True volunteering is symbiotic. Both the volunteer and the assignment are benefitting and learning from each other. Since my first year of college, I have volunteered in the education sector. Through tutoring, mentoring, leadership, and counseling students, I have grown as a professional, student, and humanitarian. All my volunteering experiences have set me on the career and the educational path I am on now. When I was 18, I began volunteering with Schools on Wheels, where volunteers tutored and mentored students living in halfway houses. Before each session, I was emailed the confidential location and traveled to my assigned students. Through this experience, I realized the power of education, empathy, and opportunity. I worked with elementary through high school students, and while I helped them with math and spelling, they taught me about life, survival, and strength. I transferred to the University of California, Berkeley my third year of college. As a transfer student, I felt compelled to help other incoming transfer students transition, acclimate, and learn resources for success on campus. I experienced the discrimination, assumptions, and imposter syndrome that brings isolation, stress, and uncertainty, which affects the transfer community. I volunteered with the OWLs (Older Wiser Learners) group, which are the re-entry students on campus. These students are considered "non-traditional" as they are typically older and possibly formerly incarcerated. Together we developed confidence, study skills, and friendships. Our group developed a strong connection, encouraging me to continue working with this community. I became an orientation leader through UC Berkeley's New Student Services. I requested transfer students because I wanted to create and foster a community of connection, solidarity, and support that is crucial when entering a new institution. In my final year at Cal, I joined UC BUILD, a UC Berkeley campus organization that supports building literacy skills at local elementary schools. Through UC BUILD, I tutored at Sankofa Elementary, a school known for its minimal resources, lack of support, and the lowest test scores in the district. In the middle of the school year, education workers' strikes nationwide forced temporary school shutdowns. With students having nowhere to go and parents struggling with the abrupt schedule changes, this strike inspired some teachers and volunteers to host "Sanctuary Sites," portable classrooms with mixed grades from different schools. These sites had donated snack foods, but the children were crying from hunger throughout the day because they missed the two guaranteed meals they received every day at school. Volunteering in a classroom that held kindergarten through second-grade students showed me the chaos of the public education system and how understaffed, underfunded, and ignored the low-income public schools are. The weeklong strikes created uncertainty within the community, the lives of the students, and myself. These strikes revealed insufficiencies in the public education system and the power of community organizations to enact change. I continue to use the fervor I witnessed that week to propel me toward my educational and career goals of pursuing law school to go into education law and policy. When I picture my future, I see an opportunity to uplift the least fortunate in our communities and watch them flourish. I envision classrooms where students and teachers possess the resources to learn, succeed, and feel confident in their abilities. As an impacted person and advocate, I have witnessed how policymakers can use the law to create lasting systemic change for communities in need. I hope to one day enter legal academia to follow my passions in education policy while working to support and uplift students who face challenges similar to and more significant than my own.