In 2019, my mom received a call from the spinal surgeon who had been seeing me for nearly 8 years: “Mrs. Tabitha Spencer? Your daughter has most likely quit growing, it's safe to do the surgery.” Me and my family had been waiting over a year for that call, the one that would kick-start the second chapter of my life. In January of next year, I had that surgery. It had been delayed six months due to COVID-19, but that didn’t matter all that much to me, what mattered is that it was happening at all. I ended up having to stay in the hospital for about three months due to extreme complications. I did a lot of things in that room, but I spent the majority of it watching TV. There weren’t many working channels- really you could only watch cartoons, car auctions, Fifty Shades Of Gray orrr the true crime channel. I was 15 and too old for preschooler programs and too young for the raunchiness that was Fifty Shades, so I turned on the true crime channel. I watched a lot of Forensic Files and The FIrst 48 and it sparked something in me. When I was 12 or 13, I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be someone people could look up to, someone that could put criminals behind bars and provide closure for families affected by violent crimes or robberies. Now that I look back, that was too big of a dream for me. I didn’t and still don’t have the physical strength for such a taxing job, but I can still work in some form of criminal justice. Forensics is pretty much the opposite of police work but they’re still intertwined. Perhaps my love of criminal justice started from my desire to be a police officer all those years ago, maybe it was watching murder cases be solved while I was in the hospital, who knows? Regardless, forensic science has been a passion of mine for many years, longer than any other college major or career choice I’ve had in the past. I love learning the science behind things in life and chemistry is both very interesting and a subject I am very good at. I appreciate you taking the time to read this essay and consider me for your scholarship, and I look forward to the time I spend in a few months learning more about forensic chemistry and I look forward to becoming a part of our state’s forensic toxicology program several years down the road.

In 2019, my mom received a call from the spinal surgeon who had been seeing me for nearly 8 years: “Mrs. Tabitha Spencer? Your daughter has most likely quit growing, it's safe to do the surgery.” Me and my family had been waiting over a year for that call, the one that would kick-start the second chapter of my life. In January of next year, I had that surgery. It had been delayed six months due to COVID-19, but that didn’t matter all that much to me, what mattered is that it was happening at all. I ended up having to stay in the hospital for about three months due to extreme complications. I did a lot of things in that room, but I spent the majority of it watching TV. There weren’t many working channels- really you could only watch cartoons, car auctions, Fifty Shades Of Gray orrr the true crime channel. I was 15 and too old for preschooler programs and too young for the raunchiness that was Fifty Shades, so I turned on the true crime channel. I watched a lot of Forensic Files and The FIrst 48 and it sparked something in me. When I was 12 or 13, I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be someone people could look up to, someone that could put criminals behind bars and provide closure for families affected by violent crimes or robberies. Now that I look back, that was too big of a dream for me. I didn’t and still don’t have the physical strength for such a taxing job, but I can still work in some form of criminal justice. Forensics is pretty much the opposite of police work but they’re still intertwined. Perhaps my love of criminal justice started from my desire to be a police officer all those years ago, maybe it was watching murder cases be solved while I was in the hospital, who knows? Regardless, forensic science has been a passion of mine for many years, longer than any other college major or career choice I’ve had in the past. I love learning the science behind things in life and chemistry is both very interesting and a subject I am very good at. I appreciate you taking the time to read this essay and consider me for your scholarship, and I look forward to the time I spend in a few months learning more about forensic chemistry and I look forward to becoming a part of our state’s forensic toxicology program several years down the road.

My name is Mikayla Spencer. My passion is helping others. Being someone with multiple disabilities has left me with a unique understanding of how a simple smile can change your day. But truly, knowing that someone is out there trying to help me is what drives me to make a difference in some else’s life. My disability has left me unable to be policeman but that does not mean that I can not make a difference. So let’s step back to what has fueled my career choice. I have had over 20 surgeries in my short 18 years of life. One of those left me in the hospital for three months. During this time I was bed bound and had limited means of entertainment. There only so many arts and crafts you can do while in traction. I only had three tv channels. The choices were cartoons, inappropriate movie channel and the true crime channel. After one episode of forensic files I was hooked. I would watch it for hours. Taking in the science part of it. Listening to the victims and their families broke my heart. They deserve justice. They deserve closure. They need someone to step up and dedicate their life to helping them find what they deserve. Then it magically clicked. I can’t be a police officer. But I can dedicate myself to forensics. Specifically forensic chemistry. That is something my body will allow me to do. That is how I will serve my community. I will bring those families and victims some hope,some justice. For every crime or for every mystery, I will be able to take my knowledge to make the world safer. I can help take some of the predators off the streets. I can give people hope. I will take my education and apply it in ways that will make my community safer. I will strive to apply it in new ways so that it can be used in other parts of the country. There is another part of this dream. That is to show those with disabilities or hardships that you can still find a way to overcome those obstacles and become all that you dreamed you could be. I want to show the world that you should never give up. I want to show them that just because you live in a world that tells you that you can’t do the things your peers do, that you should not listen to them. They are wrong. Take your dreams and fight to make it happen. You can make the world better. I can make the world better…and I will.

Unique. The Oxford Dictionary defines unique as being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else. By that definition, every person on this planet is unique. No two people are exactly the same, even identical twins have different personalities and different strengths and weaknesses. We all have at least one unique quality that makes us qualify as such, whether it be the way we dress or certain life experiences that very few or no other person has lived through. I’m not going to get ahead of myself, I’m not here to preach about how we’re all special in our own way or anything like that, regardless if that statement is true or not. What I am here for; however, is to discuss how I am unique. My name is Mikayla Leigh Spencer, and this is how I put the u in unique. From the day I was born, my family has been told nearly the exact same thing by every doctor: your child will not make it. While my mom was stationed in Hawaii during her time in the Navy, she was strongly advised to abort me and the doctors refused to deliver me as I had so many life-threatening health conditions at the time. I had an omphalocele -a defect of the abdominal wall that pushes internal organs to the outside- along with a myriad of other defects. I had severe scoliosis (spine curvature) that twisted my spine enough to push my heart to the opposite side and put enough pressure on one of my lungs to completely shut down its development. The most deadly disease that I had is called pulmonary hypertension. With pulmonary hypertension, the pressure of blood vessels that lead from the heart to the lungs is far too high, causing difficulty breathing and fatigue. To combat the severe asthma that is caused by my hypertension and scoliosis, a tracheostomy was inserted when I was four months old. In total I have had around a dozen to 20 surgeries, the first of which was to insert the tracheostomy, the second to repair my omphalocele, and many more to fix my scoliosis. My final surgery was to fuse the vertebrae in my neck and insert a rod from the base of my skull to the first thoracic vertebra attached on the uppermost rib. Overall, I have had a very difficult game of life, but I’d rather not let that bother me too much. Those surgeries are all in the past and I prefer to look at the present and the future and look forward to what is to come in my life.

In 2019, my mom received a call from the spinal surgeon who had been seeing me for nearly 8 years: “Mrs. Tabitha Spencer? Your daughter has most likely quit growing, it's safe to do the surgery.” Me and my family had been waiting over a year for that call, the one that would kick-start the second chapter of my life. In January of next year, I had that surgery. It had been delayed six months due to COVID-19, but that didn’t matter all that much to me, what mattered is that it was happening at all. I ended up having to stay in the hospital for about three months due to extreme complications. I did a lot of things in that room, but I spent the majority of it watching TV. There weren’t many working channels- really you could only watch cartoons, car auctions, Fifty Shades Of Gray orrr the true crime channel. I was 15 and too old for preschooler programs and too young for the raunchiness that was Fifty Shades, so I turned on the true crime channel. I watched a lot of Forensic Files and The FIrst 48 and it sparked something in me. When I was 12 or 13, I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be someone people could look up to, someone that could put criminals behind bars and provide closure for families affected by violent crimes or robberies. Now that I look back, that was too big of a dream for me. I didn’t and still don’t have the physical strength for such a taxing job, but I can still work in some form of criminal justice. Forensics is pretty much the opposite of police work but they’re still intertwined. Perhaps my love of criminal justice started from my desire to be a police officer all those years ago, maybe it was watching murder cases be solved while I was in the hospital, who knows? Regardless, forensic science has been a passion of mine for many years, longer than any other college major or career choice I’ve had in the past. I love learning the science behind things in life and chemistry is both very interesting and a subject I am very good at. I appreciate you taking the time to read this essay and consider me for your scholarship, and I look forward to the time I spend in a few months learning more about forensic chemistry and I look forward to becoming a part of our state’s forensic toxicology program several years down the road.

PUTTING THE U IN UNIQUE - MAVERICK AWARD SCHOLARSHIP ESSAY Unique. The Oxford Dictionary defines unique as being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else. By that definition, every person on this planet is unique. No two people are exactly the same, even identical twins have different personalities and different strengths and weaknesses. We all have at least one unique quality that makes us qualify as such, whether it be the way we dress or certain life experiences that very few or no other person has lived through. I’m not going to get ahead of myself, I’m not here to preach about how we’re all special in our own way or anything like that, regardless if that statement is true or not. What I am here for; however, is to discuss how I am unique. My name is Mikayla Leigh Spencer, and this is how I put the u in unique. From the day I was born, my family has been told nearly the exact same thing by every doctor: your child will not make it. While my mom was stationed in Hawaii during her time in the Navy, she was strongly advised to abort me and the doctors refused to deliver me as I had so many life-threatening health conditions at the time. I had an omphalocele -a defect of the abdominal wall that pushes internal organs to the outside- along with a myriad of other defects. I had severe scoliosis (spine curvature) that twisted my spine enough to push my heart to the opposite side and put enough pressure on one of my lungs to completely shut down its development. The most deadly disease that I had is called pulmonary hypertension. With pulmonary hypertension, the pressure of blood vessels that lead from the heart to the lungs is far too high, causing difficulty breathing and fatigue. To combat the severe asthma that is caused by my hypertension and scoliosis, a tracheostomy was inserted when I was four months old. In total I have had around a dozen to 20 surgeries, the first of which was to insert the tracheostomy, the second to repair my omphalocele, and many more to fix my scoliosis. My final surgery was to fuse the vertebrae in my neck and insert a rod from the base of my skull to the first thoracic vertebra attached on the uppermost rib. Overall, I have had a very difficult game of life, but I’d rather not let that bother me too much. Those surgeries are all in the past and I prefer to look at the present and the future and look forward to what is to come in my life.

In 2019, my mom received a call from the spinal surgeon who had been seeing me for nearly 8 years: “Mrs. Tabitha Spencer? Your daughter has most likely quit growing, it's safe to do the surgery.” Me and my family had been waiting over a year for that call, the one that would kick-start the second chapter of my life. In January of next year, I had that surgery. It had been delayed six months due to COVID-19, but that didn’t matter all that much to me, what mattered is that it was happening at all. I ended up having to stay in the hospital for about three months due to extreme complications. I did a lot of things in that room, but I spent the majority of it watching TV. There weren’t many working channels- really you could only watch cartoons, car auctions, Fifty Shades Of Gray orrr the true crime channel. I was 15 and too old for preschooler programs and too young for the raunchiness that was Fifty Shades, so I turned on the true crime channel. I watched a lot of Forensic Files and The FIrst 48 and it sparked something in me. When I was 12 or 13, I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be someone people could look up to, someone that could put criminals behind bars and provide closure for families affected by violent crimes or robberies. Now that I look back, that was too big of a dream for me. I didn’t and still don’t have the physical strength for such a taxing job, but I can still work in some form of criminal justice. Forensics is pretty much the opposite of police work but they’re still intertwined. Perhaps my love of criminal justice started from my desire to be a police officer all those years ago, maybe it was watching murder cases be solved while I was in the hospital, who knows? Regardless, forensic science has been a passion of mine for many years, longer than any other college major or career choice I’ve had in the past. I love learning the science behind things in life and chemistry is both very interesting and a subject I am very good at. I appreciate you taking the time to read this essay and consider me for your scholarship, and I look forward to the time I spend in a few months learning more about forensic chemistry and I look forward to becoming a part of our state’s forensic toxicology program several years down the road.

In 2019, my mom received a call from the spinal surgeon who had been seeing me for nearly 8 years: “Mrs. Tabitha Spencer? Your daughter has most likely quit growing, it's safe to do the surgery.” Me and my family had been waiting over a year for that call, the one that would kick-start the second chapter of my life. In January of next year, I had that surgery. It had been delayed six months due to COVID-19, but that didn’t matter all that much to me, what mattered is that it was happening at all. I ended up having to stay in the hospital for about three months due to extreme complications. I did a lot of things in that room, but I spent the majority of it watching TV. There weren’t many working channels- really you could only watch cartoons, car auctions, Fifty Shades Of Gray orrr the true crime channel. I was 15 and too old for preschooler programs and too young for the raunchiness that was Fifty Shades, so I turned on the true crime channel. I watched a lot of Forensic Files and The FIrst 48 and it sparked something in me. When I was 12 or 13, I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be someone people could look up to, someone that could put criminals behind bars and provide closure for families affected by violent crimes or robberies. Now that I look back, that was too big of a dream for me. I didn’t and still don’t have the physical strength for such a taxing job, but I can still work in some form of criminal justice. Forensics is pretty much the opposite of police work but they’re still intertwined. Perhaps my love of criminal justice started from my desire to be a police officer all those years ago, maybe it was watching murder cases be solved while I was in the hospital, who knows? Regardless, forensic science has been a passion of mine for many years, longer than any other college major or career choice I’ve had in the past. I love learning the science behind things in life and chemistry is both very interesting and a subject I am very good at. I appreciate you taking the time to read this essay and consider me for your scholarship, and I look forward to the time I spend in a few months learning more about forensic chemistry and I look forward to becoming a part of our state’s forensic toxicology program several years down the road.

PUTTING THE U IN UNIQUE - MAVERICK AWARD SCHOLARSHIP ESSAY Unique. The Oxford Dictionary defines unique as being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else. By that definition, every person on this planet is unique. No two people are exactly the same, even identical twins have different personalities and different strengths and weaknesses. We all have at least one unique quality that makes us qualify as such, whether it be the way we dress or certain life experiences that very few or no other person has lived through. I’m not going to get ahead of myself, I’m not here to preach about how we’re all special in our own way or anything like that, regardless if that statement is true or not. What I am here for; however, is to discuss how I am unique. My name is Mikayla Leigh Spencer, and this is how I put the u in unique. From the day I was born, my family has been told nearly the exact same thing by every doctor: your child will not make it. While my mom was stationed in Hawaii during her time in the Navy, she was strongly advised to abort me and the doctors refused to deliver me as I had so many life-threatening health conditions at the time. I had an omphalocele -a defect of the abdominal wall that pushes internal organs to the outside- along with a myriad of other defects. I had severe scoliosis (spine curvature) that twisted my spine enough to push my heart to the opposite side and put enough pressure on one of my lungs to completely shut down its development. The most deadly disease that I had is called pulmonary hypertension. With pulmonary hypertension, the pressure of blood vessels that lead from the heart to the lungs is far too high, causing difficulty breathing and fatigue. To combat severe asthma that is caused by my hypertension and scoliosis, a tracheostomy was inserted when I was four months old. In total, I have had around a dozen to 20 surgeries, the first of which was to insert the tracheostomy, the second to repair my omphalocele, and many more to fix my scoliosis. My final surgery was to fuse the vertebrae in my neck and insert a rod from the base of my skull to the first thoracic vertebra attached to the uppermost rib. Overall, I have had a very difficult game of life, but I’d rather not let that bother me too much. Those surgeries are all in the past and I prefer to look at the present and the future and look forward to what is to come in my life.