I sat an thought about many black woman in history I could have written about who have inspired me. Michelle Obama, our former first lady who is a successful black woman, lawyer, and writer. Katherine Johnson who paved the way for women in math, showcasing her intelligence and achieving feats never before expected of a black woman. Ida B Wells, who was one of the founders for the NAACP, fighting for the rights of blacks and women in many different social settings. There are many amazing black women in our history who have done things to bring about inspiration to those who came after them; However, I believe the woman who deserves the most recognition is my mother. Her life has been anything but easy from what I know, and the information I know about her probably isn't even the half of it. She had to endure a pregnancy at a young age, being in the military, struggling with depression and a struggling relationship. Even with all this, she still pushed to reach her dreams and make sure that her kids had what they needed to succeed. She attended college and got her degree all while raising three kids of her own. Even though her efforts are not always recognized, she never lets that discourage her from continuing to be helpful and kind to those around her. She always has a smile on her face and continues to look on the bright side of things no matter the circumstance. She has sacrificed so much for me and my siblings so that we have the ability to pursue our dreams, and I will forever be grateful for that. I take inspiration in her to always strive to do my best and reach for my goals no matter what obstacle may stand in my path. As I go onto college, I will keep her bubbly personality and "can-do" spirit with me no matter what I may face. I will treat the people around me with kindness because I know that everyone is dealing with their own battles and struggles, and I learned from my mom that even one kind word can make someone's whole day. I hope to be able to inspire and enlighten the people around me as I have seen my mom do so many times. I want to be a person that someone can look to when they're feeling down, upset, or unmotivated and tell them, "You can do it!", just like my mom has for so many people.

My name is Keaera Kea-Towns and I am a student athlete at Windsor High School in Windsor, Virginia. One thing that motivates me is surrounding myself with successful people. Ever since I was little, I've always had grand dreams for myself and goals for how I wanted my future to turn out. Throughout my life, I have heard time and time again from adults around me to "watch who you surround yourself with" and to "pick good people to have as friends" and I used to wonder why. I'm an individual, so even if I choose to hang around people who don't do the best things, can't I just choose to do what's right? In theory, this is true; however, when you hang around people whose morals and ambitions don't align with yours, either you change yourself to fit their standards or they change to fit your standards. Most times, the bad influence wins out because of things like peer pressure and wanting to be seen as "cool". As I got to high school, I started seeking out people whose visions aligned with mine. People who wanted to excel in school, who wanted to be nice and friendly to those around them, and most importantly, people who had dreams for their life. Me hanging around these people allowed me to stick with my goals and have a support system of those who truly cared about me and who wanted me to excel. If I could do anything with my life, I would be a successful engineer who works at NASA to make new and exciting discoveries about our world and beyond. In school, I have always been excited to learn new things that stimulate my mind. The satisfaction I get from getting a tricky math question always makes the pain of having to go through it worth it. STEM excites me because it allows me to be able to continuously learn new things. Whether I'm solving a complex math problem in my calculus class or identifying truss forces in engineering, I know there is always something new for me to learn. The technology of the world is constantly moving and improving every single day, and that is something that has always been exhilarating to me. The thought that in the future, I could be the person who helps find out how to successfully travel to distant planets or find another easier and more successful way of calculating or solving difficult equations always pushes me to continue to keep an open mind and never stop pursuing more knowledge. Although the major that I am pursuing isn't 100% focused in IT, I know a job in information technology would impact the world by improving communication channels. Designing, creating, and testing softwares, websites and more are some things that people working in the field of information technology do in order to meet the needs of the people that use them. Information technology is important work that is often overlooked and taken for granted; however without the work that people who pursue a career of IT, we wouldn't be able to do certain tasks as easily as we do now. One of the greatest challenges I've had to overcome actually pertains to sports, however, I believe it can reflect me in everyday life as well. I am a part of my school's track and field team as a triple jumper. I started triple jump my junior year of high school and continued it on throughout my senior season (which is still ongoing). One of my goals I had set for this track season was to go to states in one of my events. When we got down to the last couple meets, I decided on triple jump as the event I was going to focus on for the remainder of the season. What's funny enough though is the fact that up to this point of the season, I hadn't made any significant improvement in this event since the previous year. No personal record at all. If anything it seemed like I was getting worse at it, and that I wasn't going to be able to qualify for states at all. This led to my confidence in myself dropping drastically. I felt like I wasn't working hard enough or that I was unable to be good enough to reach my goals. I continually put myself through pain from jumping too much because I felt like I simply wasn't jumping as much as I needed to or working as hard as I could to get where I wanted to be. There were many times I said I was going to quit, however time and time again, I went out to jump. During a talk with my coach after one of my many crying sessions after jumping badly at a meet, he told me that I needed to have confidence in myself and that's when it clicked. Maybe it wasn't that I was jumping bad which made me lose confidence in myself; what if me losing confidence in myself made me jump bad? I had to have a heart to heart with myself to find out what I really wanted for myself, and how bad I wanted to reach my goals. Rather than jumping just to jump, I started working on drills to improve my technique, running drills to help my form, and most importantly, I took time to reassure myself that the work I was putting in was worth it. At the district meet, I finally reached my all time personal record of 32 feet in the triple jump. This challenge taught me that having confidence in yourself and your abilities is one of many important factors to achieving your goals, whether it be for sports, in academics, or life in general.

I have been playing basketball for 6 years and the experiences and lessons I have gained in my time of playing has helped to shape me into the person I am today. To start, I have gotten both All-District awards (3) and an All-Region award (1) since I started to play in high school. One obstacle I've had to overcome in my basketball career is my height. I'm pretty short (5'2") and because of this, I've struggled with finding a way to be good when everyone I'm playing against is taller and bigger. Due to my height, I've had to find other ways to contribute to my team. Playing defense has always been my strong suit, and this was my initial response to overcome my height problem. My first couple years of playing, my stats mainly consisted of steals and assists, and it worked out for me, gaining me my first 2 all-district 2nd team awards and an all-region honorable mention award. After that, I had to overcome my obstacle of finding other ways to benefit my team. I had a struggle with confidence for a little bit, as I felt like my skills and helpfulness to my team was sort of plateauing. Over the summer after my junior year, I put in a lot of work to better my shooting and ball handling skills because those were some things I struggled with in previous seasons. My first half of my senior season went really well; I scored a decent amount of points every game (averaged about 10 I'm pretty sure), and I was confident in my abilities. However, after Christmas break, we played a game against a team that we normally beat, and we lost. To make matters worse, I fouled out and was unable to play at all for the last quarter. After that, my confidence in myself and how I played started to plummet. I was always worried about fouling and that made me not play as confident as I normally did. After having a conversation with my coach, I realized that me losing confidence could have played a role in me not playing my best and not the other way around. This led me to working on reassuring myself of my skills, and whatever doubts I had about my talents, I would just put more work in to be better. This obstacle of my own self doubt taught me that everything doesn't always go up, or steadily increase. Sometimes, improvement is a continuous cycle of getting better and getting a little worse, before getting better again. Having faith in your abilities and the perseverance to push through even when it looks like nothing is working out is what really matters.

An anime series I could watch over and over again and never get tired of would have to be "The Disastrous Life of Saiki K". For starters, I found this series in the midst of COVID, a time where not seeing anyone but your family for days or weeks on end was normal. It was honestly such a depressing period for me because of the social distancing, so I turned to watching anime. Saiki K is a light- hearted, slice of life series that depicts all the ups and downs of friendship in the most hilarious manner. The main character, Kusuo Saiki, is a boy with psychic powers who is antisocial and does his best to keep these powers hidden. His way of doing this is by avoiding people and keeping a low profile all together. However, try as he might to avoid people in his classes, many still attempt to talk to him and hang out with him. Each and every character in this anime have their own eccentric and hilarious personalities, and each interaction makes me laugh every time. In a time where I couldn't see my own friends, I had this anime to go back to over and over again to temporarily fill that hole. Even now, I constantly find myself going back to rewatch episodes when I need a good laugh.

I've wanted to enter the engineering field since I was in 4th grade. I had an end of year project assigned to me and I had to make a big poster board about my dream college, why I wanted to go, and various math pertaining to tuition and such. I found a lot of information about the school my 4th grade self wanted to attend, which was MIT, and for some reason the only piece I've retained throughout all these years is that the school mascot is a beaver. Since then, My goals have changed drastically. I've been a part of various clubs and sports such as debate, basketball and track and field, just to name a couple. My love for engineering has stayed the same throughout all these years. I've had the honor of being included in many STEM activities in my elementary years, but as of recent I haven't had much of an opportunity to explore these fields in a while, other than an engineering class I took earlier this year. In this class I was able to explore 3D software and work with my classmates on various projects, the most interesting one being making a bridge. I loved every aspect of it, from research on the types of bridges, building the bridge and doing tests and collecting data. This project dissipitated any doubts I had about going into the field of engineering. This summer, I hope to find more opportunities to better my knowledge in engineering and computer science, so I can reach my goals of eventually becoming an engineer. This scholarship would help me to be able to take advantage of opportunities provided by a college with good engineering programs. I am currently looking at CNU and North Carolina A&T; but I am looking to expand the college list as I do more research. One contribution I can think of is one I actually haven't done yet, but actually looking to do this summer. I have recently gotten into crochet, and one day I was looking for opportunities to donate (I have made a lot of stuff since I started learning in December) and I have found a couple websites that I am looking to donate some beanies, scarves, and/or baby blankets. Although I haven't donated anything yet, it is something I'm looking forward to doing! Many of the things I have crocheted I have given away and every time I get a sense of joy after seeing how happy it makes the reciever. I feel like with me donating my projects, I'll be able to expand the joy to places I might never even visit myself.