1. I found TXT in early 2019 after stumbling upon their member introduction films. 2. For me, the most important characteristic of a MOA is love. We MOA are all united by our love for the boys and the music that they make, and its love for each other that keeps this fandom together. 3. My TXT bias is Beomgyu. I love his mischievous personality and his bounds of energy never fails to make me smile. But more than anything, I love how despite his silly nature, he's is one of the most genuine and talented idols I've seen who is always willing to give 110% in all of his performances. 4. Outside of TXT, my other bias is Yeosang from Ateez. While it's few and far in between, I'm always excited when I get a few TXTeez crumbs since Yeosang and Wooyoung (also from Ateez) trained with the TXT members when they were still at Big Hit. 5. My favorite TXT song is 0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) because it solidified me as a bonified MOA. As an avid emo/rock consumer, the concept immediately caught my attention, and to this day it's one of the few K-Pop songs that truly sounds like art and triggers a strong reaction in me. It's so emotional and nostalgic, and the way Taehyun says "I know it's real I can feel it" is so visceral and gritty, it captures the pain of being in love so well. I love this song so much I chose it to be the focus of my first ever K-Pop dance workshop. 6. No, unfortunately the financial timing has never been right for me to attend their concert. 7. My favorite concept is from The Chaos Chapter: Freeze. Not only does it contain my favorite TXT song, but the general aesthetic completely aligns with my overall taste, especially when it comes to the styling. I love the combination of cold, fantasy vibe with the nostalgic angsty feel. Their 210604 KBS World performance of 0=1 especially encapsulated all my favorite aspects of this concept. 8. Since I'm unable to take out Sallie Mae or other private student loans, I have been paying for school through a combination of personal bank loans and paying out of pocket for the past year. 9. I am currently on my senior year of college and am set to study abroad in Japan this September. This scholarship will primarily help cover tuition costs so that I can complete my final year of university. The rest of the funds will go towards covering basic living expenses during my time abroad, including but not limited to tuition, housing, and transportation. 10. TXT debuted during one of the worst times in my life and very quickly became one of the few things to bring me joy during those dark times. Since we are all similar age, seeing them work hard and strive to fulfill their dreams gave me the strength to keep persevering. I may still be in a less than ideal situation financially, but I take extreme comfort in knowing that I can turn to their music if things get bad. 11. Through the skills gained through my English degree, I aim to create a magazine based around travel, Korean traditional and pop culture, and Japanese traditional and pop culture. While I will be covering fun topics I also want to cover more grounded subjects along side it. It isn't uncommon for people in fandom spaces to see certain cultures through rose colored glasses or reduce it to generalized stereotypes. I don't intend to disillusion my readers by including coverage of more serious aspects of culture, but instead I hope that by doing so I can foster a deeper appreciation and understanding of cultures alongside their passion for topics like anime or K-pop.

From the moment we enter the K-12 system, we are taught the importance of obtaining a college degree, and this is true now more than ever. Unfortunately, we aren't taught the realities of how difficult financing a higher education is, especially for those who are in a low-income situation. My parents grew up in poverty in Guam where finishing high school without becoming a teen parent or joining a gang was considered a miracle. Through years of blood, sweat, and tears they were able to leave the island and build up a comfortable life for my younger sibling and I, and in exchange they only asked that we finish high school and surpass them by obtaining a college degree. Despite graduating high school at sixteen and immediately going into college, I was forced to leave half-way through my journey due to a combination of external circumstances and being unable to fund my education. At twenty-two, though I had to start from the beginning, I was finally back in a place where I could pursue my bachelor's degree. Now I am twenty-seven and have finally reached my senior year and am even set to fulfill my goal of studying abroad in Japan this fall. For me, pursuing a higher education is more than a necessity, it's a chance to walk down the path of opportunity that my parents painstakingly carved out. My bachelor's degree is a symbol of triumph over a decade's worth of personal sacrifice and the physical culmination of my dedication and hardship. After leaving Guam, my parents moved and raised my sibling and I in South Carolina. Since we had little to no exposure to our culture, they used visual and audio media to inspire us to venture outside of our small town, and in the process, I gained a deep appreciation for Asian media and travel journalism. I intend to develop this passion and use my English degree towards creating my own digital magazine based around travel and Japanese traditional and pop culture. Not only does this allow me to immerse myself in subjects that interest me, but it lets me take my childhood inspirations and manifest it into what my parents had wished since I was born: to live a financially comfortable life built off engrossing myself in my passions. While I find travel and Japanese traditional and pop culture interesting, one of my main motivators for starting this magazine is to provide a more grounded and realistic view of Japan. After Japan launched their "Cool Japan" marketing initiative, which pushed Japanese pop culture as a means of reinventing their image, many people now view Japan through rose-colored lenses and glorify the country. In recent years there has also been a rise of uninformed influencers who act disrespectfully when visiting Japan, leading to stricter rules on tourism. With the knowledge gained from my higher education, my goal is to use my magazine as a means to combine coverage of popular pop culture subjects with a realistic, grounded reporting on traditional Japanese customs and daily living. By combining these subjects with travel, I aim to educate those who are interested in Japanese pop culture and foster an attitude of appreciation and respect for the culture. Though I don't intend to disillusion my readers, I've opted to cover both positive and negative aspects of Japanese culture to give my readers a more accurate depiction of the country. I was able to avoid developing a glorified view of Japan thanks to being exposed to all facets of the culture, and it's through that knowledge that I've been able to cultivate genuine appreciation and understanding. Just as my parents carved a path that created my opportunity to learn and pursue a higher education, I hope to emulate that sentiment in my magazine and use the knowledge I gained to help create a world where one can engage in their interests in a kind and compassionate manner.

I was fortunate to have been raised by parents who exposed me to world media from birth. They were quick to introduce me to a range of music, TV shows, movies, and video games that weren’t readily available in Lexington, South Carolina, especially during the early 2000s. It’s through this media and the encouragement from my parents that I developed a love of travel and geek-based culture. TV programs like XPlay and Attack of the Show on G4 or Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel cultivated my appreciation for journalism, and our frequent trips to comic conventions along the southern east coast allowed me to feel a semblance of what my role models portrayed on TV. As I grew, I started to develop a particular interest in Japanese culture and media, and by 2011, I was running my own blog. Though it was undoubtedly rudimentary, it was sincere, and this space served as a practice run for me to troubleshoot my future goals. Now in 2026, I plan to take this step further and fully commit to creating my own digital magazine exploring my favorite aspects of travel and geek-culture. This digital zine will center around Japanese culture and media, travel, and other aspects of geekdom. To achieve this, I’ve bought a domain, set up a basic website, gathered inspiration from related media, and am keeping an archive of posts to publish once the website design is finalized. Considering that people outsource multiple outlets centered around one of these topics, my zine will provide a central place for audiences to obtain comprehensive information. I especially want to give a realistic depiction of the cultural aspects of Japan because foreign fans of anime and manga tend to base their understanding of Japan solely on these glorified images they see in these media, leading them to put the country on a pedestal. Though my goal isn’t to disillusion my readers, I want to give foreign fans an accurate depiction of Japanese culture. I’ve also been accepted into my university’s study abroad program and will be attending the International Christian University (ICU) in Mitaka, Japan and aim to use that opportunity to gather content and document my experiences as a study abroad student. As someone who only has a foundational understanding of the language, this series will provide a realistic view of the average student studying abroad and how I overcome the language and cultural barrier. By showing how an average person navigates studying abroad, I hope to show that it’s more accessible than it may seem. I would also often watch vlogs and read articles on other students’ study abroad experiences in Japan to prepare myself for when it was my turn, and through my digital magazine, I can follow suit and provide a realistic list of resources and advice for other people looking to study in Japan. As someone who has spent over a decade in fandom spaces that glorify surface-level elements of an entire culture, my career in journalism is geared towards presenting accurate and compelling news to combat this trivialization. Japanese tourism has gotten significantly stricter in attempt to discourage the increasing amount of disrespect and general disregard for societal customs, primarily by tourists and foreign influencers, as seen through Logan Paul’s Suicide Forest video and most recently, tourists storming the enclosure of the viral monkey Punch. I hope that by covering a range of geekdom and cultural topics, both positive and negative, I can provide interesting and informative articles to readers and foster a newfound appreciation for Japan.

Studying abroad in Japan has always been a childhood goal of mine since it's the most sure-fire way for me to immerse myself in Japanese culture and experience day-to-day living outside of just an extended tourism trip. Aside from personal interest, I'm currently in the process of launching my own digital magazine "Oh Mai!" based on Japanese culture and travel, and studying in Japan gives me the opportunity to engage in fieldwork and gather a plethora of content for it. This magazine has been an idea of mine since middle school, but I've never followed through with it because I thought it would be wiser to aim for a stable career. I graduated high school at sixteen and went straight into college in hopes of obtaining my bachelor’s degree at twenty and my master’s degree by twenty-two. I thought that by graduating high school early and entering college early, not only will I be able to study abroad earlier, but it would give me the chance to enter the workforce with a higher degree than my peers, thus increasing my chances of getting a stable, high-paying job that can fund vacations to Japan. Unfortunately, the years of intense, nonstop schooling took a major toll on me and my mental health plummeted at a concerning rate. However, having been forced to leave my university for my mental health, I ended up trapped in a toxic living situation for another two years until I was able to escape and move back in my parents. Now that I had a new opportunity to get the degree that I yearned for, I went back to college, though due to the institution being unable to accept most of my transfer credits, I had to restart my schooling from the beginning. Since I was still managing the worst of my PTSD from my previous living situation, getting my associate’s degree took twice as long to obtain. Though I could’ve stopped there, I was determined to at least get my bachelor’s degree, so I transferred into a university. Despite the eight-year journey, I’ve finally reached my senior year of university and have managed to maintain a GPA between 3.6 and 3.8 since restarting. The only thing that I haven’t been able to achieve is studying abroad, but fortunately, I have recently been accepted into my university’s study abroad program and I am in the process of preparing to enter the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan this September. I’m still in a low-income situation, so figuring out how to finance it has become my new biggest hurdle, especially since my outstanding debts now prevent me from taking out a student loan and I am paying out of pocket. Though my situation isn’t ideal, I am saving money from my part-time job and working various odd jobs to finance my trip. I’ll be taking a handful of culture and history classes to fulfill my elective credits, but most of the value I will get out of studying abroad will be experiencing Japanese culture firsthand and using those experiences for my digital magazine. I may have struggled, but now I’m finally in a place where my long-awaited degree is in sight and my dream to study abroad is being realized. I also now have the strength to take a risk and commit to my childhood dream career and have a viable plan to make it sustainable. Not initially committing to my original career plan led me down a difficult road, but for the first time in years I feel like I’m finally walking the path meant for me.

Since I was a child, society has made leaps in the fight for equality and inclusivity, but despite this, one topic that remains heavily misunderstood is mental health, especially regarding suicide. Though we have made large strides in bringing awareness to and incorporating mental health practices into everyday life, many people don't fully understand how it feels to be suicidal or how to support someone who struggles with suicidal ideation. Most rhetoric that I see relegates suicide to an impulsive choice someone makes after a traumatic event, or something youth and teens struggle with but grow out of as their hormones balance out in adulthood. The truth is that those who are lucky to survive their trauma or the hardships of youth are often left feeling lost for years to come. I spent most of my high school and young adult life grappling with borderline personality disorder, self-harm, and suicidal ideation, and have even attempted to take my life on three occasions. 2019-2020 were the darkest years of my life, and the fact that I’m here to write this essay is no short of a miracle. Since then, I was able to successfully restart my life, get the help that I needed, and return to college to get my bachelor’s degree, but though I’m proud of myself for making it this far, it doesn’t negate the fact that those mental struggles remain. Now that I’m 27 and have gotten my life back on track according to society’s standards, I no longer have a justifiable reason to be suicidal. On the outside, people see a redemption arc, but every morning I’m making an active choice to live. This is an important distinction that I feel our society fails to understand. People can grow and persevere over their demons, but the fight is never truly over. The problem with depression and suicidal ideation, especially when everything is seemingly fine, is that people who don’t have these struggles can only comprehend it when there is a traceable issue with a clear solution. I’ve seen long-term relationships end because of someone’s ongoing depression and suicidal ideation, despite their consistent efforts to overcome it. In my experience, people are sympathetic and offer help in the short term, but when the symptoms of mental struggles prolong or are seen as redundant, people tend to distance themselves. This is especially true when people exhibit symptoms that are beyond their romanticized idea of mental illness. People are often sympathetic to those who exhibit symptoms like excessive crying or isolation, but when it comes to taboo topics like self-harm or hyper-sexuality, people are quick to distance themselves or take advantage. I’ve long made my peace with the fact that self-harm and suicide will always be an option for me, but something I find more important is that even if this is true, I am making an active effort to not choose it. It has been seven years since I’ve attempted suicide, and I haven’t self-harmed since December 2020. Who I was then would never have thought that I’d make it to my senior year of college, become an advocate for mental health, or would be set to fulfill my dream of studying abroad to Japan this September. To choose life is to choose struggles, but by doing so I’m also choosing infinite possibilities to experience love, joy, and wonder. Most of all, I’m choosing to believe in my own strength to persevere against the darkness, and that’s something I’ll always be proud of myself for doing.