In the past year, I have grown in my ability to make decisions independently of my parents, while also respecting their wisdom. I often hear stories of people struggling to make decisions in the absence of sound guidance from their parents. I have the opposite problem. My parents have always given me sound advice rooted in love, which has been a blessing in more ways than I can count. However, it has also made it difficult to forge a path or an identity that diverges from theirs. If they have never led me wrong in the past, how could I possibly be confident in making a decision they wouldn’t? When I announced my engagement in late 2021, I had the opportunity to stand by a decision that my parents would have made differently. They had concerns about the timeline of the engagement, and urged me to push the wedding back—anywhere from a couple months to a couple years. They loved my fiancé, but they had practical and financial concerns about the wedding date we’d chosen. However, my fiancé and I knew that we had carefully reasoned through our decision. We’d sought the counsel of a trusted community, considered our values, goals, and desires, and accepted the financial challenges we were likely to face early on. It was difficult to stand my ground, especially in the face of my parents’ well-intentioned advice to the contrary. Wedding planning is stressful enough as it is, and our different opinions about the timeline of the engagement added another layer of tension to an already-fraught process. Throughout it all, I never budged on the timeline, but found other ways to involve my parents in the planning process and show them that their input mattered to me. On June 19th, 2022, I married my husband in a beautiful lakeside ceremony, and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. While I’ve grown in my capacity to make my own decisions, it was important to me that I didn’t overcorrect and reject my parents’ guidance wholesale. It seems to me that in growing into independence, there’s a risk of becoming obstinate and unreasonable, or of overvaluing making your own choice, and undervaluing making a wise one. Despite the changes the last year has brought, my desire to honor my parents and make the best decision possible hasn’t changed. Throughout this process, I have learned to trust my judgment and to be confident in the choices I make. I know how to reason through difficult decisions, seek qualified counsel, and integrate my values and goals into my decision-making process. I know now that I don’t need to doubt and defer to others for the most important choices in my life—I can reason well and choose boldly.

“We’re transferring her to Community Regional Medical Center,” the doctor explained to my mother, who was terrified and exhausted after a sleepless night on the chair in my hospital room. “Why?” she asked. It had taken long enough for them to admit me at our local hospital—why transfer me to one that was even more impacted and distant? “Because,” the doctor explained, “they have a better burn unit.” It had started with the inside of my bottom lip. Angry blisters blossomed there, then spread to my throat and nose. Even my eyes became red and inflamed. After endless needle sticks and tests, I was diagnosed with Stevens Johnson Syndrome—a condition that was likely caused by either the pneumonia I’d had or the antibiotic I was prescribed to treat it. Stevens Johnson Syndrome affects the skin so severely it often has to be treated like a burn. Spare yourself the Google search—it’s pretty gruesome. The week I spent in the hospital fighting Stevens Johnson Syndrome was the most traumatic experience of my life. Swallowing was agony, and sneezing was worse. I couldn’t eat for days on end, and an antiviral drug made me nauseous and miserable. If it weren’t for the love and constancy of my parents, who stayed by my side throughout that week from hell, I don’t know how I would’ve survived it. Slowly but surely, I recovered. my mother encouraged me to work a summer job—a teacher’s aide position with a local summer school program. I was still feeling unsure of my health, and nervous about diving headlong into this commitment, but I’m glad she pushed me. Stepping into the routine and responsibility of the summer job was exactly what I needed to regain my confidence and get out of the funk that the illness had brought on. I helped students with arts and crafts, public speaking, and more. Taking on meaningful responsibility to my community was an essential part of my recovery process, and it convinced me of my resiliency in the face of hardship and suffering. In retrospect, it’s easy to feel like it was obvious I’d recover, but it wasn’t obvious at all—I learned later that somewhere between 10 and 50 percent of people with Stevens Johnson Syndrome die from the disease. I also learned that the ophthalmologist who had seen me in the hospital was convinced that I would become blind as a result of the illness. I didn’t. This revelation was almost too much to bear. How many incredible things had I seen and done that I wouldn’t have been able to if I had lost my vision? I saw the pride on my parents’ face when I graduated from college, the finish line of my first half marathon, and the face of the man I love. How do you live in response to your life and vision being spared? My advice to those who have faced similar health crises is that the best response to such a traumatic event, and such a near loss, is radical gratitude. My health crisis made me less shy about expressing my appreciation to the people I love. I make sure my mother knows how much I appreciate her wisdom, her insight, and her advocacy; I tell my father how grateful I am for his attentiveness and self-sacrifice. I know now that to see and live each day is not guaranteed, and that the people around me need to hear what a privilege it is to share my life with them.

You were my age before the world began Unholying in 1996. You took a shot at Willikers Between ceremony and reception, An anxious bustle scolding the spilling Lace while the bartender blessed The elements. My memories of yours Are five by seven and only to be lifted At the edges. Another Theta lifted a bag of chips From Texaco—a wholesome, nineties theft— And split it with you. My hand is suddenly a child’s, Straining as for an octave, And the memory goes convex. I know you are just a person And were. I know my birth did not Arrest a censer swung aft and always Over the Earth, But only in the way I know that There is a God. I try to be ceremony and find The aisle petal-swept, the priest Polite but eager to leave. I try to be reception and find myself Transparent and Try-hard and Unreceived.

The best songs are stories, and “A Little Bit of Everything” by Dawes tells three. The story told in the final verse is about an engaged couple planning their wedding. The young man remarks on his fiancée’s boredom as she addresses invitations, and her response to him is one of the wisest and most profound lyrics I’ve ever heard: “You just worry about your groomsmen and your shirt size, And rest assured that this is making me feel good. I think that love is so much easier than you realize— If you can give yourself to someone, then you should.” Every time I listen to it, the lyric surprises me. The woman is perceptive and intuitive, and she knows that her fiancé’s concern is not just about the task at hand, but about the relationship as a whole. I expect her to reassure him that she feels loved by him, or that they are soulmates, or that she feels as excited and enamored as she did on the day they got engaged. Instead, she reframes love, not as something received, experiential, and irresistible, but as something voluntarily given. "The question," she seems to say, "is not whether the menial task before me is thrilling, but whether I’m willing to give myself to you in the ordinary, every day of our lives. And I am." This verse, as well as the song as a whole, is meaningful to me because it is attuned to the romance of the ordinary, and the beauty of the unremarkable. It treats what is humble and common with dignity and attention, and suggests that it is precisely those moments of our lives that are most overlooked, that are the most extraordinary.

In response to news of ulcers and arrhythmias, people cluck their tongues and shake their heads sympathetically. “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything,” they say. In response to news of depression and anxiety, they wave their hands and say, “We all get a little sad now and then.” If we accept that health is an almost self-evident good, and that mental health is an essential component of overall health, it follows that maintaining mental wellness should be as much of a priority as eating well, or seeing a doctor when we feel ill. As I’ve seen in my own life, mental health is important because it is foundational to human flourishing, and must be intentionally maintained. Personally, I work to maintain my mental health through creative outlets, and counseling in the context of a trusted community. I’m well acquainted with mental health challenges, as I’ve struggled with an anxiety disorder since childhood, and I know firsthand how it can threaten a person’s ability to thrive. Specifically, I suffer from emetophobia, or the acute and irrational fear of vomiting, and this condition has haunted every aspect of my life, from my career aspirations to my ability to care for loved ones. While my phobia is pretty well managed at this point, I know that other people struggle with mental health conditions that affect their lives even more severely. Clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder, as well as other mental health challenges, can feel all-encompassing and insurmountable. It’s important to understand that poor mental health can threaten the lives and livelihoods of those who suffer from disorders like these. Engaging in creative activities such as writing and painting have been instrumental to me in maintaining my mental health. I have always loved to write, so devoting time to creative pursuits feels natural and rewarding to me. In my experience, the creation of something beautiful and meaningful helps to combat feelings of inadequacy or meaninglessness, which can slip into our thought lives, unnoticed, if we are not careful. Additionally, I receive monthly counseling in the context of a trusted community—specifically, my church. The freedom to process my feelings, fears, anxieties, and guilt, and to receive wise and trustworthy counsel in response, is so beneficial for my mental health. After years of struggling with all of these in silence and solitude, it is a relief to bring them into the light, and work with a trusted mentor towards meaningfully resolving them. Therefore, mental health matters because it is impossible to thrive without it. In my own experience, creative pursuits and regular counseling have been the most effective methods of maintaining my mental wellbeing, and living a life characterized by health, wellness, and genuine joy.

I am pursuing my teaching credential at Fresno Pacific University in order to become a high school English teacher, and to instill in my students the same love of language that my teachers instilled in me. As a future educator myself, I know the value of an education, and am eager to further my own. A higher education will enable me serve my future students with technical expertise, real-world experience, and practical wisdom gained in collaboration with a community of learners. The program that I am pursuing will provide a solid grounding in the theoretical underpinnings of excellent teaching. In the last hundred years, major strides have been made in the fields of developmental and educational psychology, from early theories of behaviorism, to more contemporary constructivist approaches. I believe that in order to teach well, I need to be exposed to a wide range of these philosophies of education so that I can refine my own. While there’s no substitute for practical experience, I also believe that there’s value in learning from the insight and experiences of others. Thus, higher education will allow me to survey the advancements made by experts in my field, and to enrich my own personal educational philosophy. Additionally, the program I’m enrolled in involves a significant practical component—specifically, a student teaching requirement. Higher education, at its best, is not merely about theories or philosophies, but also about the application thereof. In my time as a student teacher, I will have the chance to experience a classroom setting under the guidance of a mentor teacher, and begin to put into practice the skills and approaches that I’ve learned about. A higher education makes possible this marriage of the theoretical and the practical, called praxis, and I believe that this will equip me to serve my future students well. Finally, higher education will allow me the opportunity to learn collaboratively with a community of learners who are working toward a shared goal. In my classes this semester, I am surrounded by fellow students who are passionate about becoming the best teachers they can be, and about helping one another to succeed. The result is lively classroom environments, meaningful discussion board exchanges, and memorable small-group conversations. Most remarkable about these exchanges is that students feel the freedom to say what they believe—to push back against ideas they disagree with and to voice their own. I can’t think of another context outside of higher education where I have witnessed such helpful, positive, and honest discourse. Therefore, higher education holds the promise of a firm grounding in educational theory, indispensable real-world experience, and collaborative learning within a supportive community. Each of these will be invaluable to me as I strive to become the best teacher I can be, and one day, touch the hearts and minds of my own students.