Reading has always beens something that I had on lock. According to my aunt, I taught myself how to read. Though I mentally cannot configure the puzzle to which I pieced together in order to understand the written English language without guidance. The one thing that is fathomable is my personality. Once I get into something I latch on. I could read at an extremely high level from Kindergarden, but I never really got into books. I couldn't afford to buy books along with everything else. Even when they had a resurgence in me from booktok with Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. With all the classics and the inspiration to read the Dune and Game of Thrones books, because there are some things that movies just can't get right. So I bought them. With money that would be 'better spent' on ubering to or from work or school, I bought Dune, Game of Thrones, and War and Peace. It's changed me. It's hard to read books online, but when I hold them it's my transportation to another world, not to a workplace. I do like school more now though. Maybe there's a correlation. Being around knowledge is fascinating to me. It gives so much more insight on the world and things in it. You can see the beauty in a butterfly, the red in apples, and the yellow in bananas different from anything you've thought before. There's so much to it. There's so much to life that books offer. In my freetime I write, I've been writing poems and song since I can remember, probably before that. There was one which I can't fully recover, but it was about a yellow canary. It went on about the things we can be pulled to and distracted from. It was like a dream of going from subject to subject. Words paint those illusions. Books paint those illusions of grandeur and misery and stress and everything else that is thought of from anyone. BookTok has influenced me majorly, but it's also caused me to distance myself even more from some books. People commonly only reading book which are lectures of common sense instead of books that expand their common sense. I like booktok for the classics and the inspiration for expansion of your existence. I think we should all use books for that. We should dream. We shouldn't be stagnant. We were made to dream. Explore the world through a book.

Who am I?: I'm an architecture student. I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina. The little red house I used to live in was falling apart and they kicked me out to raise the rent. I've been directly impacted by gentrification and my urban environment. I played with Legos and watched Thomas the Train in my early childhood. My upbringing doesn't make me. God made me. I hope to inspire a renaissance of architecture. I want to change the mentality of the current field. I experience poor planning in my city daily, as the public transportation is inconsistent, there is virtually no walkability, and all neighborhoods outside of the center(Uptown), are built on or off of freeways. I have to Uber to school every school day and to work as well. In my city, there is growing homelessness and gentrification. Housing prices are steadily increasing and sustainability is decreasing because the care for it was never there. This city is the most growing city in the country. I can see it. From my childhood to now, this city has drastically changed. But it is unsustainable, the city continues to forgoe the expansion and support of infrastructure and continues to build with single zoning types. The current structure only suits the car which causes traffic on the highways and pollution in the air. There is a limit that doesn't have to be current because the city has a large room for expansion in the metro areas. The city continues to fund expenditures uptown but fails to consider the consequences of centering all transportation and not taking consideration in using transportation to develop outer areas. My proposal: Split the city into eight cities. Each could have a center, public transport, necessities, and walkability. This essentially could create the 10-minute city in Charlotte. There could also be a movement to create a city fund and utilize it to create new housing districts that combine the affordability and luxury departments in one area to avoid creating slums. The new centers with varying distances from the old ones would function collectively as new cities and could create new transportation areas directly from one to another. The new centers would form a flower-like shape of density. This means there would be mixed density in the formerly zoned single-family areas to promote walkability and increase the populations near stores to increase traction. All in all, there is much more to be done than I could write, There is much more to be discussed than I could venture for in this 600. When it comes to this plan, if there is a will, there is a way. Passion: I became passionate about urban design because I loved the cities that people could conjure. It started with seeing a map of Barcelona or Paris. The blocks were so neat and there was art on every building. From there it spiraled, "Why can my city not look like this?" When I figured out how fast Paris was reconstructed the possibilities just popped into my head of what could be done if you just try. So I want to try to make a spark and see what happens.

Why do I need it?: In architecture, the materials are expensive, and traveling to school by Uber takes up most if not all my wages, not to mention eating and necessities. My money does not stretch to meet the needs and I know my aunt is struggling with maintaining bills right now. This scholarship could help me drastically change my college experience. Just today I had to miss class, because I couldn't pay $50.00 to go today. This scholarship would help me tremendously. Passion: Each year I change a lot. I have the same backbones and different destinations. Each day I change and each day I realize something new about myself and some new wonder I have. There are constants though, all through the briskness of childhood to the naivety of adulthood. When I was a kid it was legos, trains, teaching, writing songs and preaching to my teddy bears. As I grow older it's architecture, urban planning, writing stories and essays, piano, and preaching to my walls, to God, because I lost my teddy bear. God has a hold on me. i always lose the worthless and keep whats worth something. I lose my phone so much it's quite possible God is yelling from heaven, "Put it down", I just lost my card which I got a few weeks ago. I'm not lost though. The constants stay. The backbones. I am a start. I've witnessed much growth in my family, but we're still considered impoverished. Somehow, we've come to feel a richness of gathering together and helping one another. I am a first generation college student. I will use my growth to grow my family as well. I am going to study architecture and my promises are upon my backbone: I will gain the wealth to secure myself and my families future; I will see my buildings built; and I will maintain my peace. I take these things for granted: My family, my peace, and my liberties. But, as I grow myself I continue to make it a goal to call people more, to reach out more, I've been enclosed in a box since Covid. We were kicked out of our house and moved into my moms(I stay with my aunt). It was hard and a few years later my uncle, who was like my father passed away. He would've said, "Go for it Q!" So here I am, reaching out, extending my backbone to get a scholarship I know I'm not the only one who deserves. The BIPOC scholarship can help me grow the amount of black men in architecture and inspire more young men in my area to go to college, to reach that peak destination by any means and grow the wealth of our families. I looked at the people in the architecture firms in my city, Charlotte, North Carolina. Mostly white. So much so I began to think that I wouldn't relate to them much. I have such a mixed racial friend group I forgot what the actual color of our world is. BIPOC can help me change that color, even if just a little bit.