For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived with pain. Not the kind that fades with sleep or medication, but the kind that lingers quietly and cruelly, unseen by others yet all-consuming. For years, it haunted my body without explanation. Every day, I woke up already exhausted. I would try to smile, to keep up with my friends, to act like everything was okay. But deep down, I knew something was wrong. My head would pound so violently that it felt like the world was splitting in half. Sometimes I couldn’t feel one side of my body. I would get dizzy standing up, or feel my heart race just from walking across a room. No one could tell me why. Doctors ran tests. People told me it was anxiety. Some said I was just dramatic or lazy. I started to believe it myself. I began to isolate. I stopped talking about the pain because I was tired of not being believed. There were days I cried alone in bed, not because I thought I was dying, but because I didn’t know how to keep living like this. School became a battlefield. I pushed through classes, trying to focus while silently fighting waves of pain and nausea. I watched other students laugh, run, and plan their futures while I was just trying to survive the day. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I finally received answers. I was diagnosed with occipital neuralgia, POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), and hemiplegic migraines. I also learned that if the estrogen levels in my body were to spike too high, it could trigger a stroke. That moment was surreal. I wasn’t dying, but I was living every day on the edge of something dangerous. Even with a diagnosis, there wasn’t a cure, just new precautions, medications, and warnings. I didn’t feel safe in my own body anymore. That diagnosis changed everything. It didn’t fix me, but it gave me validation. For the first time, I had proof that my pain was real. But it also forced me to see the world differently. I couldn’t just dream like other teenagers. I had to plan around limits, prepare for flare-ups, and accept that my health might always stand between me and the life I imagined. And yet, through that sadness and fear, I found a kind of strength I didn’t know I had. I kept going. Even when I was too tired to sit through a full school day, even when my body ached with every step, even when I couldn’t join friends or go to events because I was recovering from another episode, I stayed. I studied. I showed up. My illness didn’t just test me physically. It reshaped my values. I learned to find joy in small victories, to advocate for myself in doctors’ offices and classrooms, and to be kinder to others because you never really know what someone else is carrying inside. I want to go to college not just for myself, but for the younger version of me who thought she might never make it this far. I want to build a future where students like me, students who are chronically ill, overlooked, or misunderstood, feel seen and supported. I’ve learned that illness doesn’t have to be the end of a dream. Sometimes, it becomes the beginning of a new purpose.

In 2018, the world went quiet. My grandfather, the man who raised me, protected me, and loved me like a daughter, took his last breath, and with him, he took the only sense of safety I had ever known. To the world, he was a veteran. To me, he was home. When he died, I was left behind in a house that felt colder with every day. Trapped with a father whose words bruised just as deeply as fists ever could. Grief wrapped itself around me and I couldn’t outrun it. I began to spiral. I stopped recognizing the girl in the mirror. I started cutting, not because I wanted to die, but because I didn’t know how else to feel something that wasn’t numb. But even in that darkness, there were flickers of light. I clung to the quiet strength my grandfather had passed on to me, his voice still echoing in the back of my mind, telling me to keep going, to fight for the life he believed I deserved. And somewhere in the wreckage, I found God. Not in a grand moment, but in the small ones. Through prayer, through pages of writing, through whispered promises to myself that I wouldn’t let this be the end of my story. From that pain, purpose began to bloom. I started a club at my high school called Empower Minds; a safe place for students like me, who felt like no one saw them. We spoke honestly about mental health, about bullying, about the parts of ourselves we usually kept hidden. We brought in counselors, held open talks, and gave people the space to just be. For many, it was the first time someone had truly listened. And for me, it was the first time I realized I could turn my pain into something powerful. Mental health isn’t just a passion for me, it’s personal. It’s the lens through which I see the world, and the reason I chose journalism as my path. Because stories have the power to heal, to connect, to spark change. I want to tell the stories that sit in silence. The ones about kids who cry quietly in school bathrooms, about the students with straight A’s and shattered hearts, about the systems that fail those who need help the most. I want to be the voice I once needed. And more than that, I want to change the way we listen. I dream of a world where getting help isn’t a maze of referrals and waitlists, where schools are safe havens, not survival zones. I plan to use both my words and my work to simplify the broken processes, advocating for more school counselors, trauma-informed staff, and mental health programs that meet students where they are. Losing my grandfather nearly broke me. But it also built the foundation of the woman I am becoming; resilient, driven, and unafraid to speak the hard truths. My experience with mental health shaped my beliefs, reshaped my relationships, and gave me a lifelong mission: to tell the stories that matter, and to never let another student feel as alone as I once did.

Justice isn’t just an abstract idea to me—it’s something I’ve seen people be denied, something I’ve seen my own family wrestle with. It’s what pushes me to pick up a pen, a camera, and step into places others might avoid. Justice means making sure the stories of the unheard, the overlooked, and the forgotten don’t disappear into silence. It means shining a light on the darkest corners of the world, where suffering is too often ignored because it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable. My grandfather was a Vietnam War veteran. When I was a kid, I didn’t fully understand what that meant. I just knew there were some things he didn’t like to talk about, some memories he carried that never seemed to leave him alone. I’d see it in the way he stared off into space sometimes, lost in thoughts he’d never explain. I’d hear it in the rare moments he did open up—frustration, anger, grief. He told me stories of friends who never made it back, of the way soldiers were treated when they returned, of the way the government failed them. It made me furious. It made me question the narratives I was taught in school, the way history is told, the way suffering is ignored when it no longer fits the storyline. That anger turned into something else—a need to dig deeper, to ask questions, to make sure people like my grandfather weren’t just statistics in history books. I want to be a journalist who doesn’t just repeat the headlines but goes beyond them. I want to be in war zones and third-world countries, not to sensationalize tragedy, but to document the reality of people living through it. I don’t want to just write—I want to capture the way a protester grips a sign so tightly their knuckles turn white, the way a mother shields her child in the middle of chaos, the way resilience looks different but familiar everywhere in the world. I think about protests a lot—how they’re messy and emotional and sometimes dangerous, but always necessary. People don’t take to the streets for fun. They do it because they feel like they have no other choice. I want to be there when it happens, not just for the dramatic moments but for the quiet ones too—the nervous shifting before a speech starts, the shared glances of determination, the exhausted relief when it’s over. Those moments, the ones that don’t always make it into history books, are just as important as the ones that do. I know this path won’t be easy. I know the risks that come with it. But if I can tell even one story that makes someone stop and think—if I can make even one person feel something they wouldn’t have otherwise—then it’ll be worth it. This scholarship would help me take the next step in making that happen. It would help me gain the skills I need to report with integrity, to tell the truth even when it’s dangerous or inconvenient, and to be a voice for those who don’t have the privilege of being heard. Justice isn’t just something I care about—it’s something I have to fight for. And journalism is how I plan to do it.