People say that you are only as much as what you come from. If that’s the case then like my mother I would be nothing more than a depressed, homeschooled little girl who works two jobs to make ends meet for her family because she never went to college, or like my father I would be nothing more than some kid without restrictions from his parents and who messed around in school. That’s one way to look at it. The hardships that I have faced come from my family and family relations. If people say that I am no more than what I came from then I am constantly impacted by moments in my life to better myself because I not only learn from personal experience but I learn from example. I am constantly observing and learning from other people what I don’t want to be and in doing so I know the better version of myself that I want to be. Yes, my parents have flaws, but it’s in those flaws that I learn from them to better myself. I’ve observed my parent's hardships and despite them, they are stronger people for it. I learned what was possible through their hard work. Yes, they were young, but together they made ends meet. From their hardships, I learned to be persistent, to do good in school, to put restrictions in for myself that my parents don’t, and more. I’ve been impacted by my aunt's wedding and how that affected my family. My aunt excluded my mother from being in her wedding while the other two sisters were in her wedding. From my aunt's actions I learned to be the bigger person from my mother because she sucked it up and showed up to support my aunt still. I’ve also been impacted by several health-related issues in my family stretching from diabetes to C-sections to cancer. Through these different health concerns, I’ve learned how to be a more compassionate person and more aware of others. I’ve learned to let people know that I am there for them while giving them space, but letting them know that I am thinking of them and they aren’t alone. However, because of all these health problems in my family, I have become a better version of myself by eating healthier, exercising, and improving my mental state as well as my physical state. Furthermore, I’ve been impacted by social media. As a trusting person, I have been drawn into meeting several people on Snapchat, Instagram, etc. Through these social media platforms, I have bettered myself to not be so trusting of people and find out what characteristics and morals I value in myself and others. I figured out the type of people that I wanted to surround myself with. All in all, so far the biggest impact moment of my life that has truly led me to better myself was when someone believed in me and chose me to be president of STEM club. When someone else believed in me it motivated me to be better especially because now I had people relying on me to lead them and improve the club. Sometimes all it takes to be better is the feeling of someone other than yourself believing in you and the responsibility to lead others and take care of them.

What do I plan to do after high school and what do I intend on doing after college are the same questions yet they are different: One gives an option while one gives uncertainty. College wasn’t the only option after high school. I could have gone to trade school or I could have gone straight into the workforce without accumulating debt; however, after college, there isn’t even a choice there’s only the willpower to keep going in order to do something with my life. Assuming that I get my degree, I intend to be successful and self-sufficient. Hopefully, I am a physical therapist and practically speaking paying off my student debt. I have already started taking steps toward this goal. I have taken AP courses to carry credits into college, observed a physical therapist, and more. Although, that’s not all that I plan to do after college. Most people think college is what you do after high school, but that doesn’t mean that getting a job is all you do after college. Yes I intend to get a job after college and live on my own, provide for myself, and heck maybe start a family, but after college, I intend to go deeper with myself. Throughout my whole life, I have only done what is expected of me and while I plan to go deeper with myself after college I hope to start during college. I hope to explore and break away from the pressure that has built up over the years and that I can become more of my own person. One my parents can be proud of as well as myself. There is so much that I have wanted to do but just never got the chance because my focus was always on starting my life and getting a degree to get my dream job. Once I do that I plan to travel as a physical therapist and gain more experience and expand my horizons. I plan to learn more about other cultures and how the rest of the world works. I want to learn all the struggles and hardships as well as the celebrations and happy moments of other countries. I want to offer my services as a physical therapist in other places whether that’s rehabilitating people from war current or past, or helping people of all ages that can’t afford it. I want to volunteer and help where I can. I also want to go deeper with my faith as well as learn about others' faith. I want to visit places that are important to people and learn the history behind it and why it’s significant. There is so much of the world that I don’t know about and I hear about it so much, but I only hear the highlights. I don’t hear about what it actually is and after college, I plan to do just that. I don’t plan to travel to be just another tourist, but I plan to travel so that I can put myself in other people’s shoes and see the dangers other people live along with the highlights.

Making a positive impact on the world is much like making a change in the world: It doesn’t happen overnight. In high school, in order for me to make any type of impact, I had to start integrating myself into the community. My motivation to do that came from a conversation I once heard that has stuck with me. In the conversation between two people one person said, 'I can't see my way through', and the other person replied, 'Do you see your next step?' The first person replied 'Yes' and was told by the other person, 'Then just take that'. I used to be a person who worried so much about the future, but it was out of my control. As a middle schooler, I was already worried about how to pay for college when I didn’t even know where I wanted to go or what to do. Then, I entered high school and college, worrying became more prominent; however, I was able to stop worrying about the uncontrollable. High school was when I started to integrate myself into the community by always trying things. I attempted many times for student council, and although I didn’t get elected, that didn’t stop me from joining other clubs or trying again next year. I was able to make a positive impact in other ways, such as through STEM club, where I was able to expand the minds of younger kids through STEM fields as president of the club, or through SLIC (Student Leaders Initiating Change), where I did many different things to help our community and leave an impact such as working with a group called Arbor Circle where we taught younger kids how to communicate properly, positive ways to cope with stress, and much more. Through SLIC, I was also able to help with kids food basket, hand-to-hand, the Women at Risk sale, and more. That wasn’t even the entirety of what I did to make a positive impact. I also joined Green Team, where I recycled and helped with the beach clean-up in Holland. In addition, I did many volunteering opportunities both through NHS (National Honor Society) and outside of NHS. I was able to be a student dance teacher and volunteered for school events and more. During High School, I was also able to work with our athletic trainers, where I feel I made the biggest impact and where I hope to make a big impact in the future. By working with the athletic trainers, I was able to help and look out for classmates’ health and safety during sports and other things. I was also able to observe a physical therapist, which led me to want to pursue that as a profession so that I can continue to serve and help others by hopefully making a positive impact on the world. Just like I was able to slowly integrate myself into the community of my high school and steadily make a positive impact, whether people realized it or not, I plan to do the same in college and in my profession: By taking my next step instead of worrying about the uncontrollable.

While being a women leader is less difficult in today’s world, it is still a challenge. The glass ceiling is a real thing that seems to be impenetrable. That is why we have to try little by little to achieve a greater change just like Martin Luther King Jr. did for blacks and their civil rights. That is why I start small and work my way up. It may not seem fair, but if I want to break that glass ceiling I have to go above and beyond the best male worker. For example, some ways I have demonstrated leadership have been through school clubs, volunteering, and more. This has helped me to go above and beyond by being able to handle more than the average student. I excelled academically as well as taking on many extracurriculars. In my junior and senior years, I took three AP classes as well as being involved in STEM, SLIC (Student Leaders Initiating Change), NHS (National Honor Society), Green Team, taking the independent study class with our athletic trainers, and dance through Kathy’s Dance Company. By going above and beyond I have been able to demonstrate my leadership skills by volunteering through NHS whether it was directing runners where to go during a race, or welcoming people into a middle school wrestling event. I took the initiative to get the job done by telling people where to go. I have also demonstrated my leadership skills through the STEM club where I started as a member and worked my way up to secretary and then president. As part of the STEM club, I was able to express my ideas and come up with announcements and activities to do at our next meeting. I also helped with concessions to make money for our club as well as participate in the eighth grade showcase to draw in new members and show what our club was about. Through dance, I was able to volunteer and demonstrate my capability to teach little kids how to dance. On top of that, I was able to exemplify my assertiveness while helping the athletic trainers during football season asking people what they needed so that we could get our athletes ready as quickly and efficiently as possible. Furthermore, through SLIC I have been able to delegate hand-to-hand as I got bags packed and delivered to the places they needed to go as well as go to the middle school as a part of Raise Your Voice, which was partnered with Arbor Circle, to talk to younger students about good communication skills, positive ways to cope with stress, the dangers of social media, and more. In addition to all that, I was also able to instruct how we sort the recyclables in green team guiding people in what to do. Even though there are many more ways that I have demonstrated my leadership skills through extracurriculars as well as my academics, with what I have learned by just what I have shared I hope to achieve my dream job of physical therapist with my leadership skills by being assertive with my patients, instructing my patients with what and how to do things, and more in hopes of breaking that glass ceiling.

Open, collaborative, and determined. These are characteristics I would use to describe myself. As president of STEM club my senior year, after being a member sophomore year and secretary my junior year, I’ve learned to be open. I have learned to lead by listening to other people. I have learned to accept other people’s ideas and try them out. Sometimes they work sometimes they don’t but I’m always willing to try. The beauty of being open to new ideas is it allows for inspiration and elaboration. In addition to being open, I am collaborative. STEM club is one way I’m collaborative with my peers, but so is SLIC. SLIC stands for Student Leaders Initiating Change. This club does many things for our school and community. One of my favorite things that I did with this club two years in a row was Raise Your Voice where we partnered with this group called Arbor Circle and some of us high school students would get together to create a presentation to give to the middle school students. The high schoolers went through some training and had to work together to make a fun, interactive, and knowledgeable presentation full of skits and demonstrations that talked about the importance of good communication, not doing drugs, the dangers of social media, positive coping skills for stress, and more. I am determined always to try my hardest regardless of the struggles and conflicts that arise. I am determined always to finish a task and pick up the slack where other people are unable to so that others don’t have to pay the price. For example, another activity through SLIC that I do is hand-to-hand. This is where I devote my seminar time every Thursday to pack at least twenty-five bags with food and deliver them around the school to teachers who have kids who don’t have the luxury of having food when they get home. I do this activity by myself in the hour that I have sometimes cutting into my lunch time to make sure that these kids don’t go home hungry. As you can see I like to help people and devote my time to working with my peers and volunteering. These are a few of the tasks that I do to do that. That’s why my future goals include going to college in hopes of becoming a physical therapist because I enjoy helping people in any way I can and I feel like becoming a physical therapist will keep me happy for the rest of my life with the bonus of being helpful to people, even though I may not become their favorite person over time because we all know that physical therapists can push us to our limits for rehabilitation. That is how I plan to make a positive impact on the world through my career by helping people. Some recent events have arisen in my family that have only strengthened that urge. My aunt going through a difficult labor of her first and what will be her only child after having an emergency C-section and my cousin getting in a car accident enduring yet another surgery after having surgery that caused her not to be able to play soccer in college. These events upon others have only caused me to want to help in every way possible and fulfilling the career of physical therapy will allow me to do that. I have only ever wanted to help others all my life. That is how I will positively impact the world: By rehabilitating those who are in need.

As a kid I never realized science was all around me even though I was constantly being creative in what I built or experimented with. I always wanted to build something regardless of the fact that half the time I didn't know what I was building. It wasn't until I became older that I realized and was able to grasp the concept of what science was and had to offer. During middle school I figured out I wanted to pursue a job with science because of our labs and investigations. We had a guest who was always at the front of the class every day named Bif. Bif was our classroom skelton with an elaborate backstory and one of the labs that we had to do was gather evidence by figuring out who killed Bif. We tested different inks and read different reports, almost like an FBI investigation. We had information from a few different suspects and read their alibi's. I thought it was the coolest thing ever that science could not only find proof, but also provide the opportunity to identify how Bif died. Then high school came. This provided endless opportunities as to different science fields I could investigate to see what I connected with most. All the way from geology and earth science to anatomy and chemistry plus more. Of course there were the required science classes I had to take in order to graduate: Earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics. That helped to cancel out what other science classes I would want to take by choice. Geology was a no because earth science wasn't my favorite and rocks, despite how cool the process of them forming is, it's not my passion. Chemistry was easy as was biology, and physics, I'm not sure how to explain that one, but it made lots of sense regardless of what I heard from other people. That led me to take anatomy and physiology and I fell in love. I loved dissecting and learning about all the muscles and tissues that make up our bodies. It was so interesting to me to know what our bodies are capable of and I knew that was my passion. With that class I pushed myself to be the best in that class and always learned more in and out of school. I watched videos, read articles, and prepped as much as I could and not to brag, but I had the best dissected cat in the classroom as well as helped my classmates when they were struggling by directing them, not doing it for them. However, when we moved to the internal part I cut the stomach for some of my classmates and dug out the contents because some couldn't do it. That's what led me to pursue the field of physical therapy. I knew that the anatomy and physiology of the human body already fascinated me, but I wanted a job that I could not only be happy with because it's my passion, but a job that also allowed me to maintain and pursue values that I have for myself outside of the workforce such as have a family, go to church and whatever else life has to offer. I tied my passion and love for the science of the human body with something that I am also passionate about outside of textbooks and lectures which is helping people. Knowing that I wanted to pursue the science of the human body as well as help people led me to my dream job.

I had a conversation with an influential adult in my life, and they shared that success is knowing that we overcame a challenge no matter what it looks like. With that, I realized that I completed achievements but still had successes that needed to be accomplished. I had challenges facing me academically and personally. Academically I have struggled. My transition from middle school to high school was COVID year. I had to learn to teach myself at home in many subjects, and when COVID eventually "ended," we came back to school, and it was like I had to reteach myself again how school works and how to study. Finding ways to study again was a struggle, and my grades suffered, but I persevered and eventually found my groove again, conquering what was in my way. Due to COVID hitting, the foundation of learning a new language was a mess for me. With a rough start to learning Spanish, I had to work extra hard and dedicate time to teaching myself a new language to have a better foundation for AP Spanish. However, as the years went on, I realized there was more that I missed, and it was difficult when AP Spanish came around. Learning the Spanish material was not an issue, the issue was that the teacher brought her personal issues to class. Many of the students struggled with the way the Spanish curriculum was taught. It was especially hard for me because I had this teacher as my homeroom teacher. So when the students went to the administration to get a teacher switch, I felt this unnecessary guilt and responsibility that I put on myself when I didn't need to. Eventually, I realized that it was necessary for my education or else I wouldn't be prepared for the AP exam. Conclusively it was more wasted time in my Spanish education that I had to once again self-teach myself while balancing my busy schedule and dealing with all the drama. Yet I persevered and it became another challenge I overcame. Personally, I've had my own goals that I have set for myself and need to achieve. I want to be a better sister, daughter, and granddaughter. I want to be the person that people can rely on and feel they can talk to. It hasn't been easy, especially considering the family health problems, concerns, and drama that I had to deal with. Recently I have found out that a family member has stage three lung cancer. Surgery is not an option so chemo and radiation are the routes that have to be taken. This on top of two other family members who have cancer, my grandma with macular degeneration, my aunt having a miscarriage, and other health problems we are facing in the family is very stressful on top of trying to maintain my life and stay focused. It's hard when all I can do is sit and wait for answers, but I have to keep going and trust that it will be okay in the end, so I keep pushing through. Not to mention the family drama I've had to face over the years has put me in an uncomfortable position to be the mediator in the family between my aunt, my grandparents, and my parents. Ever since my mom, the only sister out of three, was excluded from being in my aunt's wedding, I've been put in a position to hear disrespectful things about my parents as my family members accuse them of holding a grudge and making excuses so they don't have to be around them when my family is the ones that have expressed many times that they don't want to be around my mom. While that may have some truth, there's no reason for my family to treat us how they do and vice versa. It's hard for me too because my grandma is a schemer and always trying to get people together and forcing us to do things that no one wants and getting into business that she needs to stay out of that she doesn't understand, and she uses me to do it. Regardless, my perseverance is my success in making it through these hardships. Altogether success for me varies, and it's different for everyone and always changing. Today's challenge differs from tomorrow's and my success is ever changing. This opportunity will help me succeed so I can make my parents proud and become a physical therapist.

High school was a struggle for me. Not because of school itself, but because of my home life. My high school experience didn't start great because that was COVID. My first year of high school being a freshman and it was hard to meet new people because I had to social distance, and keep a mask on 24/7 so it was hard for people to hear me and it made me feel embarrassed because people constantly asked me to speak up, not to mention I couldn't do after school activities or any group projects and quarantining kept my friends away. As if high school wasn't hard enough, this was the time for me to become a teenager and find my identity and who I wanted to be, especially after high school. In doing so I learned things about myself that I did and didn't and about my family. I was able to observe more and realize the personalities that existed in my family. My grandma was the gossip queen, my cousin was self-centered, my aunt was unreliable, and the family drama was endless. Not to mention there were constant family health problems stacked on top of that. I love my family, but becoming older and a more mature person I became more aware of the problems of life and society, some of which are struggles that I will be facing soon, and I realized that life isn't all cushiony and sunshine and rainbows. I wasn't sure what was and wasn't okay anymore and what I could and couldn't talk about so I internalized so much and took the weight of everything on my shoulders like everything depended on me. It ate me up inside because I held everything in and I had no outlet. That's why I am so deeply grateful for my AP Macroeconomics teacher. I was always so stressed in his class because he randomly called on people for answers and I was so terrible at his class so whenever he did this it made my anxiety spike. That's what led me to talk with him and he offered to do signals if I'm comfortable answering or not and I told him that I would suck it up. Then we had a long talk and I dumped everything on him about my life and how I'm struggling to manage the hard classes I chose on top of the stress of my home life. It was easy to tell him because he seemed to have shared common values with my family, so it was easy to talk to him. He told me something that stuck with me and continues to drive my decisions so that I'm thinking about myself and not making every decision for someone else and disregarding myself. He told me that it's my world and everyone is living in it. That was such a different perspective for me to see the world compared to how I was viewing it and it allowed me to start making decisions for myself in a way that I could figure out who I truly was and what I wanted.

Open, collaborative, and determined. These are characteristics I would use to describe myself. As president of STEM club my senior year, after being a member sophomore year and secretary my junior year, I've learned to be open. I have learned to lead by listening to other people. When we go to build whatever we are building that day, I have learned to listen to other people's ideas. Sometimes they work out sometimes they don't but I'm always willing to try and the beauty of being open to new ideas is it allows for inspiration and elaboration. In addition to being open, I am collaborative. STEM club is one way I'm collaborative with my peers, but so is SLIC. SLIC stands for Student Leaders Initiating Change. This club does many things for our school and community. One of my favorite things that I did with this club two years in a row was Raise Your Voice where we partnered with this group called Arbor Circle and some of us high school students would get together to create a presentation to give to the middle school students. The high schoolers went through some training and had to work together to make a fun, interactive, and knowledgeable presentation full of skits and demonstrations that talked about the importance of good communication, not doing drugs, the dangers of social media, positive coping skills for stress, and more. I am determined always to try my hardest regardless of the struggles and conflicts that arise. I am determined always to finish a task and pick up the slack where other people are unable to so that others don't have to pay the price. For example, another activity through SLIC that I do is hand-to-hand. This is where I devote my seminar time every Thursday to pack at least twenty-five bags with food and deliver them around the school to teachers who have kids who don't have the luxury of having food when they get home. No one else does this activity so I do it by myself in the hour that I have sometimes cutting into my lunch time to make sure that these kids don't go home hungry. This scholarship will help me to reduce the cost of college and my stress. I am always so focused on the what-if situations and what will happen in the future. This scholarship will help me not only to achieve my goal of becoming a physical therapist to continue to help others but also to keep me focused solely on helping others so that I'm not stressing about the debt I will have to pay off. I want my main focus to be on helping others and becoming a physical therapist so that I can encourage others to keep going and I can help the next all-star athlete, or the next president of the United States, or even the next genius kid that could potentially solve world hunger.

To be anything other than a full-time student is hard. That's why I appreciate my sport because I have learned to balance more than what I thought I was capable of. I have been a tap dancer since I was three years old and have stayed with it. In doing so, I've learned how to balance more than I thought I was ever capable of and the importance of dedication, commitment, and time management. I have also learned how to push myself up to and past my limits as well as out of my comfort zone. In addition to that I now know how to pick myself up and push through. I've learned the importance of failing and what true success looks like. I don't take things for granted and challenge myself because an important lesson I learned in dance is that nothing comes easy even if it seems that way. That's something I took time to learn because, in dance, even going back to the basics is hard. I became so advanced and when I couldn't get the basic stuff it would make me mad because I knew I could accomplish it. So I learned to rewind and take things slowly, one step at a time. Checklists became my friend and I would make one for everything because it made me realize what I could do and accomplish. Being a student-athlete taught me how to be a team player. I learned to listen to what was around me to be part of the group. It also taught me how to be independent and focused. As a dancer, while on stage, if something happens like my shoe falls off or I mess up, I have to keep dancing, there's no restarts. In the last four years of dance, I became a soloist. The first time I went on stage alone it was scary. The only thing I could see was the bright lights and the front of the stage. The audience was pitch black and my adrenaline was high. I had to learn to calm myself down and listen to my music so that I wasn't tapping faster than my music. In my last three years of dance, I was an assistant teacher, occasionally taking over the class and teaching like it was my own. That's when I developed more of my leadership skills. That's what I have learned from dance and all those skills are going to help me with my future career. Dance has been a big part of my life, but because of dance, so has music. Dance has helped me find ways to decompress and find healthy ways to handle stress. Listening to music is one of those ways. It helps me hang loose and clear my mind. Music has been an outlet for me and helped my creative side. Music has been a gateway for me to live my life in the now instead of constantly worrying about the future. Music has built my creative side up and I enjoyed painting and drawing. I also enjoy volunteering and helping people out. I like to spend my time on others rather than myself. I also enjoy being active outside. I like to bike, hike, swim, go to the beach, spend time on the boat, climb dunes, play pickleball, kayak, paddle board, camp, and so much more. Being a student-athlete has given me a broader perspective on life and allowed me to appreciate what life has to offer.

Have you ever wanted something so badly but it was unreachable because of the cost so you didn't go for it? Well, then you didn't want it badly enough. There are always ways to get what you want and not going for it due to the cost means giving up without even trying. I'm not like that. College is something that I want. I'm not going to college for the purpose of partying or getting the "college experience". I'm going because I know what I want to do with my life. For once I have a sense of direction of where I want my life to go. I want to be a physical therapist. I want to help people. I want to be the annoying voice in your head that tells you to keep going even when it seems impossible. I want to make sure that what is unreachable is attained because it's possible. This scholarship will affect me by making my goals obtainable. It will benefit my future so that I can come out with less debt no matter how small the impact every little bit counts. College nowadays is expensive. yes, as some would say I'm a white privileged teenage girl. I may be white and privileged, but it doesn't feel that way. I'm not Hispanic, I'm not a first-generation college student, and I'm also not from a totally poor family. I feel terrible saying that but every scholarship that I pass that is specific to a first-generation student or someone who identifies as LGBTQ is money I miss out on for my future because I don't meet those requirements. Suddenly I don't feel as if I'm the white privileged teenage girl society classifies me as. I may not be any of those things that limit my scholarship pool and money available to me to make my dreams come true. I am, however, on my own: I am paying for college by myself. Everything from here on out is on my bill. That's why I am applying to scholarships like crazy because that is my way of attaining what is unreachable. I'm going to work hard to make sure I get what I want and what I deserve. That's how this scholarship can benefit my future by making my goals a little more attainable. I'm going to live my life and have fun. I'm not going to be a workaholic, but I'm not going to throw money away in college for the purpose of messing around. I'm going to make sure that fun doesn't derail me or make me lose focus. I'm going to make sure that the insanely overpriced education I'm receiving is worth my time and effort to not just get me what I want so badly, but to make sure that I get the dream job I've been thinking about non-stop is achievable. This scholarship will help me achieve my goal faster so I'm not paying off debt till my last breath on this earth.

Blood, sweat, and tears. That's how people describe their sport. If I was average, that's how I would describe mine. Unfortunately, I'm not average. Yes, it's included, but dance is a performance: It's putting on a show and telling a story with more than words. I channel my soul, thoughts, feelings, and emotions into something beautiful. Dance, in my book, has always been an acronym. "D" for determination, "A" for admiration, "N" for novel, "C" for confidence, and "E" for exuberance. This sport has pushed me out of my comfort zone, tested me, developed me, helped me, got me through life, made me cry, made me laugh, and so much more. Dance, as far back as I can remember, has always been part of my life. It's been my stable ground. The minute I was three years old, my mom put me into a dance class, and I have been doing it ever since. I am now 18 years old and have no regrets except wish I had taken more dance classes because I couldn't get enough. Dance has kept my head above water because when I am having doubts about myself I have something to turn to that can boost my confidence. After all, it's something I know I can do and something I know I can do well. It helps me to rewind, to stop stressing. It makes me take a step back and relax allowing me to look at things from a different perspective or giving me a break. It's my one step back before my two steps forward. There's nothing to describe the feeling of stepping on stage with the bright lights on me knowing that there are hundreds of pairs of eyes on me, but I don't care because I know what I'm doing. The lights make it feel like it's just me, the stage, and the music. My feet blend with the music as if they were the music while my heart pounds along with them from the adrenaline rush which I had to learn how to control in order to give the best performance possible. When I tell people that I do dance they always assume ballet, jazz, or hip hop, but I'm an outlier. I do the more unusual type of dance that doesn't come to mind. No, it's not contemporary, no, it's not lyrical, but rather tap. I'm a tap dancer. Dance has made me realize and appreciate so much: music, timing, sounds, instruments, tempo, counting, meaning, etc. Music has always spoken to me differently than everyone else. As a dancer, a tap dancer especially, it's a whole separate language. Let me tell you that music, as its own language, results in dance becoming a conversation between my body, the music, and my feet. I listen to the words for specific moves and the beat tells me when it's okay to move. Yes, it's blood, sweat, and tears, but it's also how I decompress and how I challenge myself. It may be something I know how to do well, but that doesn't mean that I turn to it for the purpose of it being easy. I tend to push myself even in my comfort zone. There's always room for improvement. Just because I danced on stage and received an encore doesn't mean that it was perfect. There's no such thing as perfect. There are bits and pieces, maybe unrecognizable to anyone but me, that I can improve. Dance is my stability, it's been my life and still is. It's not just something I do, it's something I am.

It's heart-wrenching, overtaking, and disappointing. Too much in the world goes unnoticed, the misfits trying to be themselves. A Walk to Remember would be the only movie I would need to watch for the rest of my life. A Walk to Remember prompts me to be human. Be me in my religion, my personality, my warpedness, and my sickness. Be me with my person, life-long partner, family, and friends. No matter what obstacles land in my way, I need to be me. In A Walk to Remember the main character, Jamie, is a girl who is ill, but that doesn't stop her from living as normal of a life as you and me. Her sickness only amplified her personality and changed her for the better. She impacted many lives. That's what I must recall when I am thrown lemons and expected to make lemonade. No matter what is going on, life is still lived and it must go on. Time won't cease, days will still pass, and you will still age with each passing day. It's like a timer on a bomb. Furthermore, Jamie was herself even when others made fun of her "old school" outfits or made fun of the fact that she was the golden girl, a suck-up, a goodie-two-shoes, or a preacher's daughter who was pure. Like Jamie, I need to be me when I'm at home and my parents pick at me trying to influence my decisions or change them entirely, or when my younger sister makes me feel inferior when there's no need for me to be. The way Jamie never let anyone's opinion ruin her is how I've perpetually wanted to spend my life. For the past couple of years, I have focused on what I want, who I want to be, and making time for myself, and in doing so I've happened to live my life the way I've constantly wanted. In the past year, I grew up. I've figured out what I want and I'm not going to stop until I obtain it because I'm committed to making a self-sufficient life for myself. Even though Jamie was terminally ill, she never used that fact to her advantage. She was as capable as anyone in making a life for herself; no excuses. She was a smart and observant person separating the different types of people she was inside herself as if she were a double agent. Just as Jamie was observant, I've learned by example throughout my life. In doing so, I've found the type of person I don't want to be from the women in my life, but I've learned the person I want to be from the men in my life. The women have struggled with existing too emotionally and in today's world you can't be an emotional hazard. The men have boundaries; they know the line between personal and business and don't intertwine them. I'm not a hazard and I'm not a liability. I'm an asset and a valuable resource. Moreover, Jamie repeatedly took her time even though her time was running out. While others may rush to their destination, I take the time to get there safely and thoroughly living my life the way life should be lived.