424,000 children. Currently, there are almost half-million children of varying ages who have seen the walls of a foster home before their eighteenth birthday. I have always known that I wanted to help people, specifically children but had no idea where to start my journey. In high school, I took a class on child development and my teacher had told me about the young field of family and consumer sciences and I was captivated by the prospect of finally finding direction. I spent the next four years in college earning a Bachelor of Arts in Child Development and a second degree in Family Life Education. It wasn't until my junior year that I took my first law course; I was hooked. I felt that my path would lead me in a direction that impacted lives beyond a classroom. I wanted to be a part of enacting change within our society that has been built on less than ideal foundations. By pursuing a career in law, I will be able to aid families who face adversity in various difficult situations such as domestic violence, child abuse, and homelessness. After I have established a credible career, I want to focus most of my work on adoption and our child welfare system. Our system places a large emphasis on child removal and relocation, which, in a lot of cases, is what is necessary for the well-being of the child. However, what we fail to do is provide adequate and accessible resources for caregivers to utilize in order to take the proper steps to better themselves, and their circumstances, and eventually, lead to the reunification of the family unit. Instead, these children are left behind in the foster care system to age out into the world. I have spent a lot of time reading different testimonies and memoirs about individuals who had been adopted and it has altered my perception of it all. Do not get me wrong, adoption has the capability of being a beautiful, warm union of family. In fact, my eldest brother was adopted into a family in 1977 when my fifteen-year-old mother had no other options. That union offered him a life my parents knew they would not be able to provide; he holds strong and stable relationships with his parents and has developed a relationship with his birth parents as well. This is not to be said for each adoptee. Too many times have individuals lose touch with their culture and their family's heritage because of their adoption; this often leads to issues of sense of self and identity that last long into adulthood. Moreover, adoptive families can, sometimes unknowingly, hostile living environments for the children they've adopted. With my legal education, I will be able to offer a helping hand, legally, to those who are struggling with the circumstances they have been given. Moreover, I can work within the system to try and help reform and prevent possible harmful outcomes in the future.