Do you know what word I hate? Bossy. Bossy has been a word often thrown my way, a glance to my confidence and an eye roll in response. Bossy is what I get for my empowerment in this world. The fact I can be empowered, be able to have a drive, to strive for change, dare I say organization or simply pointing out flaws, it is of course simply bossy. Being a young woman I have never found myself short of a drive to lead. As a child, I loved to take over group projects, assign goals, and work together as a team leader. As a young teen, I found myself taking the lead in my job, being an example for my employer as a hard worker, training others, and giving advice. High school went even further as I was chosen to go to Badger Girls, one of the best experiences of my life and help lead the mock senate. All throughout my life I have been nothing but a leader. I enjoy working with others, helping others, and growing as a team. But for the sin of being a woman, I am no stranger to degradation. Even my best friend has used that disgusting word of bossy. It wasn't until I told her to imagine calling a man that she finally saw how hypocritical it was. I was ignored for my empowerment, seen as a nocence, seen in the way of others who could take my roles. As if my sex was the problem, because every behavior I expressed was no different from men in my class with leadership roles, it was simply because it came from a woman's mouth that my actions were petty and unappreciated. This is not made any easier by my financial situation of course. I think that's where people lack empathy or understanding. I don't lead in other ways, I don't try hard in work to be better. I try for my future, I try for my family, I fight for others. My drive isn't because of girlish traits like jealousy or to impress boys. People need me. I worked everyday because my mom couldn't, because my family needed me to. I try hard on projects and take leadership roles because someone needs to, I need good grades to help my family and myself promise a future. I'm not self centered and I'm not bossy. I am an empowered leader for change and improvement in my life and others like mine.

Throughout my life I have had hardship after hardship, I have gone through everything from surgeries, bullying, food insecurity, mental illness, and a learning disability. Many would look at my life events and see weakness, see someone who must have lost hope, and truthfully I won’t sit here and say I stood tall through it all, that I overcame every barrier but I will say I did not lose hope. I did not lose myself, and I will proudly proclaim that it has nothing to do with simply my willpower. It was because I had something to turn to. The hardest workers in this world are people who see others struggle and don’t just turn a blind eye. That is the reason I'm here today and it's something I don’t dare take for granted. This is why I'm going into human service and eventually social work. I had two major surgeries in my life one as an infant and another as a teen, both saving my life and done by the same doctor. I remember when I met him for the first time as a teen I didn't feel fear for what was a head or overwhelming gratitude, I looked up at him and knew that I wanted to be like him one day. I remember my first time in a psychiatric hospital and as my therapist spent days helping me I didn't come out of it ready to just move one, I came out of it ready to help others. I remember when a social worker fought for me in my school. She taught me the strength I had within. She changed my life and motivated me not only to grow but change lives like she did. I was diagnosed with dyslexia in 5th grade. I struggled and got held back multiple times before this was finally brought to the surface. I was almost illiterate by the time I made it into middle school. I can't begin to express the pain it put on me, for teachers to underestimate you, for kids to pop quiz you and watch you struggle to spell simple words and forbid me even talk about the programs they tried to have me in. I was put in classes where I simply sat in front of a colorful screen teaching basic words, being put with other kids who had a spectrum of different problems but somehow were being taught the exact same way as me. It never made sense to me how someone learning a second language of English and someone with a learning disability could be taught the same way. It didn't matter to my school ofcourse, we both struggled so we both got a glorified computer game as teachers. That's where my social worker came in. Well, I was no writer I was still an expressive person, I'd write down my thoughts and feelings, In my own diverse and mystical languages of words that weren't quite right. She saw this, she heard the way I could express myself and my stories verbally and took a passion for helping me. Setting me and my mom up with a tutor, one trained for dyslexic children. incurring me to write and read, fighting my school for assessability divides. She changed the cause of my whole life. Throughout my life, at my lowest points, people have been there to bring me up and inspire me. Every one of them was a stepping stone to my success and when I wanted to go to college and make a change in people's lives like so many changed mine.

Writing has always been near and dear to my heart, since I was a little girl I looked up to my dad. He was a man dreaming of being an author, writing bits and pieces of his book well taking care of us, asking me for advice on how his younger characters should behave, and sharing mystical stories of what he was spilling onto those papers of his. To me, this writer was something to look up to, something to aspire to become. I still remember the first time he took me to the bookstore, it looked like a wonderland to my small eyes. Books towering up higher than my eye could see and a promise from my father to get just one of any of these thousands that caught my eye. Little me didn't know where to start, so many sections, so many choices, at first I thought I'd get a book like the ones my father wrote, mystical chapter books with magic and clashing swords. It didn't play out like that though. As my hand trailed the books row by row I found myself looking at small thin books with simple but mistrouse covers. I picked one up and little to my knowledge that would be the start of me writing out my own future of stories. The book in my hand was a poetry book and reading it was not like the worlds of magic my dad spoke of but the worlds of this author's mind. Words and pictures moveing across the page, emotions and struggles spilling off the edge of the book, it was raw, personal, and creative. Over time I collected over fifty poetry books before I was in high school and in my freshman year I picked up the pen for myself. I started writing my own poetry, It was very different from the ones I had read before, I didn't rhyme my words or make them flow, I compared and contrasted. Comparing my emotions to the oceans and letting out my struggles through cryptic words. Writing has been therapeutic and this year I'm making it a goal of mine going into college I'll finish my first poetry book and publish it. I have already entered many poetry competitions and now I'm going to make it big, I have plans to write a book about my journey through life represented by a poem for every tarot card. The cards represent the things a person goes through in life starting with the fouls journey and I plan to put the sixty-four cards into my life. In college, I want my poetry to fund my future and make more poetry throughout my adult life. Through that, I express myself more, fund my college, and make my dad proud.

My goals are far off, but never out of reach. I plan to help people, and change people's lives; just as so many have changed mine. I grew up lower class, lunch support, food stamps, state health care, you name it. It was the only thing that kept us afloat. I want better than that for my future, better than that for my family. I plan on getting my master's one day, going for what my parents never got to even try for. My life was saved when I was a baby, a doctor saved me from a rare condition when I was only 2 weeks old and I want to pay that forward. I want to be a midwife, help mothers go through what my mom went through, and be that person there when no one else is. I'll be honest I struggled my first years of high school but I never let that hold me back, I realized late into freshman year it wasn't fun and games anymore. I got a job that year and a driver's license and car the next, I've been working every year of my high school experience and to this day I'm now working five to six days a week. I save every penny for college and after 3 years of work and finally turning 18 I've actually been offered a 401k by my job. I take AP and college classes every year and at this point, I'm almost done with a year's worth of classes that I'd need in college. I've never let my parent's income affect me by taking classes that cost money and have paid for almost everything myself since I got a job. I know my future depends on my actions now, every class, every grade, and every day at work. I have depended on myself for so long and as college peeks around the corner, I don't plan on changing that. I've gone to see all the colleges I'm hoping to get into, I've done the math of cost and looked for every resource myself. I'll help people one day and save lives, nothing can hold me back except myself, no matter the background I come from. I'm proud of what I've done to get here and confident that all my work will lead to my dreams. No matter how far off, they're never out of my reach.

I have struggled all my life with mental health, first I was diagnosed with anxiety in elementary school, next depression in middle school due to an attempt on my life at only 11, and only two years ago I was finally diagnosed with a bipolar disorder. Back then I would do anything to not be who I am, all I’ve ever wanted was to be normal, to not struggle. Now though, it makes me who I am. It gives stories to my journey of life and it proves how strong I really am. If I had to go through everything I did to get here today I would a hundred times. Two years ago I had a lot of problems at home, it festered into something so much bigger than just me, it broke me down and ripped me away from my support systems. Without friends, in a town hours away from my school that I didn't even know the name of, and watching my family fall apart I broke. I ended up in the hospital again, in that moment I thought my life would never get better, I was so lost and it felt like everything was falling around me. I couldn't have been more wrong. After my two weeks in the hospital, I found myself, I finally got on medication that I was advocating for, for years and met back with my support system. I stood up for myself, I fell into my classes, focusing on nothing but passing school, bringing my GPA from 2.7 to a 3.5. I found a job as a freshman in a medical fitness facility, becoming first aid and lifeguard certified. Got my driver's license first try, made more friends, and took my first AP class as a sophomore. Without my life falling apart I would have never been able to build it back up, I needed a new foundation and through all the pain, suffering, and fear I found that, I found myself. I still struggle, I still make mistakes but I’ve found a way to cope, I found a medication that works, and I found friends who were truly here for me. Now I plan to go to college, something I doubted I'd ever even be able to do. I want to go and get a master's degree, in the healthcare field, helping people. I've always said If I could just make one person's life better I’d feel truly failed in my life and being able to go to college is the only way I'm sure I’ll be able to.

I hope to go into the field of healthcare, and in the end, my goal is to become a midwife. In my opinion, women are not represented in the health field. science on women's health is little to none and in one of the biggest moments of some women's lives, giving birth, women are left defenseless, confused, and sadly alone. As a midwife I hope to change the field of STEM by representing women, helping women, and being by their side from the day they get that positive test to the months they struggle after giving birth and learning what it is to be a mother. Allowing women to have someone to lean on, someone to explain what is happening, someone who specializes in women's health, in their health. In my sophomore year, I was in the STEM symposium of our school, I did a project on breast milk and its ability to prevent illnesses and expose children to antibacterial benefits. In my study, there was a large amount of evidence that the storage life of breast milk was crucial to these benefits and if stored wrong or even for more than a day all the good qualities of breast milk were lost. The study was eye-opening for my career but even more so the reaction to it was life-changing. Person after person went past my project, skimming it over and then quickly walking away. The disgusted look and sexist comments about a women duety and the gift to give life where offputting at best and repulsing at worse. I worked months on a STEM projectect about a subject I was passionate for only to be overlooked for being gross to talk about or told I was lucky for my womanhood even though it was at a scintifical convention showcasing my drive for my career could ruin someone spirts and dreams. Not mine though, if anything it pushed me to be the women I am to day, I am not ashamed of a women anatomy or bodily function or the way of the body. I drive to learn more, to study more, to understand and support women. I was born with a life-threatening birth defect, I had people there to help me but my mother didn't. she struggled alone, she was a new mom with a dying child and not a person in sight to even explain to her what was happening. To be the person she never had would mean everything to me and my family. To change the world I want to change where everyone in this world starts, at birth. I will give people opportunities, I will support women in this field that they are often left behind in, and I will be proud to be a woman of STEM.