's in Natural Sciences from SRJC, then transfer to San Francisco State University to finish my bachelor's in Biology with a focus in Conservation and Ecology. The reason I chose this path is to align with my goal of becoming a habitat restoration engineer, although I also know that any career relating to this major would be something that would be enjoyable and fulfilling to me. I have supported myself financially since I was 17, and deciding to go back to school was no easy choice. With so many years between high school and college, my transcript, while stellar, was practically useless to apply for colleges, and even though my mom hasn't supported me in years, I couldn't apply for financial aid with my own tax information until I turn 24. Essentially, I had no choice but to do full time classes and full time work. But I didn't let that stop me, and I think my grades from my previous semester speak for themselves when it comes to my work ethic. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California, surrounded by miles of open forest right on the edge of the sprawling coast of the Pacific Ocean. My childhood was spent exploring ravines and cliff sides and hollowed out tree trunks (and collecting an impressive quantity of bones). My goal in becoming a habitat restoration engineer is to give back to the land that I call home, which is why it is my goal to stay local in California. I want to make the change from landscapes blasted with strip mining, clear cutting, oil drilling, and even natural disasters amplified by climate change. Now, I'm going to move on to a little about me. As I said, I grew up in a tiny little town, less than 500 people, with my older sister and my mom and dad. My mom is a teacher, and my dad worked construction. We never really had a ton of money, but it got a lot worse when my mom left my dad. The cost of the divorce was compounded by their home being foreclosed in the housing crisis, and my mom left the area and brought me and my sister to a new city in the Bay Area that our small town minds could barely comprehend. Dad stayed behind, watching the jobs dry up and nursing his alcoholism. All of this quickly caught up to me, and I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety when I was just 15. I began taking medication and attending therapy on and off. Upon graduating high school, with no clear goal for the future, I went into the work force and moved out on my own, and I have continued to support myself to this day. Not long after this, my dad died, finally losing his battle with alcoholism. I barely felt I had picked up the pieces when COVID hit, sending me into a nearly fatal downward spiral. That was the first - but not the last - time in my life I had suicidal urges. But, I am still here. I found a reason to survive. I found a goal, I found who I am, and I found who I want to be. I found the place between my dad's passion for education and my own passion for environmentalism, a way to honor both his memory and my future. It's as hard as it ever was, but I've never been more excited to keep living.

Well, to start out, my current goal is to get my associate's in Natural Sciences from SRJC, then transfer to San Francisco State University to finish my bachelor's in Biology with a focus in Conservation and Ecology. The reason I chose this path is to align with my goal of becoming a habitat restoration engineer, although I also know that any career relating to this major would be something that would be enjoyable and fulfilling to me. The most important thing in the world to me is protecting and preserving the environment, and I believe that has to be done from many different angles. While protecting the natural habitats we have left is very important, if that is all we do, we will only remain in the same place in our fight to save our world, and our time is running out very quickly. I am not motivated by fear, however. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California, surrounded by miles of open forest right on the edge of the sprawling coast of the Pacific Ocean. My childhood was rather lonely when it came to human companions, but I spent so much time exploring ravines and cliff sides and hollowed out tree trunks (and collecting an impressive quantity of bones) that I can't remember feeling it very often. My goal in becoming a habitat restoration engineer is to give back to the land that I call home, which is why it is my goal to stay local in California. I want to make the change from landscapes blasted with strip mining, clear cutting, oil drilling, and even natural disasters amplified by climate change. Now, I'm going to move on to a little about me. As I said, I grew up in a tiny little town, less than 500 people, with my older sister and my mom and dad. My mom is a teacher, and my dad worked construction. We never really had a ton of money, but it got a lot worse when my mom left my dad. The cost of the divorce was compounded by their home being foreclosed in the housing crisis, and my mom left the area and brought me and my sister to a new city in the Bay Area that our small town minds could barely comprehend. Dad stayed behind, watching the jobs dry up and nursing his alcoholism. All of this quickly caught up to me, and I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety when I was just 15. I began taking medication and attending therapy on and off. Upon graduating high school, with no clear goal for the future, I went into the work force and moved out on my own, and I have continued to support myself to this day. Not long after this, my dad died, finally losing his battle with alcoholism. I barely felt I had picked up the pieces when COVID hit, sending me into a nearly fatal downward spiral. That was the first - but not the last - time in my life I had suicidal urges. But, I am still here. I found a reason to survive. I found a goal, I found who I am, and I found who I want to be. I found the place between my dad's passion for education and my own passion for environmentalism, a way to honor both his memory and my future. It's as hard as it ever was, but I've never been more excited to keep living.

The most influential person in my life was my dad, who passed away when I was 18. After my mom left him when I was 8, he spiraled into alcoholism that he never fully recovered from. It ran wildly out of control when my sister and I graduated and moved out. We would often not hear from him for days and have a neighbor tell us he was in bed surrounded by bottles. When he would leave to come see us he was quiet, shaky, and often had to leave to go to the bathroom for long periods of time. There was even one memorable occasion he was helping my sister pack up her things to move to a new house and suffered from an withdrawal induced seizure. On December 14th of 2018, my sister texted our group chat with some family members and friends who still lived near him, asking them to check on him because she hadn't heard from him in a few days. They found him on the floor next to his bed, and called in a helicopter when he wouldn't wake up. He never did wake up. By about 3pm on December 15th, on advice from doctors and knowledge of his wishes, we let the nurse pull the plug. I tried to learn more about my dad. He had been overbearing to the point of obsessiveness, and demanded perfection. Grades had to be perfect, extracurriculars had to be plentiful and exceptional, and most of all we had to put him and his feelings first. I began to ask my mom about him and his life, and his siblings. I began to see him as we looked through his house, sorting through everything that ever meant anything to him. I found in him a man who loved his daughters deeply, who had not been able to achieve any of his dreams but his children. I found a man who had vastly overcorrected for a childhood of neglect and absence, and had been determined above all else to give us the childhood he thought he had wanted, to give us everything that he saw as support and to be as close and caring as his parents never were. More than that, I saw a man who had always encouraged us, always pushed us to what he knew we could accomplish. I have learned to see everyone, even my parents, as people. I know that there is nothing my father's daughter can't do. My dad loved and believed in my sister and I fiercely, and from the earliest I can remember he was pushing us to achieve. He taught us the value of hard and good work, punctuality, realistic expectations, and more than anything else, education. For my entire school career, my GPA has never been lower than a 3.8. And that doesn't come by accident. My dad taught me to show up and put in the work every single day, and I have never stopped doing so. I am driven not only by my own determination to achieve what I have set out to do, but with the intention of fulfilling my father's dream of seeing both of his daughters graduate college. Losing him showed me how close we always are to losing ourselves, whether to death or to a disease that can take your life away while you still breathe. Not only has this led me to cultivate a deeper bond with the rest of my family, it has also made me determined to do what I can while I am still here.

Well, to start out, my current goal is to get my associate's in Natural Sciences from SRJC, then transfer to San Francisco State University to finish my bachelor's in Biology with a focus in Conservation and Ecology. The reason I chose this path is to align with my goal of becoming a habitat restoration engineer, although I also know that any career relating to this major would be something that would be enjoyable and fulfilling to me. The most important thing in the world to me is protecting and preserving the environment, and I believe that has to be done from many different angles. While protecting the natural habitats we have left is very important, if that is all we do, we will only remain in the same place in our fight to save our world, and our time is running out very quickly. I am not motivated by fear, however. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California, surrounded by miles of open forest right on the edge of the sprawling coast of the Pacific Ocean. My childhood was rather lonely when it came to human companions, but I spent so much time exploring ravines and cliff sides and hollowed out tree trunks (and collecting an impressive quantity of bones) that I can't remember feeling it very often. My goal in becoming a habitat restoration engineer is to give back to the land that I call home, which is why it is my goal to stay local in California. I want to make the change from landscapes blasted with strip mining, clear cutting, oil drilling, and even natural disasters amplified by climate change. Now, I'm going to move on to a little about me. As I said, I grew up in a tiny little town, less than 500 people, with my older sister and my mom and dad. My mom is a teacher, and my dad worked construction. We never really had a ton of money, but it got a lot worse when my mom left my dad. The cost of the divorce was compounded by their home being foreclosed in the housing crisis, and my mom left the area and brought me and my sister to a new city in the Bay Area that our small-town minds could barely comprehend. My dad stayed behind, watching the construction jobs dry up and nursing the alcoholism that he never fully recovered from until his death when I was 18. In the new city, my mom struggled to find work, and we would often help her unpack her classroom at the beginning of a school year, only to unpack it when the summer came and move it to a different school. Dad went on unemployment, paying reduced rent to live in a family friends house and feeding himself with the extras from the local school lunches. Every weekend, my sister and I would make the three hour drive bus ride to our hometown to see him, and drive back the next day for school. The schedule was exhausting and definitely didn't help the social lives we were struggling to try to build with our limited social skills. When I graduated high school, without a clear path for college, I went into the work force and moved out on my own. I've been supporting myself since I was 17, and continue to support myself on half an income. Money is definitely the biggest hurdle in my education, something that getting this scholarship would greatly alleviate. I'm going to finally accomplish my dad's dream of both of his daughters graduating college.

My father passed away when I was 18 years old. From the very beginning of our lives, he always impressed upon my sister and I the importance of taking pride in a job well done, in working hard and learning well, in having empathy for other people and the world around us, and in doing our civic duties like public service and voting. These habits and ideals have shaped my life and actions ever since, especially since my father's passing. I strive to live up to his memory and remember the lessons he spent so much time teaching us with such passion. These memories have made me into the person I am today. My greatest pride is in being the reliable one. I realize that may not sound terribly passionate, but I have often heard the phrase '90% of success is just showing up'. I find that to apply to everything, not just school and work, but being a good friend, partner, and member of the community. 90% of being a supportive friend is just showing up when someone needs you. 90% of being a good employee or volunteer is adhering to the promises you made and the projects you took on. By maintaining this steady dedication, I have become invaluable in every establishment I have worked at and volunteered for. I would credit this as being a lot of the reason why I was voted on as a board member for the local nonprofit Forests Unlimited, an organization dedicated to keeping our local old growth forests in the ground, whether it is through education, community action, or legal action. My goal now in going back to school after many years in the work force is to become a habitat restoration engineer. My desire to pursue the path of becoming a habitat restoration engineer is rooted in the deep desire to give back to the community that I call my family and the land that I call my home. I was born and raised in northern California, way out in the country, and have seen the damage done to our natural ecosystems by corporate development as well as natural disasters. I have seen natural places that I played in as a kid torn apart, animals and bugs that were a child's friend killed or forced from their homes to inhospitable concrete, and I have felt hopeless to stop it. But now, I see the tides of environmental reform turning, changing towards a future of living in harmony with the world around us, and the way that begins is by lending our hands and our hearts towards healing the damage that has already been done. I sincerely hope there is a day in the future when the job I hope to do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side. I see my role today as the first tentative, daring step towards that bright new world.

My life has been a delicate, neverending dance with my mental health. Although the depression has been there all my life, it began to spiral out of control in my teenage years, when puberty combined with the divorce of my parents and moving from the tiny town I had always known to a major city in the Bay Area. Thankfully, my mother had just gotten on antidepressants, and refused to let me suffer the way she had. It took a very long time to get to the point of medication, but we found a medication that works well for me, combined with therapy that I continue to this day. It wasn't until COVID hit that I became suicidal for the first time in my life. Once that feeling gets at you once, it never really goes away. Whenever things get bad, from that point on, there is a piece of you that remembers that it is an option. I lost my dad when I was 18 years old. After my mom left him when I was 8, he spiraled into alcoholism that he never fully recovered from. It ran wildly out of control when my sister and I graduated and moved out. On December 14th, my sister texted some family members, asking them to check on him because she hadn't heard from him in a few days. They found him on the floor next to his bed, and called in a helicopter when he wouldn't wake up. He never did wake up. By December 15th, on advice from doctors and knowledge of his wishes, we let the nurse pull the plug. I don't have to tell you how hard it is to lose a parent, especially at the age that I did. My dad taught me to show up and put in the work every single day, and I have never stopped doing so. Losing him showed me how close we always are to losing ourselves. The greatest challenge I am facing now with my mental health is intense burnout. Having to balance a full time school load with working 20 hours a week, plus whatever other side gigs I can find, leave me exhausted all the time. Burn out is usually what leads me to feel suicidal these days. I get to the point where going to bed at night gives me a panic attack knowing I'm going to have to get up in the morning. It's not exactly that I don't want to live anymore, it's just that the idea of going on the way I have another moment is inconceivable. I'm not at the end of my mental health journey, but I'm so proud of how far I have come. I would say the LGBTQ+ community impacts me pretty heavily, considering I am a part of it. I came out as bisexual when I was 13, after a lifetime of not knowing who I was, not fitting in and being afraid of the things I was feeling. I had always been taught that being gay was okay, but I had never been introduced to the idea that you could be attracted to both girls and boys (and other genders). What I was feeling didn't make sense, because I liked boys, so I couldn't be gay. I'll never forget the rush of relief, like a hurricane running through me, when I finally told my family I was queer. I knew they would accept me, that wasn't the problem. The difficulty was trying to learn who I was, and trusting myself when I told myself the answer.

My life has been a delicate, neverending dance with my mental health. Although the depression has been there all my life, it began to spiral out of control in my teenage years, when puberty combined with the divorce of my parents and moving from the tiny town I had always known to a major city in the Bay Area. Anxiety quickly followed suit, and I lost 30 pounds in the course of three months. I did not know how to tell my mom that I no longer felt like I was in my body. My mind felt very far away and detached from the motions my body was going through; I knew it was happening, but I couldn't feel it. Thankfully, my mother had just gotten on antidepressants, in her mid-40's, and refused to let me suffer the way she had for her entire life up to that point. It took a very long time to get to the point of medication, as they don't like to hand it out to a minor, but after several years and many attempts we found a medication that works well for me, combined with therapy that I continue to this day. Contrary to the way it's portrayed in media, the antidepressants don't just make me happy all the time (obviously), but they remove that feeling of detachment, and allow me, if nothing else, to connect with the people around me. It wasn't until my dad died, and then COVID hit, that I became suicidal for the first time in my life. Once that feeling gets at you once, it never really goes away. Whenever things get bad, from that point on, there is a piece of you that remembers that it is an option. I lost my dad when I was 18 years old. After my mom left him when I was 8, he spiraled into alcoholism that he never fully recovered from. It ran wildly out of control when my sister and I graduated and moved out. We would often not hear from him for days and have a neighbor tell us he was in bed surrounded by bottles. When he would leave to come see us he was quiet, shaky, and often had to leave to go to the bathroom for long periods of time. There was even one memorable occasion he was helping my sister pack up her things to move to a new house and suffered from an withdrawal induced seizure. On December 14th of 2018, my sister texted our group chat with some family members and friends who still lived near him, asking them to check on him because she hadn't heard from him in a few days. They found him on the floor next to his bed, and called in a helicopter when he wouldn't wake up. He never did wake up. By about 3pm on December 15th, on advice from doctors and knowledge of his wishes, we let the nurse pull the plug. I don't have to tell you how hard it is to lose a parent, especially at the age that I did. I don't have to tell you how much it crumbles the foundation that you stand on, how much the world you have come to know immediately shifts. My dad taught me to show up and put in the work every single day, and I have never stopped doing so. I am driven not only by my own determination to achieve what I have set out to do, but with the intention of fulfilling my father's dream of seeing both of his daughters graduate college. My dad always knew that we were capable of anything with the right drive and enough hard work, and damn it I am going to do what it takes. Losing him showed me how close we always are to losing ourselves, whether to death or to a disease that can take your life away while you still breathe. Not only has this led me to cultivate a deeper bond with the rest of my family than I ever would have had if my father were still alive, it has also made me determined to do what I can while I am still here. The process of going back to school has been incredibly anxiety inducing for me. As a reentry student, I have been financially independent from my mother since I was 17 and no longer had the option of moving back in with her to cut costs, so I've had to support myself on half an income. The greatest challenge I am facing now with my mental health is intense burnout. Having to balance a full time school load with working 20 hours a week, plus whatever other side gigs I can find to try to pay the rent, leave me exhausted all the time. Burn out is usually what leads me to feel suicidal these days. I get to the point where the thought of getting up in the morning has me in tears, and going to bed at night gives me a panic attack knowing I'm going to have to get up in the morning to continue my life. It's not exactly that I don't want to live anymore, it's just that the idea of going on the way I have another moment is inconceivable, but I don't see any other way to be able to survive. Now with the added joy of scholarship applications and visits to the cardiologist with my dog, I have a feeling this next semester is going to be very difficult. I'm certainly not at the end of my mental health journey, and there's still so many things about the world that make me scared, but I'm so proud of how far I have come. I know I still have a long way to go, but I know at this point I can survive anything.

My life has been a delicate, neverending dance with my mental health. Although the depression has been there all my life, it began to spiral out of control in my teenage years, when puberty combined with the divorce of my parents and moving from the tiny town I had always known to a major city in the Bay Area. Anxiety quickly followed suit, and I lost 30 pounds in the course of three months. My mom quickly got me into therapy and fought to get me medicated, a difficult process for a minor. I have continued both off and on to this day (once we had figured out the right meds). And the medication worked, somewhat. Most days, I was fine. It wasn't until my dad died, and then COVID hit, that I became suicidal for the first time in my life. Once that feeling gets at you once, it never really goes away. Whenever things get bad, from that point on, there is a piece of you that remembers that it is an option. Physical activity has helped immensely. When I switched from working in an office to working outdoors at a nursery, the tight, suffocating feeling in my chest immediately disappeared. I started running with my dog (my emotional support animal) and fell in love, going on a run with her every morning until just last month, when she was diagnosed with a heart condition. Since then, I haven't been able to go out on runs anymore, with so much time I have to spend on schoolwork and work to keep myself afloat, and now going back and forth to vet appointments. I walk with her as much as she can, but she can't go as far as she used to. Thankfully, I have been able to keep up the habit of cooking for myself, but on a tight college budget it's hard to afford healthy food. Mostly my meals consist of pasta and rice, and whatever I manage to get from the campus food banks. I haven't been able to go grocery shopping for probably six months, but I manage to get creative with whatever I can find. The greatest challenge I am facing now with my mental health is intense burnout. Having to balance a full time school load with working 20 hours a week, plus whatever other side gigs I can find to try to pay the rent, leave me exhausted all the time. Burn out is usually what leads me to feel suicidal these days. I get to the point where the thought of getting up in the morning has me in tears, and going to bed at night gives me a panic attack knowing I'm going to have to get up in the morning to continue my life. It's not exactly that I don't want to live anymore, it's just that the idea of going on the way I have another moment is inconceivable, but I don't see any other way to be able to survive. Now with the added joy of scholarship applications and visits to the cardiologist with my dog, I have a feeling this next semester is going to be very difficult. But I am on this journey to learn to be kinder to myself, and I still get up and keep going and try again every single day, and I am so proud of how far I have come. I know I still have a long way to go, but I know at this point I can survive anything.

I lost my dad when I was 18 years old. After my mom left him when I was 8, he spiraled into alcoholism that he never fully recovered from. It ran wildly out of control when my sister and I graduated and moved out. We would often not hear from him for days and have a neighbor tell us he was in bed surrounded by bottles. When he would leave to come see us he was quiet, shaky, and often had to leave to go to the bathroom for long periods of time. There was even one memorable occasion he was helping my sister pack up her things to move to a new house and suffered from an withdrawal induced seizure. On December 14th of 2018, my sister texted our group chat with some family members and friends who still lived near him, asking them to check on him because she hadn't heard from him in a few days. They found him on the floor next to his bed, and called in a helicopter when he wouldn't wake up. He never did wake up. By about 3pm on December 15th, on advice from doctors and knowledge of his wishes, we let the nurse pull the plug. My dad loved and believed in my sister and I fiercely, and from the earliest I can remember he was pushing us to achieve. He taught us the value of hard and good work, punctuality, realistic expectations, and more than anything else, education. For my entire school career, my GPA has never been lower than a 3.8. And that doesn't come by accident. My dad taught me to show up and put in the work every single day, and I have never stopped doing so. I am driven not only by my own determination to achieve what I have set out to do, but with the intention of fulfilling my father's dream of seeing both of his daughters graduate college. My dad always knew that we were capable of anything with the right drive and enough hard work, and damn it I am going to do what it takes. Losing him showed me how close we always are to losing ourselves, whether to death or to a disease that can take your life away while you still breathe. Not only has this led me to cultivate a deeper bond with the rest of my family than I ever would have had if my father were still alive, it has also made me determined to do what I can while I am still here. It doesn't have to be everything, and it doesn't have to be all at once, but while I live and breathe I will keep moving forward. And that is for you, dad.

I was born in a tiny little town in Northern California, and moved to a much larger city in the Bay Area after my parents got divorced and lost our house to the housing crisis. My mom is a teacher, my dad did construction, and I have one older sister. My dad passed away when I was 18, after a ten year long struggle with alcoholism that he never truly recovered from after mom left him. After high school, I moved out and went into the work force, and have been financially independent ever since. Now that the backstory is out of the way, I would say the LGBTQ+ community impacts me pretty heavily, considering I am a part of it. I came out as bisexual when I was 13, after a lifetime of not knowing who I was, not fitting in and being afraid of the things I was feeling. I had always been taught that being gay was okay (thankfully), but I had never been introduced to the idea that you could be attracted to both girls and boys (and other genders, which is what I now identify as). What I was feeling didn't make sense, because I liked boys, so I couldn't be gay. I'll never forget the rush of relief, like a hurricane running through me, when I finally told my family I was queer. I knew they would accept me, that wasn't the problem. The difficulty was trying to learn who I was, and trusting myself when I told myself the answer. This theme would continue into my later years. As I said, I went into the workforce after high school. I had no concrete idea of what it was I wanted to do. I had lots of things that interested me, lots of things I wanted to do, but I was paralyzed by indecision and nothing seemed 'right'. Once again, I had to take the time to learn who I was, and that took many years. I eventually gravitated towards a florist job, then a job at a sustainable plant nursery. I studied botany in my free time, and I absolutely fell in love. The way that plants live fascinates me, and they never run out of things to teach me. I decided that no matter what I end up doing, if it is somewhere in the business of plants, I will be happy. Once I had established that, it begged the question; now that I know that, why not go back to school and learn more about it? This time, I was ready, and I'll never regret the time I took to really be comfortable and happy with my decision. Now I am fully committed and nothing is going to stop me. Although any plant related career would fulfill me, I decided to craft my degree around the hope of becoming a habitat restoration engineer. I grew up in that tiny town way out in the Northern California boondocks, and I yearned to recreate that setting of human and nature side by side. In my years of environmental advocacy, my favorite events were the tree plantings, the trash clean ups, the days where I could get my hands dirty and see the change I was making before my eyes. And of course, there is the hope of being able to work outside, while repairing my local ecosystems and creating spaces for generations of humans, plants, and animals to survive and thrive for generations to come. My hope is to give back to the land and community that has supported me my whole life.

I'm not much one to accept help from others. Everything I've ever accomplished, I've done on my own, and I'm proud of that. But there was one person who taught me what true, selfless generosity looks like for the first time, and it changed the way I will care for people forever. A previous partner of mine - let's call him Max - was the kind of shining ray of sunshine you only ever meet once or twice in your life. He was the child of an incredibly difficult life. He had been disfigured from birth as the result of his mother's drug use during her pregnancy, and put into the foster system when both of his parents were placed in court ordered rehab. He returned to his father's care at around 6 years old, only to face 12 years of abuse at the hands of an angry alcoholic. At 18, after his father had disowned him for the third time, he moved out on his own for good. I met Max when he was 21, the friend of a friend and working at a local hotel dining room. He has always been the kind of person who can make you feel welcome and comfortable immediately, and he tended to attract broken people, as I have often pointed out to him. Most saw him as weird, too expressive, too nice, too polite. But no matter how you had treated him in the past, he would always be there for you. When I met him, one of his best friends was a boy who had bullied him for years in elementary school. Despite my advising against it, he forgave his father for disowning him (again), and took him into our home to care for him as he started to suffer early onset dementia. Max changed the way I thought about forgiveness, and he changed the way I thought people could be. Never before had I met someone so willing to go out of his way for anyone who needed help. When we moved in together, I would often wake up to him getting dressed, half awake in the middle of the night, to go out and pick up someone who had gotten drunk or was in a dangerous situation. Whenever anyone had had a rough day, he was there, ready to take them to get fast food or just go for a drive and talk. When my father suddenly ended up in the hospital, even though we had only been dating about a month at that point, he was there with me by the hospital bed as the doctor pulled the plug. And he was there with me a month later, when my dad's dog, that I had taken in, followed my dad. Max and I were together for nearly three years, and to this day he is one of the most special people I have ever met. Although our romantic relationship didn't work out, he is still one of my closest friends, and the benchmark to which I hold my own actions as well as any possible future partners. He taught me the joy of helping others, for no other reason than that you have the privilege to be able to do so. He showed me that everyone is worthy of forgiveness, that in the end everyone is just a person who is hurting, a person who is trying their best. I will forever be indebted to him for being a wonderful friend, a wonderful partner, and an unbelievable human being.

As much as it is something of a cliche considering I'm going into habitat restoration, I am continually fascinated by plants. The more you learn about them, the more you realize they really are sort of the dominant organisms on the earth, adapted to survive and thrive in all sorts of conditions. Not only that, but many also have the ability to adapt their environments to fit their needs. An important feature of forests is the fact that the canopy is closed (as in, the branches above are almost touching each other, so very little light is let through). The way that this changes the environment is truly remarkable. The shade from the overhanging branches keeps the area beneath them much cooler, which reduces evaporation, allowing the trees and plants beneath them to hang onto water as long as possible. The falling leaves and chunks of bark drastically change the soil composition beneath them, and can (and often has) changed dry, rocky, well-draining soil to nutrient packed, fluffy, humus rich soil that is perfect for the trees offspring to sprout and get their roots going. Although we have a tendency to think of plants as just part of the landscape, studying them really opens your eyes to the fact that they are living, breathing beings who have their own drive for survival and reproduction. In well established forests, there are trees called "nurse trees", who have lived a very long time and have a lot of sugars and carbohydrates stored up. Under the shade of the canopy, it can be difficult for young saplings to get the energy they need to survive, so these nurse trees will use the network of mychorrizal fungi to transfer some of their excess stores to these young saplings, in order for them to grow and thrive. They can do this for generations of young trees. There's also the discovery that plants have the ability to directly respond to stimulus. When we think of a defense mechanism when it comes to plants, we often think thorns or poison, mainly things that are preventative and always present. However, many plants, when faced with some kind of damage, will send out chemical signals to their nearby neighbors to warn them of danger. These surrounding plants are then able to pump their leaves full of bitter tannins that will deter whatever deer or caterpillar wants to munch on them. This is actually what the smell of fresh cut grass is. My favorite group of plants is the bryophytes, or non-vascular plants, that includes mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. It is fascinating to me that something we take so much for granted, the ability to pump water and nutrients throughout our bodies, they completely lack, and yet are still able to thrive for millions of years in almost any climate (they were one of the first plants to develop on land). The study of plants allows me a glimpse into a way of life I can hardly imagine.

My desire to pursue the path of becoming a habitat restoration engineer is rooted in the deep desire to give back to the community that I call my family and the land that I call my home. I was born and raised in northern California, way out in the country, and have seen the damage done to our natural ecosystems by corporate development as well as natural disasters. I have seen natural places that I played in as a kid torn apart, animals and bugs that were a child's friend killed or forced from their homes to inhospitable concrete, and I have felt hopeless to stop it. But now, I see the tides of environmental reform turning, changing towards a future of living in harmony with the world around us, and the way that begins is by lending our hands and our hearts towards healing the damage that has already been done. I sincerely hope there is a day in the future when the job I hope to do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side. I see my role today as the first tentative, daring step towards that bright new world. However, I want to live a full life. The world isn't going to be fixed just by habitat restoration engineers alone. It has to be a culmination of friends, family, lovers, and people who care enough about each other to try to make a difference. Worldwide change is only going to be created by a worldwide community. I do not want to only be a habitat restoration engineer. I want to be a caring friend, a supportive partner, a reliable sister. I want to make the people around me know that they are loved, and I want to make safe places for those who have nowhere else to go. Volunteering for my community is one of the things that gives me the most joy and the greatest sense of purpose in the world. I hope to be able to have time for many opportunities to give back to the community that has supported me throughout my life. As much as I hope to volunteer at food banks and beach cleanups and tree plantings, I also want to follow the issues from their symptoms to their cause. I want to advocate for a higher minimum wage, greater public health insurance and mental health assistance, and more sustainable building and agriculture practices. I hope to be able to donate to support women and queer communities in need, and provide support for communities in temporary distress from natural disasters or war, as well as prolonged economic insecurity and famine. In short, there are so many people and things that I care about that I cannot limit myself to helping the world in just a single way. Every dollar we spend, every choice and action we make, is a vote for the world we want to live in, and every being on this earth makes a difference one way or the other whether they want to or not. Every difference that I make, no matter how small, I want to be for good.

First of all, since STEM is an incredibly wide and diverse field of study, I'm going to focus on the perspective that I can bring to the table, which is environmental sciences. At the heart of science is observation, and calculus is the greatest tool to be able to quantify things that would otherwise be unquantifiable. Lord Kelvin (the man who invented the Kelvin scale, if you can believe it) said, "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be." But even being able to measure something is only half the battle to understanding it. Calculus is what allows us to fill in those gaps, to take what is measured and apply meaning to it, and even be able to predict the future or work our way back to the past. For example, within the field of environmental sciences, calculus is used on a daily basis. The world around us is constantly shifting, and calculus is vital to be able to calculate that change. It is used in everything from tracking population changes in a colony of bacteria, to measuring the rate of pollution in urban centers, to determining the rate of seed dispersal in various conditions. On a wider scale, calculus and mathematics in general is really the art of looking at a problem and going through the steps to determine a solution. This is an incredibly important part of all areas of STEM, whether you a trying to fix a bug in a computer system or design a bridge that can withstand earthquakes. To be able to look at an issue objectively, gather all the data and information that you need, and lay them out in order to follow the logical progression from beginning to end, is at the heart of all STEM fields. Not only are the concepts themselves vital to understanding and furthering our current knowledge, but the brain becomes trained in these natural progressions of problem solving that ripples out into the wider field. One last issue I would like to talk about, is the fact that it is hard. There is no secret about that, and there is no covering it up. But being in the STEM field is hard as well. Being in these classes is sort of like a boot camp for college students to be able to face adversity in their studies, to have to struggle and figure things out, and to get that first taste of finally understanding something that has been eluding you for way too long. It is a chance at the ups and downs, the frustrations and exaltations, of a life devoted to science. If a student can't handle it, that's alright, but as others have said before me, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen."

As with anyone, I have had many stories and many dreams in my life. I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California with an older sister and both of my parents. My mom has always been a teacher, and my dad worked construction. As a kid I struggled to fit in with the limited selection of friends in a small school, and I often ended up alone, reading or writing or exploring the miles of woods that surrounded our home. When I was 8, my mom left my dad, and upon losing our home in the housing crisis, moved my sister and I several hours away to a city that seemed unimaginably huge to our minds. Financially decimated from a foreclosure and the lingering divorce, money was always very tight. Dad stayed behind, despite work for him in our small town drying up, and we had to commute 3 hours back and forth every weekend. The constant stress and changes started to take its toll on me, and I began to see therapists and get medicated for depression and anxiety at 15. Slowly, I learned to manage social relationships, and around this time was when I came out, opening me to a whole new world of friendships and love. Throughout high school I dated several boys and girls, free from deciding based on gender and able to pursue whoever I found to be a good fit for me. A piece of my heart never really left my hometown. Despite how detrimental the weekend trips were to my social life, I found such peace when I went back. Most weekends I would wake up, eat breakfast and pack a bag, and head out to explore all day, wandering forests and beaches and collecting an impressive assortment of bones. When I stopped visiting my dad, unable to keep up the schedule and the emotional abuse, I put my efforts towards environmental advocacy, something that had always been stressed to me by both of my parents. But trying to grapple with school while facing so many changes and battles in my life burnt me out to the core, and I couldn't bring myself to face another four years of college, especially when I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. So I went into the work force. It takes a very long time to learn who you are, and a lot of hard work and attention. It's also a scary thing, to learn who you are knowing the possibility that you might not like who that is. For years I distracted myself, as we all do, and the idea of college felt no nearer or more pressing than it had when I graduated. It wasn't really until COVID hit, when the distractions went away and I had to come terrifyingly face to face to the reality that I had no real direction, and I was only one soul against a world of injustice and destruction. I had never been so close to suicide. When the dust settled, I found myself and my path. My desire to pursue the path of becoming a habitat restoration engineer is rooted in the deep desire to give back to the community that I call my family and the land that I call my home. I sincerely hope there is a day in the future when the job I hope to do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side. I see my role today as the first tentative, daring step towards that bright new world.

When I graduated high school, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Although many things interested me, I did not feel that any particular path was right for me, and I couldn't manage to dedicate years of my life and thousands of dollars to something that I wasn't even sure was an area that I would want to remain in for the rest of my career. So, I decided to go into the work force instead, much to the dismay of my dad, who was hugely passionate about education. I worked many different jobs, moving from serving at restaurants and retail stores to working in office environments. With each job I learned more about myself, what I liked or didn't like in a career, what felt important to me and what interested me. Outside of work, I explored, taking online classes or workshops, and picking up and putting down hobbies and projects as they interested me. When COVID hit, my world shifted. There was no distraction from the piercing knowledge of how hopeless I as a single person was against a world so full of injustice and destruction. That time in my life was the closest I have ever been to suicide. And yet, I stayed alive. Although it felt useless, I joined more environmental advocacy groups and attended more events, protests, and fundraisers. I changed jobs, unable to manage to put my efforts toward a system that caused so much damage to our planet. When I went back out on the job search in an effort to work towards something that was important to me, I found myself working at a sustainable plant nursery. I fell in love with the science of plant biology, and realized what it felt like to feel as if I was making a difference to the world. I also realized how much one person could really do when working in harmony with plants and the ecosystem as a whole, combining the human's ability to learn and study with the natural ability of the world to heal itself. My desire to pursue the path of becoming a habitat restoration engineer is rooted in the deep desire to give back to the community that I call my family and the land that I call my home. I was born and raised in northern California, way out in the country, and have seen the damage done to our natural ecosystems by corporate development as well as natural disasters. I have seen natural places that I played in as a kid torn apart, animals and bugs that were a child's friend killed or forced from their homes to inhospitable concrete, and I have felt hopeless to stop it. But now, I see the tides of environmental reform turning, changing towards a future of living in harmony with the world around us, and the way that begins is by lending our hands and our hearts towards healing the damage that has already been done. I sincerely hope there is a day in the future when the job I hope to do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side. I see my role today as the first tentative, daring step towards that bright new world. My father never got to see his dream of both of his daughters graduating college. He died suddenly in 2018, not long after I graduated. Despite this, I have never regretted the time I took to really discover who I am and find a clear and committed path for myself.

Now this is something I could go on about for hours, but I'll try to reign it in in the interest of time. Every dollar we spend, every choice we make, and every action we do is a vote for the world that we want to live in. If we as a species continue to vote in the way we have been, there will soon be no world left. We have left the planet inhospitable for most of the organisms we share it with, not realizing that this will also leave it inhospitable to us. We have been on this path of destruction so long that it will take a massive, global shift in priorities to fully restore the damage we have done. Now, I'm not saying I want us to go back to hunter gatherers in caves, but I do believe there is a way for us to be able to meet our needs and thrive as a species side by side with the world around us. Although I don't expect to see it, I hope to be a part of the people who move our world to a place where humans and the natural environment support each other, lifting each other up and creating a world where everyone can survive for thousands of years. It is an incredibly complicated and multifaceted issue, and I believe it does need to be approached from all sides, from cultural, scientific, technological, political, and economic. No one person, company, or country is at fault for the state our world is in, but everyone has the opportunity and indeed, the responsibility, to educate themselves and fight to create a better world for future generations. This can be through fighting for legislation, practicing sustainability, organizing boycotts, or my chosen path, restoring our natural ecosystems.

I'll do my best to do a quick recap of my life so far; my name is Kaye, I was born almost 24 years ago. I have an older sister and we grew up with my mom and dad in a tiny little town in northern California. As a kid my favorite thing to do in the world was go out exploring, run off into the forest, climb trees and build bridges over creeks and find the bottoms of ravines. My sister was often put in charge of keeping an eye on me, as I had (and still do have) a habit of disappearing whenever we went on walks. When I was 8, my mom left my dad, and a couple years later moved us to a much larger city in the bay area. We still visited my dad (who stayed behind in the town that was now hours away) every weekend, and the drastic change matched with the inability to create a stable social life with the custody arrangement quickly took its toll on me. I lost my creative passion and descended into depression and anxiety, and started on medication and therapy at 15. When I graduated, I decided to go into the work force and dive right into the real world, as I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at that moment. We had never had much money, so college seemed out of the question anyway. That was when my dad died. His alcoholism had spiraled out of control when my sister and I went off on our own, and quickly led to his death. Not long after that, Covid hit, and I came closer than ever before or since to suicide. When the dust settled and I began to really try to find joy and meaning in my life, I found myself gravitating towards careers centered around plants, first at a florist and then at a sustainable nursery. I studied on my own and fell in love with the science of plant biology, and what it could mean for healing the world I felt so hopeless to fix in the midst of Covid. It led me back to school, on the path to become a habitat restoration engineer, to try to recreate the places that I loved so much as a child in the carnage of the world I saw around me. My desire to pursue the path of becoming a habitat restoration engineer is rooted in the deep desire to give back to the community that I call my family and the land that I call my home. I was born and raised in northern California, way out in the country, and have seen the damage done to our natural ecosystems by corporate development as well as natural disasters. I have seen natural places that I played in as a kid torn apart, animals and bugs that were a child's friend killed or forced from their homes to inhospitable concrete, and I have felt hopeless to stop it. But now, I see the tides of environmental reform turning, changing towards a future of living in harmony with the world around us, and the way that begins is by lending our hands and our hearts towards healing the damage that has already been done. I sincerely hope there is a day in the future when the job I hope to do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side. I see my role today as the first tentative, daring step towards that bright new world.

It's hard to cut out so many of my favorite books from this list, but if I were to choose one book that I think it would be important for everyone in the world to read, it would be Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It is made up of a series of essays by an Indigenous botanist, part autobiography, part poetry, part natural history, and all her attempt to reconcile her native teachings to the western education she received. It is individual snapshots of her relearning how to see the plants, animals, and ecosystems that she works with, how to view them as living, feeling beings and learn from their teachings. A major part of the story is also her journey with reconnecting with these plants that have been so deeply connected to her people's history, to uncover knowledge nearly or entirely buried under the relentless push of western expansion. The reason I believe it is important for everybody to read this book in particular is because the tendency for our modern world to block out the natural world around us. I often find myself falling into the trap of being so focused on my own life that I forget to look around. I will forget to see the plants and trees and breathe the air outside under the sky. I will forget that we live within this world, not that we created it. While it is certainly important to remember this for our own mental health or for spiritual purposes, the more important thing is the change of perception it brings to alter the way we think about the world. To view the things around us as living beings of their own, rather than backdrop to our lives, is to begin to recognize the relationships that we have with them. It is to begin to see what they give to us, and what we give to them, how our two worlds live in harmony and overlap. Simply to remember that we are not the only ones trying to live and find joy in this world reminds us to be kind to it, to take care of it for others that share it, to curb our tendency for overconsumption and focus on what we need rather than what we want. It is to realize that, in the end and since the beginning, the earth loves us back.

I lost my father when I was 18 years old. I had graduated high school about a year before then and had gone into the work force, moving out on my own near my mom, several hours drive away from my dad. My sister had already graduated college and moved to the next state. I reveled in my newfound independence, grateful that I could be away from my family that I had had such issues with. Dad had struggled with a drinking problem off and on since mom had left him ten years before, but it began to spiral out of control when we were no longer there. We would often not hear from him for days, and he even ended up in the hospital from withdrawal-induced seizures. That was why my sister asked a neighbor to check in on him on December 14th, when she hadn't heard from him for a few days. He was found passed out next to the bed, and quickly taken to the hospital. He never woke up, and on December 15th, on advice from doctors, we let the nurse pull the plug. The loss of my father rocked my world. In the course of a day, he went from relatively healthy, to disappearing from our lives with no way to even say goodbye. When I looked at my life, I realized that my 'independence' had left me alone in the world, with nobody I could lean on for support, nobody who knew what I was feeling and could relate to the loss. And I felt keenly the reality that anyone that I loved could be gone in a moment. The first person I reached out to was my sister. As a younger sister, I often felt the torment of an older sister's wrath, from pranks and bullying to simply forcing me into the shadows. I had wanted as little to do with her as possible. But when the dust settled, we began to share stories of dad, memories, and tried to unpack and piece together the shattered lives both of us were now left with. I found in her not only a source of everlasting support, but a woman who had grown to be kind, gentle, and understanding. I learned to forgive. I found my family. I began to spend more time with my mother. She had left my father for a man both my sister and I intensely disliked, and moved us from the small town that was all we had ever known to a city that seemed to us almost inconceivably full of people. I decided to go out to dinner with her once a week, and we began to talk. I found in her a woman who had never found the support she needed for untreated depression, who had not been ready to marry or have children, and who had done her best to protect us from a man she saw as dangerous while trying to find happiness for the first time in her life. Even in my stepfather, I found a man who loves his wife and her daughters, and only ever means well despite how difficult he is to be around. I learned to forgive. I found my family. I tried to learn more about my dad. He had been overbearing to the point of obsessiveness, and demanded perfection. Grades had to be perfect, extracurriculars had to be plentiful and exceptional, and most of all we had to put him and his feelings first. I began to ask my mom about him and his life, and his siblings. I began to see him as we looked through his house, sorting through everything that ever meant anything to him. I found in him a man who loved his daughters deeply, who had not been able to achieve any of his dreams but his children. I found a man who had vastly overcorrected for a childhood of neglect and absence, and had been determined above all else to give us the childhood he thought he had wanted, to give us everything that he saw as support and to be as close and caring as his parents never were. More than that, I saw a man who had always encouraged us, always pushed us to what he knew we could accomplish, and taught us the value of had work, and good work. I learned to forgive. I found my family. My relationship with my sister, my mom, and even my stepdad is closer than it ever would have been if my father were still alive. I have learned to see everyone, even my parents, as people. I know that there is nothing my father's daughter can't accomplish, and dammit I'm going to do it. Dad knew that I would all along.

Mental health is the foundation for everything we are able to maintain and accomplish in our lives. Even things as simple as brushing your teeth or as necessary as eating, can be something that feels impossible when your mental health has deteriorated to that point. The idea of going to work, or getting good grades, or being a good friend or even mother, is unthinkable in that state of mind. There are times when I have not been able to get out of bed for days from being so depressed, and the idea of going to bed at night knowing that I'll have to wake up and go to work in the morning give me suicidal thoughts. Which is a nice segue into the amount of lives claimed every year, every day, my mental health issues, not only through suicide but by people suffering so intensely that they will hurt or even take the lives of the people around them, whether strangers or loved ones. Every day the news is littered with stories like these, and every time I can't help but wonder: might the story have ended differently if they had gotten whatever help they needed? Are there people truly beyond saving, or is it a casualty of a system that has failed its people? When my mental health starts to waver, everything that relies on me starts to crumble. I cannot perform to my full potential at work or at school, I cannot act as a good and stable friend or partner or daughter or sister to the people that need me to be so. On the other hand, when my mental health is stable, I am able to thrive, and achieve things I couldn't have ever thought possible. The amount that I am able to accomplish when I am focused, driven, and happy has shocked not only everyone around me, but myself as well. I am able to achieve perfect grades while acting as the backbone of my company and taking care of my physical health and the mental health of myself and those around me. I have been struggling with mental health issues wince I was 15, although I've likely been depressed my whole life. It was at that point, however, that it quickly spiraled out of control, and came with a whole host of anxieties and interpersonal issues. Since that time, I have adjusted and readjusted medications until I found the right one, and have been in therapy nearly uninterrupted for the last 8 years. I have made a lot of leaps and bounds in my mental health journey since then, understanding myself and my mind and learning to love and care for and cherish who I am. My biggest obstacle right now, what I often need to work on, is being gentle with myself. As I said, I am often able to accomplish much more than others, and I tend to hold myself to this standard all the time. I have built my life around it, so when there are times I'm not able to do it all, my life starts to fall apart. Or push myself and continue to keep up the pace until I burn myself out to the point of suicidal thoughts. This is only the current step in a long and unending journey that will I will continue to walk my whole life, riding the ups and downs as I learn to take care of myself, and forgive myself when I am not able to.

Every day I overcome my battle with depression, and yet I never will overcome it as long as I live. My journey with mental health started when I was 15 (although the depression likely came far before that). Several years of difficulty - my parents divorcing when I was 8, moving from a tiny town to a large city without my dad, trying to develop social skills for the first time as a lonely kid in a sea of people - finally caught up to me, and it seemed like all at once, I was completely removed from the world. My mind was far away and detached from everything; I knew it was happening, but I couldn't feel any of it. What came next was years of therapy and psychiatry appointments and different medications to try to help without debilitating side effects or long term damage to a developing brain. For a long time, I felt pretty good most days, and I could feel my body and the other people around me again. The extended lockdown of the pandemic triggered a terrible spiral, worse than it has ever been, and it was the first - but not the last - time I ever felt suicidal urges. Once those thoughts are born, they never really go away, and I still feel it sometimes. But I am here, I am alive, and I am fighting to make the world a better place. My biggest desire in the path I am pursuing is to give back to my community. My goal is to become a habitat restoration engineer, and to restore the areas in my state and near my communities that have been decimated by clear cutting, strip mining, and even natural disasters like forest fires. I want to help my community live side by side with the natural world that I also consider to be my home, even my family. I want to give back to this land that has supported me and been my friend as a lonely kid in a small town who never really learned how to talk to people. I want to give back to the land to give back to the people who live on it, and the people who will live on it in the generations to come, and hope that those people will want to give back to the land in return. I think the most important thing about philately is that it is really a study of our history. Not only the history of the hugely important postal service, but it shows you the progression of art styles and historical figures and leaders and even popular styles and motifs. It's like a tiny, postage stamp sized piece of a massive time-spanning culture, that is even now becoming a part of history in and of itself with our transition into strictly digital communication. It reminds me of the Assyrian and Mesopotamian seals used to "stamp" packages, pieces of history and culture that survived thousands of years and tell us so much about who these people were, what was important to them, and even how their bureaucracy and economy functioned. All of that information is preserved for us here and now within our modern equivalent, postage stamps.

When I graduated high school in 2017, I decided to go into the work force instead of straight to college. I had many things I liked doing, but no clear plan for the future, no goal, and didn't feel comfortable spending four years of my life and thousands of dollars on something that I wasn't sure I was going to end up using in my career. I was a star student, and enjoyed all my classes, but no particular one of them felt like the right thing. So, I decided to join the real world instead. For five years, through my dad dying and Covid and lots of personal pain and heartache, I worked my way through the ladder. I worked poorly paying jobs that I hated, then well paying jobs that I hated, then a well paying job that I hated but was interested in. This job was at a floral wholesale facility, where I got to learn how to identify and name all the different types of flowers used in floral arrangements. I began to do more research on my own, through videos, books, and going out on my own to identify. When I got fed up with that job, I decided to find something closer to the plant world itself, and I got a job at a sustainable nursery. I absolutely fell in love with the science of it, and devoured any information I could find, fed by determination and a few (slightly outdated) botany textbooks. Finally, this led me to the decision to go back to school to really deepen my understanding. What is most fascinating about science to me is the attempt to understand the world from a completely different view. I can never know what it feels like to be a patch of moss in the rain, or a cactus in the desert, but everything I learn about them might be able to get me just a little closer. I can't tap into the network of mychorrizal fungi in the soil, or read the chemical signals of trees in the forest, but I can protect them, and I can nurture them and speak for them in the language that I know. The path to saving the world is one that will have to be looked at from every angle, but I know that the one that I have chosen is the one that is right for me, the one where I personally will be able to do the most good, and I know that because I spent so long listening to myself and trusting my instincts, and now I am trusting them once again. My biggest goal is to become a habitat restoration engineer, and restore damage done by strip mining, clear cutting, oil drilling and more. One of the most important things to me is to stay local, to remain and restore the areas that I have always called home, the land and trees that have become family to me. It is important to me to be focusing our efforts on the land that means the most to us, to cultivate a home for yourself and the people, plants, and animals that will come after you. I believe there is something of a lack of this female oriented perspective in an industry dominated by men, and will only continue to be so if we don't start now and pave the way for our daughters and granddaughters, and continue the legacy of our mothers and grandmothers, and those women who never got the chance to take these steps.

The process of going back to school has been incredibly anxiety inducing for me. As a reentry student, I have been financially independent from my mother since I was 17 and no longer had the option of moving back in with her to cut costs, so I've had to support myself on half an income. In addition, I haven't been able to apply for scholarships until now because my transcripts from high school aren't applicable anymore. While most of my worries are about money, I also feel pressured to take on more units than I might otherwise attempt per semester, because each extra semester is another four months I have to support myself on part time work that was barely keeping me above water as a full time job, with the staggeringly high and quickly rising costs of housing and food in my area. I still work 20 hours a week and remain a full time student, so I often feel that I can't slow down for a moment or I will fall behind, which is often true. The tight, chest squeezing anxiety is a near constant feeling, pushing me to work faster and harder. When I go too long working myself like this, that's when I start to get suicidal. It's not necessarily that I don't want to live anymore, but the thought of pushing on the way that I have been is more than I can bear, and the only escape I can see is death. I can often be reduced to tears at just the thought of getting out of bed, or full blown panic attacks when I'm trying to go to sleep, knowing how much I will have to get done the next day. I have been on my mental health journey since I was 15, not knowing how to tell my mom that I no longer felt like I was in my body. My mind felt very far away and detached from the motions my body was going through; I knew it was happening, but I couldn't feel it. Anxiety followed quickly on its heels, further reducing my ability to reach out to my friends and family about what I was feeling. Thankfully, my mother had just gotten on antidepressants, in her mid-40's, and refused to let me suffer the way she had for her entire life up to that point. It took a very long time to get to the point of medication, as they don't like to hand it out to a minor, but after several years and many attempts we found a medication that works well for me, combined with therapy that I continue to this day. Contrary to the way it's portrayed in media, the antidepressants don't just make me happy all the time (obviously), but they remove that feeling of detachment, and allow me, if nothing else, to connect with the people around me. I still go to therapy and talk with my mom often, as well as my sister and other friends. Despite my busy school schedule, I try to see them as often as I can, even if it's just to do chores or errands together. I've learned how to speak out about my trouble, and let the people who love me shoulder some burden every now and then, and know that it is because they love me. I'm certainly not at the end of my mental health journey, and there's still so many things about the world that make me scared, but I'm so proud of how far I have come.

I met one of my closest friends as a sophomore in high school, when he was a freshman. At that time, he was already out of the closet as a gay man, and didn't have many friends left from junior high. I was also already out as bisexual, and word spread fast around our school, so he gravitated towards me as a sort of cool, older queer (even though I was actually the same age as him). As we both grew into our respective identities together and explored our separate and overlapping communities, we were sort of each others windows into these different aspects of the gay community, and the person that the other could rely on to join them at protests, marches, and parades. We went together to the San Francisco Pride parade only a few days after the Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage. I was even his date to prom, and we had an awesome night! He has shown me a fundamentally different view of life than I could have ever imagined, and every day I learn from him the way the world works for a gay man in this country and in our area. Through him I was connected to many other members of the gay community, spanning many sexualities and gender identities, and have been able to view the world in a much wider way than if I had never met him, and see things from very different perspectives. He is one of the best people I know, yet I have had to watch him struggle to find support from education systems, government bodies, and even his own family. I have watched him battle homophobia and abuse at every turn, and still refuse to hide his identity behind a curtain. I think that's something that all of us in the community can understand, this refusal to give up this beautifully wide world even when the world punishes us for it. He has also, as a psychology student, introduced me to some of the intense trauma and global issues facing our community today and throughout history. To love someone is to find strength, and to want to fight, and we are those people to each other. I know deeply how important it is to defend our community and fight for support, inclusion, and representation for everyone, because there are so many people like my friend and like me in the world, good people who I cannot stand by and allow to face homelessness, addiction, abuse, and hate crimes because of being like us. In the future I plan to take the battle straight to legislation, advocating for support for the community, lobbying for policy changes, and supporting court battles over fundamental issues of gay rights. And since this battle is both large and small, I hope to always be an open, active member of my community, here to support my community and my friends in whatever way I can, even if it is just by being a friend and a support system on my own.

I don't even know where to start or who to start with; my mother who is a teacher specializing in ELD, my grandmother who worked as a lab tech at UC Berkeley, my other grandmother who went back to school for a nursing degree later in life, a family friend who started her own business at 19 with a newborn and another child on the way. There's been so many courageous, smart, driven women in my life who inspire me every day and show me how much is really possible in this life if you let go of the idea of what you can and can't do. My biggest supporter in this journey, however, has been my boss, an Irish immigrant who is now running the local sustainable nursery that I work for. She took something of a chance on hiring me, since at my age I couldn't possibly know as much about plants and gardening as many of my other coworkers who are in their 40's-60's, and because of that chance I was able to dive headfirst into the world of plants and completely fall in love even more than I already was. Her major was in botany and she is never too busy to answer any and all questions that I have, and I have learned so much from her. When an older, very much senior (at the company) employee assaulted me during work hours, she stood by me without question and refused to tolerate the behavior or sweep it under the rug. She was thrilled to hear about my plan to go back to school and has been incredibly supportive in the hours that I have to work now, letting me drop hours in the busy season and take on extra hours over winter break when I can, even though that is our slow season. Now in her early sixties, she not only runs a thriving business but writes for gardening publications and puts on classes for the community. After leaving Ireland at the age of 19 to marry a man here in the states, she raised four children while teaching elementary school. A nasty divorce from that man put her life on hold for years, but she didn't let it stop her, and she didn't give into the idea that you are 'just too old' after a certain point. She forever continues to keep growing and learning and trying inspiring new things, helping the community wherever she can, and I never see her without a smile on her face, no matter how nasty the customer. I am forever grateful to the endless opportunities she has provided me and the deep and genuine love she holds for her employees and her home, both here in California and back in Ireland.

Although I have a lot of different creative outlets, I would say my biggest creative passion is creative writing, in poetry and prose, and I believe very strongly in the power of story. Neil Gaiman wrote in his book Anansi Boys, "People take on the shape of the songs and stories that surround them." People living in a world surrounded by dark and hopeless stories will act in a dark and hopeless way. People living in a world where all the stories end with violence, or have the problems solved with fighting and hatred, will face their problems with violence and hatred. A world full of stories of hope and resilience and community will display those qualities in the hearts of its people, especially if we are able to listen to the voices of the stories of others. I don't believe in sugar coating the world with stories, I believe in getting at the heart of the world and at the heart of people in stories and words. Poetry, also, is a way to move past everything that separates you from me and be able to feel another person, to know them without knowing them by this link of shared emotion that poetry is able to express. If I had an extra 24 hours in the day, I have a lot of things I would like to practice more. I would practice my flute and my singing, and some of the color guard I did in high school. I would take so many dance classes. I would walk to wild places and wander as long as I pleased, and see and breathe and feel everything that the world around me has to show me, and I would find a quiet place under a bush and write for hours. I would volunteer wherever I could and learn anything I could find. I would read constantly and learn everything I could, build community gardens and plant fruit trees next to the sidewalk. I would do jigsaw puzzles and learn how to paint. I would fall in love with the world and with every day in it. I feel most creative when I am given constraints. Nobody likes a blank page or an empty space, so giving myself or working within different limits during a project, really helps me to flex my mental muscles and twist around them, like a pea shoot climbing a trellis. A recent example would be painting pots with my mom. She had gotten the pots from the dump and the one I was painting has rivulets of damage, similar to termite trails under the bark of a tree. I decided to highlight these areas, outline them in white and turn them into a trailing, ambling white vine with blue and purple moonflowers blooming along the edges of the pot. Most often these constraints are what inspire me to the most beautiful and important aspects of these projects that I would not otherwise have had to think of if I had no limitations, and they become my favorite parts.

There are two main issues that are the biggest factors on the impacts that floods have on our communities and ecosystems; climate change and habitat destruction. The effects of climate change have caused weather systems to fluctuate erratically, causing ecosystems that normally have safeguards in place to prevent severe flooding to be overwhelmed by the force of the storms. However, even under ideal weather conditions, most communities are at much greater risk of flooding because of the effects of habitat destruction. As I mentioned earlier, most ecosystems in areas of high flood risk have safeguards built in and developed over centuries to reduce the effects of flooding on the area as well as allow the area to bounce back more efficiently. This can be the formation of roots in the soil, soil composition as determined by plant life and microbiomes, etc. When the land is developed, this delicate system is dismantled, and the flooding that had been held in check is allowed to run rampant. This is why I believe my desired career path, habitat restoration, is one of the most important factors in the reduction of the damages done by floods. For example, the area I grew up in was naturally a wetland, that was drained in order to be developed upon. The loss of this ecosystem left no place for the water to go when the rainy season came, except for in our river, which swelled to burst its banks, and into our streets, which was not only dangerous to our citizens, but would contaminate our water supply and cost taxpayer money. It wasn't until efforts were put in place to restore these natural wetlands that the flooding nearly disappeared entirely. By setting aside a separate space for the wetlands to inhabit, the water was able to spread across a greater area and be held in check by the unique soil and plant life. The city beside it was left unaffected by the massive quantities of water that, because of the local biome, came in a massive flush within the period of a few months, rather than steadily throughout the year. The restoration of native ecosystems also plays a massive part in reducing the effects of climate change. It is not enough to just replant whatever you happen to get your hands on; just having plants is not enough. A fully stabilized ecosystem thrives in a way that the struggling crape myrtles in the sidewalks of a city can never hope to achieve, and with that comes massive amounts of carbon dioxide captured and stored and oxygen created. These ecosystems, however, take a long time to establish, longer than we have if we want to save as many people and communities as possible from the dangerous effects of flooding. By using what we have learned for the good of the world around us, we can help ourselves and our future descendants, while repairing the damage done not only to our human communities, but to our neighbor communities of plants, animals, and soil. I sincerely hope there is a day in the future when the job I hope to do is no longer needed, when humanity and the natural world can flourish side by side. I see my role today as the first tentative, daring step towards that bright new world.