Six months ago I was a homeless, junkie, meth addict with an ostomy bag attached to my front torso. I had been wearing it for the last nine months since I had been shot and killed during an argument. I had come to at the Logan Health intensive care unit after being in a medically induced coma for five days. Everything I owned fit into a grocery cart. I had nothing left. I had truly been living in survival mode for the last year and a half. Fast forward to the present time, I am working full time, going to college full time, just finished a six-month drug rehab program and I am talking to my family again. I have a relationship with God, I have a sponsor, am doing step work and am an active member of Narcotics Anonymous. What a turnaround! Now that I live a completely different life in a new town I understand how bad things were. There are a plethora of sayings and addages about how addicts exist and how getting and staying sober is such a miracle and obviously a better way to live. I have friends again whom are honest, trustworthy, and consistant. I don't have to have a life full of guilt, shame, and chaos. I am able to keep a routine, hold a job, pay my own way, and be accountable for myself and others. Most important, I have self respect and dignity, my integrity is in check and I don't have to lie about anything anymore. When it comes to helping others with my education, I will use it to rebuild a home for my family. I will be able to provide my children with everything that they will need to be healthy and protected. I have a chance to teach them so much about the world and ensure that the experiences in my past will never have to be part of their experience as they grow up and mature into positive members of societey. Eventually I plant to start my own business from my education which will allow me to help even more people by offering employment and further into the future I will have the time and means to give back to my community. I will be able to donate more time and money to the programs that helped me get clean and helped me learn how to live a better life and to realize that I am worth all of it.

Helping others brings a sense of community and security. It makes a person feel good. It's more than holding a door for a little old lady or letting another driver into your lane. Helping others shows selflessness, integrity, and compassion in oneself. It's part of the golden rule and so much of this has been lost in the last few generations. Good people helping each other out fosters the perserverance of humanity and we could all do better with some of that. It is not always easy to help others, we don't always notice if an individual necessarily requires any help. And other times it's easy to see that somebody needs help desperately but we are unable to help for some reason. As children most of us are taught the importance of helping others and what that looks like. We get older and it becomes more and more automatic. Sometimes we might do it without even knowing, simply by smiling or acknowledging a stranger. Other times we might volunteer or do some kind of service work to give back to our neighborhood or community to feel good about ourselves and in that we are helping multiple individuals all at one time and that's amazing! Personally, I have grown to make helping other people a habit and most times I do so without even realizing it. As if the courtesy of being in tune with others, noticing and acting on it without even realizing I'm even doing it is part of my natural behavior. Many times people say thank you to me and I don't realize why. Unknowingly I had already pulled out a chair or taken somebody's jacket for them at a restaurant. Maybe it is a skill or perhaps a sense or perception of surroundings. Could it be instinctual or advanced reading of peoples' body language? I'm blessed to have the ability the take care of the people in my life who are close to me. Just imagine if every single person we interact with throughout the day took it upon themselves to help others. Instead of going it alone with all tasks and routines, just a couple of them could be tamed by the integrity of others and that alone would relieve such an unmeasurable amount stress. Humanity certainly could use an adjustment in this regard and regain much of the respect and dignity that has been lost in the last few decades. Please help others every day.

I will be participating in the Heavy Equipment Operator program bt the University of Montana. I am passionate about this career as I grew up in a town that was always under construction. Everywhere one could see there was always a new foundation being poured. Lines being put in by crews wearing hi visibility, reflective vests by an excavator. There was never a time in thirty years that we didn't have to slow down for road construction or dodge pylons in the middle of the road while driving. It was always just part of the landscape and it seemed awesome. After graduation I plan to get on a crew right away so as to gain some real world experience and to begin earning wages of course. Beyond that, the next stage in the plan is to start a business installing septic systems for residential housing developments in the surrounding area. I already know a guy who knows a guy with equipment to borrow and he has some work lined up already as the need for that type of service is in high demand and he is regularly turning down jobs due to being too busy himself as it is. We'll see how it goes but that is the plan. Overcoming adversity and working through it... In two thousand twenty one I lost my ipad job due to company cutbacks and eventually became Homeless period after a year and a 1/2 of being homeless. Being homeless in Montana is extremely unfortunate and hard. I was living in the flat Valley. Working a couple jobs under the table. Not having a safe place to live makes it difficult to sustain a job because of all the stresses involved. I moved to transitional housing in Missoula Montana was set up with if I vocational. Do you have counselor I found a job and then enrlled at the university of Montana in a to learn a new career. In the next few weeks I will be moving on from the transitional housing and into my own apartment. From there my plan is to finish college and integrate into work-study as part of the course. Being able to have the resources presented to me in a dire time of need has been integral for me to get back on my feet and overcome adversity from such a major setback in my life. I am fortunate, I am blessed.

After graduation I will be pursuing heavy equipment operators trade. This will include multiple trades combined. Maintenance of machines tasks welding and mechanical skills which I will be learning more about. CDL training is involved as well which is training I have already done but a refresher and updated to current status will be necessary. So one could say numerous trades are bunched together and put to use in this multifaceted trade. This particular trade interests me more than others in part by its salary. However the fact that the amount of different tasks and duties performed in daily operations gives me the chance to let me out my multitasking abilities to the test. Being able to use ample physical and mentally demanding functions simultaneously throughout the daily routine keeps me more focused and motivated than other monotonous, menial, sedentary and mundane jobs most people perform with distain and that seems so unrewarding to me. Going into problem solving and thinking outside the box, that's how my brain is wired. Since I was young, I have always deconstructed ever problem ever presented to me. I like to zoom out and view things from a variety of different angles. This creates a vast amount of unconventional yet extremely valuable solutions for most situations. I like to say, "there are no problems, only solutions." With this mindset I have always had an advantage in coming up with better methods of getting a job done and typically a top notch result. I have already enrolled and registered for my certificate program and met with the course director. We spoke on graduation employment and what that looks like locally as I will be going to work prior to graduating as part of independent study coupling on the job training as part of my program. That's the plan he sets out for his students, I will stick to that plan. If you called someone who knows me well they would recommend me for the scholarship because he knows how much effort I am putting into the only chance I will ever get to create a better life for myself and my children. He knows that I come from a family that didn't have much, just like his. A place that to us, a little is a lot. He would say that I'm motivated and deserving of financial help because neither of us ever had any and it would definitely not be wasted away.

I was basically raised on a construction site from the '80s and into the 90s. I get a hammer a 16 penny nail through lumber before I ever learn how to read write or even ride a bike without training wheels. My father owned his own roofing company and that's how we lived. The builders contractors and other subs for the company kept the friends we had the people that were always around. it was a fun way to grow up. The smell of just cut 2x4s Grease from pneumatic tools and leather nail pouches always reminds me of those times. They were good people and a big influence on how I've always lived my life honest and with integrity and less strong work ethic. These were the kind of men who were up at the crack of dawn and on job site before the bird started chirping and worked until the sun started going down. They lived off Copenhagen and mountain dew, leftovers for lunch from dinner the night before, or cold beer and a bag of chips, hey, those ones always made me laugh. That's why I chose a career in the trades industry. The social causes I care about are the same as what these guys care about, lowering taxes, lowering gas prices, keeping the borders secure, freedom, and the second amendment. These social causes and important because they are the issues that the working man faces every time he gets his paycheck. They pay the most taxes, they work the hardest, they drive to work and they don't want any illegal immigrants taking their jobs. Roughly 20% their paycheck is pulled by taxes. We'll call in another 5% for fuel just to get to work. So backbone of this country who works the hardest and gets taxed the most shouldn't have to worry about immigrants coming into our country and taking food off their table. The taxes getting raised by the government who is also responsible for open borders. What's next? Job loss? Higher taxes? Labor market? Which brings me to my last point. We need the second amendment to either protect us from those government over from the illegal immigrants that are government is letting into our country. There is no advocacy of any sort of violence here, nearly protection from a force that does not see things the same way. That's why these are the social causes that I support.

They say a mustard seed can move mountains, well that's what I'm going to do! When I get done with this career advancement certificate and heavy equipment operating I will have the skills necessary to get in a big tractor and move so much earth, I will be just like a mustard seed. That's exciting to me because the fact that something so little can change the lay of the land in such a way that the impact is noticed for centuries after it is gone. Hopefully I can have a similar impact on people in my life and others that I haven't even met yet. That is the kind of positivity I wish to show everyone in my life. Two close family friends influenced me to pursue this career path. They were friends of my father's two super cool super mellow and affluent next door neighbors I have the pleasure to grow up with them as a kid. 4th of July parties, volleyball, and growing up with their kids was a memorable and happy time in my life I wish I could tell them that and how much it means to me. Both of these gentlemen moved dirt for a living whether it was by belly scraper, bulldozer, or dump truck. I remember them coming home after work still wearing their hard hats and their high visibility dirty t-shirts it's funny now how I looked up to them. I'm passionate about this career path because I know it will allow me to live the kind of life where I don't have to worry financially. Also it will allow the chance to be around my kids while they grow up because there's a work-life balance that is important these days. Living comfortably and not having to worry about how I will be able to pay the next set of bills would be very relieving for me moving forward and it would be the first time in my life for that. I am the first one in my family to ever go to college as my dad quit going to school after 8th grade to work on the family farm. Back in the day women stayed home and raised kids so that's what my mom did too so she didn't have the opportunity to have a career like women do these days. There's nothing wrong with that things are just different now. Having a happy life and being financially independent through this kind of a career path would enable me to carry on similar things like barbecues and volleyball and other good times that I remember and that would make impact on a lot of people and that idea brings so much more joy and happiness that it would spread around the world just like a mustard seed does in a field.