The person I admire most is my dad. Before he passed away, he used to tell me constantly that I was capable of more than I thought I was. At the time, I usually brushed it off because confidence was never something that came naturally to me. Growing up with severe social anxiety and selective mutism, speaking in front of people felt terrifying for most of my childhood. I spent years overthinking every sentence before I said it and convincing myself that staying quiet was safer than risking embarrassment. Ironically, that became a large part of why I joined mock trial. At first, it honestly sounded ridiculous to me. The idea of voluntarily speaking in front of judges, attorneys, classmates, and entire rooms of people felt almost impossible. But part of me was tired of letting fear make every decision for me. I think my dad recognized that before I did. He always pushed me toward situations that forced me to grow instead of shrink. My dad served in the military before I was born, and PTSD affected much of my childhood and eventually contributed to his death. Despite everything he struggled with internally, though, he cared deeply about whether I succeeded academically and personally. He celebrated every achievement like it genuinely mattered and constantly reminded me that education could create opportunities neither of my parents had growing up. After losing him, education stopped feeling abstract to me. It became something much more personal. It became a way to honor the sacrifices my family made while also building a stable future for myself and the people around me. Mock trial changed me in ways I did not expect. It taught me how to think critically under pressure, communicate clearly, and advocate for ideas confidently even when I felt nervous internally. More importantly, it taught me that confidence is usually built through discomfort rather than before it. I think that lesson has shaped nearly every part of my life since then. Outside of mock trial, I’ve pushed myself into leadership positions, tutoring roles, volunteering opportunities, and healthcare settings that younger versions of myself would have avoided entirely. Those experiences helped me realize that fear does not automatically mean something is impossible. Sometimes it simply means something matters to you. That mindset is a large part of why I plan to pursue higher education and healthcare long-term. I want to build a life where I can help people who feel unheard, misunderstood, or overwhelmed the same way I often did growing up. When I think about the person who inspired that drive in me most, I always come back to my dad. He spent much of his life fighting battles internally while still trying to encourage the people around him to believe in themselves. I think a large part of who I’m becoming started with him believing in me long before I fully knew how to believe in myself.

Even after my dad broke his femur in a car accident, it only took him a few days to get back to answering his phone, ever ringing from the calls of clients. He would grimace from the slightest movement, but he never let it show in his voice. At one point, my mom told him he needed to stop worrying about work and focus on recovering first. He just shook his head and said, “People are counting on me.” Before he owned his roofing company, he served in the military, and I think those two parts of his life blended together in a way that shaped a lot of my childhood. He treated responsibility almost like something sacred, a quality he instilled in me as well. Even after the accident, he was still trying to check on projects, return calls, and make sure nobody got left hanging because of him, because even if his own body was failing him, he wouldn’t be the reason somebody else did. What stuck with me most, however, was the way he viewed the people he worked for. My dad used to talk constantly about “doing right by the community.” I used to think this was vacous “goodwill” sort of talk, but looking back now, he definitely walked the walk. He gave huge discounts to families struggling financially and sometimes barely made money on jobs because somebody needed help and he couldn’t bring himself to turn them away. There were times I remember thinking, “Hey, dad, not exactly rich either!” But one day, when I asked him about it, he said he believed that if we took care of God’s children first, God would take care of us too. Owning a business never looked glamorous in our house. Honestly, if it were an advertisement, it’d be an awful one: it looked like late-night invoices at the kitchen table, stress during slow seasons, and phone calls during dinner. It looked like someone carrying the weight of employees, customers, bills, and family all at the same time while quietly dealing with the effects of his service. His military background also shaped the way I grew up. There was always an expectation to stay disciplined, keep your word, and push through discomfort. At times that pressure was difficult, but it taught me resilience early on. I plan to pursue healthcare long-term because I think it gives me the opportunity to “do right by the community” in the same way my dad always tried to. A roof leak to one family might just be another job on paper, but to the people living under it, it can feel like their whole life is falling apart. I think healthcare can work similarly. People are trusting you during some of the hardest moments of their lives, and the way you treat them matters just as much as the technical side of the job. I think that’s a large part of why I’m drawn toward patient-centered healthcare specifically. I want to become someone who makes difficult situations feel a little less frightening and isolating. The older I get, the more I realize how much small acts of patience and reliability actually affect people. Watching my dad balance military values, entrepreneurship, faith, and service taught me that strength usually is not loud or dramatic. Most of the time, it just looks like somebody continuing to show up for other people no matter how hard life gets.

One of the first things I learned growing up was how to recognize the sound of a door closing too hard. Not because it meant something bad was about to happen, but because certain sounds could change the mood of the entire house in seconds. A slammed cabinet. Heavy footsteps. Raised voices, etc. Before I even really understood what PTSD was, I was forced to understand how to dance around it, and what it felt like to constantly pay attention to the emotional atmosphere around me. My dad served in the military before I was born, and PTSD quietly affected a lot of my childhood. In my youth, I didn’t really have the words for it yet. I just knew there were stretches where he seemed distant, exhausted, irritated, constantly tense, or a combination of them all, in ways I didn't fully understand. Loud noises could suddenly shift his mood. Small situations sometimes caused reactions that felt much bigger than whatever had actually happened. As a kid, it was confusing. It’s hard to understand why someone who loves you can still sometimes feel emotionally far away. And for a long time, I used to internalize those feelings, as if there was something wrong with me. As I got older, though, I stopped seeing PTSD as anger and started understanding what it was. Moreso being like a fight or flight that never really shuts off. That changed the way I viewed both my dad and mental health in general. I started realizing how deeply trauma can shape the way someone experiences the world around them, even years later. Growing up around that also made me very aware of other people’s emotions from a young age. I became good at noticing changes in tone, posture, and behavior because I was always trying to figure out how someone was feeling before they actually said it. Sometimes that turned into anxiety and overthinking. But it also made me much more empathetic toward people who are struggling internally while still trying to function normally on the outside. One of the biggest things I’ve learned is how isolating PTSD can become when people feel like they have to hide it. A lot of veterans are taught to push through things quietly, which can leave them carrying trauma by themselves for years, something I saw my dad go through first hand. From the outside, people might only notice irritability or emotional distance. They usually don’t see the hypervigilance, stress, exhaustion, or guilt underneath it. That perspective is a large part of why I want to pursue healthcare long term. I’m especially interested in patient centered care because I understand how vulnerable people can feel when they’re struggling with things other people cannot immediately see. I want to become the kind of healthcare worker who treats people like human beings first instead of just focusing on symptoms. I also hope to specifically help veterans struggling with PTSD feel less isolated and less ashamed of what they’re experiencing. Growing up around PTSD taught me how damaging silence can become when people feel pressured to suppress everything they’re carrying. Sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do for another person is make them feel like they don’t have to carry it alone for a little while, and if I can do that, then I think it's safe to say I did my job.

For most of my life, people called me the quiet one. They meant it nicely, I think. Shy. Polite. “Reserved.” It sounded like a compliment when teachers said it in front of the class. But it never felt like one. There were days I went the whole school day without speaking. Not because I didn’t have anything to say--I usually did, so much so that keeping it all in would hurt, I’d rehearse answers in my head until I had the phrasing just right. But when the moment came, nothing came out. My heart would start racing, my throat would close up, and the sentence I’d practiced over and over would vanish, like it had never even existed. That fear wasn’t loud. That was the hard part. If it had been, someone might’ve noticed my struggle. But it was the kind of suffering that hums beneath everything. Always there. Always waiting. Maliciously silent. I was diagnosed with social anxiety and selective mutism in middle school. It didn’t come as a surprise to me. I already knew something was different--I just didn’t know what to call it. Giving it a name didn’t magically make it easier to explain, though. I still had teachers who thought I was being rude. Peers who thought I didn’t care. Adults who told me to “just speak up” like it hadn’t already taken everything in me just to sit in that room. Class discussions. Group projects. Presentations. The usual stuff. Except for me, it felt like trying to breathe underwater. I found my own ways to survive--writing more than I spoke, overpreparing everything, fading into the background whenever I could. It worked. Sort of. I got by. But I also learned how to stay small. How to stop taking up space before anyone asked me to. I still catch myself doing that sometimes. Overthinking basic conversations. Apologizing for things I haven’t even done. Playing out every possible outcome of a sentence before I say it, just in case. But I’ve learned that progress doesn’t always feel like confidence. Sometimes it just looks like staying in the room. Even when it’s uncomfortable. College scares me a little, but I want to be there anyway. Not because I’ve conquered anything, but because I’ve learned how to keep going even when it’s hard. For me, higher education isn’t about being fearless--it’s about building a life that isn’t shaped around fear. I’m planning to study pharmaceutical engineering. There’s something quietly powerful about designing systems that help people feel better without demanding attention. Systems that are dependable. Precise. Safe. I like the idea of working on things that make someone’s life easier, even if they never know who made it that way. There’s something deeply human about that. There are people who go unheard. People who can’t always speak up, or who stop trying because no one ever listened. I’ve been one of them. I want to help build something that works better for people like that--not someday, but now. And if the person I used to be could see where I’m standing now-still anxious, still figuring it out, but showing up anyway--I think they’d be proud. And I’m proud too.