Kindness in Action: "I just feel like a freaking failure". It broke my heart to hear one of my best friends say that sentence. She looked down at the wooden round table in front of us, and meshed her fingers together. We were sitting in the English office and eating our lunches, but something had looked off about her all day, she wasn't as energetic as usual, and said she didn't feel like going outside to soak in the rare sun we were getting that day. "I'm so sorry Valerie, what happened?," I tentatively asked her. She looked at me and started to talk about her college results, how she'd been waitlisted by school after school and felt like all of her hard work hadn't meant anything, because she hadn't been welcomed the way she should've been. To be honest, hearing this I felt a little embarrassment internally; I'd been rejected by multiple of those schools she'd been waitlisted by. At first I wanted to say "at least you have *some* chance of getting in," and compare her struggle to mine, but I realized: that wouldn't make her feel any better, that would've just made my friend feel guilty for opening up to me. Instead of making it about myself, I held her hand and told her that that sucked, those schools are dumb and clearly missing out on a girl like her, and dragged her outside into the sun, so that she'd stop punishing herself with this misery. I know that seems like a small example, but I think that when friends do those things for each other, it's the purest form of love there is. I don't have to love my friends, they aren't related to me and I don't technically owe them it, but I choose to, because by loving this individual who makes me happy, I get to thank her for being such a wonderful person just because of her wonderfulness. Creating Connection: I believe that I help bring people together by doing everything that I do with love. I love my friends, I love strangers, I love that joke you just made, and I love the shoes you wore today. I think that by being such a loving person makes me feel more grateful for those around me, and furthermore, I think getting to appreciate others so much gives me the opportunity to make them feel seen. I think that people can get lost in their self-perceptions, one of my friends once described it as having "personality dysmorphia". This is when you perceive your personality flaws as being much much more present than they are. I think that when someone's doing this, the best thing to help with that is hearing from others unprompted how loved they are, and how amazing you think that they are, because if you only tell them when they tell you about it, they'll think it's because you feel guilty and feel like you have to lie to them. I've struggled with my own insecurities about my personality and appearance for so long that it's made me realize how important it is that I try to help others with these feelings through as many compliments and listening ears and little gifts and gestures of love as possible, because I think that at their cores people need to feel loved to learn to love themselves.

Asking my parents about money has always been complicated. They want me to know what I'm doing with my money, so that as an adult I can support myself, but I'm not really allowed to know what they're doing, so I've never had much of an example to draw from. Through small observations I've been able to gleam things like debt (overhearing them complain about student loans to each other when they thought I was sleeping) and income (when I was in kindergarten, I got a few new sets of clothes, because 'we don't need to spend money on a million uniforms, you can just rewear your clothes,' but now that my little sister's in kindergarten, we can afford a new set for every day of the week). But when it came to filling out my FAFSA and learning about the student loans I'd be taking out, I was essentially on my own. However, I happened to get lucky enough this final semester of high school to be placed in a 'Personal Finance' class. This is a one semester course which is focused on teaching you how to maximize your 'net worth,' which I learned is the difference between your assets and liabilities. Through this class, so far I've learned about selection of debit vs. credit cards and the fees they entail, different kinds of government loans, investing between stocks and bonds and ETF's, and even different kinds of retirement funds and how to handle them. Having the opportunity to take this class has given me two major feelings: one, that I have to start investing ASAP, and two, a surprising confidence that I *can* do a lot things I was previously afraid of. Before taking this class, I looked at finance as another language that I really did *not* want to understand, like it was under lock and key and only available if you buy a Patagonia vest and worship Patrick Bateman. However, I now feel a lot more confident that I'll be able to handle my finances myself as I mature! I want to use this to better my future because I want to be in a comfortable enough financial situation that I can teach my children how to control their financial future because I *have* made strong enough choices to lead them by my example. I don't want my kids to be confused on their FAFSA, I want to be able to tell them "here's what to do," and know that that's right because I did it and it worked.

I want to create communities designed to work cohesively with the natural world around it so that we can coexist peacefully without causing further harm to the natural world, or even help regrow what we've previously harmed. I believe that this will have to be done through innovations in sustainable infrastructure and their incorporation into modern construction bit by bit. I was really inspired when I heard about these bike lanes in Germany- apparently they have lights that charge up during the day, and then light up at night to light the bike trail, totally solar powered! Not only is that a really cool sustainable design, but it also makes those areas safer at night for residents and travelers. I'm really excited by innovations like that, like those hospitals where the lights in a certain person's office don't come on until exactly ten minutes after they clock in. I want to oversee new construction projects to try and ensure that things like that get to be included, and I have so so many ideas for it! I really value disaster resiliency as well, and I think that's something a lot of newer neighborhoods don't include as much as they should. For example, my dad has lived in suburbs all across the country for his work, and regardless of where we were I noticed the same sets of problems. First of all, you couldn't get anywhere without a car, which really isolates younger residents and harms community wellbeing, not even going into the carbon impact of that. Second of all, again with the community connectivity, there weren't any shared social spaces. Also, any time there were so much as a mild thunderstorm, at least a row of houses had to repair windows, roofs, and more! Shouldn't our houses be built with stronger materials than that? Did you know that in other countries, their walls are thick and heavy without sacrificing insulation? And yet in our neighborhoods, we build row after row of empty drywall homes for the sake of increasing property value, but those houses are so expensive that they sit there, empty, and they're so cheaply built that the second a rough storm let alone a natural disaster happens they're automatically down for the count. I want to change this as a whole. First of all we need to be building less homes, with stronger materials that are actually built to last. Second of all to help the housing crisis I think we should place an emphasis on multiple family homes or group housing, which can still be well-built, but can be made more affordable to those struggling financially. Additionally, I think that the way we concentrate homes should be like a flower with it's petals. In the very center you'd have the urban center, and as you travel further down the petals, to accommodate folks that don't want to live closer to others, you get slightly more space between homes, the further and further away you get. However, what is changed is that these urban centers aren't the only places with shared spaces, but you add stores, restaurants, parks interspersed throughout the petals so that people can still see each other in their own communities, *and* you include plenty of public transportation to even further decrease reliance on cars. Furthermore, I think there are lots of new ideas we should feature, such as instead of just grass lawns, featuring more houses with lawns filled with local wildflowers to help insect populations, which will also aid local avian species.

Some of my fondest memories come from being lost. I distinctly remember wandering off from my mother at a local park and her finding me with my nails caked in dirt, curiously holding up a worm to my eyes. After doing her due duties to drag me back to the other children and admonish me for dirtying my clothes, I think my mother understood what those moments meant for me. Giving kids the opportunity to 'dig around' gives them more than a satisfying tactile experience, it gave me the feeling of being connected to something. Being raised in concrete-jungle NYC, I think I have a greater sense of appreciation for how nature can become an escape, and so I want to protect the pockets of nature such as local parks that we keep within communities. That way, people can benefit mentally from them, and we leave some natural ecosystems as in tact as possible. This is better for the physical health of people in that community because of the improved air quality, and better for the mental health of people in that community because they get to know they're part of a conservation effort, and their children get to learn about and see more diverse flora and fauna as they grow up. I want to do this by being a part of more sustainable construction practices. When I am part of the construction of a home or an office, I want to make sure I'm helping to build for a company that values our ecological impacts on the space that we are building in. I think that there is power in where you choose to work, because by becoming an employee for them, you are increasing their potential value through the speed they can complete jobs, the quality, and the increase in good reputation. Therefore I believe that by working for a company aligning with my moral values and encouraging others to do the same, I think that we can force companies to have some moral values, because companies need to have someone to work for them, and so they need to want their workers to be happy. In conclusion, I believe that through construction that's been really thought about, with love and care, we can inspire the next generation into loving their land in the form of all the little wormies they find when they are playing in the dirt.