My inspiration for going into a career that helps people is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older, I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. To help provide healthcare to more people, I would first inform them of what they can do on their own. Healthcare and access to professionals are important, but realistically, everyone will not have those opportunities. Helping them understand what they can do to improve and maintain good health is just as important as giving them insurance to go to the doctor. I plan to provide pro bono healthcare in as large a capacity as I can to ensure that even the least fortunate can improve their health. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care they deserve. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care they deserve. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. With this scholarship, I will be able to attend school to fulfill the education requirements needed to be a pediatric nurse and provide adequate care for children. I will be able to use the money that I have left when I begin working to help upcoming students the way the scholarship is helping me instead of paying loans. In addition to helping monetarily, without having to work long hours to pay back loans, I will be able to offer my time to students with similar interests in the field. This will lead me to bring more like-minded individuals into the medical profession to make it that much better.

I choose to further my education to help people who look like me. As I attend school, I will be able to learn how to generally care for patients as a nurse as well as inform others of the special care that certain patients may need. All people cannot be cared for in the same way when it comes to certain diseases and disorders, and helping others learn is what propels me to do the best that I can to attain the goal of having a career in this field. Sitting and thinking about all the people who may have died or suffered simply because their care was based on too broad a spectrum is disheartening and something I want to change. This way of thinking has shaped my plans for post-college graduation. Knowing that I want to get to know people and what will give me the best chance at helping them gives me an understanding of just how much pursuing this degree will mean to me. Going to college and getting my degree in nursing to become a nurse anesthetist will allow me to take the time to talk to and understand just what medicines or practices will interfere with what the patients are already taking and how the medicines they will have to start taking will interfere with them. Patient care goes beyond what is recommended to the patient, as you should also be open to understanding their side of the predicament. Through my career, I will be able to be the voice on the inside for those who are not listened to. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. This also allows the population as a whole to thrive because everyone will have access to adequate and specific medical care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. The closer I and others with this same passion get to helping others, the closer we can get as a whole to being a better world. As we get there, there will be less affliction in people's minds about attending the doctor and more excitement about being aided.

In my day-to-day life, I continuously find ways to give back to my community and the people around me. I have volunteered at nursing homes, in primary school classrooms, and at band recitals for young children. I decided to give back in the form of being present and helping because people may forget what you do, but they will always remember how you made them feel, and being there for them to help calm them down, ease their nerves, help them learn something new, or just to cheer them on will allow them to remember just how you made them feel in that moment. I also give them the chance to see the stage in life they can make it to if they just keep working and keep adding to the knowledge that they already have. Over the years, I’ve learned that leadership is more than just telling people what to do; it involves guiding them as well. To be a leader, you must know how to relate to everyone who’ll be involved in your care or under your leadership, whether you have been in their shoes or not. I learned many things through my various titles as a leader, and being a section leader in my varsity marching band taught me the biggest lesson. It taught me that everyone is different and allowed me to realize how important it is to pay attention to detail when working with different people. At the time of my leadership, I was in charge of six people, including myself. I had to teach them marching drills, field show music, and basic marching field etiquette. This wasn’t an easy task, but in doing it, I learned that when you are leading someone, you have to lead them in a way that they can follow. The way that I taught one of my members wasn’t the same way that I would have to teach the others because they learned at different rates and in different ways. Learning to pay attention to those small details helped me run a smooth operation. I learned that no one will learn anything trying to follow you when you already have it figured out; they need that extra guidance to figure it out in their own way. As I continue to get older, I will only expand on these areas of leadership in college and volunteering in everyday life. Volunteering is something that I have always been passionate about and have been involved in since a very young age. I hope to be able to really make a difference in the world as I travel, spread my heart, and teach others the importance of volunteer work.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people is my constant desire for societal improvement. General care for patients is sometimes not done in a way that is effective for all patients. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, I will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but I will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, I will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in the hospital doing exactly what they did. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. With time, I started to understand just what their jobs consisted of. As I got older, I began to learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. During my time developing the required skills to work as a nurse, I plan to not only involve myself in healthcare volunteer work but the community as well. Healthcare starts with understanding people as just that: individuals. Trying to care for someone that you don’t understand will inevitably lead to problems. Aside from that, I will also volunteer my time in any way possible for those who cannot afford healthcare. This may be giving them a hot meal, giving them care baskets to try to keep them as clean as possible, or simply informing them of ways to stay healthy even without the hospital. With this scholarship, I will be able to attend school to fulfill the education requirements needed to be a pediatric nurse and provide adequate care for children. Without having to work long hours to pay back loans, I will be able to offer my time to students with similar interests in the field. This will lead me to bring more like-minded individuals into the medical profession to make it that much better.

The leaders in my community have been starting to introduce ways to improve our community, and the biggest way has been by starting a community garden. Since the majority of our town’s population is elderly, getting to grocery stores will be a problem for them. Most of their kids have moved away, and many of their friends have died off, so the number of people to drive them or ride with them has dwindled significantly. The council members decided to combat this by partnering with a program called Sipp Culture to create a community garden. Starting a garden on such a large scale has been something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember, so being able to participate in the first one in my town is a very large feat for me. The garden has been one of the best ideas for this community for as long as I've been alive, but it's not getting the recognition it deserves. When the idea was first introduced, there was only enough support to get the garden started, but it took months before it was actually worked out properly. To make the garden better and, overall, more impactful, we would need to get more community involvement. The more people that we can get to help with the process of growing and preparing the harvest of what is taken from the garden, the smoother the process will go. Getting these people involved will also allow the spreading of better eating habits, as more people will be led to try foods that are fresher and more readily available to them. Through my career, this would be the best way to make a difference because I would be able to show people what it means to be healthy, both with and without healthcare. I would first inform them of what they can do on their own. Healthcare and access to professionals is important, but realistically, everyone will not have those opportunities. Helping them understand what they can do to improve and maintain good health is just as important as giving them insurance to attend the doctor.

I choose to further my education to help people who look like me. As I attend school, I will be able to learn how to generally care for patients as a nurse as well as inform others of the special care that certain patients may need. All people cannot be cared for in the same way when it comes to certain diseases and disorders, and helping others learn is what propels me to do the best that I can to attain the goal of having a career in this field. Sitting and thinking about all the people who may have died or suffered simply because their care was based on too broad a spectrum is disheartening and something I want to change. This way of thinking has shaped my plans for post-college graduation. Knowing that I want to get to know people and what will give me the best chance at helping them gives me an understanding of just how much pursuing this degree will mean to me. Going to college and getting my degree in nursing to become a nurse anesthetist will allow me to take the time to talk to and understand just what medicines or practices will interfere with what the patients are already taking and how the medicines they will have to start taking will interfere with them. Patient care goes beyond what is recommended to the patient, as you should also be open to understanding their side of the predicament. Through my career, I will be able to be the voice on the inside for those who are not listened to. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. This also allows the population as a whole to thrive because everyone will have access to adequate and specific medical care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older, I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world,” my teacher said to me in 4th grade. I didn’t understand what it meant at that time, but as I got older, that statement stuck with me. I started to understand that there is no one who can fix the problem that you have or see within the world or your community but you. You must be the one to take that first step; you must do the research to fix the problem; and you have to be the voice for the people that aren’t being heard. A closed mouth will not get fed, but neither will a closed heart. You can never see the goodness that can come from getting involved in things to help people, and you can never reap the benefits of fixing your community if you don’t just start. This inspires me to get involved in my community and overcome the challenges of fear and division. Knowing that I can be the reason someone is smiling because I spent time with them and reminded them of their granddaughter, or the reason that a kid isn’t getting yelled at anymore, gives me a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment you can’t buy in a store. Knowing that I can take the burden off someone who's hurt just by bringing them their groceries or that giving a kid a Christmas gift that they weren’t going to have helps me understand the true meaning of community and why it is so important. It helps me understand that when someone says it takes a village, it is meant to take that same village through your whole life and not just part of it. As I started to think of how my future would impact my community, I started to notice a bigger issue. So many people in my community do not go to the doctor and, in turn, suffer from treatable things. Many of them are stubborn, while others are simply just scared. As their kids get older, it is imperative that they do not instill that fear in them. I want to be the one to show them and many others in the world that medicine is not a scary thing. When I talked with these fearful people, it showed me that it's not so much the office that they are scared of but the treatment by the physician. General care for patients is sometimes not done in a way that is effective for all patients. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will ease the fear of maintaining a healthy life. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older, I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older, I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that they deserve. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

I grew up in a town that was full of litter. Every street, no matter how short, was filled with litter from restaurants and stores that were miles away from the town. No matter how many people I would tell about littering and try to inform them about littering fines, no one would listen. They’d tell me, “It gives the prisoners something to do,” not understanding that times have changed from when prisoners had to do community service work. Knowing that there are still people with this mindset drove me to want to continue to push recycling and clean living. Of course, this started on a small level, with me just starting a compost bin at my own home and getting my family to put their trash in the respective places. However, just as soon as I started, those ideas got shut down by my mom because all she saw was trash. I had to show them that it is more than trash and that the road is not a trash can. I started to show them that there are benefits to not throwing trash out the window and throwing away food that they no longer wanted to eat. Instead of allowing them to keep the bags that the food was given to us in, I kept them with me and made everyone grab their trash once we got out of the car. This has shown a slight improvement just because they don’t want their cars to be trashy, so they will dispose of the trash properly. This made them finally understand that if you don’t want the car to be trashy, the streets shouldn’t be that way either. Furthermore, instead of throwing food in the trash, I got them to save it to feed the neighborhood cats daily or put it under a nearby tree for any other creatures that frolic during the night. This has both reduced clutter in the fridge and reused food that would’ve just gone bad. Doing this helped to reduce our trash that gets picked up weekly and has helped us see how much food needs to be cooked to feed just us. In the future, I hope to start introducing recycling bins to separate the trash that I’ve started to throw away. Alongside that, I want to teach them about compost bins and what their benefits are. I know that the more I can get my family to do it, the more they can start to tell others around them about the benefits too. This is something that I have become more and more passionate about in recent years because I have become more aware of the trash problem in the whole world. My future is in my hands, and I know I need to make a change now.

Poetry has this amazing way of touching people's hearts and minds, and I want to use that to make a difference in the world. My plan is pretty simple: I want to write poems that shine a light on important issues like the environment, mental health, and especially God. I hope that by putting these topics into words with vivid images and emotions, I can get people thinking and feeling more deeply about them. Another big part of my plan is to use my own experiences in my poetry. I want to share my ups and downs, struggles, and successes to show others they're not alone and to give them hope and strength. I'm also excited about teaming up with other artists who care about the same things. Together, we can publish our work to reach even more people and make an even bigger impact. Overall, I see poetry as more than just words on a page—it's a way to connect with others, spark conversations, and maybe even inspire change. I believe in the power of storytelling and community, and I want to use that power to help make the world a better place, one poem at a time.

Over the years, I’ve learned that leadership is more than just telling people what to do; it involves guiding them as well. To be a leader, you must know how to relate to everyone who’ll be involved in your care or under your leadership, whether you have been in their shoes or not. I learned many things through my various titles as a leader, and being a section leader in my varsity marching band taught me the biggest lesson. It taught me that everyone is different and allowed me to realize how important it is to pay attention to detail when working with different people. At the time of my leadership, I was in charge of six people, including myself. I had to teach them marching drills, field show music, and basic marching field etiquette. This wasn’t an easy task, but in doing it, I learned that when you are leading someone, you have to lead them in a way that they can follow. The way that I taught one of my members wasn’t the same way that I would have to teach the others because they learned at different rates and in different ways. Learning to pay attention to those small details helped me run a smooth operation. Every day I would walk in to see smiles on their faces because they actually understood the material that was being fed to them. I learned that no one would learn anything trying to follow you when you already have it figured out; they need that extra guidance to figure it out in their own way. This is significant to me because I want to be a nurse. On a nursing level, this relates to the care of patients. Each patient will be different in many ways. There are different types of care for men versus women, children versus adults, and even race versus race as it relates to the susceptibility to certain diseases and disorders. It is important to understand that nursing requires an astounding amount of attention to the smallest details to ensure the patient comes out on the winning side. This experience in marching band may seem unrelated to some people, but it truly taught me the patience and care you need to work with other team members effectively. Lessons can be acquired from any activity, and it is important to recognize and accept each and every one.

Through my recent years of life, I’ve started to struggle with my mental health. It stemmed from many things, but my interactions with my family have to be the biggest issue. This continues to be a problem, as I started to struggle with overthinking and problems with addressing things that were wrong. Over the last few months, I’ve been able to find ways to improve my mental state. As far as overthinking, I have been able to separate reality from made-up scenarios. I struggled with making that differentiation because they all seemed so real. Those thoughts stemmed from one to another, to the point where something as small as quietness on the phone felt like I was being ignored. Small things like this that constantly consumed my mind started to affect my relationships, and not in the way that I’d been working toward. So, I started to talk with myself, which may sound even worse but proved to be very helpful. I talked with myself to understand my way of thinking, and I could avoid thinking about some things or at least control how they affect me. A deeper problem I had to address was allowing myself to feel. For so many years, even before I started to realize this had anything to do with mental health, I kept anything that seemed sad on the inside. Like I stated earlier, this was mostly to do with my family and how they interacted with me. It got so bad at one point that I couldn’t sit in silence for longer than 10 minutes without crying. All the feelings came rushing out at once, and there was no way for me to stop them. Once I recognized that this was an issue, I turned to the internet to find a way to help. As I started to look for ways to help, I started to understand why I had been so cold. As I became more emotionally independent from my family and started to actually address things that bothered me, I understood why I went cold. I wasn't listened to, and my opinion wasn't often considered. I decided at that moment that my kids, friends, and people around me would not feel that way. I made an effort to listen to my friends, even about the smallest things, because although they were small to me, it could've meant the world to them. This way of thinking and change in attitude have made me such a better person in just a few short months. I understand what triggers me, how to not get overly upset by those things, and how to move forward without allowing those feelings to absorb me and impact my actions with other people.

My journey with money has been a series of learning experiences that have shaped how I view finances and plan for the future. It all began around last year, when I decided to open my first bank account. At that moment, it felt like a rite of passage into adulthood—a step towards managing my own money responsibly. Opening that account wasn't just about having a place to stash my cash; it was my introduction to the world of financial institutions and the importance of keeping track of where my money goes. As I grew older, I realized the significance of budgeting. At first, it seemed tedious and restrictive. However, as I started to track my expenses more closely, I saw how budgeting gave me control over my financial life. I learned to allocate money for essential expenses like hygiene products, snacks, and school expenses while setting aside savings for future school shopping and going out with friends. This not only helped me stay on top of where my money was going but also how much money I let slip out of my hands with senseless purchases. Understanding the value of purchases was another key component of financial understanding. Although I'm still young, I see that in past years, I often fell into the loophole of impulse buying, spending money on things I didn't really need. Through trial and error and with a growing awareness of financial responsibility, I began to distinguish between wants and needs. This shift in mindset has been helpful because it has allowed me to prioritize spending on what truly matters to me. Looking ahead, my focus remains on building a solid financial foundation. I continue to refine my budgeting skills, adapting them to accommodate changes in my income and expenses as life progresses. By consistently saving a portion of my earnings and making informed financial decisions, I aim to achieve financial security and independence in the years to come. Beyond personal gain, I am passionate about sharing what I've learned with others. Financial education is empowering, and I believe everyone should have access to the knowledge and tools needed to make sound financial choices. Whether through informal conversations with friends and family or more formal avenues such as workshops or community outreach programs, I am committed to promoting financial literacy and helping others take control of their financial futures. In conclusion, my journey with money has been one of growth and self-discovery. From opening my first bank account to starting to master the art of budgeting and mindful spending, each step has equipped me with valuable skills and insights. I am confident that these experiences will continue to guide me as I navigate life's financial challenges and opportunities, and I look forward to using what I've learned to build a secure and prosperous future for myself and those around me.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. To help provide healthcare to more people, I would first inform them of what they can do on their own. Healthcare and access to professionals are important, but realistically, everyone will not have those opportunities. Helping them understand what they can do to improve and maintain good health is just as important as giving them insurance to go to the doctor. I plan to provide pro bono healthcare in as large a capacity as I can to ensure that even the least fortunate can improve their health. Through my career, I would be able to give all people proper care. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. With this scholarship, I will be able to attend school to fulfill the education requirements needed to be a pediatric nurse and provide adequate care for children. I will be able to use the money that I have left when I begin working to help upcoming students the way the scholarship is helping me instead of paying loans. In addition to helping monetarily, without having to work long hours to pay back loans, I will be able to offer my time to students with similar interests in the field. This will lead me to bring more like-minded individuals into the medical profession to make it that much better.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older, I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older, I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

I grew up in a town that was full of litter. Every street, no matter how short, was filled with litter from restaurants and stores that were miles away from the town. No matter how many people I would tell about littering and try to inform them about littering fines, no one would listen. They’d tell me, “It gives the prisoners something to do,” not understanding that times have changed from when prisoners had to do community service work. Knowing that there are still people with this mindset drove me to want to continue to push recycling and clean living. Of course, this started on a small level, with me just starting a compost bin at my own home and getting my family to put their trash in the respective places. However, just as soon as I started, those ideas got shut down by my mom because she just sees it all as trash, but I had to show them that it is more than trash and that the road is not a trash can. I started to show them that there are benefits to not throwing trash out the window and throwing away food that they no longer wanted to eat. Instead of allowing them to keep the bags that the food was given to us in, I kept them with me and made everyone grab their trash once we got out of the car. This has shown a slight improvement just because they don’t want their cars to be trashy, so they will dispose of the trash properly. This made them finally understand that if you don’t want the car to be trashy, the streets shouldn’t be that way either. Furthermore, instead of throwing food in the trash, I got them to save it to feed the neighborhood cats daily or put it under a nearby tree for any other creatures that frolic during the night. This has both reduced clutter in the fridge and reused food that would’ve just gone bad. Doing this helped to reduce our trash that gets picked up weekly and has helped us see how much food needs to be cooked to feed just us. In the future, I hope to start introducing recycling bins to separate the trash that I’ve started to throw away. Alongside that, I want to teach them about compost bins and what their benefits are. I know that the more I can get my family to do it, the more they can start to tell others around them about the benefits too. This is something that I have become more and more passionate about in recent years because I have become more aware of the trash problem in the whole world. My future is in my hands, and I know I need to make a change now.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older, I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. To help provide healthcare to more people, I would first inform them of what they can do on their own. Healthcare and access to professionals are important, but realistically, everyone will not have those opportunities. Helping them understand what they can do to improve and maintain good health is just as important as giving them insurance to go to the doctor. I plan to provide pro bono healthcare in as large a capacity as I can to ensure that even the least fortunate can improve their health. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older, I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. To help provide healthcare to more people, I would first inform them of what they can do on their own. Healthcare and access to professionals are important, but realistically, everyone will not have those opportunities. Helping them understand what they can do to improve and maintain good health is just as important as giving them insurance to go to the doctor. I plan to provide pro bono healthcare in as large a capacity as I can to ensure that even the least fortunate can improve their health. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

Being from a small town in Mississippi with very different interests compared to my African American peers, many of the programs that I apply to are for majority white children. In these programs, such as nurse shadowing, creative writing, and STEM research, there are very few people that look like me, and that poses a problem for me because I could potentially be looked over. In an effort to continue to better myself and my knowledge, I have learned from a very young age that I will have to stay on my toes to ensure that I display the best version of myself at all times. To overcome this challenge, I have expanded my resume with volunteer work so that the program that I am trying to be a part of will see that I am a qualified candidate for the part of the program they are trying to fill. I have also continuously kept in contact with people in these programs that I have met in order to keep my name out there and ensure that I am known as reliable. This has been a struggle because, given that there is a lack of African American people in these areas, there is a bigger problem as to who I will be able to rely on to help me gain the knowledge necessary to be a part of an organization. Navigating through this process was not easy, but luckily, I didn't have to go through it alone. My close family and trusted teachers did a lot to help me. From sending me applications for programs that would benefit me to giving me rides to these programs, they have been there to help. They have been gracious enough to continue to help me as I begin to start my college career. Overcoming this issue has not been easy, but it will be worth it. Being able to have these connections within hospitals and research programs will allow me to go into my field of study with depths of knowledge that many others don't have. This allows me to continue to build on this prior knowledge and use what I have learned to help my people. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds will require different levels of care. Every race is genetically different, and understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public like I should. This would allow me to give back to my community because I would then have the knowledge to give African American people and other people of color the proper care that would often be looked over by a physician who is not a person of color. This would be the best way to give back to the community in this profession because it will allow younger African American children and other children of color to see a physician that looks like them in the medical field, and it will allow the population of people of color to thrive because they will have access to adequate and specific medical care.

Through my recent years of life, I’ve started to struggle with my mental health. It stemmed from many things, but my interactions with my family have to be the biggest issue. This continues to be a problem, as I started to struggle with overthinking and problems with addressing things that were wrong. Over the last few months, I’ve been able to find ways to improve my mental state. As far as overthinking, I have been able to separate reality from made-up scenarios. I struggled with making that differentiation because they all seemed so real. Those thoughts stemmed from one another, to the point where something as small as quietness on the phone felt like I was being ignored. Small things like this that constantly consumed my mind started to affect my relationships, but not in the way that I’d been working toward. So I started to talk with myself, which may sound even worse but proved to be very helpful. I talked with myself to understand my way of thinking, and I could avoid thinking about some things or at least control how they affect me. A deeper problem I had to address was allowing myself to feel. For so many years, even before I started to realize this had anything to do with mental health, I kept anything that seemed sad on the inside. Like I stated earlier, this was mostly to do with my family and how they interacted with me. It got so bad at one point that I couldn’t sit in silence for longer than 10 minutes without crying. All the feelings came rushing out at once, and there was no way for me to stop them. Once I recognized that this was an issue, I turned to the internet to find a way to help. The most efficient way I found was to write down what I felt and what I wished I could say aloud. This allowed me to work through my feelings rather than repress them. As I see others struggling with the same thing in silence, I can only think about my own journey. I know what it’s like to suffer in silence and how hard it can be to try to reverse the damage. When people will allow me to, I try to be the person they can talk to. I encourage them to talk to their friends about how they may feel. Most people in that situation are the ones that never get checked on, and that can be tiring. I try to continuously be the light for those who can’t see it on their own.

I grew up in a town that was full of litter. Every street, no matter how short, was filled with litter from restaurants and stores that were miles away from the town. No matter how many people I would tell about littering and try to inform them about littering fines, no one would listen. They’d tell me, “It gives the prisoners something to do,” not understanding that times have changed from when prisoners had to do community service work. Knowing that there are still people with this mindset drove me to want to continue to push recycling and clean living. Of course, this started on a small level, with me just starting a compost bin at my own home and getting my family to put their trash in the respective places. However, just as soon as I started, those ideas got shut down by my mom. She just sees it all as trash, but I had to show them that it is more than trash and that the road is not a trash can. I started to show them that there are benefits to not throwing trash out the window and throwing away food that they no longer wanted to eat. Instead of allowing them to keep the bags that the food was given to us in, I kept them with me and made everyone grab their trash once we got out of the car. This has shown a slight improvement just because they don’t want their cars to be trashy, so they will dispose of the trash properly. This made them finally understand that if you don’t want the car to be trashy, the streets shouldn’t be that way either. Furthermore, instead of throwing food in the trash, I got them to save it to feed the neighborhood cats daily or put it under a nearby tree for any other creatures that frolic during the night. This has both reduced clutter in the fridge and reused food that would’ve just gone bad. Doing this helped to reduce our trash that gets picked up weekly and has helped us see how much food needs to be cooked to feed just us. In the future, I hope to start introducing recycling bins to separate the trash that I’ve started to throw away. Alongside that, I want to teach them about compost bins and what their benefits are. I know that the more I can get my family to do it, the more they can start to tell others around them about the benefits too. This is something that I have become more and more passionate about in recent years because I have become more aware of the trash problem in the whole world. My future is in my hands, and I know I need to make a change now.

"There are two kinds of truth: the one that sets you free and the one that leaves you in the darkness." Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly taught me a lesson that I didn't think was coming. In the book, an ex-detective works an undercover gig to bust a drug ring. In the process, he risks his daughter's life once they find out who he is. His daughter didn't know the extent of the work he did, and he never planned to inform her. Knowing that his daughter's life was in danger, he had to kick his acting up a notch and even start to live among the very people he was trying to take down. He had to almost become what he hated the most. In the end, he started to understand just why working the job he does but keeping it a secret from his daughter was a bad idea. This taught me a valuable lesson. Even if we think that someone can't handle our truth, we can never know until we tell them. It also taught me that we could be setting both ourselves and others up for failure and hurt trying to avoid rejection. It has taught me to live by this rule: when we make new friendships and go into relationships, there should be complete honesty from the beginning. Not to say spill all your business in the first few seconds of meeting someone, but there should be no lies exchanged about information that is asked of you. You should live by the truth that sets you free.

Walking into my eleventh grade algebra class, the first question my teacher posed to the class was, “What do you plan to do in the future?” At the time, I was annoyed with the question because it was asked so much, but as I grew with her and learned in her class, I realized she genuinely cared. Finding a teacher that cares now is rare, but I have been lucky enough to have at least one in every grade of high school, with Dr. Ray standing out the most. Not only did she care about our education, but who we are as people outside of school as well. She teaches more than her classroom title, showing authentic interest in her students' overall lives, and I stand as a living witness. Dr. Ray has helped me in more ways than I can count. She has helped me navigate life as well as keep my head on straight for my future. She has shown me the different types of colleges that I can apply to, how to form essays for college admissions, helped me sign up for fly-in programs to tour colleges, given me glowing letters of recommendation, and much more. During this time of weighing college options, she pointed me to the University of Missouri. She even made sure that I had help with work and navigating the city by graciously having her friends watch over me as my personal protection. She recommended that I visit the school, and that's just what I did. After touring the university, I fell in love. I fell in love with both the academic buildings and the activities available to me. I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging and community from the moment I stepped on campus until I drove off, looking in the rearview mirror. With the amount of research and internship opportunities, attending this university will set me up for success in my career field. With an education from the University of Missouri, I am confident that I can go into nursing knowing exactly how to help every patient that comes my way. With a degree in nursing, I aspire to help the public understand just what it means to be cared for in a hospital. There are so many stigmas about hospital staff caring more about the pay than having a passion for their work, and I want to be a part of the generation that changes that viewpoint. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, I will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but I will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, I will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team.

I pride myself on what I have been able to prove to myself and others, both academically and in my community. In my four years of high school, I have not only surpassed what I thought I’d do, but I’ve done it while being involved in so much. My biggest accomplishment would have to be the title I received as valedictorian of my 2024 graduating class with a 4.2 GPA. This was not an easy thing to accomplish, but I did it with grace. While keeping my grades up, I participated in marching band and concert band as a section leader, jazz band, theater, BETA club, TRIO, Upward Bound, Jr. Beta Club as president, the journalism club as the chief editor, and the math club. All accomplishments and many more to come have been done alongside a regular school workload with additional dual enrollment classes that include art appreciation, English Comp I, English Comp II, Biology I with Lab, college algebra, public speaking, sociology, and psychology. Along with being an avid participant in school activities, I was also involved in Delta Gems, Sipp culture, an AEOP apprenticeship program, the McMullen Young Writers Workshop, and the National Youth Leadership Forum. Being a part of outside clubs allowed me to collaborate with new people and see different views than I was used to. It also helped me develop relationships that still stand strong to this day. A part of my outside involvement that also helped shape me were my volunteer hours. A few of the things that stood out to me the most were the times I volunteered at a retirement home, played at a middle school pep rally on multiple occasions, taught middle school students how to march and memorize music, participated in a fundraiser for less fortunate kids during Christmas, made a donation to a nursing home for basic needs, and worked “children’s day” at church, helping kids understand what it means to know God for themselves. These activities were things that allowed me to get involved in my community and show that there is more to life than schoolwork. Of course, all these opportunities did not just fall into my lap; I worked very hard to qualify for them, earning various awards along the way. The awards include music honors and recognition, such as being the 11th-grade band section leader, scoring a 1st place solo and ensemble, being presented with the section of the year award, receiving the section leader of the year award, being a dedicated member of the uniform crew, and achieving the Music in the Parks award. As far as schoolwork awards go, I have a few major ones: the principal's list, student of the month, being a part of the National Honor Society, and being a part of the National Technical Honor Society. Most kids my age do not have a resume this long or full. I have proven myself worthy of all that will come my way. In my high school years, I have given and poured into others, knowing that my time to be poured into will come. Above all else, I have cared for others, and I know that will all be reciprocated in the future. I know that all my hard work, both academically and in my community, will pay off and aid me in building the life I know I deserve. I know that I am among a small group of kids that can say this, and I am proud of it. I am honored to be given these awards and to be able to say that I worked hard to get here. With my high school season coming to an end, I can look over my polished resume and say that I made the most of my years. I took opportunities to learn both inside and outside the classroom, and I’m left with so many wonderful lessons and memories to prove it.

Walking into my eleventh grade algebra class, the first question my teacher posed to the class was, “What do you plan to do in the future?” At the time, I was annoyed with the question because it was asked so much, but as I grew with her and learned in her class, I realized she genuinely cared. Finding a teacher that cares now is rare, but I have been lucky enough to have at least one in every grade of high school, with Dr. Ray standing out the most. Not only did she care about our education, but who we are as people outside of school as well. She teaches more than her classroom title, showing authentic interest in her students' overall lives, and I stand as a living witness. Dr. Ray has helped me in more ways than I can count. She has helped me navigate life as well as keep my head on straight for my future. She has shown me the different types of colleges that I can apply to, how to form essays for college admissions, helped me sign up for fly-in programs to tour colleges, given me glowing letters of recommendation, and much more. During this time of weighing college options, she pointed me to the University of Missouri. She even made sure that I had help with work and navigating the city by graciously having her friends watch over me as my personal protection. She recommended that I visit the school, and that's just what I did. After touring the university, I fell in love. I fell in love with both the academic buildings and the activities available to me. I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging and community from the moment I stepped on campus until I drove off, looking in the rearview mirror. With the amount of research and internship opportunities, attending this university will set me up for success in my career field. With an education from the University of Missouri, I am confident that I can go into nursing knowing exactly how to help every patient that comes my way. With a degree in nursing, I aspire to help the public understand just what it means to be cared for in a hospital. There are so many stigmas about hospital staff caring more about the pay than having a passion for their work, and I want to be a part of the generation that changes that viewpoint. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, I will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but I will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, I will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. The way that a male patient is treated is oftentimes done with much more respect and efficiency than their female counterparts. There are various operations that women need or get where the course of action for the care has been based upon the opinion of men in a greater ratio to women, and this becomes problematic when the woman's best interest is not at heart. This also goes for people of color in the way that they are attended to. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Every race and sex is genetically different, and understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. Through my career, I would be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who is not a person of color or who doesn't have the best interest of a woman at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. This also allows the population as a whole to thrive because everyone will have access to adequate and specific medical care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

In my 18 years, I’ve tried to be of help where I could. People have always told me that I was kind-spirited and had a welcoming attitude, so as I grow up, I emphasize these qualities in what I decide to get involved in. I spend my time helping those who can’t help themselves. The largest group of people in this category are the elderly and small children. One of my core memories of these acts is the time I spent at the nursing home. I was involved with the nursing home on more than one occasion, and there are two in particular that speak volumes about the joy that volunteer work brings. One cool October morning, my group members and I walked through the doors of a local nursing home and immediately felt loved. About 50 elderly men and women were sitting, waiting for our arrival, with a table laid out to begin the bingo game. They graced our presence with smiles making us feel comfortable with them. We gave out chocolates, teddy bears, and many hugs. This particular volunteer experience sticks with me because they all seemed like they’d been waiting on anyone to come visit them, and they enjoyed every second of it. Another occasion was when we got to bless the elderly occupants of a different nursing home with their favorite hygiene products. Initially, I thought it wouldn’t be very impactful, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. Many asked for things as small as a strawberry chapstick or a tube of cocoa butter, but it meant so much more to them than any of us could’ve imagined. They thanked us teary-eyed and explained to us that they don’t have access to these things. They only have constant access to what their families bring and what the home gives them. For the ones without families that come to visit, this was an especially difficult experience to process because they felt forgotten about. Other experiences that had an impact on both me and the others involved would be the time that I spent with kids. This could be reading to them at the library, helping with math homework, or just babysitting them. In the younger ages, they are so impressionable, and watching them grow up and turn into their own person brings their own personal joy. I used to think you had to be a parent to understand that, but working with kids in any capacity will make you feel an overwhelming amount of pride. These experiences helped shape me more as I got older. I think of these people, some who have passed, and I start to tear up. I’ve taken less than 3 hours out of my day to make such a difference in their lives, and it’s impacted both me and them over the past 3 years. I continue to involve myself in these types of activities so I can continue to make a difference in their lives and bring joy to mine.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world,” my teacher said to me in 4th grade. I didn’t understand what it meant at that time, but as I got older, that statement stuck with me. I started to understand that there is no one who can fix the problem that you have or see within the world or your community but you. You must be the one to take that first step; you must do the research to fix the problem; and you have to be the voice for the people that aren’t being heard. A closed mouth will not get fed, but neither will a closed heart. You can never see the goodness that can come from getting involved in things to help people, and you can never reap the benefits of fixing your community if you don’t just start. This is what inspires me to get involved in my community. Knowing that I can be the reason someone is smiling because I spent time with them and reminded them of their granddaughter, or the reason that a kid isn’t getting yelled at anymore because they understand their math work now, gives me a sense of satisfaction you can’t buy in a store. Knowing that I can take the burden off someone who's hurt just by bringing them their groceries or that giving a kid a Christmas gift that they weren’t going to have helps me understand the true meaning of community. It helps me understand that when someone says it takes a village, it is meant to take that same village through your whole life and not just part of it. Within my community, I am part of community events to encourage the growth of the community. I strive to always be an inspiration to the kids who are growing up behind me by tutoring and displaying politeness to everyone, despite what they may be going through. I spend my time wisely at other moments by volunteering at nursing homes to let the people in them know that they are not alone and that they are not forgotten. I work with kids at my church during Children's Day to ensure that they understand what it means to be a part of a church community and how it can be helpful both in real life and spiritually. As a whole, I try to get others to involve themselves in the things they believe in.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I've noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long and I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, I'll not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but I'll also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, I'll be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I'll be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they shouldn't fear if they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long and I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long and I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long and I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long and I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

Walking into my eleventh grade algebra class, the first question my teacher posed to the class was, “What do you plan to do in the future?” At the time, I was annoyed with the question because it was asked so much, but as I grew with her and learned in her class, I realized she genuinely cared. Finding a teacher that cares now is rare, but I have been lucky enough to have at least one in every grade of high school, with Dr. Ray standing out the most. Not only did she care about our education, but who we are as people outside of school as well. She teaches more than her classroom title, showing authentic interest in her students' overall lives, and I stand as a living witness. Dr. Ray has helped me in more ways than I can count. She has helped me navigate life as well as keep my head on straight for my future. She has shown me the different types of colleges that I can apply to, how to form essays for college admissions, helped me sign up for fly-in programs to tour colleges, given me glowing letters of recommendation, and much more. During this time of weighing college options, she pointed me to the University of Missouri. She even made sure that I had help with work and navigating the city by graciously having her friends watch over me as my personal protection. She recommended that I visit the school, and that's just what I did. After touring the university, I fell in love. I fell in love with both the academic buildings and the activities available to me. I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging and community from the moment I stepped on campus until I drove off, looking in the rearview mirror. With the amount of research and internship opportunities, attending this university will set me up for success in my career field. With an education from the University of Missouri, I am confident that I can go into nursing knowing exactly how to help every patient that comes my way. With a degree in nursing, I aspire to help the public understand just what it means to be cared for in a hospital. There are so many stigmas about hospital staff caring more about the pay than having a passion for their work, and I want to be a part of the generation that changes that viewpoint. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Looking back in the future, I can give a huge thanks to Dr. Ray for showing me this opportunity.

Walking into my eleventh grade algebra class, the first question my teacher posed to the class was, “What do you plan to do in the future?” At the time, I was annoyed with the question because it was asked so much, but as I grew with her and learned in her class, I realized she genuinely cared. Finding a teacher that cares now is rare, but I have been lucky enough to have at least one in every grade of high school, with Dr. Ray standing out the most. Not only did she care about our education, but who we are as people outside of school as well. She teaches more than her classroom title, showing authentic interest in her students' overall lives, and I stand as a living witness. Dr. Ray has helped me in more ways than I can count. She has helped me navigate life as well as keep my head on straight for my future. She has shown me the different types of colleges that I can apply to, how to form essays for college admissions, helped me sign up for fly-in programs to tour colleges, given me glowing letters of recommendation, and much more. During this time of weighing college options, she pointed me to the University of Missouri. She even made sure that I had help with work and navigating the city by graciously having her friends watch over me as my personal protection. She recommended that I visit the school, and that's just what I did. After touring the university, I fell in love. I fell in love with both the academic buildings and the activities available to me. I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging and community from the moment I stepped on campus until I drove off, looking in the rearview mirror. With the amount of research and internship opportunities, attending this university will set me up for success in my career field. With an education from the University of Missouri, I am confident that I can go into nursing knowing exactly how to help every patient that comes my way. With a degree in nursing, I aspire to help the public understand just what it means to be cared for in a hospital. There are so many stigmas about hospital staff caring more about the pay than having a passion for their work, and I want to be a part of the generation that changes that viewpoint. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, I will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but I will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, I will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long and I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long and I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. With this scholarship I will be able to further pay for college and achieve these goals. I will be able to support myself by paying for books, room and board, and other essentials. The money from this scholarship will give me a head start to paying for school to minimize debt in the future.

Being from a small town in Mississippi with very different interests compared to my African American peers, many of the programs that I apply to are for majority white children. In programs like nurse shadowing and STEM research, there are very few people that look like me, and I could potentially be looked over. This issue is amplified by being from a poorer family. Being that we aren’t as well off as others, the programs I can participate in are limited. In an effort to continue to better myself and my knowledge, I have learned from a very young age that I will have to stay on my toes. To overcome this challenge, I have attempted to expand my resume with volunteer work so that the program that I am trying to be a part of will see that I am a qualified candidate for the part of the program they are trying to fill. This has been a struggle because many programs are connected with schools to fill them, and without the school backing me, it can be a hassle to fight for a spot. Overcoming this issue hasn't been easy, but it will be worth it. Being able to have these connections within hospitals and research programs will allow me to go into my field of study with depths of knowledge that many others don't have. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different backgrounds will require different levels of care and understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public. For as long as I can remember, I knew my passion. Going through school, I constantly indulged myself in anything biology-related. I watched HawthoRNe with my mom, Grey’s Anatomy with my aunt, and even cared for my family and pets when they got hurt. As I got older, I dreamed of being a part of every program I could, but due to financial struggles, that dream died quickly. Aside from monetary problems, I never had my own car and often didn’t have a way to get to these events. I decided not to sulk or pout and attended virtual events instead. The enrichment from these events further grounded my confidence in what I wanted to do in the future. Throughout my career, I will be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to attend the doctor and that they shouldn't fear if they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased. Now I get to live out my dreams of working in the medical field, thanks to perseverance and consistency.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be as big as how prone they may be to certain diseases or as small as a stereotype you want to avoid. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. This has been a passion of mine for as long and I can remember. I used to watch HawthoRNe and Grey's Anatomy with my family and imagined myself in their position. My family bought me stethoscopes and a suture kit, which only intrigued me even more. As I got older I began to dwell on and learn about the different roles of all the people within a patient's time of care. This led me to understand just what career I wanted to pursue. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who doesn't have the best interest of a patient at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

College is important to me for many different reasons, but the main one has to be to help others. There are many ways that you can get involved and help others without college, but college is important to me for the level of help that I want to give. I want to be a nurse, and you must go to college to accomplish that goal. Helping others in the hospital setting is not a small task, and proper training is necessary. College will help me accomplish the goal of becoming a nurse to help the people of the world and obtaining this scholarship will help me achieve this goal. By accomplishing this goal, I will be able to care for patients. As I learn more about nursing, I learn that each patient will be different in many ways. There are different types of care for men versus women, children versus adults, and even race versus race as it relates to the susceptibility to certain diseases and disorders. It is important to understand that nursing requires an astounding amount of attention to the smallest details to ensure the patient comes out on the winning side. To be able to assess a patient and understand these differences, I will need a college education. Getting this education, while accumulating as little debt as possible, will give me the tools and knowledge necessary to identify these differences and how to help them. I continuously want to further my education to help people who look like me as well. Sitting and thinking about all the people who may have died or suffered simply because their care was based on too broad a spectrum is disheartening and something I want to change. As I attend school, I will be able to learn how to generally care for patients as a nurse as well as inform others of the special care that certain patients may need. As I said, all people cannot be cared for in the same way when it comes to certain diseases and disorders, so learning about these different types of people is what propels me to do the best that I can to attain the goal of having a career in this field. For these reasons, I want to pursue higher education. These are all reasons why college is important to me and why going to college is such a big goal for me. The closer I and others with this same passion get to helping others, the closer we can get as a whole to being a better world. College is important to help us learn all of the ins and outs of helping people, as well as being very expensive. I can use this scholarship to get my education to help the public.

Thinking about my future always makes me excited. Ever since I turned 3 and watched Hawthorne with my mom, I have been talking about working in the medical field. I would play doctor with my family and even keep a patient record. I knew from a very young age that I was destined for nothing else besides that. Thinking of working in an office in front of a computer or outside building things bored me. I chose a career field at that age, and my fascination has only grown. As I got older, I learned that there are many kinds of doctors and careers in general in this field. From radiology technicians to neurosurgeons, there is a place for every interest in this field. In recent years, I have settled on anesthesia. This field of medicine hits three points for me: I can work in the OR without a scalpel in my hand, I can use my math skills consistently, and I get to work directly with medicine. I used to think I would have to sacrifice one of those three components to work in a hospital, but knowing that I don’t only draws me closer to this profession. My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by some physicians. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. Through this I will also be able to ease misconceptions surrounding the healthcare field. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give all people the proper care that would often be overlooked by some physicians. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

Through my recent years of life, I’ve started to struggle with my mental health. It stemmed from many things, but my interactions with my family have to be the biggest issue. This continues to be a problem, as I started to struggle with overthinking and problems with addressing things that are wrong. Over the last few months, I’ve been able to find ways to improve my mental state. As far as overthinking, I have been able to separate reality from made-up scenarios. I struggled with making that differentiation because they all seemed so real. Those thoughts stemmed from one another, to the point where something as small as quietness on the phone felt like I was being ignored. Small things like this that constantly consumed my mind started to affect my relationships, but not in the way that I’d been working toward. So I started to talk with myself, which may sound even worse but proved to be very helpful. I talked with myself to understand my way of thinking, and I could avoid thinking about some things or at least control how they affect me. A deeper problem I had to address was allowing myself to feel. For so many years, even before I started to realize this had anything to do with mental health, I kept anything that seemed sad on the inside. Like I stated earlier, this was mostly to do with my family and how they interacted with me. It got so bad at one point that I couldn’t sit in silence for longer than 10 minutes without crying. All the feelings came rushing out at once, and there was no way for me to stop them. Once I recognized that this was an issue, I turned to the internet to find a way to help. The most efficient way I found was to write down what I felt and what I wished I could say aloud. This allowed me to work through my feelings rather than repress them. As I see others struggling with the same thing in silence, I can only think about my own journey. I know what it’s like to suffer in silence and how hard it can be to try to reverse the damage. When people will allow me to, I try to be the person they can talk to. I encourage them to talk to their friends about how they may feel. Most people in that situation are the ones that never get checked on, and that can be tiring. I try to continuously be the light for those who can’t see it on their own. As I learned this I started to value the happiness that came with a clear mind. I continuously pray and address my feelings as they come about. Suppressing my emotions and thoughts that I thought were bad did nothing but hurt me in the long run, so I had to drop that habit. My mental health means so much more to me now that I know how to manage it. It has shown me that I can get so much more accomplished with a focused mind and confidence in my abilities.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world,” my teacher said to me in 4th grade. I didn’t understand what it meant, but as I got older, that statement stuck with me. I started to understand that there is no one who can fix the problem you see within your community but you. You must be the one to take that first step, research to fix the problem, and be the voice for the people that aren’t being heard. In my 18 years, I’ve tried to be of help where I could. People have always told me that I was kind-spirited and had a welcoming attitude, so as I grow up, I emphasize these qualities in what I decide to get involved in. I spend my time helping those who can’t help themselves. The largest group of people in this category are the elderly and small children. One of my core memories of these acts is the time I spent at the nursing home. I was involved with the nursing home on more than one occasion, and there are two in particular that speak volumes about the joy that volunteer work brings. One cool October morning, my group members and I walked through the doors of a local nursing home and immediately felt loved. About 50 elderly men and women were sitting, waiting for our arrival, with a table laid out to begin the bingo game. They graced our presence with smiles making us feel comfortable with them. We gave out chocolates, teddy bears, and many hugs. This particular volunteer experience sticks with me because they all seemed like they’d been waiting on anyone to come visit them, and they enjoyed every second of it. Another occasion was when we got to bless the elderly occupants of a different nursing home with their favorite hygiene products. Initially, I thought it wouldn’t be very impactful, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. Many asked for things as small as a strawberry chapstick or a tube of cocoa butter, but it meant so much more to them than any of us could’ve imagined. They thanked us teary-eyed and explained to us that they don’t have access to these things. They only have constant access to what their families bring and what the home gives them. For the ones without families that come to visit, this was an especially difficult experience to process because they felt forgotten about. Other experiences that had an impact on both me and the others involved would be the time that I spent with kids. This could be reading to them at the library, helping with math homework, or just babysitting them. In the younger ages, they are so impressionable, and watching them grow up and turn into their own person brings their own personal joy. I used to think you had to be a parent to understand that, but working with kids in any capacity will make you feel an overwhelming amount of pride. These experiences helped shape me more as I got older. I think of these people, some who have passed, and I start to tear up. I’ve taken less than 3 hours out of my day to make such a difference in their lives, and it’s impacted both me and them over the past 3 years. I continue to involve myself in these types of activities so I can continue to make a difference in their lives and bring joy to mine.

“You can do all things through Christ,” Reverend Chezar will tell me every time I see him. He is one of the spiritual leaders within my community and one of the most grounded people I know. I respect all the leaders within my community, but of all of them, he stands out to me simply because he treats everyone like family. Ever since the first time that I spoke with him as a 6-year-old girl in Bible class, he has been a supporter of mine. No matter what it was that I wanted to do, he told me I could do it and to not listen to anyone who said I couldn’t. He has been an encouraging person to everyone around him, and the atmosphere within his church is always truly welcoming. He was one of the first to show me what a true teacher of God should be. Of the other spiritual leaders in this community, his church is never the center of drama, and that may seem like common sense to most people, but having the people in this community in his church without the mess that that comes with shows just how influential his services can be. I respect him because he will preach what is on his heart without trying to be liked by the masses. This leads to genuine teachings and real lessons that can be learned by the people in attendance. He has accomplished something that many churches around here have failed at: authenticity. By being his authentic self and teaching what he knows is right, he has led his people in attendance, including me, down the right path and let them know that even if they veer off for any reason, he can help them get back on track. Knowing his influence on so many people grounds my confidence in my future and abilities with God. Growing up under his teaching, I truly believe that I can do all things through the Lord. Without God, there would be no purpose to be fulfilled through my life, and understanding this gives me confidence that the path in my life is one that will make a difference. God will not lead me astray, and that boosts my confidence and courage even more that my goals are possible and will work out as I stay focused. Every day, I have comfort in the fact that my life is not to be lived in vain.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. This can be something as simple as understanding what is needed to make them comfortable and knowing that all parts of the care is important. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give women and people of color the proper care. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. The way that a male patient is treated is oftentimes done with much more respect and efficiency than their female counterparts. There are various operations that women need or get where the course of action for the care has been based upon the opinion of men in a greater ratio to women, and this becomes problematic when the woman's best interest is not at heart. This also goes for people of color in the way that they are attended to. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. The way that a male patient is treated is oftentimes done with much more respect and efficiency than their female counterparts. There are various operations that women need or get where the course of action for the care has been based upon the opinion of men in a greater ratio to women, and this becomes problematic when the woman's best interest is not at heart. This also goes for people of color in the way that they are attended to. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

Being from a small town in Mississippi with very different interests compared to my African American peers, many of the programs that I apply to are for majority white children. In these programs, such as nurse shadowing, creative writing, and STEM research, there are very few people that look like me, and that poses a problem for me because I could potentially be looked over. This issue is amplified by being from a poorer family. Being that we aren’t as well off as others, the programs I can participate in are limited. In an effort to continue to better myself and my knowledge, I have learned from a very young age that I will have to stay on my toes to ensure that I display the best version of myself at all times. I know that I must take advantage of every bit of knowledge and intellect that comes my way. To overcome this challenge, I have attempted to expand my resume with volunteer work so that the program that I am trying to be a part of will see that I am a qualified candidate for the part of the program they are trying to fill. This has been a struggle because many programs are connected with schools to fill them, and without the school backing me, it can be a hassle to fight for a spot. This within itself is a struggle. Being that there is a lack of African American women and African Americans in general in the healthcare field, there is no one advocating for you on the inside. Overcoming this issue has not been easy, but it will be worth it. Being able to have these connections within hospitals and research programs will allow me to go into my field of study with depths of knowledge that many others don't have. This allows me to continue to build on this prior knowledge and use what I have learned to help my people. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that all people are different. Every race and sex is genetically different, and understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public like I should. Through my career, I will be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. This also allows the population as a whole to thrive because everyone will have access to adequate and specific medical care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. Through this, I learned that not having as many people to look up to within this field does not mean that I can’t be that for someone else. Learning this lesson was very important to understand that there are reasons to keep going to attain my goal, no matter the setbacks or what may be trying to hold me back. This is a lesson that I would want the younger people to understand when they start. You don't have to have people holding you up to reach your goals; you can build your own staircase.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. The way that a male patient is treated is oftentimes done with much more respect and efficiency than their female counterparts. There are various operations that women need or get where the course of action for the care has been based upon the opinion of men in a greater ratio to women, and this becomes problematic when the woman's best interest is not at heart. This also goes for people of color in the way that they are attended to. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. I learned that this was the field for me when I used to be obsessed with shows depicting the medical field and began asking my pediatrician questions anytime I went. As I learned about the different careers, I knew my specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who is not a person of color or who doesn't have the best interest of a woman at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

Through my recent years of life, I’ve started to struggle with my mental health. It stemmed from many things, but my interactions with my family have to be the biggest issue. This continues to be a problem, as I started to struggle with overthinking and problems with addressing things that are wrong. Over the last few months, I’ve been able to find ways to improve my mental state. As far as overthinking, I have been able to separate reality from made-up scenarios. I struggled with making that differentiation because they all seemed so real. Those thoughts stemmed from one another, to the point where something as small as quietness on the phone felt like I was being ignored. Small things like this that constantly consumed my mind started to affect my relationships, but not in the way that I’d been working toward. So I started to talk with myself, which may sound even worse but proved to be very helpful. I talked with myself to understand my way of thinking, and I could avoid thinking about some things or at least control how they affect me. A deeper problem I had to address was allowing myself to feel. For so many years, even before I started to realize this had anything to do with mental health, I kept anything that seemed sad on the inside. Like I stated earlier, this was mostly to do with my family and how they interacted with me. It got so bad at one point that I couldn’t sit in silence for longer than 10 minutes without crying. All the feelings came rushing out at once, and there was no way for me to stop them. Once I recognized that this was an issue, I turned to the internet to find a way to help. The most efficient way I found was to write down what I felt and what I wished I could say aloud. This allowed me to work through my feelings rather than repress them. As I see others struggling with the same thing in silence, I can only think about my own journey. I know what it’s like to suffer in silence and how hard it can be to try to reverse the damage. When people will allow me to, I try to be the person they can talk to. I encourage them to talk to their friends about how they may feel. Most people in that situation are the ones that never get checked on, and that can be tiring. I try to continuously be the light for those who can’t see it on their own. As I learned this I started to value the happiness that came with a clear mind. I continuously pray and address my feelings as they come about. Suppressing my emotions and thoughts that I thought were bad did nothing but hurt me in the long run, so I had to drop that habit. My mental health means so much more to me now that I know how to manage it. It has shown me that I can get so much more accomplished with a focused mind and confidence in my abilities.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. The way that a male patient is treated is oftentimes done with much more respect and efficiency than their female counterparts. There are various operations that women need or get where the course of action for the care has been based upon the opinion of men in a greater ratio to women, and this becomes problematic when the woman's best interest is not at heart. This also goes for people of color in the way that they are attended to. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. My specific role in the change would be as a nurse. Upon graduating from the University of Missouri’s nursing program, I will be trained and certified to work as a nurse to help the public. Knowing that, on average, most hospitals have the nurse as the person a patient will see the most of, I decided this would be the most intimate form of patient care. During this time, you will not only work to figure out a possible diagnosis, but you will also get to know their stories. With this knowledge, you will be able to reassure them of any misconceptions they may have regarding the doctor’s office and assure them that their care is important to all members of their care team. Through my career, I would be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who is not a person of color or who doesn't have the best interest of a woman at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

“Music knows it is and always will be one of the things that life just won't quit.” I heard this lyric in Sir Duke from Stevie Wonder, and it stuck with me. Music has been a big part of my life since the 3rd grade, when I first auditioned for the band. All I knew prior to this audition was that I liked to listen to Rihanna, and I wanted to be in the band because they played a Rihanna song at their spring concert. This decision that was made out of pure selfishness opened my eyes and heart to a world I knew nothing of. I was put on the clarinet and started learning basic notes. I didn’t know at the time that it could play things besides what I heard Squidward play on SpongeBob until we had our first assignment. “Go home and find a musician that you like on your instrument,” and I didn’t even know where to start. I opened YouTube, and there she was, Doreen Ketchens. She wasn’t playing classical music like everyone else, and she stood out to me. Her renditions of songs I'd never heard struck my interest in jazz music. When I told people I liked jazz, I got funny looks and even comments mentioning the ages of the songs, but I soon found my people. I looked at my schedule on the first day of 10th grade; I had a jazz band for 8th period. I never remembered signing up for it, but it was a blessing in disguise. We learned to play blues, how to swing our notes as opposed to the standard counting we learned in concert band, and how to do improv solos. Before that, I’d never been one to play out and get recognized; I’d just blend in and improve the sound. Being in this class brought out my confidence and resilience. I could pick up on my mistakes, I started playing by ear, and I could even think of a solo on the spot. Outside of the personal effects music had on me, it brought along relationships that I would never dream of happening. The hours of practicing and Friday night football games gave me memories worth more than diamonds. My love for Rihanna led me down a path to a new appreciation for music. It made me see that I like all music, not just pop, and there’s no reason to hide that. I can sing Frank Sinatra and Etta James out loud with all my heart, radiating joy to the people around me who may not even know who they are. Music has a way of bringing people together, even if other areas of life are far from the same.

Being from a small town in Mississippi with very different interests compared to my African American peers, many of the programs that I apply to are for majority white children. In these programs, such as nurse shadowing, creative writing, and STEM research, there are very few people that look like me, and that poses a problem for me because I could potentially be looked over. This issue is amplified by being from a poorer family. Being that we aren’t as well off as others, the programs I can participate in are limited. I learned from a very young age that I would have to stay on my toes to ensure that I displayed the best version of myself at all times. To overcome this challenge, I have attempted to expand my resume with volunteer work so that the program that I am trying to be a part of will see that I am a qualified candidate for the part of the program they are trying to fill. This has been a struggle because many programs are connected with schools to fill them, and without the school backing me, it can be a hassle to fight for a spot. I have also continuously kept in contact with people in these programs that I have met in order to keep my name out there and ensure that I am known as reliable. This in itself is a struggle, being that there is a lack of African American women and African Americans in general in the healthcare field. Overcoming this issue has not been easy, but it will be worth it. Being able to have these connections within hospitals and research programs will allow me to go into my field of study with depths of knowledge that many others don't have. This allows me to continue to build on this prior knowledge and use what I have learned to help my people. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds will require different levels of care. Every race and sex is genetically different, and understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public like I should. Through my career, I’ll be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked by some physicians. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. Jack inspires me solely because of his resilience. Many people would’ve stopped as soon as they had to stay in the concentration camp or once they saw what they had to do to become engineers, but not Jack. He took what he had to offer to the world and gave it all he could. He accomplished his goals and created the life he deserved, even though it was not initially given to him. Through this, I learned that not having as many people to look up to within the field I want to work in doesn’t mean that I can’t be that for someone else. Learning this lesson was pertinent to understanding that there are reasons to keep going to attain my goal, no matter the setbacks or what is trying to hold me back.

Going to college can be a financial burden for many children, including myself. The money that you can receive is based on your parents’ income, but that's not directly given to you, so you're stuck between not going to college to dodge student loans or going to college and paying off loans for the rest of your career. Scholarships like these that are specific to a degree are tremendously helpful. This scholarship will be helpful for attending college because it can go towards pursuing a degree in nursing. Nursing school can be very expensive once you actually get in, and this scholarship can help pay for that. Choosing a degree in science was an easy choice for me. Since I was young, I have been obsessed with science, and I know what I want to do in the future. Knowing how a person acts and why certain people will have a disorder or disease that others may not has always fascinated me. This fascination led me to research a career in nursing. Pursuing this career will allow me to understand even more about what causes disorders and diseases and how I can help aid people with them. This research allowed me to even further understand what truly inspires me to pursue this career. My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help me grow, is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. This way of thinking has shaped my plans for post-high school graduation. Knowing that I want to get to know people as well as myself while helping them gives me an understanding of just how much pursuing this degree will mean to me. Going to college and getting my degree in nursing to become a nurse anesthetist has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember, and it is soon to become a reality. With this scholarship, I can accomplish this dream of mine to go out and help the world like I’ve always wanted to.

There are many ways that you can get involved and help others without college, but college is important to me for the level of help that I want to give. I want to be a nurse, and you must go to college to accomplish that goal. Helping others in the hospital setting is not a small task, and proper training is necessary. College will help me accomplish the goal of becoming a nurse to help the people of the world. I continuously want to further my education to help people who look like me as well. Sitting and thinking about all the people who may have died or suffered simply because their care was based on too broad a spectrum is disheartening and something I want to change. As I attend school, I will be able to learn how to generally care for patients as a nurse as well as inform others of the special care that certain patients may need. As I said, all people cannot be cared for in the same way when it comes to certain diseases and disorders, so learning about these different types of people is what propels me to do the best that I can to attain the goal of having a career in this field. With the winnings of this award, I will be able to pay for my books for school. I will be able to learn all there is to learn about nursing. This will help me give back to my community in a better way than I can now. Volunteering at nursing homes now, I have limited knowledge about how I could help those that are in there or the CNA’s working there. With my degree in nursing, I will be able to understand, from the perspective of the workers, how I can better help the facility overall. What inspires me to get involved in my community is knowing that I can be the change. Knowing that I can be the reason someone is smiling because I spent time with them and reminded them of their granddaughter, or the reason that a kid isn’t getting yelled at anymore because they understand their math work now, gives me a sense of satisfaction you can’t buy in a store. Knowing that I can take the burden off someone who's hurt just by bringing them their groceries or that giving a kid a Christmas gift that they weren’t going to have helps me understand the true meaning of community. It helps me understand that when someone says it takes a village, it is meant to take that same village through your whole life and not just part of it. Within my community, I am part of community events to encourage the growth of the community, and I’m happy to see it flourish.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world,” my teacher said to me in 4th grade. I didn’t understand what it meant at that time, but as I got older, that statement stuck with me. I started to understand that there is no one who can fix the problem that you have or see within the world or your community but you. You must be the one to take that first step; you must do the research to fix the problem; and you have to be the voice for the people that aren’t being heard. A closed mouth will not get fed, but neither will a closed heart. You can never see the goodness that can come from getting involved in things to help people, and you can never reap the benefits of fixing your community if you don’t just start. This is what inspires me to get involved in my community. Knowing that I can be the reason someone is smiling because I spent time with them and reminded them of their granddaughter, or the reason that a kid isn’t getting yelled at anymore because they understand their math work now, gives me a sense of satisfaction you can’t buy in a store. Knowing that I can take the burden off someone who's hurt just by bringing them their groceries or that giving a kid a Christmas gift that they weren’t going to have helps me understand the true meaning of community. It helps me understand that when someone says it takes a village, it is meant to take that same village through your whole life and not just part of it. Within my community, I am part of community events to encourage the growth of the community. I strive to always be an inspiration to the kids who are growing up behind me by tutoring and displaying politeness to everyone, despite what they may be going through. I spend my time wisely at other moments by volunteering at nursing homes to let the people in them know that they are not alone and that they are not forgotten. I work with kids at my church during Children's Day to ensure that they understand what it means to be a part of a church community and how it can be helpful both in real life and spiritually. As I get older and deeper into my career I plan to start working in a hospital and continue to volunteer at nursing homes. With my own knowledge of nursing I will be able to help the CNA’s with a whole different view than I could as a child. I also plan to work with the elders in buying them food or supplies they may need. Making as much money as my career will allow me, I will be able to use a little extra to help those that I know are in need and that have been struggling since I was young.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. The way that a male patient is treated is oftentimes done with much more respect and efficiency than their female counterparts. There are various operations that women need or get where the course of action for the care has been based upon the opinion of men in a greater ratio to women, and this becomes problematic when the woman's best interest is not at heart. This also goes for people of color in the way that they are attended to. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Every race and sex is genetically different, and understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. Through my career, I would be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who is not a person of color or who doesn't have the best interest of a woman at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. This also allows the population as a whole to thrive because everyone will have access to adequate and specific medical care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

I choose to further my education to help people who look like me. As I attend school, I will be able to learn how to generally care for patients as a nurse as well as inform others of the special care that certain patients may need. All people cannot be cared for in the same way when it comes to certain diseases and disorders, and helping others learn is what propels me to do the best that I can to attain the goal of having a career in this field. Sitting and thinking about all the people who may have died or suffered simply because their care was based on too broad a spectrum is disheartening and something I want to change. This way of thinking has shaped my plans for post-college graduation. Knowing that I want to get to know people and what will give me the best chance at helping them gives me an understanding of just how much pursuing this degree will mean to me. Going to college and getting my degree in nursing to become a nurse anesthetist will allow me to take the time to talk to and understand just what medicines or practices will interfere with what the patients are already taking and how the medicines they will have to start taking will interfere with them. Patient care goes beyond what is recommended to the patient, as you should also be open to understanding their side of the predicament. Through my career, I will be able to be the voice on the inside for those who are not listened to. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. This also allows the population as a whole to thrive because everyone will have access to adequate and specific medical care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. For these reasons, I want to pursue higher education. The closer I and others with this same passion get to helping others, the closer we can get as a whole to being a better world. As we get there, there will be less affliction in people's minds about attending the doctor and more excitement about being aided.

Going to college can be a financial burden for many children, including myself. The money that you can receive is based on your parents' income, but that's not directly given to you, so you're stuck between not going to college to dodge student loans or going to college and paying off loans for the rest of your career. Scholarships like these that are specific to a degree are tremendously helpful. This scholarship will help attend college because it can go towards pursuing a degree in nursing. Nursing school can be very expensive once you get in, and this scholarship can help pay for that. Choosing a degree in science was an easy choice for me. Since I was young, I have been obsessed with science, and I know what I want to do in the future. Knowing how a person acts and why certain people will have a disorder or disease that others may not has always fascinated me. This fascination led me to research a career in nursing. Pursuing this career will allow me to understand even more about what causes disorders and diseases and how I can help aid people with them. This research allowed me to even further understand what truly inspires me to pursue this career. My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help push me to grow as I learn to interact with new people, is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. This way of thinking has shaped my plans for post-high school graduation. Knowing that I want to get to know people as well as myself while helping them gives me an understanding of just how much pursuing this degree will mean to me. Going to college and getting my degree in nursing to become a nurse anesthetist has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember, and it is soon to become a reality. With this scholarship, I can accomplish this dream of mine to go out and help the world like I’ve always wanted to.

I choose to further my education to help people who look like me. As I attend school, I will be able to learn how to generally care for patients as a nurse as well as inform others of the special care that certain patients may need. All people cannot be cared for in the same way when it comes to certain diseases and disorders, and helping others learn is what propels me to do the best that I can to attain the goal of having a career in this field. Sitting and thinking about all the people who may have died or suffered simply because their care was based on too broad a spectrum is disheartening and something I want to change. This way of thinking has shaped my plans for post-college graduation. Knowing that I want to get to know people and what will give me the best chance at helping them gives me an understanding of just how much pursuing this degree will mean to me. Going to college and getting my degree in nursing to become a nurse anesthetist will allow me to take the time to talk to and understand just what medicines or practices will interfere with what the patients are already taking and how the medicines they will have to start taking will interfere with them. Patient care goes beyond what is recommended to the patient, as you should also be open to understanding their side of the predicament. Through my career, I will be able to be the voice on the inside for those who are not listened to. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. This also allows the population as a whole to thrive because everyone will have access to adequate and specific medical care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually. For these reasons, I want to pursue higher education. The closer I and others with this same passion get to helping others, the closer we can get as a whole to being a better world. As we get there, there will be less affliction in people's minds about attending the doctor and more excitement about being aided.

Volunteering in nursing homes allowed me to gain more knowledge about life and how much experience can mean. It puts into perspective that the wisdom that our elders hold so dearly in their hearts never gets spread beyond the four walls of their senior living facilities. The knowledge within those walls and those small, fragile people can outdo an author any day in teaching a lesson. This interaction with them helped me to see that my goal of going into the healthcare field because I want to help people could overlap in my everyday life as well. Healthcare is much more than how handy you are with a scalpel or how perfectly you can do a suture; it is caring for and helping people as you would your own family. Being there and being able to have conversations with other people’s grandmas and grandpas allowed me to see that helping people comes in all different shapes and sizes. Some people require more attention than others, while others just need a warm hug. This encouraged me to dig deeper into what my profession can mean to people. The perception that healthcare workers are only there to treat you rather than genuinely care for you is one that I want to break. A healthcare provider is someone with compassion and kindness in their heart who will take the time to look beyond just the treatment of an illness. Sitting and listening to my elders as we played a game of bingo and handed out bears and chocolates helped me gain an understanding of how just an hour of my day can affect them in such a passionate way and taught me that we are letting time slip away, but not in the way that we think. We are wasting our time not by working with our elders or trying out the suggestions that they provide but by locking our wisest people behind doors to be fed pudding and soft foods, never giving them the chance to speak to the people and encourage us in ways that our parents cannot, or allowing them to show us just how impactful we can be on the world. Volunteering at nursing homes taught me that you do not run out of time; you simply don’t use your time correctly. This new way of looking at life allows me to take time and listen to what my elders have to say, as it may be just the answer I am searching so desperately for.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world,” my teacher said to me in 4th grade. I didn’t understand what it meant at that time, but as I got older, that statement stuck with me. I started to understand that no one can fix the problem that you have or see within the world or your community but you. You must be the one to take that first step; you must do the research to fix the problem; and you have to be the voice for the people that aren’t being heard. A closed mouth will not get fed, but neither will a closed heart. You can never see the goodness that can come from getting involved in things to help people, and you can never reap the benefits of fixing your community if you don’t just start. This is what inspires me to get involved in my community. Knowing that I can be the reason someone is smiling because I spent time with them and reminded them of their granddaughter, or the reason that a kid isn’t getting yelled at anymore because they understand their math work now, gives me a sense of satisfaction you can’t buy in a store. Knowing that I can take the burden off someone who's hurt just by bringing them their groceries or that giving a kid a Christmas gift that they weren’t going to have helps me understand the true meaning of community. It helps me understand that when someone says it takes a village, it is meant to take that same village through your whole life and not just part of it and I want to be a member in that village for as many people as I can. Within my community, I am part of community events to encourage the growth of the community. I strive to always be an inspiration to the kids who are growing up behind me by tutoring and displaying politeness to everyone, despite what they may be going through. I spend my time wisely at other moments by volunteering at nursing homes to let the people in them know that they are not alone and that they are not forgotten. I work with kids at my church during Children's Day to ensure that they understand what it means to be a part of a church community and how it can be helpful both in real life and spiritually. This also comes with informing them of other religions and why it is important to not force what they believe on others but spread what you believe and give additional information to those who are interested. As a whole, I try to get others to involve themselves in the things they believe in.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world,” my teacher said to me in 4th grade. I didn’t understand what it meant at that time, but as I got older, that statement stuck with me. I started to understand that there is no one who can fix the problem that you have or see within the world or your community but you. You must be the one to take that first step; you must do the research to fix the problem; and you have to be the voice for the people that aren’t being heard. A closed mouth will not get fed, but neither will a closed heart. You can never see the goodness that can come from getting involved in things to help people, and you can never reap the benefits of fixing your community if you don’t just start. This is what inspires me to get involved in my community. Knowing that I can be the reason someone is smiling because I spent time with them and reminded them of their granddaughter, or the reason that a kid isn’t getting yelled at anymore because they understand their math work now, gives me a sense of satisfaction you can’t buy in a store. Knowing that I can take the burden off someone who's hurt just by bringing them their groceries or that giving a kid a Christmas gift that they weren’t going to have helps me understand the true meaning of community. It helps me understand that when someone says it takes a village, it is meant to take that same village through your whole life and not just part of it. Within my community, I am part of community events to encourage the growth of the community. I strive to always be an inspiration to the kids who are growing up behind me by tutoring and displaying politeness to everyone, despite what they may be going through. I spend my time wisely at other moments by volunteering at nursing homes to let the people in them know that they are not alone and that they are not forgotten. I work with kids at my church during Children's Day to ensure that they understand what it means to be a part of a church community and how it can be helpful both in real life and spiritually. This also comes with informing them of other religions and why it is important to not force what they believe on others but spread what you believe and give additional information to those who are interested. As a whole, I try to get others to involve themselves in the things they believe in.

My future self will be able to look back on all she's done to become that nurse who is changing the way people view the medical field and be proud of the obstacles she's overcome.

My inspiration for going into a career that helps people, and on the way to doing so, meeting and connecting with new people to challenge me and help push me to grow as I learn to interact with new people, is my constant desire for improvement. This includes personal improvement as well as societal improvement. Being able to explore and interact with all different communities and see what you can contribute to them is a much-needed moment of self-reflection and motivation to continue to learn about all you can do to help. Through this way of thinking, I have noticed that one of the most major ways to make a societal improvement would be through medical care and the way that care is catered to all types of people. General care for patients is not done in a way that is effective for all ethnicities or genders. The way that a male patient is treated is oftentimes done with much more respect and efficiency than their female counterparts. There are various operations that women need or get where the course of action for the care has been based upon the opinion of men in a greater ratio to women, and this becomes problematic when the woman's best interest is not at heart. This also goes for people of color in the way that they are attended to. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds and biological backgrounds will require different levels of care. Every race and sex is genetically different, and understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public as I should. Through my career, I would be able to give women and people of color the proper care that would often be overlooked by a physician who is not a person of color or who doesn't have the best interest of a woman at heart. This would be the best way to make a difference throughout my career because I will be allowed to show people that it's okay to go to the doctor and that they should not fear whether or not they will get adequate care. This also allows the population as a whole to thrive because everyone will have access to adequate and specific medical care. In this process, future generations of medical providers and current medical providers will be able to change the narrative of the healthcare field being biased or not caring for the patient individually.

In my day-to-day life, I continuously find ways to give back to my community and the people around me. I have volunteered at nursing homes, in primary school classrooms, and at band recitals for young children. I decided to give back in the form of being present and helping because people may forget what you do, but they will always remember how you made them feel, and being there for them to help calm them down, ease their nerves, help them learn something new, or just to cheer them on will allow them to remember just how you made them feel in that moment. I also give them the chance to see the stage in life they can make it to if they just keep working and keep adding to the knowledge that they already have. I also try my best to show leadership in tutoring. This allows you to be seen in your community as a reliable, patient, and caring person. When you take the time to help a student learn in ways that their parents can't, there will be a different type of appreciation for you. At this moment, for the parents, you release a weight from their shoulders and stress from their minds about whether their child will ever be able to get help understanding what they can't seem to grasp in the class. This will always be a thought in the parents' minds, as they are able to see their child grow academically and socially now that they are not stressed about the work that they can't seem to understand. Another way I try to give back to my community is by babysitting. This is one of the best ways to show leadership because it shows that you have the tenderness and patience that are required to work with human beings. Every person is different and will require a different level of attention in certain areas of their life, and babysitting will allow you to work with all different types of people. Learning these things through volunteering made me realize that many people will have a way better chance in life at helping the community and pursuing their dreams if they just have someone there for them rooting them on in their corner. This scholarship will be the final piece to the support that I have in my corner because I come from a low-income family and academics and scholarships are the only way I would be able to afford college. This scholarship is a necessity for me because without college I can't become a nurse and give back to my community through the medical field.

In my day-to-day life, I continuously find ways to give back to my community and the people around me. I have volunteered at nursing homes, in primary school classrooms, and at band recitals for young children. I decided to give back in the form of being present and helping because people may forget what you do, but they will always remember how you made them feel, and being there for them to help calm them down, ease their nerves, help them learn something new, or just to cheer them on will allow them to remember just how you made them feel in that moment. I also give them the chance to see the stage in life they can make it to if they just keep working and keep adding to the knowledge that they already have. I also try my best to show leadership in tutoring. This allows you to be seen in your community as a reliable, patient, and caring person. When you take the time to help a student learn in ways that their parents can't, there will be a different type of appreciation for you. At this moment, for the parents, you release a weight from their shoulders and stress from their minds about whether their child will ever be able to get help understanding what they can't seem to grasp in the class. This will always be a thought in the parents' minds, as they are able to see their child grow academically and socially now that they are not stressed about the work that they can't seem to understand. Another way I try to give back to my community is by babysitting. This is one of the best ways to show leadership because it shows that you have the tenderness and patience that are required to work with human beings. Every person is different and will require a different level of attention in certain areas of their life, and babysitting will allow you to work with all different types of people. This is also great for recognition because parents will be reassured that their kids can be trusted with you and that you are going to provide their kids with care without coming home to complaints from their kids. As I continue to get older, I will only expand on these areas of leadership in college and volunteering in everyday life. Volunteering is something that I have always been passionate about and have been involved in since a very young age. I hope to be able to really make a difference in the world as I travel and spread my heart and teach others the importance of volunteer work.

Being from a small town in Mississippi with very different interests compared to my African American peers, many of the programs that I apply to are for majority white children. In these programs, such as nurse shadowing, creative writing, and STEM research, there are very few people that look like me, and that poses a problem for me because I could potentially be looked over. In an effort to continue to better myself and my knowledge, I have learned from a very young age that I will have to stay on my toes to ensure that I display the best version of myself at all times. To overcome this challenge, I have expanded my resume with volunteer work so that the program that I am trying to be a part of will see that I am a qualified candidate for the part of the program they are trying to fill. I have also continuously kept in contact with people in these programs that I have met in order to keep my name out there and ensure that I am known as reliable. This has been a struggle because, given that there is a lack of African American people in these areas, there is a bigger problem as to who I will be able to rely on to help me gain the knowledge necessary to be a part of an organization. Overcoming this issue has not been easy, but it will be worth it. Being able to have these connections within hospitals and research programs will allow me to go into my field of study with depths of knowledge that many others don't have. This allows me to continue to build on this prior knowledge and use what I have learned to help my people. Going into the medical field requires you to understand that people with different ethnic backgrounds will require different levels of care. Every race is genetically different, and understanding that will give me the chance to optimize care and help the public like I should. This would allow me to give back to my community because I would then have the knowledge to give African American people and other people of color the proper care that would often be looked over by a physician who is not a person of color. This would be the best way to give back to the community in this profession because it will allow younger African American children and other children of color to see a physician that looks like them in the medical field, and it will allow the population of people of color to thrive because they will have access to adequate and specific medical care.