My experience as a daughter of a veteran has shaped my viewpoints of the world, and my passion for the environment. Throughout my childhood my dad was often deployed, leaving my mother to care for two young, rowdy children. She, tired and stressed about our dad, often sent us outside to play by ourselves, leaving us to our own devices. Me and my brother entertained ourselves, creating elaborate worlds and exploring the world around us. It was this freedom, this exploration that helped to cultivate my intense love for the environment, becoming the foundation of my beliefs and passions. As I got older, I began to understand more and more of what my father faced overseas, the history, complexity, and danger of it all. The stress I faced, the wondering of if this might be the last time I get to hug my dad, the nightmares that came when contact became sparse, it all came together, formulating my worldview, taking my passion for the environment and turning it into something more. I became interested in the history of it all, wars and peace, and the impacts of war, not just on people but also on the environment. Being the daughter of a veteran, growing up with my father, overseas, in an active war-zone, shaped who I am today. It is because of the impacts of him being deployed that I found and cultivated my passions in life. Though I would have much rather had my dad at home throughout my childhood, I don’t mind the person it has made me. It is because of this experience that I have found my aspiration in life, a passion for my future, and a career to pursue.

1. I deserve this scholarship because I would like to go on to pursue a career in world domination. In order to achieve this, financial aid is much needed, as funding for my army of evil minions has taken up all of my money, and as such I am currently swamped with millions of dollars in debt. 2. As mentioned, my goal is to achieve world domination, however first I must purse a degree in leadership and business in order to figure out how to NOT go into any more debt. My minions count on me and I must learn how to successfully and fairly rule not only them but also the world. 3. A major obstacle I overcame was making friends, aka minions. There was a time, believe it or not, that my minions were not in fact mine. I first had to learn the social skills, or shall I say cohesion and blackmail skills, to be able to accumulate such a large volume of faithful followers.

The high school I attend is very high stress environment. As a magnet school, it prides itself on it test scores, and because of this prioritizes said test scores over its students mental health. My school encourages students to enter high stress situations and to put schooling first above all else, as such this has resulted in most of the students having some sort of mental health issue or disorder. Coupled with the stressful and harsh environments offered in workplaces, there are many avenues that need to be explored in order to help those that struggle with mental health. A practical solution to help those that struggle with mental health would be to make mental health programs more available, especially in the workplace and in schools. Workplaces often over work employees, treat them poorly, have poor work conditions, etc. that add to their inhospitable environment. Such a hostile environment is detrimental to the mental health of employees, therefore making mental health programs, like counseling, psychiatry, and mental health services imperative to helping employees that struggle with mental health. For schools, they are too detrimental to students mental health, offering high stress situations. In schools, better, more available counseling services would help students to learn coping skills and ways to reduce stress and anxiety. Such programs, if instated (or if had been instated) would have greatly help my mental health, allowing me to live a healthier more stress free life. These programs could also help curb the occurrence of suicides, especially those in schools, as they offer support and intervention for those individuals.