All my life I’ve been a slave. A slave to education, to teachers, to my peers. I was always told that I would never be smart enough, that I would always lose, that life was a competition. A competition that I was already pitted to lose because of my skin color. This also occurred often in karate. I was told by my classmates at the dojo that I did not deserve to be on the mat because I was too brown. It made me fight harder, but it made them resent me more. My life was always a tug of war in this aspect. Giving so much of my energy and time only to be dragged down by negative words and actions. I was not worthy of success. This is not true. Those thoughts that were implanted in my head ruled my life and my academics for years. Receiving a ninety-eight percent was not good enough if my white classmates received a ninety-nine. I was always fighting, fighting to do better than my friends who were only doing their work. I was doing my best, but being disregarded by teachers and administrators because I was a “know-it-all” when in reality, I was a nine year old answering their questions. My whole life has been a fight. My mom tried to help me, but the administration treated my white mother with kindness and turned their backs on her brown daughter. My father has never been around, leaving me to fight for empathy wherever I went. No one ever understood. No one ever helped me win my battle. But I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of being the competitor but never the winner. When I further my education, I do not picture an environment where I am defined by how I perform in comparison to my peers. I am only defined by how I perform in comparison to myself. In college, I plan to study Biology in order to later apply to a DPT program and become a physical therapist. This scholarship would greatly benefit me in my studies going into the STEM field. There will be a lot of competition in the STEM field and receiving this scholarship would help to decrease the financial competition and burden I will face coming from a single-income home. I want to be able to study without feeling the inferiority of being around classmates who were able to afford college tuition. Life shouldn’t be easy, but minority students should not be set up for failure from the beginning. And I believe that starts with programs like this.