As I am ending my high school career and looking forward to my future at college, I have been reflecting on how I have ended up where I am. There have been so many people in my life that believed in me and helped me succeed. At San Ramon Valley High School, I have been a part of the marching band. My freshman year, my senior year drum major, Katrina, was running auditions for the next leadership team of the band. I was very shy and was scared to put myself out there and audition, so I walked away from signing up to audition. On my way out of the door, Katrina stopped me and handed me the form. This one simple act changed my high school experience as I decided to give it a try. Her act pushed me into trying a new experience, where I was forced to lead large groups of people who were older than me and take on much more responsibility. At first it was very scary being in front of over fifty band members, and I definitely did not do well on my first days of the audition, but Katrina kept pushing me to get better. Eventually I began to gain confidence and began to socialize more with the other students. Ever since I got the role, I have spent my last four years meeting and learning about all the different members of the band, which has led to many special memories and moments that I carry with me into my future. I am so grateful for her believing in me, and seeing that I could be a good leader even when I couldn’t four years ago. Another experience that I am grateful for was taking AP Calculus with Mr. Meyer my junior year and senior year. Originally, I just signed up for calculus because it was the next level math class and I wanted to take math every single year to meet the college requirements. However, Mr Meyer’s class was the most interesting class I had ever taken at SRVHS. While the class was hard, he showed me how rewarding it was to spend time on difficult math problems when you finally got the right answer. His class structure made me enjoy doing math problems, and eventually inspired me to continue doing math in college as a data science major. Without his class and his vibrant teaching style, I would have never discovered how much I enjoy math and I never would have gone further into math in college. I am very grateful for the support of my parents throughout my life. My parents have always taught me that no matter what I do, they are and always will be proud of me. I especially felt this going into high school, when most of my friend’s parents were always pressuring them to take one more AP class or do one more extracurricular activity, my parents always said that I was enough. The way they raised me made it more meaningful when I myself decided to take AP classes or take on a challenge, as it was because I wanted to. As I am now a senior, I am grateful for all the experiences in high school that shaped me into who I am today, and I carry all the new skills and experiences I’ve gained at SRVHS into college. I did apply and get accepted to both UCLA and UC Berkeley, and I am so excited to attend UC Berkeley in the fall as a data science major.