My volunteering journey began in my freshman year of high school when I participated in a Children's Christmas party organized by AMBUCS. This was my first true volunteering experience, and the positive impact it had on the children and their families left a lasting impression on me. Since then, I have made it my mission to give back to my community, especially the younger generations, through various organizations, with my latest project being the youth group at my church. In my role as a youth group leader, I have the opportunity to mentor and guide individuals who are 3-7 years younger than me. I aim to create an environment where older members of our generation can offer advice and wisdom to younger individuals who may be struggling with the challenges of adolescence. By connecting college students with high school and junior high students, we can offer relatable support during a time of uncertainty. This is particularly important because, in today’s rapidly changing world, older generations can often seem out of touch with the realities of growing up in the digital era. As someone who navigated these challenges just a few years ago, I believe we are uniquely positioned to offer guidance that is relevant and authentic. No one can relate better to these members of our community than us because we were once them. The concept of leadership through service is crucial in my approach to mentoring. I believe that leadership is not just about directing others, but about serving those in need. Through my role, I strive to be a positive role model for my peers, but I also recognize that different people face different problems. For example, while I may be an effective mentor or role model for teenage boys in my community, I know that teenage girls often need role models who have faced similar challenges. That’s why leadership through service is so important — it allows me to bring in new leaders who can relate to different members of the group and provide support where I might not be able to. By mentoring others and showing them how to lead through service, I aim to help current adolescent members of the group grow into future leaders. This ensures that the group remains adaptable and continues to evolve, as these new leaders will understand the unique challenges that younger generations face. It also allows me to continue to advise my current members when they are older, as they will stick with the group, just in a new role. They will lead younger members while still being able to receive guidance from senior leaders who were once in their positions, creating a cycle of mentorship and support. The image attached below is from my trip to Passion 2025. I love going to Passion because it allows me to hear speakers who have lessons tailored to college-aged individuals. I try to take these messages back to the youth group and alter them to make them more applicable to their stage of life. That picture was taken by my grandmother. We stopped at my grandparents' house on the way down. They moved down to Alabama last year, so it was nice to see them again.

As a financial major, I have received lots of great advice via internships and classes I have taken. I have learned about life insurance, annuities, bonds, index funds, mutual funds, and other types or forms of investments. After thinking about all of these different investments and where I am at in my life, I have decided that one investment strategy in particular is the best. I learned it in a principles of financial management class taught during the first half of the fall semester this year. The best money lesson I have learned on my voyage to become financially literate is that you should never let your money become stagnant. If you allow your money to sit and collect nothing but dust, you will lose in the long run. With inflation rates always making the dollar worth less and less, you need to invest in something, even if the interest is not exceptionally high. There are options with short timespans and no risk available to any investors over the age of 18. More specifically, the option I am currently looking into is government bonds, notes, and T-bills. T-bills or treasury bills are my preferred option for college students. They can be as short as a month or as long as a year, which allows some liquidity, and have a substantially higher rate than your bank account. If you take a subsidized loan and have the amount in your bank account, you can invest it and make money since it will not gain interest until you graduate from college. Making money off your tuition costs is easily the best advice any college student could ever receive, and I wish more students knew about it. By the time I learned this, I had already rejected my subsidized loans. You can easily purchase these T-bills on TreasuryDirect, a government website that allows you to create an account with them. You may have to mail them a letter, but after that, you can buy bonds, notes, and T-bills from your electronic device. I am about to send the letter and will apply this strategy next semester if I receive a subsidized loan. If I do not get the loan, I can still use the leftover money in my savings to buy T-bills. I will always have my money working for me and not sitting in a bank account. If I cannot buy bonds, I will have a money market account to get a better rate than a standard bank account. Everyone should look for a way to get their money collecting interest instead of dust. You can do this through safe options like bonds, notes, T-bills, money market accounts, and many more, or you can do it with riskier options in the stock market or company bonds. Once you have the money to pay your bills, you should create ways to keep your savings constantly generating more interest. If you do this, you will be far better off than leaving your cash under the mattress, in a safe, or a standard bank account.

My dream version of myself is someone who doesn't just take care of himself but his family and community too.

As a finance major, I believe healthy finances are a critical part of any person's life, especially students. As a student, you are still training to get the career you want and are likely working an entry-level job. However, you are still paying large sums of money for college. Due to this, it is imperative to have healthy finances during these years so you can have a good opening into your adult life. Many college students find themselves in thousands of dollars of debt and have no current way to take it out, so it is crucial to make every dollar count. If you waste money or pass up opportunities, your debt will only grow as interest gets tacked on to it, and you are missing out on possible resume builders if you ignore work altogether. The best way to avoid this is to save money before college or get a job while attending college to help with your debt. Doing this will help you get more experience and money, and if the job pertains to your field, it may add something to your resume that helps you stand apart from your peers. Many employers also like to see a student who takes the initiative and work during their time at University. I manage my finances by ensuring I save all of my paychecks and exclusively spend money from them on food and gas. The money that I get for holidays and birthdays gets split 50/50. I also have multiple accounts at my bank to better manage my money. These include a money market account, savings account, checking account, and a round-up share account. Each account has a specific purpose: the money market account is there to earn higher interest rates and help my savings grow, which allows my money to grow faster with minimal risk. My savings account keeps money I may need for an emergency easily accessible. My checking account lets me make quick purchases on the go. My round-up account acts as a piggy bank that builds up more savings from previous purchases. I can allocate the change to other miscellaneous tasks. In addition to these, I also look for internships that will give me experience in my field. I will be interning under a local financial advisor in July. While I may not make as much money there, I will receive important information for the future. When a student faces a choice like this, they must decide which is more important and better for them at that time. You must do what is best for you when faced with similar situations. In conclusion, students need to manage their finances to have a good start in their adult lives. Learning to do this now is better than learning to do it later when you are drowning in debt because you negligently ignored a growing problem. The process is more straightforward than most think, and with a little effort, students can, with the help of their bank, create a system that works for them.

I am Jarron Fleming: a student at Oakwood High School. I hope to show that my ambitious goals and hard work prove I am a suitable candidate for the Holt Scholarship. I will tell you about who I am and my family, my academic career, what I do when I am not in school, and what I plan to do after school. After you read my credentials, I hope you consider me for this scholarship. I was born and still live in a rural village in central Illinois, Oakwood. The population of Oakwood is around 1,600 residents. My family is middle-middle class, my father is a conductor for CSX, and my mother is a cosmetologist. I am the oldest of three children, and all of us are boys. My parents named me after my uncle, Jarron, who passed away when he was still a baby. My father named me after him as a way to commemorate him. From middle school to my junior year of high school, I worked at my grandparent's pool store, "Quick Pools and Spas." I have done very well in school, especially these last two years. The summer following my Sophomore year, I started taking Dual Enrollment classes at Danville Area Community College (DACC). I have taken enough courses to become a full-time student with a 3.9 GPA and join the Phi Theta Kappa. At my high school, Oakwood High School (OHS), I became the Vice President of the Student Council, was inducted into the National Honor Society, and got a score of 1180 on my SAT, which helped me become an ISAC State Scholar. After this Spring Semester, I will be the first student to graduate from OHS with an Associate's Degree. When I am outside of school, I have a lot of different hobbies. I love playing board games, video games, reading, and watching politics. I play board games such as Catan and Villainous with my friends. When we play, I go over to my friend Kyle's house and have dinner and dessert while we play. When I play video games, I either play Minecraft with my friends or play games like Death Stranding or Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain by myself. I am reading Moby Dick, 1984, and The Message (Bible). When I am at family gatherings, I talk to my relatives about politics. To stay informed: I watch journalists such as Elijah Schaffer and Savanah Hernandez. I also watch political commentators like John Doyle. After college, I plan to become a financial advisor. To prepare for this job, I contacted a local financial advisor to see if I could intern for him, learned about the stock market, took economics classes at OHS and DACC, and took accounting, management, and business law classes at DACC. I hope to start my profession by opening my business in Danville, Illinois. The advisors in Danville will be retiring soon, which means if I start now, I can become their new advisor. While Danville is not the biggest town, it still has many residents and room to grow. My due diligence with my school work and clear goals show that I met the criteria for this scholarship. I should be selected because very few people can graduate high school with an Associate's Degree. I will use the money to help pay for my tuition. I have estimated that my last two years will be between $24,000 and $30,000.

Since I was in grade school, I have been passionate about owning my own business. Until a few years ago, my grandparents owned a pool store. I had always wanted to become the owner after they retired. However, they eventually sold the store to another local business owner. Fortunately, during my sophomore year of high school, I took an economics class and realized I was much more passionate about something else. I love investing, learning about finances, and the stock market. After meeting with advisors and talking to my family, I realized that I could create my own business out of my newfound passion, and since then, that has been my dream. I have spent the last two years pursuing it. I know I have what it takes to follow my passion and start my own business because of my strong work ethic, quick adaptability, and likability. The summer after I took economics, I began taking dual enrollment classes at the local community college, and since then, I have done remarkably well. I have worked so diligently that I am graduating from high school with my associate's degree. I have already started taking classes related to my field, such as intro to business, micro and macroeconomics, and other similar classes. Through it all, I have been able to quickly learn all the material, even college-level business calculus, despite having taken only pre-calc at my high school. It has all been me, with no tutors or parents helping me with my work. I have shown that I can do this and stand on my own two feet. When I get out of college and have my degree, I am sure that I will quickly pick up clientele as I have already met with an advisor about receiving an internship and will be establishing a good connection with potential clients. There is no doubt in my mind that I can get this done and get it done right. Currently, I give back to the less fortunate through community service. I have painted a park bench, waited on the disabled, helped run concessions for the little league games, and raised money for post-prom. In the future, I hope to make donations to charities and give opportunities to those who need a second chance. One family at the church I attend helped a woman by giving her a job where she would come and clean their house. I want to be able to do things like that as well; it is something I look forward to doing. I also want to start donating food to the local food shelter. Once I start making money, I should be able to get them a decent amount of food, the student council that I am a part of has donated hundreds of canned goods over the last couple of years.

I want to see the leadership in my town change. For years we have had the same people who do nothing to improve our town and never consult the public. My town's leadership is older people who don't want anything to change, and the younger board members just let their parents influence them into making unnecessary decisions. I want my town to start doing more to fight drug distribution in the trailer park and fix our school so that students who take dual enrollment classes or want to graduate early can do so without having to fight the school or take meaningless steps and waste time. Students should not have to take high school-level English classes that "prepare" them for college if they have already taken those college classes. On the national level, I want our country to value its citizens more. Why does America, a first-world country and the self-proclaimed greatest country, have so many homeless people? Our country is so busy looking at other countries that we refuse to help our people. I want to stop allowing people into our country through immigration or seeking asylum and take money out of the military to focus on helping the homeless. These two factors are vital because we waste billions of dollars, and our massive budget makes us more aggressive. I think stopping immigration is more important because it will stop living space from being filled and ensure that the people we are trying to help have less competition. I would also like to see younger people get involved in politics and have these old corrupt politicians ousted from power. Our "representatives" care more about money and lobbyists than they do about their constituents. I want to see the world's values shift toward caring more about helping those who can't help themselves. We live in a world where all anyone cares about is helping themselves: nobody cares about the homeless, Asian sweatshops or the mines in African countries, or the African countries still being used as ways for first-world countries to get cheaper resources. All anyone cares about is living a convenient and easy life where they get whatever they want when they want it. If a five-year-old working 20-hour shifts for 15 cents an hour in China is what it takes for me to get my Nike shoes for $10 less, then so be it. People will complain of homelessness yet never donate food or money to help them. If a seven-year-old has to mine materials so that I can drive my new electric car, that is acceptable. However, assure you that I will complain about these atrocities on my Twitter account and never talk about it again. In my community, I have done community service where I was a waiter at a party for the mentally challenged, repainted a park bench, worked concessions for the kids' baseball games, and, in the future, I plan on running for a local position. Other ways I hope to help in the future include: trying to improve our school system's dual enrollment process and seeing if we can get more people to donate to the food pantry.

"The Man Who Sold The World" by David Bowie contains the most important message of any song I have heard. The song is about self-reflection, comparing oneself to who they were in the past. As people, we evolve throughout our lives, learning new things, encountering new scenarios and people, and forming our own interpretations of the world. The Man Who Sold The World shows that at some point in our lives, we will look back and see an entirely new person from who we are now. That message resonates with me because when I look back on who I was in the past and how I am changing now, I see different people. I see myself progressing toward becoming my best self. The name of the song and figure described as selling the world is us. We are the ones selling the world. I interpret it as us selling the world and all its hurtful and degenerate ways so that we may focus on ourselves and become better people. That has become more apparent in recent years as I have tried to pursue becoming a better Christian and freeing myself from the chains of the world. I see who I was a few years ago, and I can tell that the person I was then and the person I am are two completely different individuals. We have different beliefs and desires. In summary, The Man Who Sold The World has the most important message because it shows us that we can change and that you can transform into new people. You are not trapped to be the person you have become, sell the world and use the profits to change. You will thank yourself for the decision later; self-improvement is the answer.

Higher education is important to me because it offers me a way to not only gain access to the field that I plan on entering but also give access to subjects that are not available to students in the lower levels of education, like high school. These subjects could be courses like philosophy and ethics, the history of art or music, and more. Thanks to my pursuit of getting a higher education, I learned about the Greek philosophers and the more modern philosophers that inspired the founding fathers when they were building America. If I hadn't gone to college, it is likely that I would never have come to know philosophers like Thales or John Stuart Mill. I also would not have learned how businesses in America can save money on taxes by using LIFO by making it appear that they made less profit on sales than they really made. Higher education has let me take courses on Philosophy and Ethics to Financial Accounting. It is incredible that someone can learn two incredibly different topics at the same school. Thanks to higher education, I can learn about the field I want to go into and pursue my dream career as a financial advisor. I can learn how to properly invest other people's money for them, learn the required material that is needed to be certified, the laws that deal with businesses, and how they operate. I will be able to pursue other goals that come along with this job. Some of these goals include starting a family while being financially stable. I will be able to earn a higher wage and provide more for my future family. I also won't be gone all the time because I will be on a schedule similar to a nine-to-five. I will also get to promote financial responsibility to other community members. All of these things are very important to me and would not be possible if I didn't pursue higher education. In summary, I think higher education is important because it gives me the opportunity to follow my dreams while also learning about miscellaneous topics along the way. I get new and greater opportunities, a way to help financially support my family and advance up the social hierarchy, the opportunity to learn cool and interesting facts, and a way to research all of the things I need to succeed in my future career and life.

Learning is paramount to me because a person needs to challenge themself to become a better person. One way to become a better person is to become more educated in different subjects, such as language, math, reading and writing, or physical activities, such as how to patch drywall or lift weights. By doing that, you will help keep your brain healthy by providing it with stimulation, and you may also learn new skills that could aid you in the future. Learning things like instruments and languages has also been shown to increase your IQ. Since I began taking college courses, I have learned many things about philosophy, the human body, how surveyors conduct surveys to ensure that they are statistically accurate, how some businesses run, how the economy works, and some facts about the history of art and in what ways the different genres vary. That has allowed me to see the world from many angles, solve problems relating to vastly different areas, and improve my ability to comprehend more complex content. I plan to learn throughout my life by establishing goals and putting them in order of what I think will help me more and what I believe will be the most interesting. I plan on learning more about language by using apps and watching videos. I plan on learning Italian, Greek, Russian, and maybe Japanese using this method. Languages are noteworthy to master because not only does it help us understand other people, but even understand our own language and grammatical structures. However, there are also less prominent things that many people neglect to learn, but if they did, it could save them a lot more money. These things include more physical skills, such as patching drywall or making minor repairs to household appliances on your own. If outsourced, these tasks could cost you hundreds of dollars when you could have done them on your own for less than a hundred dollars. In addition, learning to lift weights can help you stay healthy and reduce the risk of injury due to improper form. While these physical tasks may not be as mentally formidable, they can clearly improve your life in different ways. It is beneficial to stay physically healthy and not dependent on handypeople to fix every minuscule problem in your home. Learning is the gateway to independence from many hardships holding people back. By pursuing education, we are freeing ourselves from our tribulations.

While using both bold and just looking for scholarships online, I have found that if you stay motivated and keep looking and applying: you can find many scholarships that apply to the categories you may be a part of. On Bold alone, I have discovered nearly forty scholarships that match me. It is incredible that if you put time and effort into looking for, finding, and filling out scholarships, you can have the potential to raise a substantial sum of money to fund your education. Many do not even require an essay to apply, erasing the last step and replacing it with simply pressing a button. Before applying for scholarships, I assumed all scholarships required a lengthy essay. After using Bold and applying for a few other scholarships I found online, I now know that many scholarships require either no essay or may ask the writer a few questions to understand how you are an adequate candidate. Even scholarships that do require essays are usually only a few hundred words; I have yet to encounter one that demanded a thousand-word essay or more like I had previously assumed it would be. Most scholarships are a lot easier to apply for than I had thought. The most important thing I have learned while in the process of applying for scholarships is that you have to be patient. Many scholarships have a long time until the deadline. After the deadline passes, more time is needed to review applicants and find a worthy winner. That means you may have to wait months to find out if you are the winner or if someone else won. Luckily on Bold, they have sections for each step of the process, making it ten times easier to see where you are at in the process and how much longer it takes. They even have a section that will inform you if you are a finalist for the scholarship. With the scholarships, I have applied for that are not on Bold, I have to either check my email or go to each individual website to check that specific scholarship. That means you have to be a well-organized individual to not mistake scholarships you have already applied for, for the ones you still need to apply to. You could also forget about a scholarship if you aren't keeping track. In summary, I have learned that to be successful at applying for scholarships, you must be motivated, patient, and well-organized. If a student can display these three attributes, they will notice an uptick in success with their search for scholarships. If these three attributes do not fit how you are currently managing your search for scholarships, you may struggle to apply for or find scholarships.

I am pursuing a college degree so that I can pursue my dream career. My dream career is to be an independent financial advisor. I have wanted to be a business owner since seventh grade, but I realized I wanted to be a financial advisor during my sophomore year of high school. I grew privy to the idea through an economics class, where I became very interested in the stock market. I need to go to college to get a degree in finance so I will have the proper credentials for this field. The area I live in is severely lacking in financial advisors; I have met with one advisor who told me that he is the youngest person in this area; however, even he is in his fifties. From what I understand, other advisors in the area are even in their seventies. Within the next ten to twenty years, most advisors in this area will be retired. I have also heard that not many people are entering the field either. That means that future competition will be scarce. Someone needs to fill in for the people who are leaving, and I want to be the one who takes over when they are gone. Going to college will give me a chance to pursue this career and help my community become financially responsible. It will also give me a huge opportunity to become the sole provider for my area at some point in the future. There is a diverse array of people in this community spanning all ranges of economic status. I would have no trouble finding clients having upwards of one hundred thousand dollars ready to give me for management. If this were to happen, I would be able to grow my company and build something for my family to take over after I retire. That is the overall goal for this, to leave something for my family so they can have a solid foundation. My children will be bestowed with the ability to pursue nearly any career that they like, even if it is something other than my business. Everything I do: I do with the end goal of helping my family grow and not stay stuck in their economic class. I want to go to college and get a degree for the chance to aid my family and provide them with the brightest future I can provide. I will be able to do for my children what my mother and father have done for my brothers and me.

I believe that mental health is essential because it is vital to living a long and prosperous life. If your mental health is constantly under attack from some form of anxiety or depression, that can quickly seep into and affect your physical health. When one element of your health is damaged, eventually: all of it will be. Not being of a sound mind can cause poor decision-making and possibly addiction or some form of substance abuse that will inevitably lead to unfavorable outcomes. I have found that the best way to maintain adequate and stable mental health for myself is to listen to quiet and or slow music that is relaxing to me. My songs of choice are typically jazz, depending on what I have been doing or will do during the day. Other things I try include: getting off social media and other apps or games that cause me to become angry or express negative emotions for no valid reason. That is an important distinction: it is natural to feel negative emotions and can even be needed sometimes, but this does not mean that you go out of your way to watch or partake in activities that make you feel bad for no reason. Actions like this cause your mental health to deteriorate slowly over time. When I have absolutely no way of escaping from these apps and am by myself, I will usually turn to family or friends; or if it is too late in the night, I will seek out scholarships like this one to have something to occupy myself with until I get tired. Venting to others or yourself via writing is a good way of allowing some of your negative feelings about the current situation to dissipate. Recently I have started writing notes and thoughts about the world down in a notebook I have so that they do not just stay in my head. That, in addition to giving me a way to vent, also allows me to come back later and rationalize to myself why or why not what I was thinking at the time was a rational train of thought. It also allows me to consider if that is the correct way to look at things. It is very critical to hold yourself accountable when you find yourself looking at the world from the perspective that either you or the situation are too far gone. By writing this essay, I already feel much better; writing something is key to getting better and should be done by more people.

The thing that excites me the most about college is the opportunity to gain access to new information and learn new and fascinating things about ourselves, the world, and even beyond that. Since I started taking classes, I have learned about Philosophy in addition to the classes I took to help with my degree. If I had not gone to college, I would never have been able to study people like Socrates, Thales, or Kierkegaard. In addition to philosophy, I have also been able to take ethics and learn about even more philosophical topics. The three parts of your health are all equally important. If you are ill in one category, you will see this illness infect the other too. If you are a spiritually-ill person, you will eventually become both physically and even mentally ill in addition to your original affliction. I avoid this by trying to equally maintain all three of my types of health and neglecting them as little as possible. I practice physical health by going to the gym. On average, I am at the gym four to five days out of every week. I train different sections of my body every time I go, and I usually take a friend as my gym partner. That ensures that I have someone there to help me in case of an accident or if my form could cause injuries. To help my spiritual health, I try to go to church as much as possible. I thought this was not enough, so when a friend told me about youth group a few weeks ago, I started attending that in addition to Sunday Service. I think being asked hard questions about how I see God and how he acts in my life is a good exercise that increases mental fitness and makes you a better Christian. Many people neglect their spiritual health, so I see this as a vital step towards being at my best and achieving a good balance between the three types of my health. To help with my mental he, I will listen to soft music like smooth jazz. I will usually do this when I am driving or while I study. The musician that I listen to the most is Bobby Caldwell. I think listening to softer music helps relax our minds and releases the stress of our day. I try not to listen to louder or harder genres of music as little as possible because I think they can harm how our mind processes our environment. I also believe that what we listen to can have significant effects on our mental status.

I currently own two miniature dachshunds. Their names are Bandit and Holly; Bandit is part wire hair and has a slight overbite. Holly is part long hair and loves to burrow into blankets. I have also owned three other dogs: two more miniature dachshunds and a basset hound. The two other dachshunds were named Frankie and Bell. Frankie had a short temper, but he loved my parents. Bell specifically loved my mother; she would follow my mom all around the house. The basset hound was named Dixie. Dixie was scared of everything, puppies, thunder, fireworks, people, other animals, the vacuum cleaner, and almost everything else in the house. All my dogs have played the role of companion; however, Bandit has become extremely close to me. Almost every night, he will end up pawing at the side of my bed, trying to get in; I am starting to think about getting him a little staircase so he can get up on his own without breaking anything. If I am already asleep, Bandit has figured out he can jump into the chair and walk across a table. The last time he did that, he almost broke my laptop. Bandit spends nearly every moment of his day with or near me. When I am studying or doing homework, he sits in my lap, and when I play video games or have to take a test online: he sits in the chair and watches me until he falls asleep. When I go outside to sit on our couch swing, he will run out after me and go into the area behind me or sit under the swing and watch for squirrels and rabbits. When we go back inside, he usually gets the zoomies and runs around in front of the closet door because he knows the closet is where we keep the treats. When he finishes his treat, he will come over and try to get you to rub his belly; when he does that, his little teeth stick out. We have started to call him a little rabbit when he does that. I love him more than almost anything in the world; I don't know what I would do if something were to happen to him. He is the cutest, most intelligent, and determined dog I have ever owned. He has even managed to catch a squirrel that was in our backyard. He is the best part about coming home from school, and seeing him jump around the room when I open the door. He goes from furniture to furniture, attempting to get high enough to give me kisses. He makes all of my days so much better than they would be without him.