From a very young age I’ve wanted to help people. I think everyone when they were little were told that they are capable of being president. For me it was the first black, female president. Now when you’re in 3rd grade and only know so much about what being president and the journey there entails, you can simply only imagine that you’re going to hold so. Much. Power. First and foremost, America is the world. Secondly, you’re going to rule that world! Third of all, you’re gonna be the first black girl to do it?! I can happily say that the older you get, that idea never gets less impressive, daunting and more difficult? Absolutely. But for the exact same reason it is realistically so difficult and outcasted socially is the same reason it is such a powerful idea to me still. But a lot of things have changed since I was eight and even a girl. I mean firstly I’m not a girl, I’ve been a boy for nearly five and a half years now, and I’m 18! And now, I don’t want to be president, and truthfully I never really wanted to be one. When I was told, “You can be whatever you want, baby. You could be the first black female president, and you’ll do so great.” I immediately thought of all the responsibility, and sure I was eight and didn’t even know what a president really did but I think we all knew presidency took a lot of power and with that came lots of responsibilities (I mean are you really going to tell me that wasn’t what came to your mind from either of those words? At any point in your life?). Among those responsibilities though, was helping people, giving them homes, solving world hunger, keeping the animals safe, etc. etc! That’s what I prioritized! And I give tiny me kudos for thinking of being a humanitarian rather than a dominator over the corruptive elites as the first black female president, but maybe she didn’t know about all of that yet. That immediate thought of helping people is what has trickled down to me wanting the career I do today! I think, besides world hunger being solved, and homelessness being eradicated, I want to do my part through providing emotional security to those like little eight year old me. Through COVID-19 I faced the biggest emotional and mental challenges in my life, I was isolated and put through a ringer of discovery and loss. I was faced with turning twelve and lacking everything a twelve year old had usually got to grow with. Social norms changed drastically and emotional dependency was narrowed down to people on the internet that were going through the same thing as me. My grades and mental health plummeted, I was having suicidal thoughts and i had to go to my mother for them. I am so so grateful that I could have my mothers support in finding a therapist and simply having someone to listen to helped me so much. As I’ve grown I've seen the abilities and amount of help psychologists and therapists are able to provide and I want to be one of those providers. I want to show that I am here for the youth, that they deserve to be heard and prioritized and helped with anything they are looking for. I want to enact change in how we see children’s support. I want to change children’s mental health for the better.

In my time at high school, I have faced many moments where, as a mixed black student at a Hispanic school, my blackness has been overlooked. I bring it up, and people tilt their heads, asking with amused surprise or fascination, “You’re black?!” and I usually do my best to respond with a “yes! I am!!” Junior year, I had a Hispanic English teacher who, during his improv rants about a topic, had used the term “Blacks.” When he first did this, twice in a period, I corrected him the second time, saying, “It’s African Americans.” He dismissed me with something forgettable. Then there was a second time, where he was talking about the American dream, how it wasn’t made for people of color. Ironically, while listing people of color with people following, “Blacks” was a singled-out label! This time, I corrected him right away, and he said, “I have black friends. I can say that.” I didn’t say anything else because I didn't feel like having this argument with a grown man in the middle of class. After the bell rang, though, and he was at his desk, I did go up to him and asked him politely not to say “Blacks” for it was disrespectful and dehumanizing. He told me that he wasn’t going to let me tell him how to teach his class. I can’t imagine how he thought I was saying that, but he did. I told him I was never trying to do that and that I was simply asking for him not to say "blacks" because as a black person- “You're Black??” and ooh, it really rang through my ears that time. He had a weirdly gleeful smile, and his tone was that of an onlooker asking questions about something that wasn’t a person, talking about personal and serious feelings in the classroom. It wasn’t an important fact that I was a black person telling him how I felt when he said Blacks with a tone that made it obvious he knew what he was saying. It was important that I didn’t look black, so me being black was super fascinating. I have never been so uncomfortable around a teacher. Or angry. I told him, “Yes, I’m black.” and quickly moved on because if you are being told you’re saying something dehumanizing, don’t you think you should stop and listen? But no, he did not. He went on to try to excuse his behavior because he had black friends, and when he was first making these friends, he tried to label them as African American, but they didn’t “identify as that”; they were “blacks”. I told him his college past was irrelevant, and saying something that feels uncomfortable to a student who is of that race is the point of my conversation. He was saying something dehumanizing and harmful, and that was not okay. I wish the conversation had ended with something to either make me feel fully rightfully angry or better, but a classmate intervened because she thought it was getting too serious. So she too invalidated my feelings as a black person defending myself. I would have meetings with this teacher about later conflicts and bring this matter up, and it would be dismissed as a curriculum matter. I don’t think this kind of behavior should ever have to be tolerated by children of color, not blooming ones, trying to defend their learning experience and themselves. My aim, as an aspiring children’s therapist, is to create spaces and resources for kids to be advocated for and defended. To feel safe and seen.

Success to a lot of people is getting to a goal, or finishing something to an end, where you are happy!! You get something that results in you being able to profit, and that’s it. Successes come in periods at a time, whether it be in terms of time or the amount of work. Then this success usually means you’ve made it. You’ve done this thing, and you’ve accomplished something with worth. Now obviously, success is much more extravagant than that in other people's heads. Maybe it’s more invigorating or inexplicable with how exciting it is! To me, though, success is happening to me all the time. Success, objectively, is something to be proud of, whether you are just a little bit or a lot. When I’m doing something such as turning in an assignment on time, I’m so proud! I’m excited and relieved. Glad I got that done and put in time to keep my grades passing or improve them. So that’s a success for me! But my successes don’t come from just work. They come from things that are external and internal, physical or mental. Most of my successes come from my emotional reasoning, though my mental strength to overcome the social challenges I encounter day to day. Things that cause stress and anxiety come into my life every day. And every day I overcome them. There is nothing I am more proud of than that, and to me, those are my most notable successes. The successes I made of things that could have slowed me down or strayed me away from my main goal. All these little successes, from killing anxieties, making friends, turning in assignments, to moving up a grade, figuring out where I will move after graduation, and what I need to do independently as an adult. They all matter, and they all snowball into something that I am looking forward to down my path. My biggest, most important goal is becoming a children’s therapist, but that's sooo far away, and what I need to do first is appreciate what I’m doing right now. That I feel is the main goal. Stopping to smell the flowers, enjoying my journey, and being proud of myself every step of the way. Now, don’t get me wrong, waiting to graduate has been a pain. I'm anxiously excited and practically a jumping bean waiting to bound from the tree. When I think about all my steps to graduation, and what makes me so excited to graduate makes me so proud. And sad! I get upset about all the things I had to overcome, because “what the heck,” but also “oh my gosh, look at me go!!” All these little successes were amazing and tiring, but worth so much pride. These feelings really come down to let me proudly say that success to me is all the stuff to bring me to it, and the pride and self-confidence and love I get to feel afterwards. It’s also the excitement for the successes coming forward. I hope that by getting this scholarship, I can confidently and securely achieve my career goals. It’ll most definitely help me overcome the financial stress of college and mark it as a success. Having the scholarship will be one more success closer to the success of being a children’s psychologist, so I can support the youth the way I wish I had been supported.

Throughout my whole little life, I’ve done my best to advocate for myself and others, whether it be for us sharing oppression status or not. I’ve lived my life within intersectionality for a long time as a mixed transman. I love who I am, and there is nothing I want more than to understand other people’s situations and let them grow to love who they are as well. I’ve never gotten to feel too attached to any community. I was raised in a majorly caucasian community, a rural area with a seemingly family-controlled school. Through high school, I’ve had no easy time finding an accepting space within my school that is mainly Hispanic populated. There is a lot of internalized racism among the black youth at my school, as well as an overwhelming amount of racism and colorism. Despite this, I have always attempted to do my best at reaching out to people who may sympathize with me so that I sympathize with them. Oppression is real for everyone, and though I will not tolerate any form of systemic hate from anyone, I will not allow that to shy me away from helping others and supporting them. I know that listening to people’s stories matter and throughout my whole social life, I’ve listened and talked to people, hoping to help them feel seen as I wish to be seen. When it comes to me being trans, I have always, always, worked to express myself and become a role model for being yourself in those ways as well! Finding your racial identity and queer identity are so key. I’ve helped many of the people I've run into, and most commonly by being friends with feel seen and open, and being someone they can talk to. I also aim to always educate the teachers around me, those who are the most key role models, to see what their students are feeling and tell them about things that I have gone through, to do better for their future students. With all this experience and history I have socially, being a children’s therapist is the biggest goal. The youth of today are vulnerable and feel helpless and unhelped. They deserve to have much more support available at their young age and more people reaching out to them rather than telling them to do so. Minors are the most oppressed of the human population. They are not allowed to vote. They are the most vulnerable, in danger, and emotional of us. All their decisions are made by adults, whether it be what their parents want or not,t and they deserve to be seen and supported. I hope, through pursuing psychology, I can be a deeply involved children’s therapist and help the youth as I wish the world would have seen and taken care of me.

My first obstacle was presented in my freshman year. I was young and shy, coming from a middle school that was not at all graceful to who I was blooming into in eighth grade after Covid. But despite that, I was very excited to be myself, especially in this new campus where hopefully I’d be freer. My coaches were very open to how I identified, and when I asked for a change into the boys' locker were very kind and instructive in how I could do so. It was scary to go through a campus I hardly knew and wander into spaces nobody, but one generally snippy man, was working in, but I got my locker, and despite the exasperated comments of boys in response to me using the bathroom stalls to change, I inhabited the space,e only growing ever more confident and proud of myself. One day, I had been pulled out of PE as soon as I had changed, being taken to the learning director's office. The learning director was generous enough to try to understand who I was and explained in a weirdly around-the-bush way me being trans was putting him in a position vulnerable to harassment by parents whose boys might’ve complained about the confusion of me being in the bboys'locker, and then complained themselves because of whatever they might’ve assumed. This put parents and their opinion of my life above me, and what I found to be most comfortable. My vocalization of preferring the boys' locker and preferring a gender neutral bathroomovern the girls’ was taken as the latter being a scapegoat rather than a sign to maybe sacrifice a little for my comfort. In the end, I would have to go to the nurse’s bathroom, and eventually, through embarrassment and a gifted sense of shame, retreat to the girls' locker. It was uncomfortable and lasted till junior year, when I would try for a boys locker again, then sadly pulled into the same series of events a week later. Escorted to the Learning director's office, given an empty choice to try for a locker I already had, and me retreating and stayed in the nurse’s bathroom. Through the locker room problems and prominent social norms at my school, I would be given the second obstacle of believing sports, no matter gender neutrality, were not for me. It would be too awkward, and my trying was not going to be worth it. I know now, I didn’t, and still don’t deserve the lack of self-confidence and advocacy for what I'm capable of. I’ve grown past that now and hope that through my pursuing psychology and a career as a children’s counselor, personally and for school, I can support children and the school system. I want to provide advocacy for my children and community. I don't think a school’s tools for supporting and helping students grow into who they want to be in the future, through hopefully honest education and through open teaching, should ever go underused or unused. I want trans people in any part of the educational system, preschool, elementary school, middle school, or even college, where I will go next,t to be safe and free to grow into whoever they want to be and do whatever they want to do. The political climate is crushing down on this path and future for trans people, and through my career and any other actions I can take, I want to fight to keep this path open and atrulye possible future.