Are you a boy or a girl? I constantly confuse people. The little kids ask me this question in the gaga ball pit at the summer camp I work at. The older lady at Costco asks me this in line for checkout. I asked myself this question when I was a kid too, but I know the answer is neither. At school, the teachers try their best to use "they" or "them", and most succeed. They slip up a few times, but honesty I don't care, because I am me and that's what matters. They act like they committed a crime when they slip up, and that is the part that scares me and embarrass me. They stare me down, like I'm going to report them to the school board. They tiptoe around me, and it makes me feel like a beast, the "other". I understand that it's good that they do this, I just wish there were an option to just put "surprise me" on my pronoun selection. It's hard to explain in writing, and that's really saying (or I guess "writing) something, as writing is my escape, my passion, and my exploration of myself. And again, I understand that pronouns are important to different people, just not to me. I'm not good at explaining it. I have tried though. Some people understand it, that I am "me", and that doesn't really relate to pronouns. I just use "they" and "them" because that's what we have as a society for the in-between. I find that they don't really work for me either, and I feel like pronouns are a social construct meant to confine us to one thing. I'm not sure if that makes sense, so I'm going to stop ranting and start talking about how my identity as sort of non-binary sort of agender has inspired me to write, and how challenges that I have sort of mentioned (about gender and social norms) have also impacted my writing. Most queer people don't have much representation, and the famous ones we have tend to be written by straight women. I find that odd, but that's something for another time. As a queer person who uses pronouns that society is not used to, I find it hard to find representation in media. Harry Potter is always on the shelf at my little library in the middle of nowhere Wauna, Washington, but Symptoms of Being Human is not there. I had to go all the way to Seattle to find that book. I might not have said this before, but I am an avid reader, and have always wanted to write my own book(s). That's where my identity as agender/non-binary seeps into my passion for writing. I am not afraid to stand up for others, as is evident in how I go to the Women's March every year, or in how I make and distribute zines on issues like the lack of voice that Queer people have in sports. Anyways, I started writing characters that never had voices. Queer, POC, Trans, characters who voices where silenced. I wrote a character who was like me, so people could see that it's possible to just be yourself. I want to put books in the little libraries that I grew up in, so the next kid can see it's not weird to be yourself. I write so that people aren't asked if they are a boy or a girl, I write so people can feel seen, I write because I am a writer who loves to write.

Curiosity about the world has always driven me, and I am passionate about helping others discover it too. During my sophomore year of high school, I worked as an assistant counselor at my school's summer camp. That experience revealed my desire to teach. Guiding kids, supporting their dreams, and challenging them to grow showed me the difference a mentor can make. I saw my younger self reflected in them, the kid who dreamed of being a writer, a historian, an astronaut, an explorer. Their aspirations inspired me to help them reach their goals. I worked there again during my Junior year summer and am working there again this summer before college. I see it not only as an opportunity to finance my own future, but also as a way to invest in each kid’s future dreams. So, I knew I wanted to teach, but I was unsure of the specific subject or focus until I joined Schoolhouse, an online tutoring platform. Through tutoring people from around the world in Japanese, which has been one of my passions since I was eight, I realized how much I enjoyed helping others learn about language and culture. Participating in the Dialogues on Schoolhouse, where I discussed global issues such as gun violence and the role of foreign aid with people from diverse backgrounds, further clarified that my goal is not only to teach but also to foster meaningful connections and understandings. These experiences helped me see the impact of sharing knowledge and perspectives, shaping my ambition to teach in ways that connect people and broaden their worldviews. That's when I realized that I want to teach, to guide others, and to learn alongside them in the future by utilizing my passions. I was always afraid to start writing the "perfect" book when I was younger, and I only started writing because my 8th Grade English teacher pushed me to do so. I want to be that to someone, to inspire them to fulfill their dreams. I see myself teaching English in Japan or maybe I'll end up teaching Creative writing to a new generation of writers. My future holds many opportunities to both explore myself and my own dreams, while also being there to inspire others to explore their own aspirations. I see this money as a way to achieve both my own dreams, while also helping others achieve theirs.

I was told that I wasn't a math person. Fractions looked like scary monsters, the times table tests were too fast, and I wondered why can't a triangle be just a triangle? Just because I struggled, it doesn't mean I didn't do well, though. I got good grades and moved to the advanced math during Middle School. But I never felt at place. The Khan Academy guy, the IXL pits of despair, no one helped me feel confident in my capabilities as a math student. I didn't like to do fun stuff on desmos, or figure out how to add programs to my graphing calculator. I was in an endless loop of self-dregredation. I wasn't good enough, and I never got the scratch and sniff stickers that other people got on their tests for getting above a 90. I know now that that was such a stupid way of thinking about mistakes. Mistake is not the "m" word for math. Failure leads to success, it leads to real learning, and I know that my "m" word was just a blessing in disguise. A disguise that I let myself believe and be fooled my. Fast-forwarding to the Junior year when it all changed, and I'm taking college level Calculus (AB). I was afraid of that "m" word from before. I watched my classmates pencils glide with ease and purpose over their papers, as my sat still. Yet one of the times where I was staring out the window thinking about what I was missing my teacher, Ms. W (to keep her name private), came up to me and asked what I was doing. I remember being scared. I said I was thinking and she said if I needed more time to come talk to her after class. I had never done that before, never even given myself the option to ask for help, so it felt insulting to hear her say that. However that meeting changed my life. I got there, definitely sweating, and all she did was asked me how I learned best, what kind of notes did I think helped me learn. She asked to see them when I said "IDK, I just do it like everyone else" (pretty sure that's a quote). She told me that was the problem. Everyone learns differently, and maybe I need to write, draw, or solve things in my own way to understand math better. It wasn't supposed to be this one-on-one battle where a giant derivative was in my way. Ms. W had my back. I started to take notes with pictures and funny sentences that stuck in my head more for tests. I started understanding concepts, talking with peers, my pencil moved on my paper, but at different speeds and places. Ms. W, my inspiration for so many things, showed me how to love myself. It turns out that the real reason why I was afraid of math for so long was due to the limits (get it, math joke intended) (or bounds but I like limits better as a math joke) that I had put upon myself.

I loved to read. As a kid, there wasn't much to worry about other than what birthday party you attended on the weekend or the occasional summer reading book. I spent my time reading. I read every day, for every year of elementary school. I still had playdates, don't get me wrong, but since we lived so far from everyone they were few and far between. Then I found out about writing those stories that I had been reading since, well, it feels like forever. It was halfway through 4th grade, I believe, and I was at a Waldorf school. For those of you who don't know what that means, Waldorf is an art school. We had plays for every season, a knitting class, and we would learn about ancient mythologies. As many of the days before had gone, we were learning about Norse Mythology. Frey, Freya, Thor, all that good stuff. My teacher had mentioned that we couldn't prove that these people existed and that they were most likely stories told by Norse people for generations. I asked something along the lines of, "If they are just stories, why do they feel so real?". The answer was that people use their minds to create vast worlds and characters that our brains can understand. I didn't know what that meant as a kid, so I asked the next best thing to Google, my mom. She told me something that I could understand, and that was that our minds are such creative places, that sometimes we need somewhere to put all of our ideas. That sounded awesome to me, so I began to create my own story. One that was (definitely) based on a series about dragons and the different species of dragons that there were. One notebook became two, and then two became five notebooks. I became so obsessed with the idea of creating my own story about mythical things that I used it as the basis for an 8th-grade writing project. It started as a ten-page assignment for the year, however, I worked on it every day, adding a few details that relate to my own life. They made it feel more real, just like those myths I learned about before. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, every night for the next year until those ten pages became thirty. Watching as my ideas became reality made me feel important, happy, and so many other things that I can't describe. I want to prove to my younger self that I can get published. I want my characters to be evidence to other people that there are so many ways to live, and your identity is not related to how happy you could be. I want to inspire all the 4th-grade readers to become writers. This scholarship would help with that dream. I want to continue to write and be creative on my journey to my career, otherwise, I am letting my 8th-grade self down. I will finish that project, even if it means and I am 150 pages closer to that goal than before.

It's not just Chappell Roan's music that has impacted me. Of course, I love listening to it and singing along, we all do, but it also makes me feel heard. As someone who is genderqueer and part of the LGBTQ+ community, her music motivates me to stay strong and follow my passion for writing. She is what I dream of becoming, a kind and motivating person who stands up for what they think is right. I want to be someone who any kid can look up to and see themself, either career-wise or identity-wise. That's why Chappell Roan's music and career means so much to me. If she thrives, so do people like me who need a figure to fight for their human rights. Someone who understands where we are coming from and doesn't take advantage of that, and instead helps people become comfortable with who they are. I find that part the most inspiring. The fact that she creates art from her heart speaks to so many different people, as well as her attitude toward her own mental health, makes Chappell Roan one of the most generous and considerate person I know. Finding the balance between doing things for the money or for your creativity is hard, and she exemplifies what it means to be an artist through doing this.