Attending and Cheering on the sidelines for Football games from August-October & Basketball games from November-February, Competing and learning multiple routines during competition season (November-February), Performing during basketball and football halftime, Decorating halls during homecoming week, Performing for Homecoming Assembly in-school and during the football game. Performing alongside both the school’s dance and pom-poms teams for the annual “Go Pink or Go Home” football game to fundraise for breast cancer research. The actions listed above are some of the activities we as cheerleaders, participated in at Addison Trail High School; however, this is not the full description of what being a cheerleader meant to me. Cheerleading allowed me to connect with others interested in spreading joy and who wanted to participate in showing school pride. Through this sport, I was connected to people from all over the state and from all different entireties of backgrounds, races, religions, genders, and sexualities, and I befriended many of these people through our shared passions, goals, and triumphs. Within my many endeavors as a member of this team, I learned what it truly meant to be part of a team: everyone contributing different ideas, abilities, and views so that we may all prosper; a collective where our success depends on our cooperation and disregard for any and all of our differences. Cheerleading also means being vulnerable and having faith in my teammates to support me not only physically in stunts but also emotionally in putting together a presentation of our total physical exertion and with smiles upon our faces not because we performed well but because we performed together, no longer as individuals in a group, but as a team with one collective goal. Being a cheerleader is to learn vulnerability, trust, teamwork, and ambition.

I am called insane and irrational by many. Insane because people don't understand that I see everything from multiple perspectives. Irrational because I allow my head and heart to think together, to find a solution to issues that is both practical and keeps my conscious clean. I am determined to become more in life than my parents' accident child. I am determined to keep college fees from deterring my goal to break free of the chains that have kept my ancestors from success. I am an old soul with a young heart and a fortified will for success.

My passions are learning about cells and different types of life. I cope with my depression and anxiety by playing instrumental music and reminding myself that only so much is in my control and stressing out about things that are out of my control only results in my own pain. I wish to pursue a career in the medical field one day and to be the first person in both of my bloodlines to attend college.

My grandfather has changed my life multiple times, even before knowing I would ever exist. He illegally moved to the US from Mexico in the 80s when he was only a teenager and brought his younger brother with him so that he could also have a brighter future. He then worked to get himself and his brother legal citizenship which he succeeded in doing. He then continued to work minimum wage jobs and work his way up saying "minimum wage in the US is better than an unlivable minimum wage in Mexico." Later on, my father ran away to my estranged grandmother's home where he was legally old enough to stay and drop out of high school. After many years of being alienated from my father's life for personality differences, he immediately stepped up and took custody of my brother and I when our parents were incarcerated. He has since then molded us to learn and study so that we can break the cycle of struggle that our family has faced for decades and has worked countless weekends on overtime so that he can provide us with the tools that we need to succeed, and now it is my turn to do as much as I can to lower my tuition price as I know that he will go to the ends of the world to try and afford my tuition when it is likely that he will have to work past normal the normal retirement age so that he may live a financially stable life. I wish to be able to return here in the future, to my low-income community and donate to my underfunded local elementary school, continue the donations to St. Jude Children's Hospital that my grandfather was unable to afford after becoming my legal guardian, and let my grandfather retire.