On May 30, 2020, my five-year plan disappeared. Following a family emergency, I took my sister-in-law into my home. Overnight, I became a caregiver, case manager, advocate, crisis coordinator, and so much more. I learned how to navigate medical systems, disability services, benefit programs, legal documents, and emergencies that I’d never imagined facing. College wasn’t part of the plan. Survival. That was the horizon I set my sights on. My sister-in-law lives with multiple disabilities and requires extensive support. Helping became a bigger verb than I recognized, and new responsibilities reshaped every aspect of my life. My current days are almost unrecognizable to a previous version of myself. They revolve around appointments, paperwork, supervision, and making sure she remains safe and healthy. Like many caregivers, I often push personal goals and dreams aside. Education was one of those. A “someday.” A “maybe.” As the years passed, caregiver burnout settled in. I realized that if I spent the rest of my life only surviving, I’d keep missing parts of myself. “Someday” had arrived without my consent. I experienced how difficult it can be for families to find services and how often people with complex needs are excluded or underserved by programs. It often depends on a caregiver’s ability to navigate systems that seem designed to overwhelm. I also learned that my experiences have value. The knowledge I’ve gained through caregiving has been hard-earned, no doubt about that, but it also taught me lessons no textbook could ever teach. Returning to college in my forties was intimidating. I’m a first-generation student from a low-income background. I had no roadmap. There was nobody to show me the way. I returned after nearly twenty years away from school, all while continuing my caregiving responsibilities at home. Every class required balancing assignments with appointments, care coordination, and the unpredictable realities of supporting someone who relies on me to keep her world steady. Financially, the decision meant sacrifices. I reduced work hours to make time for school and absorbed additional expenses related to technology and extra caregiving needs. There are days when the challenges still feel overwhelming, but higher education represents something bigger than a degree. It’s an opportunity to transform my experiences into meaningful community impact. Last week, I completed three AA degrees at Coastline College. I’m preparing to transfer to CSU East Bay to study Human Development with a concentration in adulthood and gerontology this Fall. My long-term goal is to help create better programs and services for adults with disabilities and their families. Too often, people with complex needs are excluded because they require extra support. I want to help build systems that make inclusion possible and real. Returning to school changed something I didn’t expect. For years, I thought of myself as “only a caregiver.” In discussions and assignments, I realized that many of the lessons I’d learned through caregiving held their value well beyond my own front door. I could connect real experiences to larger conversations about aging, disability, access, and support systems. Instead of simply reacting to problems, I started thinking about how problems might be solved. That helped me see a future beyond daily survival. The challenges that brought me back to school are the same ones that keep me moving forward. I can’t change the difficulties my family has faced. On May 30, 2020, my five-year plan disappeared. I never would’ve chosen the path that followed, but it taught me who I am and where I belong. I hope to use what I’ve learned to strengthen my community.

I am a first-generation, low-income student returning to college after twenty years away. My days start early and end late. I help an adult with intellectual and developmental disabilities get dressed, eat, move safely, and feel calm, then I sit down at my desk to read, write, and log into class. In between medications, appointments, and behaviors, I squeeze in quizzes and discussion posts. It is a lot to carry, but higher education is the clearest path I have to build a more stable future for my family, my body, and the community I care about most. I am a full-time caregiver and conservator for an adult with autism, Down syndrome, Alzheimer’s, blindness, and significant medical and behavioral needs. She cannot be left alone. I assist with every part of her daily life. I purée food and spoon-feed her, change her diapers, and manage self-injurious behavior when it escalates. At the same time, I am raising two children and managing our household. Because my caregiving income is modest, anything extra, like textbooks or a laptop, often feels out of reach. I have to plan every purchase carefully. There is no extended family safety net if something goes wrong. My personal and financial challenges overlap. My own chronic illnesses cause pain and fatigue, so I need an ergonomic chair, proper desk setup, and technology that will not crash during exams. Since I must complete my degrees online in order to stay home with the person I care for, reliable devices, internet, and software are not optional. They are my classroom. When money is tight, I am tempted to drop to part time so I can work more hours, but that would delay my transfer and keep me in the same unstable position for longer. Even with these barriers, I have stayed committed to my studies in the social and behavioral sciences and human development. The humanities give me language for what I live every day. Through sociology, psychology, and human services courses, I am learning how systems either support or fail families like mine. Good professors have shown me how powerful teaching, writing, and advocacy can be in changing those systems. Their encouragement and belief in me keep me pushing through long nights of reading and writing, even when I am exhausted from caregiving. My long-term goal is to open an Adult Day Program for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, focusing on those whose needs are considered “too difficult” for existing programs. I want to create a place where participants have meaningful routines, sensory-safe spaces, and community inclusion. A place where families can trust that their loved ones are respected and understood. My experience as a caregiver is important, but I also need the academic foundation to design ethical, effective, person-centered programs and to advocate for policy changes that protect vulnerable adults. This scholarship would ease the financial pressure that sits underneath everything I do. It would help cover tuition, textbooks, and basic technology, so I do not have to choose between a working computer and other essentials for my family. Most importantly, it would allow me to stay enrolled full time and transfer on schedule to complete my bachelor’s degree without guilt. I am determined to turn the challenges my family faces into better options for other families. With support, I can keep moving toward that goal and honor the spirit of incredible educators like Sharon L. Smartt by using my education to open doors for others.

I did not return to school because life finally became calm. I returned because it didn’t, and I needed a way to build a future that could hold everything I carry. I spent years as a caregiver for an adult with autism, Down syndrome, blindness, and dementia. Her needs are constant, unpredictable, and often exhausting. My own health issues, including hEDS and psoriatic arthritis, added another layer of difficulty. For a long time, it felt easier to put my dreams aside and focus only on survival. Going back to school felt too big, too complicated, and too far away from the life I was living. What gave me courage was the day I realized that caregiving alone could not create the long-term stability my family needs. I wanted a future where I could support the person I care for, protect my own health, and build something meaningful. I wanted a second career that did not depend on my body’s strength, but on my experience, compassion, and leadership. That realization pushed me forward. I wanted options. I wanted dignity for both of us. I wanted something more than getting through the day. The moment that changed everything happened quietly. I was helping her through a difficult morning. She was overwhelmed and frustrated, and nothing I did seemed to work. Hours later, she finally leaned her head on my shoulder and fell asleep. She rarely accepts touch, but that day she chose me. As she rested, I understood something important. She trusts me with her entire world. If she can give me that trust, I can give myself courage. That moment reminded me that caregiving is not just responsibility. It is purpose. It is a calling. It is the reason I needed to grow. Going back to school felt less frightening once I connected it to her future. I realized that the gaps I see in disability services are not going to fix themselves. Existing programs do not serve adults like her. They do not provide enough support for people with complex needs or those who decline with age. My experience as a caregiver gives me a unique perspective, and returning to school allows me to turn that perspective into real change. Building an Adult Day Program designed around dignity, sensory safety, and meaningful activity is not just a dream. It is the direction my life has been pointing me toward for years. Courage, for me, is not loud. It is not a dramatic turning point. It is choosing to log into my classes when I am tired. It is trusting that I can still learn after years away from school. It is believing that my lived experience is valuable. It is understanding that my future can be larger than my past. I went back to school because I want the people I care for to have better options. I want my children to see what resilience looks like; I want to teach them to keep reaching for bigger dreams. Most of all, I want a life where my purpose and my education meet in the middle. Returning to school is the bravest decision I have made, and it is the one that will shape everything that comes next.

Being a first-generation college student influences my career goals in every possible way. I grew up without academic support at home, and there was no one who could guide me or show me how college worked. My mother was naturally intelligent, but she passed away young. After that, I was raised by my father, who was harsh, judgmental, and quick to punish struggle instead of helping me through it. School became something I had to navigate alone. There were no conversations about majors, no encouragement, and no understanding of how education could shape a future. That lack of support stayed with me for years and shaped the way I learned and the way I saw myself. Because I never had guidance, I entered adulthood without a clear direction. Much of my time was spent caring for family members, including my grandmother. In 2020, I became the full-time caregiver for an adult with autism, Down syndrome, blindness, and dementia. Caring for her changed my view of what people with disabilities deserve. I saw the gaps in existing programs, the limited engagement, and the lack of environments that truly understand complex needs. I also realized how much compassion and stability matter, especially for those who cannot always express what they need. Returning to college allowed me to turn my lived experience into a meaningful career path. Being first-generation means I am building something my family never had. My education is not only a chance to improve my own life. It is the foundation for creating an Adult Day Program that is safe, supportive, and designed to meet the needs of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I want to develop a place that treats people with respect and gives them meaningful days, not just supervision. My first-generation experience pushed me to become resourceful, determined, and independent. Those traits now shape my academic goals and the future I want to build. I am working toward degrees that will allow me to create long-term change for families like mine and for adults who deserve better care. Education is giving me the tools to build what I needed growing up: support, direction, and a future with purpose.

I am a non-traditional student, a full-time caregiver, and a mother returning to college with a clear purpose. For years, my daily life has centered around supporting an adult with multiple disabilities, including Autism, Down syndrome, Alzheimer’s, and blindness. That experience changed the way I see the world, and it was where I learned that I don’t want to be a teacher. It taught me how powerful consistent support, dignity, routine, and compassion can be for everyone. It also showed me how many adult services fall short and how deeply families need programs that are safe, flexible, and genuinely person-centered. Because of this, I am working toward a degree that will allow me to open an Adult Day Program designed for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. My goal is to build a space that is sensory-safe, trauma-informed, accessible, and joyful. I want to create a place where people can learn, explore, form connections, and feel valued. I want to take what I’ve learned as a caregiver and turn it into a community resource that lifts not only the participants but also the families who support them. I plan to combine my education with my life experience to redesign what quality adult day services can look like. I want to build programs grounded in dignity, autonomy, creativity, and skill-building. I imagine a future facility that includes meaningful activities, community outings, inclusion, life-skills training, and staff trained to work with compassion and cultural competence. My hope is to create something that improves quality of life for adults who often get overlooked once they age out of school-based support. My education is the bridge between where I am and the impact I want to make. Each class brings me closer to the knowledge and credentials I need to build a program that truly serves people. My goal is to create long-term change, not just for one person, but for an entire community of adults with disabilities and the caregivers who love them. My community is desperately lacking in quality services. When families cannot trust that their loved ones will be safe and happy, they often stop utilizing the resources all together. This increases caregiver burnout quickly. When caregivers burnout, the people who depend on them suffer the effects. With my future program, I hope to benefit not just the clients that we service, but also their families as well. As demands rise, we have to keep up, and I am the right person for this task.

Being a first generation college student means building something I have never seen modeled in my family. It means stepping into a system without a guide and learning every part of it through trial, error, and determination. My parents did not have the chance to go to college, and neither did the adults who helped raise me. Higher education was something distant and out of reach, not something ordinary families talked about. When I enrolled in college, I did it without instructions and without anyone who could tell me how to handle financial aid, degree planning, or the stress of balancing real life with school. My journey has not been traditional. I started college young, stopped, returned, stopped again, and returned once more as an adult with children and caregiving responsibilities. Along the way I faced trauma, poverty, instability, and the long term effects of growing up in a home where emotional support was rarely available. School was always on the horizon, but life felt too heavy to focus on it. Instead, I became the person everyone depended on. I became a mom, a caregiver for an adult with multiple disabilities, and a support system for my family. I learned responsibility by necessity, not by choice. Coming back to college as a first generation adult has been one of the hardest things I have attempted. I study between medical appointments, behavioral crises, cooking, cleaning, and managing a household that depends on me. I write papers late at night after everyone is asleep. I take quizzes in the car outside of appointments. I carry school in my pocket because I do not have the luxury of long study sessions or quiet mornings. What keeps me going is the belief that my education can create long term change for my family and for the people I want to serve. I dream of opening or working in an adult day program that supports adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. My life has been shaped by caregiving, and I know from experience that the world needs more compassionate, trauma informed, community based care. I want to build a career that honors the work I have already done at home. I want to give dignity, routine, safety, and connection to people who often do not have access to any of it. This scholarship would help me stay in school without sacrificing essential needs at home. Every semester comes with costs that stretch our budget and make it harder to balance caregiving with coursework. Financial support would reduce stress and allow me to focus on learning instead of scrambling to make everything work. It would also strengthen my confidence that I belong in higher education and that I can finish what I started. I am a first generation student who did not take a straight path, but I am here. I am determined. I am building something new for myself and for the people I take care of. I am not giving up.

My biggest dream is to build an Adult Day Program that feels like a second home for adults with developmental disabilities. I want a place where people are safe, understood, celebrated, and given opportunities to grow at every stage of life. This dream feels huge, slightly out of reach, and at the same time completely tied to my purpose. It started the day I became a caregiver for the disabled adult who lives with us. Supporting her through blindness, autism, Alzheimer’s, Down syndrome, and the emotional weight of decline changed the way I see the world. She taught me that adults with complex needs deserve more than quiet rooms and “babysitting.” They deserve joy, dignity, learning, and community. They deserve a life with color. The spark for my dream happened during the years I spent managing her care. I watched her age out of services with almost nowhere meaningful to go. Options were limited, underfunded, or simply not built for someone with her combination of disabilities. Families like ours are left holding everything together on our own. As I supported her through daily routines that included memory loss, sensory overwhelm, and anxiety, I realized something important. The problem was not her. The problem was the system she was expected to fit into. That realization shifted something in me. I wanted to build a program that met people where they are instead of expecting them to shrink themselves to fit a system. My dream program would include sensory safe rooms, music, creativity, community outings, skill building, and a level of warmth that feels like family. It would include training for staff that goes far beyond basic compliance. It would prepare young adults who are aging out of school based supports and also welcome older adults who need companionship and structure. It would be designed to respect dignity for people across the spectrum of support needs. It would feel like a place where caregivers can finally breathe, knowing their loved ones are cared for with tenderness and intention. The path to this dream is long, but it feels doable one step at a time. First, I am returning to college to complete my degrees in human services and related fields. Education will give me language and structure for the work I have already been doing informally for years. Next, I will gain experience in local agencies that serve adults with developmental disabilities. I want to learn the regulations, the funding systems, the gaps, and the realities from the inside. I will also need business skills, grant writing experience, and a strong understanding of nonprofit or vendor operations. It is a lot to learn, but every class I take moves me closer to the life I want to build. The courage behind this dream comes from knowing that families like mine need more options. The creativity comes from imagining a program that blends structure with joy. The commitment comes from everything I learned as a caregiver. I have seen what love and patience can do. I have also seen how quickly people fall through the cracks when the support around them is not built well. A pie in the sky dream is supposed to feel slightly impossible. Mine does. But it also feels like the work I was meant to do. One day, I want to look around a room full of adults who feel safe and understood and think to myself, this is where the dream landed.

Right now, I give back through caregiving, advocacy, and community leadership. I am the full-time caregiver for an adult with multiple disabilities. This role requires patience, problem-solving, and constant emotional support. I regularly help other families navigate services by sharing knowledge about Medi-Cal, IHSS, disability rights, and community programs. I also volunteer in Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, supporting youth leadership development, fundraising efforts, travel opportunities, and community service projects. These roles have allowed me to model resilience, compassion, cultural competence skills, and inclusivity for the next generation. In the long term, I want to expand the impact I’m already having as a caregiver. My dream is opening a trauma-informed, sensory-safe Adult Day Program for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. My goal is to create a space where adults with disabilities can thrive socially, emotionally, and creatively, not just a place to be supervised. I plan to use my education to design programming that respects autonomy, dignity, reduces isolation, and supports the whole person. I also want to reduce caregiver burnout by offering a reliable, high-quality program families can trust. Ultimately, I hope to build a model that raises the standard for disability services and creates a more compassionate community for future generations. My commitment to giving back is rooted in my own experiences growing up and in the realities I face every day as a caregiver. When you spend years navigating medical systems, advocating for someone who can’t speak up for themselves, and filling in the gaps that programs overlook, it changes you. It also gives you a very practical understanding of what works, what doesn’t, and what families actually need. I’ve seen firsthand how easily people with complex disabilities get left behind, and I want to be part of the solution instead of someone who just witnesses the problem. Education is one of the tools that will help me make that shift. Going back to school at this stage in life gives me the chance to formalize the skills I already use daily, like crisis management, communication, disability advocacy, and navigating systems. I am also learning how to build programs that are ethical, sustainable, and supportive. I plan to use what I learn to design an Adult Day Program that is structured but flexible, therapeutic but fun, and dignifying rather than institutional. As I move forward, my goal is to blend lived experience with academic knowledge so I can serve my community in a way that is compassionate, competent, forward-thinking, and future-proof. I want families to feel seen, supported, and safe. I want adults with disabilities to have real opportunities for connection, growth, and joy. I hope that through the work I build, I can create long-term change that outlives me and benefits generations to come.

My path to higher education has never been straightforward. When I was in school the first time, my mother and grandfather passed away, along with a child I babysat and a friend from work. I did not complete the Liberal Studies degree and become a teacher, as I had carefully planned. Instead, my life began to focus on the changes I went through, and then on my new family. Most of my adult life has revolved around caring for others. As I raised my children, I was also called to care for a family member rather suddenly, and I accepted that this is what family does. I became a caregiver for an adult with multiple disabilities, including early-onset Alzheimer’s, blindness, autism, and Down syndrome. Over time, I learned her routines and medical challenges. The advocacy battles have taught me quite a bit as well. I learned that I am capable of doing difficult, yet meaningful work, even though I have no degree to prove it. Returning to college as an adult student has given me a fresh perspective, and it has helped immensely with caregiver burnout. My early attempts were marked with financial strain, family emergencies, and parenting. These were life situations that I didn’t have tools to handle at a young age. Now, in my forties, I have clarity, determination, and life skills I did not possess back then. I am pursuing an associate degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences along with Sociology, which I will complete in the Spring. My goal is to transfer to CSUEB for a Bachelor’s in Human Development, then complete a Master program in Public Administration or Nonprofit Management. I already have practical work experience, and I dream of working to make our Developmentally Disabled population live fuller lives through a new Day Program of my own someday. Being a caregiver has taught me to see beyond any limitations. I’ve learned to advocate across agencies and programs, navigate social services, communicate with all sorts of professionals, and create systems that reduce chaos and emergencies. I have also learned just how isolating caregiving can be, and I’ve had a front row seat to other families struggles. Caregivers spend so much time keeping others safe that we often forget ourselves. There is rarely an opportunity to dream of a bigger future. Returning to school has given me a sense of possibility and purpose. My Day Program goal is much needed in our community. People need to feel like they’re sending their loved ones to a safe place. I envision a program that is trauma-informed, sensory-safe, and inclusive. Many programs feel outdated, restrictive, or improperly designed for today’s needs. The people we serve deserve joy and dignity in their lives. I don’t want to turn on music and walk away. I want a vibrant place for adults to learn and grow, and one where their families feel comfortable leaving them. Currently, most of my resources go to caregiving needs, family expenses, and necessities. Scholarships would reduce the financial strain that affects my focus. I would be able to complete my education without wondering about sacrifices I’m making. I believe in second chances because I’m living mine. My experience has shaped me into a person that can turn empathy into action and leadership. With this scholarship, I can continue building my foundation for future change that my community desperately needs. Thank you for your consideration!