I have been protecting our planet for as long as I can remember. As a little girl I would use cups to carefully transport spiders from my house to my garden. As a middle schooler I would go on “worm walks”, where I would walk around my neighborhood with a trash bag after a rain to pick up garbage before it reached the bay and move worms off the sidewalks. I took up sewing and thrifting instead of shopping new, treated food waste like a crime, and took public transportation at every opportunity. In high school, my passion for the planet only grew. I founded the Coastal Club, which hosted regular cleanups and awareness events to save our beaches and ocean wildlife. We collected dozens of bags of trash in frequent partnership with the Pacific Beach Coalition. I also founded Mission Green for Blue, a small nonprofit organization dedicated to the restoration of habitat for the endangered Mission Blue Butterfly. I spent countless hours researching the types of plants these insects need to live, planting them and watering them in the highly specific ecosystems the Mission Blue Butterflies reside in. Since the commencement of my project in 2021, their population has risen by a count of 2,000. In 2022, I also began volunteering at a nonprofit thrift store called Pick of the Litter, whose proceeds go towards an animal shelter and rescue center in my area. In 2024 I completed an unpaid internship with Seaside Sustainability, working 15 hours a week to collect research and produce articles for sustainability on the Massachusetts coast. I won four Presidential Gold Service awards along with the Young Men’s Institute Award for Christian Leadership and Catherine McAuley Service Award for my work. I even went vegetarian to show my support for Mother Earth and her many beautiful creatures. And one day, it hit me: I wanted to be an environmental attorney. To be able to fight in a larger way to save our world’s beautiful wildlife would be my ultimate dream. Amidst the mess of self-appointed responsibility to save everything and solve every problem, I found a beautiful reconnection to my childhood roots of forests and animals through environmental policy. My greatest dream is to work for the Environmental Protection Agency or the Jane Goodall Institution to stop industrialization, poaching, and other anthropogenic intrusions from claiming innocent animals and wild habitats around the world. The earth has given me everything, and it deserves to be honored. My greatest hope is that one day, with care and compassion, I will be able to save the homes and lives of thousands–be they animals, plants, or people like us.

On the first day of my senior year of high school, I went to the cafeteria to buy food and casually asked the name of the woman serving me lunch. She stopped with the most touched look on her face and said, "You are the first person who has asked me that today." She beamed as she told me her name was Zhara and filled my plate. Two weeks later, the Latina club was having a bake sale. As I stood in front of a table laden with delicious sweets and mourned the emptiness of my wallet, Zhara suddenly appeared beside me and handed the club treasurer a $5 bill. "Get Lilly whatever she wants," she ordered with a smile. Simply making the effort to ask her name on the first day had so deeply struck her that she was returning kindness from her own pocket. From that day forward I gradually realized that all students encountered our cleaning staff, lunch staff, security, and gardeners around campus daily, but no one knew any of their names. These people work incredibly hard and are essential to our experience, yet they received little to no recognition. I knew I had to step up and take action. I met with the head of school about the issue, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging the humanity of every person in our school community. With her help I began a project with our technology team to formulate a slide presentation including the photo, name, and hobbies of each staff member to display on cafeteria TVs. Within weeks, each student was smiling and greeting the support staff by name as they passed and thanking the lunch staff personally when they were handed a hot meal. While most students are unaware that I initiated and led the project, the change it made was widespread. This taught me that leadership does not always mean standing at a podium, leading a fundraiser, or presiding over a club; leadership also means standing up for what is right behind the scenes, when nobody is watching and there is no reward except improvement. To be selfless is to care solely and purely because you care. When I see trash on the sidewalk as I am walking, I pick it up and throw it away without fanfare. When I see a person asleep on the ground or a bench, I leave food beside them without waking them. I have found multiple injured or abandoned animals–mostly dogs or baby squirrels–in my neighborhood and each time spent hours safely transporting the animals myself to rescue facilities and making sure they can be connected with their owners or nourished back to health. I believe most ardently that compassion is my personal obligation on this earth. Spending the last few dollars in my wallet, doing the work of carrying an insect outside rather than squashing it underfoot, offering forgiveness and patience when snapped at by angry strangers: these and all acts of kindness are my duty. Through my beliefs I work to see God in all creatures, and to treat each stranger with love in His name. In this, the selfless inadvertently becomes the self-fulfilling, and service becomes sustenance for my spirit.

“Before using the sword, you need armor.” The weapons vendor at the Celtic fair was not bestowing a metaphorical life lesson upon me; he was hoisting a thick vest of chainmail over my head so his demonstration wouldn’t kill me. The moment my hand closed around the swordhandle, I was transfixed. My fascination with swords developed from a childhood built around stories of monsters and heroes, from Princess Bride to Percy Jackson. I found very few female swords masters in the fantasy books I read in my youth; more often, the damsels were being rescued by the dashing knight or powerful warrior. I felt a burning desire to overturn that narrative. I couldn’t play with real sabers, but I discovered an enthralling introduction to the sport of fencing. Amidst an upbringing surrounded by stacks upon stacks of books, I grew into an obsession with learning and school. I woke up each morning of middle school with a backpack ready and uniform laid out, eager to greet another day of knowledge. Although work has grown much more challenging throughout high school and I often spend eight hours on homework after a day of school, the joy of learning still shines through my exhaustion or caffeine-jumbled mind. Given my love of knowledge and critical thinking, finding fencing seemed like fate. My puzzle-obsessed brain was infatuated by the sport’s complex strategies, the need to think three steps ahead of opponents in the span of seconds. Often nicknamed “physical chess”, fencing requires a rare level of mental acuity. I took to the sport with vigor, quickly becoming the first one in the gym on Saturday mornings and the last to leave on a Sunday night. I began training when I was twelve, which is rather late on average for a fencer. Starting off in a beginner’s class surrounded by students several years younger than me, failing in my first couple of competitions, and frequently losing bouts was sometimes discouraging, but the tenacity I had adopted from a rigorous academic experience bled over to my sport. I refused to give up hope or to stop working, and in less than a year I had risen into the advanced class and begun competing at the Cadet and Junior level of regional competitions. What began as a curious whim led to tutelage under venerable Stanford coach George Pogosov, competing in USA Fencing Nationals, winning gold at Cadet Women's Junior Olympic Qualifiers, and competing in the Junior Olympics. When I fence, I am Ares, god of war. While I wear all white and snack on organic granola bars before bouts, I am mentally clad in a billowing shirt and buckled boots, skin weathered and hat feathered as I exchange parries with my enemy on a plank precariously perched over the fathoms below. Today, I continue my fencing and academic journeys as I look ahead to my future fencing career at the national and international level. I shine with pride at the knowledge that I have become my own knight, that I am the intelligent and masterful warrior of my own story creating a narrative my family can be proud of.

I was in second grade when I learned that saving the world was my responsibility. I was sitting in a classroom of 35 other students, with Mary Janes swinging beneath my desk and a rhinestone headband in my hair, listening to my teacher explain that global warming was destroying the planet and our generation had to fix this problem. When she produced a drawing of planet Earth on fire, I started crying. For many years now I have struggled with anxiety. At times it is casual and appears only before big events; at other times it is all-consuming for weeks on end, violating every aspect of my daily routine and deeply disrupting my physical health. I cannot pinpoint the source of my angst; there is no one thing. There has never been just one thing. The pressure starts early. Students inherit the mistakes of the generations that preceded them before they can talk. If the hundreds of stressors and changes that transpire from the beginning to end of one’s educational career aren’t overwhelming enough, there is an onslaught of social, environmental, and ethical duties to absorb and contend with, followed by swipe after swipe through news of wars abroad, election chaos, label your sexuality, be who you are, get skinny now, sign this petition, cancel this brand, buy this trend, fix your nose, change everything about you but love yourself. Be perfect. Life and responsibility for young people today is utterly dizzying. In my sophomore year of high school, I decided to do something about my issue that went beyond serving myself. I felt freakish every time I had to hide in a bathroom to breathe and try with all my might not to throw up from anxiety. I felt alone, and I realized that meant others did too. I joined the Youth Ambassadors Group at a startup program called Allcove, a youth mental health care organization near my home, and began attending meetings. To my shock, many of my fellow ambassadors experienced what I did and far beyond that. I learned about experiences with mental health that I would never have even considered. Together, we worked over the course of two years to open a youth mental health center in the Bay Area of California where youth could come for free therapy, healthcare, events, food, drink, and a quiet, safe place to spend time and find peace. I spent countless hours analyzing everything down to the details of color palettes, trying to build a haven of calm in the madness for students. Since its opening, that center has helped hundreds of youth already. Being a young student today can be daunting, overstimulating, and frustrating. I believe strongly in establishing places of rest and breaking away the stigmas around mental health issues such as severe anxiety. By listening openly and seeking solutions by involving the youth, particularly those who have struggled with mental health, in decision-making, we become capable of serving and even saving the lives of students to better nurture them for their only real responsibility: happiness.

“Why do you care about nature so much?” I was seven, and a classmate had asked me that question while I clambered up a tree. “It’s perfect,” I answered simply. A jagged piece of bark dug into my small hand, forcefully loosening the grip of dirty fingers and sending me plummeting into the thick grass below. I rolled and laughed my way through damp soil before arriving at a gentle repose on my back, staring at the endless stretch of redwoods crosshatching above me. I was only a child, but I felt an understanding deeper than any I have known to this day. My answer was the greatest truth I could tell, but no one has asked me that question again since that day. I feel that everyone cares about earth deep down, but not necessarily enough to understand or act. I want to be different. Being raised in a Catholic and technology-free household meant that I grew up with simplicity and ideals of service to others in my everyday life. I was raised to buy some food for the man begging outside the grocery store, to pick up a stray piece of litter on the sidewalk. Service has been a passion of mine since I can remember, but my volunteer work was widespread and aimless for many years. I knew that I loved to be outside and to contribute to a greater cause, but I had no idea what kind of career that could bring me–so I began to experiment in the direction of what I knew best: nature. I joined my middle school ecology club when I was twelve and have not stopped working to protect our planet since. I founded the Coastal Club at my school, which hosts regular cleanups and awareness events to save our beaches and ocean wildlife. We have collected dozens of bags of trash so far this year in frequent partnership with the Pacific Beach Coalition. I also founded Green for Blue, an organization dedicated to the restoration of habitat for the endangered Mission Blue Butterfly. I have spent countless hours researching the types of plants these insects need to live, planting them and watering them in the specific ecosystems the Mission Blue Butterflies reside in. Since the commencement of my project in 2021, their population has risen by a count of 2,000. I began volunteering at a nonprofit thrift store called Pick of the Litter, whose proceeds go towards an animal shelter and rescue center in my area. I even went vegetarian. And one day, it hit me: I wanted to be an environmental attorney. To be able to fight to save our world and its many dying species and increasingly exploited resources would be my ultimate dream. Amidst the mess of self-appointed responsibility to save everything and solve every problem, I found a beautiful reconnection to my childhood roots in forests and animals. My greatest dream is to work for the Environmental Protection Agency to stop industrialization from claiming endangered species and wild habitats around the world. The ability to conduct research out in the field and then come home and use it to support a case that will save our planet is more appealing to me than any job I can imagine. The earth has given me everything, from my childhood to my peace. It is perfect. My greatest hope is that one day, with tenacity and compassion, I will be able to save millions of lives–whether they be plants, animals, or humans, in honor of generations of women before me who were not given the opportunity to do so.

“Why do you care about nature so much?” I was seven, and a classmate had asked me that question while I clambered up a tree. “It’s perfect,” I answered simply. A jagged piece of bark dug into my small hand, forcefully loosening the grip of dirty fingers and sending me plummeting into the thick grass below. I rolled and laughed my way through damp soil before arriving at a gentle repose on my back, staring at the endless stretch of redwoods crosshatching above me. The earth was breathing beneath me as the trees above narrated the centuries old folklore stored in their strong roots. I was only a child, but I felt an understanding deeper than any I have known to this day. My answer was the greatest truth I could tell, but no one has asked me that question again since that day. It seems that everyone wants to help the environment at heart, but no one takes the time to understand it, to take action, to really care. I am determined to be different, and to protect nature's perfection. Being raised in a Catholic and technology-free household, I was taught to embrace simplicity and love. Service has been a passion of mine since I can remember, but my volunteer work was widespread and aimless for many years. I knew that I loved to be outside and to contribute to a greater cause, but I had no idea what kind of career that could bring me–so I began to experiment in the direction of what I knew best: nature. I joined my middle school ecology club when I was twelve and have not stopped working to protect our planet since. I founded the Coastal Club at my school, which hosts regular cleanups and awareness events to save our beaches and ocean wildlife. We have collected dozens of bags of trash so far this year in frequent partnership with the Pacific Beach Coalition. I also founded Green for Blue, an organization dedicated to the restoration of habitat for the endangered Mission Blue Butterfly. I have spent countless hours researching the types of plants these insects need to live, planting them and watering them in the specific ecosystems the Mission Blue Butterflies reside in. Since the commencement of my project in 2021, their population has risen by a count of 2,000. I began volunteering at a nonprofit thrift store called Pick of the Litter, whose proceeds go towards an animal shelter and rescue center in my area. I even went vegetarian. And one day, it hit me: I wanted to be an environmental attorney. To be able to fight to save our world and its many dying species and increasingly exploited resources would be my ultimate dream. Amidst the mess of self-appointed responsibility to save everything and solve every problem, I found a beautiful reconnection to my childhood roots in forests and animals. My greatest dream is to work for the Environmental Protection Agency to stop industrialization from claiming endangered species and wild habitats around the world. The ability to conduct research out in the field and then come home and use it to support a case that will save our planet is more appealing to me than any job I can imagine. The earth has given me everything, from my childhood to my peace. It is perfect. My greatest hope is that one day, with tenacity and compassion, I will be able to save millions of lives–whether they be plants, animals, or humans, in honor of generations of women before me who were not given the opportunity to do so.