Ascend Ruthless Expectations - My Shot: Hamilton Original Broadway Cast - Good 4 U: Olivia Rodrigo - Don't Lose Ur Head: Six Original Broadway Cast - Believer: Imagine Dragon - Groundhog Day: Em Beihold Artist name: Magnificent Standard

My favorite piece of art is actually a piece of music called "Lake Superior Suite" by Cait Nishimura. This piece is about the little cities surrounding Lake Superior, like the first movement of Pancake Bay, and each of the five movements focuses on a different city or park of Lake Superior in Canada. Not only was this suite really fun to play, which I had the great honor of being able to do, but the "Lake Superior Suite" tells an amazing story as well. Not only are listeners introduced to the beauty of Lake Superior from Pancake Bay Provincial Park with a light simplicity of moving notes but listeners are also told, through music, the darkness of Neys in movement four. This movement tells of the horrors of the Neys Provincial Park which was a prisoner of war camp for Japanese in Canada, which drastically changed how I listened and played this piece. This piece really inspired me in being able to tell the different vastness of these two stories, being how different they are. It also reminds me that history is always closer than I think, both physically in that I'm from Wisconsin so Lake Superior is literally right there and mentally reminding me that history is doomed to repeat itself unless we make changes in the world. All in all, this suite keeps me interested in it's hauntingly beauty I hear from it. Like so many people in this world, we might never knows what lies inside unless we look a little closer.

Someone I look up to from history is Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII of England. This lady had to go through so many ups and downs before she was Queen Consort, being married twice before Henry and both times her husbands died forcing her to remarry, as it was considered inappropriate for a woman to be unmarried in that time. But it’s not all of her marriages that make her interesting to me, but more so what she did with the power given to her from her marriages. For example, she was able to write and publish books under her own name, which was unheard of from women at the time. She also was a woman of great faith and constantly fought for it, being a Protestant in a newly found Church of England world she was living in. Furthermore, she not only lived under fear of religious persecution from Henry, but also had to worry about her own life, given what he did to his other wives. Yet she was still able to do all the amazing things that she did in her life, like fighting for women to get educated like men were at the time. In short, I believe her to be one of the first feminist, at least by our standards of what a feminist today. And even if that isn’t enough to admire her for, I also believe that being a woman in that time and having her own ideas and thoughts and standing up for them is also really impressive. Given the opportunity to talk to her, I would love to get her thoughts on issues we have today and get her thoughts on those ideas.

My favorite book is Again, but Better by Christine Riccio. This book tells the story of Shane who is at a summer intensive in London for creative writing, her true passion, even though her parents want her to go into pre-med. From here, the story appears to be the stereotypical rom-com, but that’s not what happens in this story. Well at least not right now. See, at the end of that summer Shane and the guy of interest don’t end up together, life keeps them apart; a shocking ending for a romance book. Here’s where the story starts to get interesting. A few years later, the world brings Shane and this guy back together, and by magic elevator, the two end up going back to that summer that they spent together in London. Now what do they do? Do they change how they acted with each other? Do they spend more or less time together? Well I’m not going to just tell you the ending, that would be rude, but I can tell you why this is my favorite book. In general, I love to read rom-coms, but after reading hundreds of these books time and time again, sometimes the “guy and girl meet and fall in love” story gets old after a while. However, that’s not really what happens in this story. It also includes a little bit of the fantasy/sci-fi genre, which happens to be another of my favorite genres, with the magic element and being able to go back in time for the characters. Maybe it’s the combining of these two genres that makes me love this story so much, but I like to think that sometimes all we need in life is just a little bit of magic to help guide us along.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be just like my dad. He is an electrical engineer and he always used to tell me that a big part of his job was using math in a variety of different ways. Once I found out that his job included math, I wanted to do the same thing he did since math was the one subject I excelled at from kindergarten to senior year of high school. However, over the years, I’ve discovered a few things about engineering. First and foremost, engineering involves so much more than just being good at math. Engineers also need good leadership skills, excellent communication skills, be able to work independently and in a group setting, and many other skills as well. Even so, I’ve found that I’ve been able to gather many of these skills over the years. Another discovery I’ve made about engineering is that I definitely do not want to be an electrical engineer, like my dad, as that is not a major or job I’m interested in pursuing. Instead, at Michigan State University, I’ve discovered a major called Applied Engineering Sciences, which essentially combines business with engineering. I recently found out that I really like business as well as engineering, all thanks to one of my friends in high school asking me to join a club with her. In ninth grade my friend at the time basically begged me to join this club with her called Future Business Leaders of America, which helps high schoolers find out more information about the business world and help them apply skills that entrepreneurs use. Part of the reason I fell in love with business is I could see how my actions could impact the world more, as employees provide a service to a company. I also realize that engineering does this, but to me, it’s easier to see how the business world can help people as opposed to the engineering world. It’s always been a big deal to me that I try to help the world in some way, as my mom is a nurse and I love the way that she’s able to care for people. However, I want to replicate what she does in my own way with my own major and I really think that Applied Engineering Sciences can help me do just that. In fact I think this major is perfect for helping society as a whole because the biggest draw to why employers hire students with this major is that they are the communicators between the engineering and the business world. By being able to be a mediator between these two groups, less arguments and less confusion happen within these two groups as there is someone who can speak both of their “languages”. With less arguments happening with the two groups, we can be more productive and create new products and implement them to help the rest of society. So really they help two separate groups of people, the business and engineering world and also the rest of the population with the ideas we can create together. Overall, I know I want to help bring people together and I know that this is a degree that can help me get there. Bringing people together despite their own personal thoughts or feelings is never any easy task to look forward to solving, but it's one that I can't wait to solve.

I have been taking some kind of calculus class for the last four years of my life. And while these past four years haven’t been the easiest in terms of learning math, there’s definitely something special about being able to solve the multitude of problems calculus can give. Because of that, I believe calculus is so important in the STEM field because it teaches you not only how to do the chain rule or how to find the integral, but calculus also teaches you how to be a good problem solver. Calculus has also taught me how to work better with others and how to take criticism well; also two things necessary for STEM. When I first started taking pre-calc in 10th grade, my teacher had us seated in groups of four with other students. Everyday when the teacher was done teaching the lesson for the day, we would always have a little extra time to get started on homework for that night. Having these extra ten or so minutes everyday when the lesson was done really helped teach me that calculus requires working with other people, both students and teachers. This is when I really learned that I can’t always solve every single problem by myself, sometimes I need other people to help solve my problems. Weirdly enough, this seating arrangement also taught me that it’s ok to ask for help from others when you need it, since I had others who could help me so readily compared to me just working by myself later in the day. Both of these skills, learning it’s ok to ask for help and working in groups, are vitally important in what I’ve learned is necessary to succeed in the STEM field as I’ve learned most people in these fields tend to end up working in groups. So learning these skills from all calculus can be very easily exchangeable to working in STEM fields. Calculus also helped teach me how to better tune my problem solving skills more. Didn’t understand the lesson that well. Asked classmates for help with the homework before we left class for the day, then went to the teacher later that day during my study hall to check my answers and check in more with the teacher if I needed to. Didn’t understand how to do the homework once I was at home. Looked at the answer key that my teacher made and tried to understand how to do the work by myself. Have a work day in class to work on homework. See if classmates could help me or if I could help them. No matter what was thrown at me, and no matter what still is thrown at me in my calculus classes, I always found a way to finish what needed to be done in the class. Basically calculus has taught me that no matter what problem is thrown my way, there will always be someone around who is willing to help me solve my problems and help me understand whatever it is that gets through my way in life. This is comforting to know that the skills I’ve learned in calculus can be transferred to STEM fields. Since all the calculus classes I’ve had are more group based, transferring these skills shouldn’t take much work and I know that these skills will be useful in what’s needed of me in the STEM field.