I already have my Bachelors in Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and am pursuing my Master's in Social Work. My education has been something very important to me because it is what I need to be able to help people who are like me. With just my Bachelor's I had wanted to go into non-profit work and work with the LGBTQ+ or Disability communities as those are the communities I most align with and feel I could most help. The positive impact I could have had in this sector would have come from both personal and educational experience, both of which I feel are vital to making a positive impact on society. Currently I use my degree to work closely with my local affiliation of the National Alliance on Mental Illness where I am a member of the board. I advocate for the LGBTQ+ and disabled population in our region as well as creating more resources for people to find support groups. My education and age has brought a new perspective to the group that they have not had in several years and is helping them grow as an organization and become a bigger voice in the community at large. My Master's in Social Work is where I want to make the most positive impact on society. I hope to earn my LCSW and become a Clinical Social Worker to provide therapy. I want to focus my practice on adults within the LGBTQ+ community and Disabled individuals as well as those facing housing insecurity. I hope to one day open my own practice offering affordable mental health care and case management services to offer people the care they need. My belief is that by helping one individual you are helping a whole host of people as it spreads out like a spider web, because the actions and emotions of someone greatly impact those around them whether they intend for them to be impacted or not. I think my Bachelor's in Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies gives me a good background for the concepts and ideology that will be taught in my Master's in Social Work and will help me make a better impact in people's lives as I will have deeper understanding of the societal implications and reasonings behind what they are going through. It will also help me better empathize with them and connect with them. I believe my education will lead to me making a large positive impact on society.

I am a chronically ill graduate student who struggles with both physical and mental disabilities. I have been disabled since I was nine when I first started having absence seizures shortly after a concussion that was never caught. I continued to have seizures with increasing frequency for 11 years before they were diagnosed when I finally saw a neurologist who did not even believe they were seizures until he saw them on the EEG. I have also struggled with chronic pain for the last seven years which has also not been taken seriously or treated appropriately. These physical disabilities have only compounded the mental disabilities of depression and post traumatic stress disorder that I have struggled with since I was a teenager. All of this has led me to having a much stronger grasp on empathy which will be a strong suit when I am a clinical social worker. Much of what I want to do and focus on as a therapist and clinical social worker involves the communities I am a part of as those are the ones that I understand the most intimately and see a need in. These communities being the queer and disabled communities. I want to help people like me who are going through the same struggles I had gone through when I wasn’t able to get the help I so desperately needed that would have prevented me from attempting to take my own life and ending up homeless. Much of what I have gone through has made me a stronger person and my disabilities just add a challenge that I have to navigate amongst it all. These challenges and hills are easier to navigate with a support system of peers which I discovered greatly during my time in my undergraduate. I was heavily involved with multiple disability related organizations including Advocates 4 Autism and Bulldogs for Universal Design. Both groups gave me support systems and friends that helped tremendously when either my seizures started to get bad or my mental health worsened. They helped me get through some really dark times. Between my college support system and a similar online support system for mental health I realized I wanted to be a therapist for people like me, who did not get the help they deserved whether or not they could afford it and whether or not they have physical limitations that could prevent them from otherwise seeking services.