My dream is to become the first one in my family to work as a scholar in academia and to have a transformative impact on multiple fields of social science.

As a third-generation Polynesian American born to a fifteen-year-old single mother, I learned early on that not everyone starts their life with the same advantages. Whether it was the financial hardships that marked our beginnings or our experiences with racial discrimination-advantages weren't necessary for our success. We defied stereotypes and I learned to answer adversity with tenacity. Upon reflecting on my experiences with the American legal and educational systems, I can say with confidence that the process of successfully navigating college influenced my career aspirations when I was an undergraduate student. At the beginning of my academic career, I wanted to be a lawyer, but my interests evolved as I progressed further into my education. As I gained more knowledge about political and economic systems, I developed a greater appreciation for the role that they play in impacting the outcome of legal systems. Thus, when I became better at recognizing and articulating their interconnectedness, I decided to major in comparative political economy so that I could explore knowledge from all three of these fields. Since graduating as a first-generation student, I have been planning on taking my career to new heights. I am currently enrolled in the University of Nebraska at Omaha's political science graduate program earning my master's degree in the fields of history and government. My long-term career goal is to become a political science instructor at the college level. Since I am working towards completing the program fully online from where I live in Washington State, I am forced to pay twice as much for tuition as I would otherwise because I don't live in the same state as the university for which I am enrolled in. Despite the significant financial burden I face in pursuing my career goals, my dream of becoming a college instructor drives my motivation to succeed. In previous years I was able to reduce the financial burden of earning my undergraduate degree by working part-time while taking university courses. Drawing from this experience, I still work part-time to cover my living expenses so that my loans are used strictly for tuition purposes and don't accumulate into an amount of debt that I can't repay in a reasonable amount of time. Considering that I finished my undergraduate education with a 3.9 grade point average and maintained a healthy relationship with my wife while in college, I have demonstrated that I am capable of effectively balancing multiple responsibilities. Being from a working-class, multiracial family of indigenous Hawaiians and American Indians, no one in my family had the opportunity to go to college before my generation. Embracing an opportunity that my family never had previously changed my belief about what future is possible for us and the broader nations of indigenous people whom we are related to. By graduating from university, I have contributed further evidence that indigenous people have the skill and drive to overcome historical legacies of disenfranchisement and oppression. Seeing the advancement of historically marginalized communities as a social issue worthy of my time, I want to be a college instructor so that I can work to help these kinds of students achieve self-determination through education. Even though I still have obstacles such as out-of-state tuition costs that make realizing my future career in academia more difficult, they are small in comparison to those that my mother and I endured together as a child, and even smaller than those faced by generations before us. Thus, I will press forward and continue to pursue my future the same way I did in the earliest chapter of my life: answering adversity with tenacity.