“You are never too young, young girl!” Although the way a regional advisor emphasized the “too young” as they said this to me was a bit tacky this has got to be the most straightforward and best piece of financial advice I've ever received. The way this applied to me was that I wasn't aware you could apply to certain scholarships even before getting into high school. However, these words are an art of their own. Taken for any type of financial situation is beneficial, such as why start saving tomorrow when you can start today?

Frankly, I didn't even know how to start this essay. Now don't stop reading, I just had to get that off my chest real quick. I use creativity to figure out ways to tackle issues I have. As someone who doesn't necessarily consider themselves the most creative, I find that preparation is what helps spark the creativity that I lack. When coming across this prompt I couldn't pinpoint an aspect in my life that seemed creative and so on a separate paper I started planning my ideas. Although I didn't follow through with any of these ideas, it made me realize that there is creative thinking in my life due to step-by-step planning. Obviously, this doesn't only apply to writing this prompt but honestly, it's a great example because it represents the fact that preparation led to being able to complete the task at hand. Creativity is like a child, it simply follows its own rules, and not being able to figure out why it's crying might stress you out. Even when I'm not feeling the most creative I can always calm down and plan out how I'm going to tackle a certain situation. Now, this doesn't mean you should go ahead and tackle a child but if you don't know how to go about dealing with a kid it's most likely all you need is to step back for a bit and think about why it might be crying.

Coming from a Mexican household , being a Texan means opportunity. I truly believe having the ability to study in the United States is already a blessing. Seeing the growing diversity is incredible to me.Personally, I want to continue furthering diversity by academic advising. Not only as a career goal but also just because I was given the opportunity to get this education and I want to see others who have similar stories rise up. At the moment this is a mere dream;I will continue to nourish this dream through hard work. My dreams are big of course, but what can I say...everything IS bigger in Texas.

Putting my free time into something that matters has always been significant to me. As a minority, I put priority in helping underrepresented groups on my free time.I truly enjoy the community service I form part in because it has demonstrated that just anybody is able to make a great impact on other people's life's. Just today my family and I had the opportunity to help a family who's kid was born disabled. Unable to give too much economical help, we collected the donations our church gives in order to provide his family with food for the week.Being part of a supportive community is great because we get to have experiences that makes us better as a person.

First of all, greetings. Who am I you ask? To the eye, I am a 5’1 Latina, with big eyes and curly hair. To my family, I am a golden ticket, an opportunity that is. I am someone who takes great pride in the effort I put in to helping others, a volunteer. Personally, however, I consider myself a dreamer.I am the future, and with hard work,a future teacher. Although fulfilling dreams is remarkable I am someone who instead looks forward to guiding others closer to their dreams.This is farewell, but I hope we meet again, maybe in a classroom.

It might be kind of obvious and cliché but the woman I most admire is my mom.Ive always looked up how strong and determined she has been throughout.Even though someone may appear to have it easy at the moment,you never know what they had to face in the past. Coming from Mexico she had to work a lot in order for me to be able to get an education in the United States.Her high school years were significant in her own education and were also some of the hardest years for her.Her high school, Ilustre Instituto Veracruzano was around 17 miles away,a 40 minute bus drive,or a two hour walk.Taking the bus was a privilege however , because there was days she couldn't afford to buy a lunch and pay for the bus so she had to chose between the two.The buses themselves weren’t so safe, at times they were completely crowded and the fast stops sometimes took her by surprise.Anyways, I am sympathetic to her situation because I also have to travel a long distance to get to school every day. In addition,the classes got considerably harder, and less and less students showed up because of different circumstances .By her generation’s second year of high school around one fourth of the students had already dropped out. Looking around the room to see less and less kids each year was “ really discouraging “.With her never ending persistency and her goal to strive in life, she managed to not take notice in her class' lowering attendance. Neverthless, she managed to finish high school and the rest of her life choices proved to me that I had to work hard in order to get somewhere and that education was a big part of success. As of today, we still live in Mexico but because of her sacrifices I am able to study in the US and am a born citizen.Obviously, her work has inspired me to follow right behind her and although I don't think I can ever make such an impact in someone's life I long for making her proud. Therefore, my plan is to go to college as a first generation student and form my own story about how i had to cross the border to go to school everyday , and be able to make my own kids proud.As of my career goals, honestly, I am still super indecisive because I want to do something that will have a huge impact to be able to be of use to more than one person.I will always take into consideration my mom's hard work whenever I am applying myself to a task, and because of this I am sure i will thrive in life.

My name is Valerie, but I have been called val for like nine tenths of my life.My Mexican parents decided to go with that because the word "valiente" in Spanish which means brave, also starts with the 3 letters that represent me. Personally, I never thought I could live up to their expectations, seeing as I've always been a small, shy girl.However,the one thing I always can guide myself around is God.My whole family and I are strong community servers of our local church, but recently i formed a strong will of doing more. With covid-19 negatively affecting most of these communities' churches Ive held a strong hand towards spreading help towards what otherwise , the church groups would do.Stepping up to read god's reading has been one of the most eye opening experiences because not only was I able to break out of my shell, but also I am so proud of myself for spreading such beautiful words to others. Getting to see the world from another perspective has shown to be completely worth it.All in all, I urge everyone to look out for their community , as we are in times of much need and i'm sure your local church wouldn't mind an extra hand!As for giving back to the community myself, I plan to spread awareness about the difficulties that covid-19 has had on churches as to recruit as many helping hands as I possibly can.

I've always wondered what I could do differently to: become better.That had always been the one and only goal I had set for myself.What exactly did I mean by "becoming better"?Honestly, going back on it, I had the wrong vision towards my path to becoming better. When thinking of a better future,I never had the one important change that could actually make my whole life better,Jesus.Growing up I was an active church member on my community.However, as the years went by and other stuff got in the way I was unable to actually be of service to Jesus. Quarantine has definitely been a bummer for many people.Personally though, I am very happy with the one thing that I did manage to do which was to connect with Jesus again.Over the course of this pandemic i've gave a lot of thought into my community hours , since it's not easy to volunteer with all the covid procedures. Seeing as I hadn't been with Jesus for so long I acknowledge that everything was awfully stressful and chaotic for me. Thankfully, but also unfortunately my local church was in a lot of community need , making me the perfect fit for the job.I am forever thankful for the opportunity to come back to my actual happy place and i urge everyone to think about the fact that maybe their church needs it as much as mine did.

Earl Nightingale once said,"Everything begins with an idea".The quote itself, like many others can be interpreted differently based on the reader.However, this quote has managed to grow on me, since the first day I encountered it. I used to be very laid back when it came to school ; beginning freshmen year all my goals were just to get through the year. Later in the year, I came across this quote on my English || class. Although I obviously can't completely credit the quote itself for changing my mentality, I do acknowledge that it was a huge game changer for me.The quote made me realize that I wouldn't get anywhere if I never thought of an idea of how to get there.All of a sudden, all I could think about was: what I could do to become better, or what idea I could come up with to start something big. With that said, the most obvious thing for me as a first year high school student was to pursue higher grades on my classes, find extracurriculars, and get involved with my community.All of these would eventually go together for my main goal, making getting to college a reality.With the quote's constant reminder that you have to start somewhere, but also a lot of hard work, countless study nights, tears, and regular chats with my teachers about what I could be doing better, I can honestly say i'm at a better place than where I started. In all sincerity, I know that if I had not read Nightingale's quote, I probably wouldn't be the same.All the goods that are currently proving that the actions leading to my goal are completely worth it , would all be insignificant to the person I was before getting the idea to improve.I honestly believe everyone would benefit from a sudden idea , if they decided to actually pursue it of course.I urge everyone to take their motivations seriously, seeing as this could build up to making them a better person.

Seeing as he only responds to "Haku" it's pretty funny I still expect him to come to me when i say buddy.Truth is I fully think of him as my bestie. Quarantine has been a bummer for many but fortunately me and Haku have had plenty of adventures(of course only one of us can put it in words).You can go to @valerie.770 to see me,the owner(he's behind the camera in most pictures).Of course i had to take him to Veracruz,Mexico with me ,turns out he's a great travel partner.It's truly beautiful to see him grow so fast.