When I was nineteen, I found myself in a position I definitely wasn't ready for. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure it was a position I’d ever be ready for. But here it was and there was no backing down: I was 19 years old, and I was a parent. When you're a teen parent, you don't have the luxury of focusing much on future goals and careers. Your main priority is keeping your baby clothed and fed and housed and loved. That means taking whatever job happens to cross your path and hoping for the best. I am now 37, and my son just started college. He's grown up happy and healthy and is off in the world pursuing his own future career, and now I'm back here in suburban Pennsylvania, neither a big earner nor very satisfied with the "career" I've found myself in. After working my way up from an entry level job, being a low-level department supervisor is how I’ve been "making a living" for years. This has been my reality for so long, it seems odd to now be actively pursuing a future career, but that’s what I’ve decided to do. Just two years ago I enrolled in my local community college. I majored in Journalism and passed through the first two years with PELL grants and a 4.0 average. Now, as I'm moving on to my bachelor’s program in Southern New Hampshire University (where I'm shifting my focus to Anthropology,) the PELL grants have run out and I'm at a point where the student loans are mounting. I sometimes wonder if it's worth it to build up this debt in the hope of pursuing a career after school. The challenges of going to school while working full time are compounded by the overwhelming cost of school. Now I’m working hard and trying to maintain the same straight A's I received in community college. I dream of one day using my associate degree in journalism and my future degrees in Anthropology to pursue a career in the research of cultural practices folklore. It may require more than the bachelor’s I’m reaching for now, but I still dream of learning about and interacting with cultures across the nation and the world, collecting their stories and learning their customs, their songs, their dances, their foods, and everything else I can. Writing for a publication like National Geographic or doing research for any of a number of Folklore Studies centers across the U.S. would be dreams come true. This scholarship would do an almost immeasurable amount toward helping me toward that goal. For, as of now, I may be able to squeak through my bachelor’s program with student loans, but graduate school seems like a possibility floating just above my reach. A scholarship like this would be a step-ladder that would help me grab the edge of that dream and pull it down to Earth. I hope you’ll consider me for this so I can not only pursue my dreams, not only help record the untold stories of the world, but also so I can make my son, who was worth every second of hardship, proud of his Dad.

My sister was born with spina-bifida. Throughout my entire childhood life, I spent so much time in the back of a car on the way to a hospital. Or playing with toys in a waiting room. I spent so many nights worrying about my sister or my parents, as they struggled with the stress of it all. It had grown to feel normal to me. The doctors, the surgeries, the crying mother, the sitting alone. I am not sure I fully understood it, but I know I felt it. In school, I had to defend my sister from the bullying and jeers of classmates. In the world, when we would be refused service at some amusement park or fair because they "couldn't accommodate wheelchairs," I felt anger and righteous indignation. The experiences I had as a child left me understanding that not everyone has the same experience in the world. Some people face challenges that others never will. Those people need our extra attention and care. As a child, this can be incredibly hard to understand. You don't get why some people get more attention than you. You don't understand that just because something is easy for you, it doesn't mean it's easy for everyone. But over time, you grow a sense of empathy. I will never know what it's like to be in my sister's wheelchair. I will never know how the world looks to her or how much those experiences of exclusion and powerlessness hurt. But I can listen and know that it was hard and hurt and I can use that to benefit others. I can't take away the medical conditions that others have. Nor can I give them the things their medical conditions denied them. But I can do my part in making the world a bit easier and friendlier for people going through tough times. Sometimes, this is simple as a friendly smile or greeting to someone whom others may be avoiding because they are uncomfortable. Sometimes, this can be as large as organizing grassroots campaigns, writing letters, or staging petitions when businesses or laws make it difficult for those with chronic medical conditions to receive care or accommodations. But in all areas of life, in all our jobs and communities, it's important to remember that there are people who may not feel as empowered as you, and you have ability to put forth a small amount of effort and empower them with your words and actions.

I see a writer who gets to share their passion and their skills with the world, and not just in the spare hours between work and sleep, but as a profession, so he has energy left over to give to his family, friends, community, and anyone who is in need.

I remember the time I woke up being lifted onto a stretcher. It took a moment for me to look around at the white drop ceiling, the gray fabric-covered cubicles and the confused-but-familiar faces staring back at me. I felt the lump on the back of my head, and memories started coming back slowly. I'd figured out what happened. I'd passed out at my desk, at work. And now, I was in the embarrassing position of being taken out of my workplace on a stretcher, in front of everyone. Worse still was the dawning realization, as they asked me question after question about what happened, that I wasn't having any physical medical emergency. I'd had a panic attack. My panic attacks started when I was 15. I remember banging on my dad's bedroom door at the top of the steps, telling him I was dying of a heart attack. I was sure of it. He came out, shrugging off sleep and rolling his eyes. "Just drink some water. You're fine." As I grew up, they began to worsen. I found myself unable to drive over bridges because I was afraid that if I had a sudden panic attack while on the bridge, I might lose control and go flying off into the water. I'd leave work suddenly or not go in at all. But, at this point, I was afraid of medicine. I was afraid to get help. When I was a teenager, I'd been diagnosed with ADHD and put onto ritalin. It was a terrible experience. I'm sure many people have fine or good experiences with the drug, but I found it made me obsessive and uncomfortable, but do to some behavioral problems, my school had threatened my parents with my expulsion if I wasn't medicated in this way. So then, even 20 years later, I didn't want to go back. And yet, my life was close to falling apart. I had become a parent at age 19 with a world of weight on his shoulders, and this panic disorder to boot. My depression was worsening. I didn't have the motivation to go to college or follow any of my passions. My debt was rocketing upward, as I worked my dead-end job and spent each night on the couch, trying to catch up on the sleep I missed the night before. I was going through break-ups as fast as I was meeting partners. My life could have easily spiraled at that moment. But finally, in my mid-20s, I decided to act. I don't know what did it for me, but something clicked. I realized that just because my brain didn't make enough of a certain type of chemical, that didn't mean I had to settle for a bad life. Just because some synapse in my brain wasn't firing as often as it should, didn't mean that I was weak. Finally, I sought help. I found a therapist that I liked, understood, challenged, and validated me. I found a medicine that took the episodes of panic and mania away. And surprisingly, they didn't change my personality or make me into a zombie, as I feared! They just made it easier for me to swim among these intense emotions and not fall under. I began eating better. I'd decided to be open with my friends and family about the problems I was facing. Taking time to myself. Exercising. It made a world of difference. Without that first step, I wouldn't be in college. I wouldn't be pursuing my passions. And I wouldn't be thriving.

rom the first time I read a book, I wanted to write books. From the first time I picked up a comic book, I wanted to draw. From my earliest memories of music, I've wanted to make music. I've always been driven by this need to create and it's taken me to a lot of interesting places in the ensuing years. My first major creative project was playing in bands throughout high school. I picked up a guitar at 13 and I fell in love with punk music. My band played a few shows and practiced once a week for nearly a year before a move pulled me away. I had trouble writing music after that, but I kept on creating. While music didn't work out and drawing didn't work out (I was never any good at that!) the two creative drives that stuck with me are writing and performing. My first time performing was in my 2012 when some comedian friends asked me to join them on stage for a sketch comedy show. I'd written some sketches with them, but the idea of being on-stage was nerve-wracking. But the moment I said a line and heard the roar of laughter from the crowd, I was hooked. I've been performing comedy in and around Philadelphia for a decade since. From producing and hosting a monthly sketch show in West Chester, PA, a monthy variety show at L'Etage in Philadelphia, and a live D&D show at Good Good Comedy Theater, to creating and hosting three years of the Philly Improv Theater's Black Friday Comedy Marathon, my days of comedy were some of the best of my life. Unfortunately, as the pandemic shut down venue after venue, my live comedy ambitions started to become more difficult. Through it all, I've stuck to my other passion: writing. I found early on that I had a skill for conveying narratives about obscure bits of culture. I started a podcast about the true stories of how folk songs and folklore travel through history and across the world and evolve. Though I have yet to ever make a cent from writing, I've built up a small portfolio of features with no plans to stop. With these passions in mind and comedy on the back burner, I finally decided to enroll in college in 2021. At my local community college, I took courses in Journalism, English, History, Creative Writing, and Music to deepen my knowledge and become a better writer. I hope to grow my podcast, Every Folk Song, into a larger venture with the skills I've gotten from community college and that I hope to gain from Southern New Hampshire University. These pursuits have been difficult for me, as I've worked full-time since the age of 19, when my son was born. The efforts and financial demands of fatherhood have kept me from school and limited my ability to pursue an artistic career. But with my son leaving for college, and my time a bit freer as I've transitioned to working from home in the past two years, the time became right for me to pursue my dreams in a bigger way, though money is still a challenge. I would love to achieve much more in the field of journalism in the future, and grow my podcast into a larger pursuit. I am working diligently on a novel and I hope to have that completed and, with any luck, published. And I yearn to get back on the performing stage. This scholarship would help free up some space for me to achieve all these things.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” George R.R. Martin wrote that in his famous(or perhaps, infamous) series "A Song of Ice and Fire." I return to this quote often, because I find that it has been true for me in so many different ways. I've been a reader for my entire life, jumping from picture books to comic books to chapter books to novels and non-fiction. These days, I read about one graphic novel and one regular novel or non-fiction book a week. And the ways that books have impacted my life - the things they've taught me - are immeasurable. Though, I think they're best explained through examining that quote. Reading has taught me empathy. More than any other part of my life. Of course, I've learned empathy through meeting and developing relationships with people. However, you tend to largely meet people who are like you. People of the same socio-economic background, in the same area, often around the same age. That's not even to mention that they're all of the same time period as you! Additionally, people don't always say everything they think. Or everything they fear. Or everything they want. Or everything that hurts them. Reading provides a gateway into the heads of people who are unlike you. You can pick up a book written by a person who has an entirely different life experience than you and learn about what life in another continent, another time, another body was like. When you read memoirs or autobiographies - or even when you see bits of the author float into the characters in fiction - you can read deeply about the things even the people you're closest to would never share aloud. I have learned so much about so many types of people from reading. The first time I read Beloved, I found myself in tears, thinking about what it would have truly been like to live as a Black woman in the last days of slavery. How hard her and her ancestors must have suffered. How hard that transition must have been. And then, reading Ta-Nehisi Coates, feeling deeply how much suffering still happens in the Black communities around the country. What it must feel like to be a person with a totally different life experience than me. I also have learned new ideas. I remember reading Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Pirsig in high school and learning, for the first time, how important it was to craft a set of beliefs that are all your own and follow them with conviction. Soon after, I read Plato and other philosophers and learned how important it was to examine the things around you and thing deeply about them. I read Howard Zinn and realized just how different the world is than the world we're shown on TV and in movies and even in the high school classroom. Reading opened my eyes to a brand new take on life that I'd never have known if I'd have continued walking through my priveleged life, head in the clouds, not a care in the world. Authors like the ones above or David Graeber or Yuval Noah Harari or Joseph Campbell have helped shape my goals and what I want to do with my life. Pursuing Anthropolgy came entirely from my love of learing about humans, humanity, culture, and all the different ways a person can be human. I wouldn't have known how important any of that was to me without the help of books.

Living sustainably is a scary prospect, to start. You imagine a life where you're living in some kind of mud hut and eating sticks while using dried seaweed as tissues. Our brains tend to go to extremes, and the anti-environmental rhetoric we see everywhere in our lives certainly doesn't help. However, sustainability can be simple. Think about what's being asked of you: Reduce your carbon footprint. Keyword: "reduce." We all are going to have a carbon footprint. That's just a fact of life. But there are many simple and achievable things one can do to take that footprint down, bit by bit. I will use my daily life as an example. When I leave a room, I turn off a light. It's very simple, but it's an easy way to reduce your energy consumption. I unplug appliances when I'm finished using them, so they don’t sap outlets and don't leak tiny amounts of energy all day. I replaced all the light bulbs in my house with eco-friendly bulbs, and that was as easy as going to the local hardware store and just asking. I reuse boxes and bags from all packaging. If something was held in it once, it can hold something again, to store or to mail. I use both sides of a piece of paper, an index card, and a post-it note. The amount of paper waste you can reduce by keeping cloths in each room of your house will astound you. My largest contribution to sustainability, however, has to be in my diet. For 10 years now, I have been completely meat-free. Since the meat industry is one of the largest contributors to carbon emissions, it was the least I could do to have the most impact. And vegetarian food is delicious! Likewise, almond milk lasts longer and (good almond milk!) has a taste that rivals cow's milk in every way. I am constantly monitoring the food in my fridge to make sure none of it goes to waste. Anything that I'm not going to eat this week goes in the freezer and can be de-thawed later or used in a smoothie. One other major thing that I've learned over time is that when grocery shopping, I used to tend to always go for the cheapest option in every instance. When looking at the eggs, I would see the free-range, local eggs and still go for the generic, cheaper ones. Then, one day, I realized - the price difference is only -at most- a dollar. If I could spend one extra dollar every two weeks to reduce the traveling costs, animal cruelty, and carbon footprint of something simple like my eggs? Why wouldn't I? I carpool when I can. I buy as much used as I possibly can - the production carbon costs for new books or clothes are so high when you can find most of the things you want and need pre-owned. I try to throw away as little as possible. We're living on a planet that has a finite number of resources. We are living on a planet that very well could become uninhabitable. It's our responsibility to leave our children with a place they can live and breathe in. And none of these steps I took were huge. None of these things I do every day feel like they take much effort or subtract anything major from my life. However, I know that they're adding something major to the life of the Earth. And that's the most important thing.

From my teenage days of mohawks and leather jackets to my 20s, playing a goofball on the comedy stage, my uniqueness has always been an aspect of myself that I've strived to nurture. From our bodies to our fashion to our beliefs and our many ways of expression, there are so many facets of each person that sets them apart from the rest. Supporting and displaying these pieces of every individual is something that always works to the benefit of society. We live in such a vast and diverse world, but society can often work to pull us into its morass, flattening out the dents and grooves that make us unique. We can feel a pressure not to stand out, or feel as if the things that are individual to us will somehow hold us back. However, it's those individual and unique aspects that help us to create new ideas and better understand all that humanity has to offer. I was always a free thinker. I grew up in a wealthy, white suburban community where any deviation from the group led to bullying and harassment. Just post-9/11, there was a furor of anti-muslim hysteria and a hunger for war that I found scary and disappointing. I became outspoken against this wave of dangerous ideas. The area where I live also harbored a lot of homophobic sentiments. I faced a lot of harassment and even violence for speaking out against those prevailing attitudes. I received torment for my style of dress, as I was really into punk rock and wore my hair in large, colored spikes. It was a difficult way to grow up. However, instead of feeling cowed into following the crowd, the harassment only made me entrenched in my identity. I began to believe it was more important to speak up than to be silent when you're different. As time has gone on, I've found this to be helpful to society. As I struggled with mental disabilities or personal issues, I've been outspoken about them. When I have weird and unique creative ideas, their uniqueness has only made me want to create them more. These things have been a helping force for others in my social circle or greater community who feel as if they have no outlet. When they see someone being open about what makes them different, they can feel better about expressing themselves with confidence. I hope, with my creative and journalistic work in the future to help nurture these things in society and create a world where individuality is celebrated, not feared. I hope to continue being outspoken in my writing and my professional work about ideas that differ from the deafening collective voice. I hope to continue being open and forthcoming about those aspects of myself and my life that some might find strange or embarrassing so that others in the same position will feel less alone. I think we are all unique and we should all be proud of that.