Every letter begins the same: Dear Dad. What comes next is always different. Sometimes I write to tell him about something that has already happened, sometimes about something that is going to happen. Sometimes I write about a random thought I want to share or a question I want to ask. Yet every one of these letters remains in a notebook, unsent. I received my dad’s first letter at lunch on my first day of Kindergarten. Little did I know he had slipped in a handwritten note that morning while packing my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It read: Dear Madie May, I hope you make lots of friends and have a great first day of school! I love you more, Dad For years, every time I opened my lunch box, I was greeted by a letter from my dad. Even if I was having a terrible day, I could always count on his notes to cheer me up. However, one of the worst days of my life was the day I sat down to lunch and found no letter. My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 Non-Small Cell lung cancer when I was in the third grade. At the time I was only eight and I didn’t fully comprehend what that meant. It was only after I celebrated my ninth birthday party in his hospice room that it truly sunk in. My dad was going to die. But even while battling cancer, my dad still made sure to write me a letter every day. Eventually, his letters became nothing more than a shaky drawing of a heart, sometimes nothing more than my name scribbled on a Post-it note, but I treasured every single one. But unfortunately, three months after his diagnosis, my dad passed away, and my mom, sister, and I helped each other through the hardest day of our lives. Even though he did not finish high school, my dad was a genius. He was constantly building machines, working on cars, or taking apart something that wasn’t broken. When I was little, he used to help me build castles out of magnetic blocks, boats out of Legos, and doll houses out of cardboard. Looking back, it’s no surprise that I plan to be an architect. He instilled in me a passion for design, construction, and making something out of nothing. I want nothing more than to become an architect, dedicate my buildings to him, make him proud, and keep his memory alive. Of course, I haven’t actually seen or spoken to my dad in years, but I still keep in touch with him through letters. Every time something good happens, I write him a letter. Anytime something bad happens, I write him a letter. Anytime a major event is coming up, I write him a letter. I wrote him a letter just a few hours before I took the field for my last marching performance ever, and he was the person to find out I’d been accepted into my dream college. Whenever my mom was having a stressful day at work, I wrote him a letter asking him to watch over her and send down his love. Yes, eight years have gone by since he passed, but I talk to my dad every day. Even though he is not with me physically, he has been by my side through every monumental moment I always thought he would miss. He’s helped me make important decisions about my future, and he’s guided me onto a path I am excited to explore. I love you more, Dad. Love, Madie

From a young age, I have been conditioned to strive for perfection. When you are a "gifted" student with a valedictorian sister, a town-famous mother, and a genius father, perfection is expected of you. I followed every rule, solved every problem, and read every book. However, freshman year, I pushed myself too far and developed a severe anxiety disorder. "You can eat when you finish this math worksheet," I told myself. "You can sleep when this research paper is done.” I had a reputation to uphold. I was the valedictorian. I had to do whatever it took to be number one, because if I wasn’t the best, who was I? However, the pressure began to pile up, and I started to pull out my hair. At first, it was a couple of strands here and there, but eventually I was pulling out my hair in clumps. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t tell my mom. She had her own problems to worry about; she didn’t need to deal with mine as well. But after she found piles of hair around my room, she forced me to go to therapy. Initially, I was against the idea. I refused to go. "I can stop," I told my mom. "It’s nothing to worry about." But I couldn’t. When I kept pulling out my hair, she put her foot down and scheduled my first appointment. I told my friends I was going to the dentist. I was embarrassed and didn’t want to admit that something was wrong with me. If I went to therapy, I was broken. I wasn’t the person everyone expected me to be. After going to therapy, I began to realize I was broken. "Everyone has their own ways of dealing with stress," my therapist explained to me. "Some people drink. Some people self-medicate. You pull out your hair." But my therapist helped me realize that broken is normal. Broken is okay. "Look at your necklace," she told me, and I examined the locket I wore every day. "Really look at it." I stared at the small, heart-shaped locket where some of the rhinestones had fallen off, and the picture of my family inside was scratched and fading. The chain it hung on used to be gold but had become a weathered, tarnished silver. "Is it perfect?" I shook my head. "Do you love it?" I nodded my head, tears welling in the corner of my eyes. I realized that, in the midst of striving for perfection, I had neglected to love myself. I had falsely correlated being my best self with being the best. I was on autopilot, and the pain from pulling out my hair was my way of reminding myself I was human. With the support of my therapist and my family, I came to terms with the fact that I did not have to be perfect. All I had to be was my perfectly broken self. Anxiety forced me to question what I wanted out of life. I realized I didn’t want to spend my college years, which are supposed to be the best time of my life, stressed out of mind. My true passion is architecture, but I never believed it was an “impressive” enough profession. I want to design skyscrapers and concert halls, and I want to design the building for a mental health non-profit to help others like me. This scholarship is the first step on my journey to providing a space for people to be vulnerable, to be themselves, and to be broken. For that, I am immensely grateful.

I learned the hard way that doctors never call on Thanksgiving with good news. When my parents sat me down to tell me my dad had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, I didn’t know what that meant. I couldn’t comprehend how he wasn’t going to get better. In my mind, anything could be cured with a band-aid and a kiss. Three months later, I cried into my pillow for an hour when my mom told me he had died in his sleep the night before. My dad was my best friend. He was the person I ran to when I scraped my knee. He was the person I built Lego sets with. He was the person who told me a story every night before I went to sleep. When he was diagnosed with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer, I didn’t know what that meant. I couldn’t comprehend how he wasn’t going to get better. In my mind, anything could be cured with a band-aid and a kiss. However, no amount of chemo, radiation, or band-aids could cure him. He fought a valiant battle with cancer, but he died a couple of months after my ninth birthday. His death was the most devastating thing I have ever had to go through. For years, I let his death haunt me. I kept trying to live in the past rather than grow into my future. But one day, I made the decision not to mourn him but rather to make him proud. Even though he did not finish high school, my dad was a genius. He was constantly building machines, working on cars, or taking apart something that wasn’t broken. He even made his own telescope. When I was little, he used to help me build castles out of magnetic blocks, boats out of Legos, and doll houses out of cardboard. Looking back, it’s no surprise that my goal in life is to become a successful architect. He instilled in me a passion for design, construction, and making something out of nothing. I want to design concert halls like the ones where we used to see musicals, and I want to design hotels like the ones we used to stay at on family vacations. I want nothing more than to become an architect, dedicate my buildings to him, make him proud, and keep his memory alive. While most people want to pursue higher education in order to get a good job and make piles of money, my motivation for a college education is much more personal: I want to become an architect in honor of my father. Even though my dad did not have the opportunity to share his passion with the world, he shared it with me. Now it is my turn to share our dreams with the world and honor the man who ignited those dreams in me.

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." My entire life, I’ve been engulfed by a society urging me to make something good out of something bad. And for years, I believed there was a rainbow after every storm. But eight years ago, I learned that’s not always the case. When my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, I didn’t know what that meant. In my mind, anything could be cured with a band-aid and a kiss. Three months later, I cried for hours when he passed away in his sleep. My dad was my best friend. He was the person I ran to when I scraped my knee or finished a Lego set, and the person who told me a story every night before bed. After he was gone, I was merely a shell of myself and felt as though some part of me died with him. For years, I avoided everything that reminded me of him. Even though my mom and sister were going through the same ordeal, I turned away from them. I resented them for having more time with my dad than I did. My sister spent 11 more years with him, and my mom was with him for over 20 years. I also hated visiting the cemetery because I did not want to talk to the headstone that used to be my dad. Perhaps the largest impact of his death was on my relationship with God. I used to go to church every Sunday, but after he died, I couldn’t listen to my pastor say “God works miracles,” or “God does all things according to his will,” without bubbling over with anger. I stopped going to church and lost my faith in religion. No matter how hard I tried, I kept coming back to the same questions: Why did I only get 9 years with him? Why did God take away my dad? However, in my sophomore English class, I realized I was wrong. We were discussing Maya Angelou’s famous quote, "If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude." At first, I adamantly disagreed with Angelou. Yet for days after class, I couldn’t stop thinking about her words. Contrary to what I believed, there is no law that states something good has to come from something bad. When life gave me lemons, I kept waiting for magic to turn them into lemonade. But because of my dad, I now know that’s not true. It wasn’t up to the universe to make something good come of his death; it was up to me. That day, I made a promise to myself: I was going to make something positive come from his death. Over the past year, I’ve made an effort to improve my family relationships. I’ve started spending more time with my sister, and I’ve opened up to my mom about many past feelings. Now, our relationships are stronger than ever. Most importantly, I’ve gone back to church. Although I gave up my faith for a while, I found comfort in knowing God never gave up on me. I also want to continue his legacy by becoming an architect. When I was little, my dad helped me build doll houses out of cardboard and castles out of Legos, and I know he would be proud to say, “My daughter, an architect.” I still struggle with my dad’s death; I doubt those struggles will ever go away. However, thanks to his death, I’ve grown into the person I am today, and I found the strength to make my lemonade.

I was probably the only nine-year-old in the world who hated The Lion King. Yes, you heard right. When I was a kid, I despised this beloved Disney classic. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with singing lions, cackling hyenas, or comedic meerkats and warthogs. I knew the nurse was only trying to help when she put on the DVD, but it ended up doing the exact opposite. Because as I was sitting on a bean bag in a brightly colored, fluorescently lit, artificially happy room, my dad was dying down the hall. My dad had been in hospice for the past month because of stage four lung cancer, and my family and I were spending every waking minute at his bedside. However, as his cancer progressed, my mom did not want me to remember my dad as the man who was losing his hair and who was hooked up to a thousand monitors, so I spent most of my time in the hospice playroom. It was one of these days, a week before my dad died, that I watched The Lion King for the first time. Technically, I only watched the first half of the movie, because once I saw Simba begging his dead dad to wake up, I ran out of the room in tears and did not watch the movie again until seven years later. When I was finally forced to watch The Lion King again for a school project, I discovered I was much more like Simba than I realized. Immediately after my dad’s death, I could not bring myself to terms with what had happened. My head knew he was gone, but my heart kept waiting for him to walk into my room and tell me a bedtime story. Furthermore, I went through a prolonged phase of anger, as did Simba. While Simba sang "Hakuna Matata" and acted as if nothing could phase him, I blamed my dad’s death on anyone and everyone. I was angry at him for smoking. I was angry at his doctors for not curing him. I was angry at God for taking him away from me. However, it was in my sophomore English class that The Lion King changed my life. We were nearing the end of the movie, farther than I had ever watched before, when Rafiki uttered a line that has stuck with me to this day. "The past can hurt," he said. "But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it." For seven years of my life, I thought The Lion King was about a lion who ran away from his problems. But last year I learned it is truly about a child who learns to grieve their dad while also carrying on his legacy. The Lion King taught me that, at some point, you have to turn anger into action. It taught me that I needed to stop blaming everyone around me for something no one could control. It taught me I needed to focus on making my dad proud rather than spend my life wallowing in sadness. Without The Lion King, I don't know where I would be today. I decided to go back to church because of The Lion King. I decided to become an architect and keep my dad’s memory alive because of The Lion King. I decided to stop grieving and start growing because of The Lion King, and for that, I am forever grateful.