I hate soccer. When I was young I was a gymnast and a dancer. When I was eight I started playing soccer. Soccer became the love of my life. But I didn't stop there. I consider myself to be not only athletic but also incredibly hardworking. During all three years of middle school, I played tennis and ran cross country. Playing sports is an important part of my life because it is where I am happiest, where I build relationships, and where I work on myself. I picked up a soccer ball in third grade, and I took it and ran. For years my entire universe revolved around soccer. I played school soccer and club soccer. I have spent most weekends in hotels with my mom and my soccer cleats. I even changed my schedule during my junior year so that I could go to personal soccer training before school. Soccer taught me a lot about myself. Soccer taught me that I am the hardest worker I know. Soccer taught me that I love to sweat, run, and to play a little dirty. Soccer also taught me that I am extremely hard on myself, and I do not take my mistakes lightly. I am aware that I am my biggest critic and performing poorly only really disappoints me. I loved soccer right up until I didn't. I loved soccer until soccer made me forget to love myself. Until eventually every wrong step I took or bad pass I made slowly built up inside of me, and eventually, I crumbled under the pressure. I realized that trying to obtain perfection made me doubt myself and lose confidence in my ability and it was no longer enjoyable. I ended up hating soccer. I pushed through and finished my soccer career my senior year and hung up my soccer cleats. It was a very bittersweet moment. I knew early on, partially because of my soccer experience, that I loved to run, and that I was pretty good at it. Earlier I said I ran through middle school. When I got to high school my mom thought I should not continue cross country because she thought I would get injured and that running would inhibit me from playing soccer. I ended up running track my sophomore, junior, and now senior year and have excelled. I decided to run cross country again for my senior year and it was the most fun I've ever had in my entire life. I remembered how much I truly love to run and how good it makes me feel. My senior cross-country season was the happiest I have ever been. It made me believe in myself and made me proud of myself. It made me want to be better and push myself more. I believe that running is completely mental. It was me against me, and I had to win. Your body argues with your brain but your brain has to be strong enough to win. The season went very well and we made it to States and placed 13th. I won Rookie of the Year because I technically didn't run cross country ever before in high school and my coach says I'm his most influential runner. In every sport I have played, I have done so passionately. My passion for soccer burned out, but paved the way for the track and cross country seasons that have reshaped how I view myself. I am now trying to walk on to run the division one track. Sports have taught me life lessons I will never forget, so I thank soccer.

I used to be a very introverted person. I thought the definition of success was self-furtherance. All of my motives and goals were focused on my personal gain. In moderation, this is a good habit to have. But there is only so far my faith can grow within myself. About a year ago I moved to a different church, whose slogan is, "love God, love others and love our world." I realized that nowhere in there does it say, "love myself." This mission statement inspired me to venture into a life of outward service and community. I serve my community in a variety of ways. I volunteered for years at my church to serve in the nursery and be a cherub church teacher for kindergarteners. The purpose of this work is to pour into young children's lives. My main act of service to my community is as a dog foster for bully breeds that would otherwise be euthanized in kill shelters. I volunteer, donate and foster for two different rescue organizations and have saved over a dozen dogs from critical situations and found them families to be adopted into. Working with these dogs has taught me valuable lessons about patience and empathy. In the future, I hope to not only continue my work toward justice for dogs but also begin working with homeless shelters and soup kitchens to show compassion to the neighbors we so often overlook. The purpose of being a Christian is to further the kingdom, and I am called to live in a manner that shows other people what I believe in and why they should believe it too. That doesn't necessarily mean I must be a pastor or a missionary, it just suggests that I should use my talents and reach to love others with a Godly kind of love. I try every day to be intentionally kind to people. I try to befriend people that are different than me. I use my talents in writing, running, and soccer to befriend my opponents and people that I might have never had the pleasure of knowing if I hadn't gotten involved. I want to influence the relationships we keep with our peers and how we interact with the people around us, especially people that hold different beliefs than us. The change that I hope to inspire through my service to the community is a reactive wave of love, friendship, kindness, and compassion through my community and school campus to promote a happier and more connected community.

I have loved to write in every form since I was a child. I even wrote my college essay on my passion for writing. I think the main reason writing has remained my favorite pastime over all of these years, is the power that words hold. Alone, words are just words. However, writers have the ability and opportunity to structure and string words together to leave an impact on readers. Writers possess a talent that records history and creates art. Writing is important to me personally because it is the easiest form of communication. When I am thinking, processing or reflecting, writing is the easiest way for me to convey my ideas and emotions. I write for three main audiences, myself, my close circle, and the readers of my future book. The things I write for myself are messy, abstract, and imperfect. They bring healing, pride and joy. My writing records my growth and progress as a person. I write my hopes and plans for my future as well as my reflections on the past and things that have impacted me. I write about the present, and the current situations that I find myself in and how I feel about them. Writing is so very important to me in this way. The words that will never leave my journal or my notes app. The poems that will never be read by anyone else. The unfiltered and the ugly is what makes my writing important. Writing is also important to me because it is meant to be shared. My writing that my friends and teachers read is perfected and added to. That writing is collaborative and interactive. It is alive, in the sense that it changes. It is open to love but also open to criticism and question. Sometimes I experiment with different rhyme schemes and metaphors. Sometimes they are a hit and get rave reviews from my peers. Other times, they make no sense at all and have to be tweaked or scratched completely. Writing is important to me because it is something me and my friends share a mutual love and appreciation for. We bond over our love for the feelings that writing gives us, and the feelings that writing helps explain. The writing that is personal to me, and the writing that is shared with and reviewed by my friends, are both steppingstones to the most important writing goal I have, to publish a book. For a couple of years, I have been writing poetry and organizing it into a book that I hope to publish in college. Writing is important to me personally because I love to read what other people write and I love to share what I write for other people to enjoy. In my opinion, writing is the most human thing one can do. To pick up a pen and use a series of words to articulate stories and cultivate emotions is powerful. When we write things down, they are alive, they change with time, but they also stay the same. Personally, writing is important to me because it is how I communicate. Writing is my language. Writing is how I bleed all the words I don't know how to speak.

My mother has given her life so that I might succeed in mine. Since my infancy my mother has been on her own, but she has never asked for help, she has never searched for pity, and she has never failed me. My mother has supported me in my pursuit of every level of education, and she has helped me by sacrificing herself, sending me to private school, and opening up my horizons. My mother has sacrificed a lot so that I could reach my educational goals. Throughout my childhood my mom worked two jobs, and 12-hour night shifts. She never missed an award ceremony, a school play, dance recital, soccer game, art show, NHS induction, track meet, debate, or report card. Even though there was an elementary school less than a mile from my house, that my grandmother taught at, she chose to put me in a school 30 minutes away because it was a better, charter school. She downgraded her car so she could afford for me to have a reliable car to drive to school. Recently, she hired a math tutor for me so that I can get the best score possible on my SAT and ACT, in order to not only get into college, but also to get scholarships to afford college. She has financially and emotionally put my education and development first, so that I can be successful in every stage of life. My mother has saved pennies, cashed checks, and tightened the budget so that I could attend private school to get the best education possible. My mother sent me and my older brother to private school that had an intensive yearly tuition in. I received a high-quality secondary education, at the expense of my mother's retirement savings and the selling of her gold jewelry. I know she is stressed and worries about money, but the lights stay on, there is gas in my tank and a diploma with my name on it is waiting on me in the spring. For a while my mother was strongly against me going far off to college. I think most of her disapproval came from fear and sadness. It's been her and I against the world and she doesn't want me to leave. She also worried about the tuition. One day, out of the blue, as if a switch had gone off, she was open to the idea of me going to college out of state. She realized that God has a big plan for my life, and I have educational goals and dreams that exceed the city limits of our small town. In order to broaden my horizons, she first had to widen her own. She took me to visit multiple out of state schools. I have decided on a college that is an 11-hour drive from her. It has one of the fastest growing programs for the major I intend to study. I think she brags about me to everyone she knows. My mother is the strongest spirited individual I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, of loving, and of belonging to. She has put herself, her desires for my future and her fears for my future aside so that I can fulfill my full potential. I am eternally grateful for the trail she has paved so that I can walk across the stage at the end of this year, and continue my journey into college, where I know she will have my back every step of the way.

I am standing still simultaneously running a marathon that only ever ends up precisely where it started. I am changing while the world around me stays the same. Claustrophobic from the lack of growing pains. I remain in a fixed position as the sun rises and the earth spins around again. I feel as though my bones outgrow my skin. I feel grief and loss that I will never get back what once was and will never experience what could have been. I pour my soul out only to be left empty handed and underwhelmed as my effort is never reciprocated nor appreciated. I break myself for things that are radically insignificant. My family asks what happens when I turn the page. I pay the price of possessing the ability to make my ugly sound nice. I lie through my teeth about my height. With a smile on my face, I lie about my height.