As a high school student, I am involved in various extracurricular activities that I am extremely passionate about. These activities not only benefit me personally but also benefit my school community in a number of ways. As track and field captain, head of public relations for student government, and a member of the National Honor Society, I play a vital role in my school community is involved. One of my passions is track and field. I have been running since I was in 9th grade, and since then, the sport has become a huge part of my life. As captain of the track and field team, I am responsible for organizing practices, motivating my teammates, and leading by example both on and off the field. I am dedicated to helping my team members improve their performance and achieve their goals, and I love seeing them succeed. Another extracurricular activity that I am passionate about is student government. As the lead of public relations, I am responsible for promoting student government events and initiatives to the school community. This involves creating posters and flyers, making announcements at school assemblies, and using social media to spread the word. I am proud to play a role in helping to make student government more visible and accessible to my fellow students. Through the organization, I have also had the opportunity to organize and participate in community service projects. For example, our group has organized food drives, fundraisers for local charities, and clean-up events in the community. These projects allow us to give back to our community while developing important leadership and teamwork skills. Finally, as a member of the National Honor Society, I am committed to academic excellence and community service. In order to maintain my membership, I must maintain a high GPA and complete a certain number of community service hours each year. This has motivated me to work hard in my classes and seek opportunities to give back to my community. As a member of the National Honor Society, I have had the opportunity to participate in a variety of community service projects. For example, I have volunteered at my church to donate groceries, participated in park clean-up projects, and helped gather toys for a local toy drive. Through these experiences, I have learned the value of giving back to my community and the impact a group of committed individuals can have.

“Why are you so black?” …asked the boy that lived a few houses down from me as he stood there patiently waiting for an answer. My mind snowballed with questions as I tried to figure out what had just happened. Why was my skin tone mentioned out of nowhere? What was it about my dark skin that interested him? The names I'd grown accustomed to hearing pierced my self-esteem and affected how I felt about myself throughout my childhood: "darkie," "blackie," and "overcooked." When I transferred to a predominantly black school in 7th grade, I thought I'd be able to avoid the constant jokes about the color of my skin. Although we were all black, I was presented with new terms like "light skins" and "dark skins." As I began middle school, my past returned to haunt me even more, as if it came back even harder. As my teacher turned off the lights so we could view our next lesson, the same hurtful joke was yelled from the back of the class, "Where did Moses go?" implying that I was too dark to be seen… someone had been affected by my melanated skin yet again. This was nothing new to me; everyday brought a new joke aimed at me and my skin. My first encounter with colorism came from the people I least expected it, my family. Consistently listening to jokes not only at school but also at home was extremely difficult. "You're the adopted one because you're darker than everyone else." Hearing that not only created hate I had for my skin, but it also made me realize how different I was from the majority of people around me. My perception of beauty had been completely obscured. I have now discovered that these experiences strengthened my perspective on the standards of external beauty, As the world began to close down, my hatred for the color of my skin faded, while the love for my skin appeared. Expressing how I felt through journaling and drawing impacted me significantly. My passion is the reason I rose from the excruciating doubt I faced. As the pencil scribbles along my paper, the shading, the smears, and the imperfections of my melanated figures played as a reflection of myself. I had developed a relationship with myself that I didn't know I needed. The more time I spent with myself and the people who surrounded me with love during quarantine, the more self-aware I became of the beauty my skin holds and expressing it. I had become so caught up in trying to impress my peers in terms of appearance that I had forgotten to focus on what I knew was more critical: gratifying myself. I have embraced my night-kissed skin and have become proud of it. Struggling with self-worth made me realize how fortunate I was to be surrounded by a circle of friends who constantly made me feel loved. It made me think and know that embracing my dark skin is precious. Now reflecting on the experiences I've faced, I wouldn't change anything that has built who I am today. I am an individual that has used my experiences to grow and become a leader of self-motivation for those around me. Following those experiences came negatives, but with those negatives came a person with a positive outlook on body representation. Understanding that my identity was and still is widely rejected makes me value my complexion even more. To return to the original question, "Why are you so black?" I'm not sure what the science is behind it, but I love my darkness..

My first introduction to code was when I was in 4th grade. I had just bought my first game with the money I'd saved for the past few weeks. After watching many Minecraft videos from my favorite creators on youtube, my yearning to own Minecraft for myself grew even more robust. I was exposed to many different ways this game could be played, such as building houses, playing minigames, to even playing against another player. Modifications a.k.a “mods,” were very popular around that time and grew amongst the youtube community. Mods to Minecraft were the new trend. While wanting those mods for myself, it included doing research which then introduced me to coding on the Minecraft IDE. I programmed to add my own items and even new actions to the game. My love for adding mods using the app’s IDE built onto my passion to code. My love for computers also started at a younger age than when I was introduced to computers. I loved learning about new technology as I searched the internet in the first grade. “Searching the internet is very uncommon for someone 6 years old,” said my teacher as I used the computer lab desktops to find online games on google. I was definitely pretty advanced on the internet for my age. I can say my interest in computers at a young age has affected my career choice in computer science. As I leaned more into the computer science track, I realized it was fairly rare to see African American faces when viewing videos explaining algorithms and data structures. It made me look into that harder. Lack of exposure to African American youth is a huge reason that makes it like this, and that is a problem. African American youth around the nation need to be exposed to more career choices that primarily include tech. As a Black student interested in computer science, I know that earning my engineering degree will enable me to raise awareness about the need to produce a large number of young black engineers. This degree comes with the knowledge I gained prior to obtaining it. With this degree, I will be able to encourage younger Black students to pursue STEM careers. I want to provide a service that exposes young black students to STEM. I hope to raise awareness so that many young black engineers who will change the world are produced.