"Ooo you just got beat by a girl" As a girl in wrestling, people think that I wouldn't be able to participate in the sport for being too soft or weak. Trying to make it seem as if women in this sport wouldn’t be able to last in the first round without getting injured. All of these remarks felt as if they were trying to discourage me from continuing. Very few individuals motivated me, telling me "keep going", "you got this". This male dominated sport demoralizes women who try to join. Sometimes, being one of two girls at our practice can be intimidating and isolating, but it gives me a chance to truly prove what I can become by putting in the effort. I try my best to give it my all in practice, matches, and tournaments to show everyone I can do it. My junior year, I established a small girls team by personally inviting some girls and advertising on social media. As the team grew, I offered to help new members that needed a little more attention with moves all while my coach was focused on my other teammates. Because of this, my coach appointed me to become captain for the entire team. As captain, I continued to support students in teaching and perfecting their moves. I also created a safe space for teammates to make mistakes but feel confident in their performance. This allowed students to feel comfortable enough to ask for help. Just to have others around me both girls and boys feeling as if it were okay to speak up when they didn’t know something let me realize that I was able to make something of myself in this sport. I was also able to take on new responsibilities such as leading practices and managing communication between students and the coach. In wrestling, women aren't seen enough and that made me want to try harder to succeed. Not everything in life was made to come as easy, but this challenge just proved that the mental and physical strain was all worth it. This opportunity helped me to not just grow in athletics but also in my personal life. I developed better communication with my adults and peers, and I learned how to manage more responsibilities at work. I'm able to communicate with my managers and coworkers. This opportunity improved my overall experience as a high school student because it gave me a better understanding of life and the struggles that come with it.

"Ooo you just got beat by a girl" As a girl in wrestling, people think that I wouldn't be able to participate in the sport for being too soft or weak. Trying to make it seem as if women in this sport wouldn’t be able to last in the first round without getting injured. All of these remarks felt as if they were trying to discourage me from continuing. Very few individuals motivated me, telling me "keep going", "you got this". This male dominated sport demoralizes women who try to join. Sometimes, being one of two girls at our practice can be intimidating and isolating, but it gives me a chance to truly prove what I can become by putting in the effort. I try my best to give it my all in practice, matches, and tournaments to show everyone I can do it. My junior year, I established a small girls team by personally inviting some girls and advertising on social media. As the team grew, I offered to help new members that needed a little more attention with moves all while my coach was focused on my other teammates. Because of this, my coach appointed me to become captain for the entire team. As captain, I continued to support students in teaching and perfecting their moves. I also created a safe space for teammates to make mistakes but feel confident in their performance. This allowed students to feel comfortable enough to ask for help. Just to have others around me both girls and boys feeling as if it were okay to speak up when they didn’t know something let me realize that I was able to make something of myself in this sport. I was also able to take on new responsibilities such as leading practices and managing communication between students and the coach. In wrestling, women aren't seen enough and that made me want to try harder to succeed. Not everything in life was made to come as easy, but this challenge just proved that the mental and physical strain was all worth it. This opportunity helped me to not just grow in athletics but also in my personal life. I developed better communication with my adults and peers, and I learned how to manage more responsibilities at work. I'm able to communicate with my managers and coworkers. This opportunity improved my overall experience as a high school student because it gave me a better understanding of life and the struggles that come with it.

Latinos are the backbone of this country, The United States of America. Everyone here never seems to understand how we as a community work hard to get to where we are. Not just our parents traveling as children to give themselves and their future families a better outcome, but their children going on to make something out of themselves so our families can be proud of their own efforts because we have come further to give the full effort of their experience. I was around 9 when I first realized that my parents have come from Mexico and have left their own lifes to give my sister and me a chance of a better one. I had always thought that they always lived here as this was their first home. Once I found out that this was not true I paid closer attention to the people around me, the immigrants that have come from a different country to give their family a better life. I saw all the latinos on the street begging to work or just trying to sell flowers in the middle of the roads. Watching as they have become older over the years it has never seemed as a problem for the strong work ethic that we all have as a community. Growing up in California there were always people that had something to say about who came into this country whether it would be legally or illegally. Never thinking about the work that immigrants have done to make this country a home. Without them I truly believe that we wouldn’t be able to function. The latino community takes the jobs no one would want, it can be picking fruit in the fields, construction, manufacturing, housekeeping, but the one thing that these jobs have in common is that they take a huge toll on the bodies of the people that do them. As a first generation Latina learning about this gave me a deeper understanding of who I am and what I should do to give my family and my community the proud feeling that I would help them with the things they have come to do, which can be as giving the future generations a bigger and brighter future than our past generations have had. This event, while it may seem small to the people around me, gives me the understanding that not only am I a representation of who I will become but a representation of the community I come from. There will always be a handful of people trying to put down my family and what we stand for but this is what I want to overcome not just for me but for everything I represent.

“Hold on till tomorrow” This is what I told myself for 4 years straight, just to see if I would be able to make it to the next day. Even though I struggled to see that there is more to life than just living till my body decides to give out, I tried nothing more than to keep holding on. Growing up I have always heard about people struggling with their mental health never once thinking it would be me in the future. Mental health is something that no one should have to struggle with not just because it comes in different forms but because there will always be someone there to try to help you through it. Going through this as a child I wasn't sure where I would end up. I always thought I wouldn't even make it past my high school graduation and that thought in itself made it as if I shouldn't try in school. But I couldn't bear to make my parents feel like they have failed with me, as if I would be the one who didn't care for all they had struggled with. Seeing how they have come to give me a better life than they had, seeing my sister rise above anything she had to help me with school. This thought had never left my mind, so the only thing I felt I could do was to push them away because I didn't want them to see me struggle within my own body, that their daughter, little sister couldn't make it past what would seem the easiest part of her own life to make them proud. After struggling for a while I didn’t know how far I would be able to make it past the age of 14, there is nothing worse than being in a dark place at such a young age. Watching TV shows and movies which have become more aware of this mental trauma that has hurt many young people. These shows have given me the courage to ask my family for help, it was hard to reach out feeling scared that I would disappoint my family for my choices. Once I talked to my mom she told me that she was glad that it didn’t lead to anything further and that it was the right time to reach for help. Even though she was upset that I didn’t come for help sooner, she was always by my side to help me through this hard time. Not only did she help me through this through different methods such as finding different hobbies, talking to a therapist, and becoming more active within my community to keep me motivated, to find purpose in myself than to just stop believing in myself. Growing up in this type of environment I don’t want to wish this type of belief onto anyone. The belief of not thinking that there’s a way out of the living nightmare, just to find out that there will always be some type of light at the end of the world, where everything will slowly get better. In my experience I came to the realization that there will always be something trying to get in the way of what we try to accomplish, whether it's mental health, family problems, or even just the thought of not being able to make anyone proud. This is what I had to struggle through just to make it where I am today. But this is what makes me stronger and proud of what I will soon accomplish. Knowing that I was able to get past the horrid thoughts of not being able to make it to the end and to make my family proud of what I am.