Generational wealth, to me, means being able to live a life without excessive financial worries, and being able to help the next generation using your wealth. I want to be able to build my own generational wealth so I don't have to worry as much about money as I had to growing up, and still have to now. Currently, the biggest worry on my mind is trying to afford graduate school. My household yearly income is barely the cost of one semester, let alone a year's tuition, and the presence of generational wealth would have helped us tremendously. My parent's financial habits have influenced me my entire life, and they have always told me that I want to avoid any debt from college if at all possible. With this advice in mind, I have worked hard since high school to have any odd job I can pick up in order to try to afford the rest of my tuition that wasn't covered by my undergraduate scholarships. However, as I move to graduate school, that funding and scholarships are going away, and there are significantly less opportunities for me to receive the funding I need. Although I have been saving for years, I still do not have nearly enough to afford even one year of graduate school, and that terrifies me. Generational wealth would mean that I would have been able to get a master's degree without spending weeks sending emails and searching out any opportunity I can. to be able to afford my degree. Generational wealth would mean I wouldn't have to start considering full-time employment while slowing getting my degree. Generational wealth would mean that I didn't have to feel like I need to put my life on hold to try to finish my education. I plan to achieve generational wealth for myself in the future by using my degree(s) to get a well-paying job that will allow me to be able to save money for the future. I love and admire my parents and how much they have done for me, but I want to better myself so I don't need to live below the poverty line of income. A stable job would give me the chance to live frugally while putting money away for the future when I or future generations may need it. Generational wealth provides opportunities, and I want to see others have those opportunities that I didn't have. This scholarship would help me to be able to continue my education, and work towards being able to build generational wealth to help better myself and those who come after me.

Learning about how the world works has been a fascination of mine since early childhood, and was encouraged by my mother taking me to the local public library often. Mathematics, in my opinion, is an excellent way to help understand the world because of its many applications. Pure math can push the boundaries of human comprehension, and applied math can solve problems or explain natural phenomena. I decided to pursue mathematics because math is a systematic way of explaining my world. Mathematics has rules, and if they are followed, you get the right results that can then be analyzed to learn more. Mathematics helps both ordinary people and large companies make decisions, and it truly shapes the way we all see the world, even if we don't realize it. My degree concentration is Business Analytics, because I want to use statistics to help organizations make decisions and analyze the enormous amounts of data they gather every day. I am interested in how interpreting results can impact a business's decisions about operations, and how I can impact the world, even if it ends up being in a minimal way. I am currently looking to pursue graduate school for a Master's degree in Statistics after finishing my current B.S. Mathematics -- Business Analytics. Though I have gathered so much knowledge while working on my Bachelor's, I want to continue a bit further and give myself a specialized skillset that will make my resume stand out. Mathematics is necessary in every industry, and every company has a need for someone to handle mathematics-adjacent work. My degrees will give me the double benefits of expanding my personal knowledge of the world, and of making me a valuable asset in my future professional position. Mathematics shapes the way I view the world, and pursuing it for a career has given me even more of an appreciation for its importance. For everything I learn, there are always more questions that I ask, and more knowledge to obtain. I will continue learning and asking questions for the rest of my life, even after my formal schooling is over, but for now I want to take advantage of the resources I have available as a university student to learn the skills that will help me to push further for my personal (and professional) pursuit of answers in the future.