“What are you?” A question that I have heard almost every week, sometimes on the same day. The people that question me never want to hear how I love playing volleyball, how I am involved in nearly every extracurricular that exists, or a fan of “Criminal Minds.” Instead, they care about my race. Over the years, I have adapted many different responses. “What do you mean? I’m tan because I love the beach,” or, “You know Troy Polamalu? The NFL player? Yeah, I’m his daughter.” Of course, these sarcastic replies only go so far. If I tell them that I am biracial, they automatically ask what my parents are. It is a never-ending cycle of being mixed. As a small, frizzy-haired child with a speech impediment, self-confidence did not come easy. Despite this, I was happy. I loved my family. We lived next to my cousins until I was in the third grade, one of which was my age. You would think that we would have spent every minute possible playing, but that was not the case. Instead, my aunt did not want us to spend time together. She always blamed it on my speech impediment, “I just don’t want it to rub off on my daughter.” I remember crying to my mom about how I was trying my best in speech therapy. Years later, I would find out that my small impediment was only an excuse for the bigger issue in my aunt’s mind. I was not the right color for her. People that thought like this became my and my mother’s motivation early on. She worked with me on my reading and writing before I ever entered kindergarten. By the time I started school, I was reading on a third-grade level. Throughout elementary, I strived for every award that was possible, using people’s prejudices as reasons to work harder to prove them wrong. Fast-forward to high school when everyone already knows who and what you are. At the beginning of the school year, there is a mandatory census that everyone must complete every day for the first week. I still remember the first time I had to do it. My teacher called out every option, and we had to raise our hands for whichever applied to us: white, black, Native American, Hispanic, or Asian. I waited until the very end, assuming that there would be an ‘other’ or ‘biracial’. Nope, not that lucky. “Who didn’t raise their hand? I’m missing one person.” I shakily raised my hand, noticing everyone’s stares. “What are you?” I start to get nervous, knowing that none of the choices fully apply to me. Anything that I choose will exclude a part of myself. “Umm,” I stopped, looking at my classmates’ stares, “white.” Everyone in the class laughed. This year, there was an ‘other’ selection at the very end. Just when you think that race is not an issue, you step into politics. As a conservative, biracial young woman, I do not fit into the media’s portrayal of how I “should” feel. Now that I have overcome my speech impediment, I am quick to chime in during political debates inside or out of the classroom. However, if I say anything about being conservative to a black friend, they say, “Your whiteness is showing.” I was devastated the first time I heard this from a black mentor that I met during my time at the Trent Lott Leadership Institute at Ole Miss. How can being half-white determine how I feel about politics or anything in life? The challenge of being biracial still exists and is an ongoing battle between me and those around me. Over time, I have begun to love and accept every part of me. The struggles I have faced have allowed me to grow into the person that I am. I love my curly hair, tan skin, and brown eyes. I love how I can relate to different types of people because of my experiences. No one deserves to feel how I felt all those times that someone made assumptions of me as a person because of my color. Diversity is what made this nation great. By being inclusive, we will succeed.

My school has had a volleyball team for four years. When I was in the seventh grade, I was ecstatic about the new sport. However, they specified that only high school could try out. I did not let this issue discourage me and attended a volleyball camp at Millsaps College over spring break. The following month, we had tryouts, and they selected me to the very first Northeast Jones Lady Tigers Volleyball team. We have solely played in a high school district for the past two seasons. Now, our team has won two district championships back-to-back. My route to being a starter on varsity was not the easiest. Our coaches were new to the game of volleyball just as the players were. I was one of the youngest on the team, and the coaches always wanted to play the older girls in the varsity games. I worked incredibly hard every season, but they would only put me in when we were losing. Once we gained the lead, they benched me. It was heartbreaking to constantly work hard but never get recognition for it. Instead of giving up, I strive to prove them wrong every year. I finally started as an outside hitter in our third season. This year, I played setter, which is my preferred position. I love being the leader of the team, even if I do not receive the same recognition as hitters. Last year, we played our initial season in a district. My favorite memory would have to be when we played our biggest district rival, Florence High School. The team was incredibly nervous beforehand; Florence had won the district for five consecutive years. The game took place on the day of my sixteenth birthday, and I was determined to come out with a win. However, we lost the first two sets almost immediately, but we never gave up. We united and won the next three sets and crowned the regional champions. I scored the winning point of the game with an ace on my serve. The coaches in the district also voted me as “1st Team All-District.” Volleyball is one of the greatest sports in the world. We cannot perform it without teamwork and communication, two traits necessary to be successful in nearly anything. In Mississippi, volleyball is not extremely established. Most schools are only just now developing teams, and they are constantly overshadowed by football. Before COVID-19 struck, we would invite elementary-aged girls to attend our volleyball camp. It was a fantastic opportunity for them to grasp the fundamentals of the sport without having to produce thousands of dollars to play club volleyball. Since introducing this tradition, many schools in the community have played volleyball in their physical education classes and at recess. My high school also hosted a “Boys Volleyball Tournament” where different male sports teams would compete against each other. Mississippi is just now making strides in the growth of volleyball across the state, but I hope that one day it will be just as common as football in the South.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?" People need to take part in their communities because, without volunteers, societies will fall apart. The poverty rate in Mississippi is the highest in the country at 19.7%, placing us dead last in the nation. The Glory House is a nonprofit organization based out of the county that I live in that has consistently tried to assist the needy. I have always admired The Glory House for all the work they do in our community, and they remain my favorite nonprofit to volunteer with. This past Christmas, they conducted a “Christmas Shop” for impoverished families that could not afford presents. I helped set it up and organize all the donations by age group and size. After this past Easter, Glory House also helped after 140 tornadoes hit Mississippi, where the most destructive activity in the state took place only 15 minutes away from my home. My school volleyball team safely volunteered to aid clear the damage. The Future Leaders of Jones County is an organization offered to outstanding 11th-grade students in my community. We had to apply and interview before being accepted. As a part of the organization, we break into groups and participate in a volunteer project in our community. As my group’s leader, I proposed that The Glory House would be a great idea. My team is currently the lone group that has started on our project. Thus far, we have assisted in restoring a building that The Glory House is hoping to operate as a place for missionaries to stay. My team helped remodel it by painting walls, cleaning, putting up new blinds, and throwing away trash. We are also conducting a food drive to restore the food pantry used to help feed the homeless. I aspire to be a local pediatrician with a private practice. People constantly tell me, “Don’t you know pediatricians are one of the lowest-paid doctors?” Of course, I know this, but it is not about the money. I care about helping the children and ensuring that they will grow to enjoy a significant life. Many patients that pediatricians encounter are often low-income families or do not obtain health insurance. It is a confirmed fact that children that come from disadvantaged families often struggle in school and throughout life, only perpetuating the cycle of poverty. As a pediatrician, I could persuade their parents of the importance of providing their children preliminary education, so they can disrupt the cycle of poverty. There are so many opportunities that colleges and scholarship sites, like Bold.org, offer underprivileged children a better life. The sole problem is making it through school to have the ability to succeed.

Rocco joined our family in May of 2020 when he was six weeks old. Now, he is extremely spoiled, and I love him so much! He sleeps in the bed with me (we snuggle), and I take him almost everywhere with me. He loves tall grass, soft blankets, and going on walks. He also loves attention and will take pictures to get it!

The year before I began kindergarten, my mother taught me how to read, and I fell in love with it. Every two weeks, we would make the trip to the library and load up on enough books to read every day. I enjoyed every second of it. That was the time for just me and her. Everything else was consumed by typical household things for her, and I spent my time fighting and playing outside with my three siblings. When I began school, academics became second nature to me. Everything came so easily. My classmates were learning to read cat and dog, while I sat on the play mat and read books that were considered to be on a 3rd or 4th-grade reading level. As we got older, this tendency remained the same. By the end of my elementary career, I read on the college level and was running out of books in the school library to read, but the other children had to be forced to read a book a week. I read so many books out of the school library that my only other option would be to check out books about things like the origins of NFL football teams. I liked those, too. I am now a junior in high school, and I have started preparing for the next step in life: college. I feel like every educational success in my life has stemmed from my early love for reading. In my AP classes, my classmates constantly groan and complain about reading assignments, but I love them. I understand that books and a valuable education will give me the keys to a great life. Seventeen years of books and reading assignments have brought me to this point in my life. I am about to begin applying to colleges when it feels like just yesterday I was reading storybooks with my mother. It is terrifying. Education has been a predominant part of my life since I was three years old, and I do not see this changing. I am currently second in my class, striving for first, and I will not settle there. I aspire to attend Vanderbilt University and major in biochemistry. From there, I will become a pediatrician. Once I own my own practice, I plan to give my patients a very special gift: a book, so their parents will hopefully give them the gift of early education, like my mother did for me. Before this can happen, I have many more stages in life to endure, and education will be the key to this. However, I will make it through the next stages of my life like I always have: perseverance, hard work, and a book in my hand.

Ever since I was born, hunting and fishing have always been predominant around me. It was late in the night, and we had been visiting my grandparents at their lake house that evening. As we stood to leave, I heard the line on the fishing pole shoot farther into the lake. I instantly grabbed the pole, being very careful to not jerk too hard to ensure the fish would not get off the line. I finally caught the fish after nearly thirty minutes. It is the biggest catfish I have ever caught, weighing at about fifteen pounds.