Having spent my entire life in Fernley all of the technical skills that I have can be attributed to the town in one way or another. Because of this, I try to give back to the town by using these skills as best I can to either directly help the community or represent the community well. This can be seen across all of my extracurriculars, but specifically band, VITA, and academic team. I started playing the tuba in eighth grade as a student at Silverland Middle School. In the time since starting I have had the honor to represent Fernley at 4 Regional honor bands, 1 All-State band, and 1 Small Schools All-State band. On top of those achievements, I was blessed to be a student leader in the Fernley High School Marching Band 3 out of my 4 years in high school, and during this time I have been able to help my younger classmates be better musicians and better members of the FHS band. A more direct example of my community service efforts is seen through my involvement in the VITA program. VITA stands for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, and it is a nationwide federal program sponsored by the IRS aimed at providing free tax preparation for communities in need. I joined the program my sophomore year of high school because it was run by my accounting teacher and she was in need of more student volunteers. My first year was particularly stressful as I had to cram a significant amount of tax law into my very young mind, but in the end I was able to make it through the full tax season with zero rejected returns. In the following years I joined the program as the student manager, which just meant I was forced to do all of the hard returns. In my second year I not only prepared more returns, but did so without recording a single error or rejected return. The trend continued into this, my senior year of high school, as I was once again the student manager and finished my third and final tax season without ever having a return rejected. As a testament to the success our program has seen, just this past month my fellow volunteers and I were invited to present to the Lyon County Board of County Commissioners to share our program's story with the rest of the county. I feel my commitment to the town of Fernley is best reflected in my time on the Fernley High School Academic Team. Academic Team is an activity run through the school that operates in a very similar manner to any sports team, but instead of physical activity we compete with other schools in an academic trivia style format. FIS, SMS, and FHS all have teams, though FIS and SMS compete on the middle school circuit, and I am fortunate enough to have been a member on each of these teams. During my time in high school I have been team captain for 3 seasons, and in these seasons I am proud to say that I have led our team to Regionals 3 years in a row. I bring this up as a testament to my fierce competitive spirit and Fernley pride. I was not physically gifted enough to bring success to Fernley's athletic programs, so instead I contributed in the way I was personally best equipped, and that took the form of being our academic team's leading scorer from sophomore through senior year. All this is to say, this city and community has taught me the importance of hard work, and the importance of giving everything I have to accomplish my dreams. I want to be a mechanical engineer who one day designs something that changes the world, and I can say with one hundred percent certainty that I would not be able to write that sentence without the influence of this town. My time in band taught me the importance of practice and leadership. My time in VITA taught me the importance of being thorough and helping whoever you can. My time on the academic team taught me to have confidence in who I am and the impact that only I can make. All of these lessons fundamentally shaped my character, and they are the reason I have any dreams or aspirations at all. Without this community I would be nobody, but because I have this community I am able to feel like somebody.