I always knew I would go down some path of art, but I wasn't always sure which path that would be. four years ago I was sure wanted to be an actress. I loved the feeling of stepping out onto the stage, whether the seats were full or just had a few people. I wanted to embody the work of art that was presented to me in a script and grant the author the joy of seeing their art come to life. Even if they weren’t seeing me perform. The first time I got to “become the art” was my middle school’s rendition of Legally Blonde. However, a few days before the musical was to be shown, we all went into quarantine. From there, all my chances of getting actual acting experience went out the window. I don’t come from a family that could afford to get me acting class and professional headshots. All I had was my talents and a lot of passion for art, so I searched for something I could use my other talents for. this was the first obstacle I had to overcome. I researched what kind of a job would fulfill all my desires, and at the top of my Google search was an article on how to become a set designer. As I read through the article, the things that it said a set designer did started to sound familiar to me as if I had done it before. Suddenly, I was taken back to practicing lines in my middle school’s auditorium and seeing in my peripheral vision a group of people with black shirts working on props for our musical. They looked like they needed an extra hand so I set down my book and made my way over to the group. The next thing I knew, I was painting props and stretching cardboard over a shelf to make a judge’s stand. Until my sophomore year, I had never looked back on that moment with such a realization. Realization that I still want to bring an author’s work to life, but instead of “becoming the art”, I want to give the art a place to come alive. Until last school year, my school didn’t have a Drama Club, despite most of the students asking for one to be added for years. When the club was finally added to my school, there wasn’t much set designing that we were able to do with our small budget. This was the main challenge that I faced as for me to become a set designer, I needed more experience and a better knowledge of how a stage worked. to overcome that challenge, I took on that gritty mindset and came up with my solution. I decided to take AP 3-D Art. I pretended that people who faced social injustice in society were my writers and the artworks that I designed to capture their struggles in society were my “set”. When working on each art piece, I saw my designs start to come to life in a way that captured all my abilities and highlighted the struggles people faced. It was a feeling of pure bliss that I never wanted to let go of. I had turned my challenge into an opportunity. While I may not have the same theater experience as the people around me going into college, I will have the experience the bliss of seeing your art come to life, and that's the feeling I can't wait to grant others.

When I go to my extracurricular activities, it gives me a home away from home with all of the people I enjoy most in my community. During these activities I'm able to be myself and let go of the stress from the school day. I’m able to talk to my friends and see everyone enjoying themselves without the worries of the outside world. I’m able to just have fun. Since I moved to Baltimore during the last month of my fifth grade year, I've always found it a bit hard to adjust to how people are in Baltimore compared to me. Before I lived in Baltimore, I found myself living in Southern Maryland and virginia. During this time I moved between a lot of schools, so when I got to my school in Baltimore, I remembered telling my grandmother the week before I started that I wouldn't make any new friends because I would just lose them anyways. This statement didn’t hold up as I did gain friends in the short time I had before the summer and with that I gained a passion for writing and sharing my stories with others. However, this didn’t fully make me feel included. It wasn’t until I joined clubs my ninth grade year and sports during my tenth, like mock trial, model un, yearbook, coding, art club, and volleyball, that I finally started to open up and have less anxiety to be around people. My first club with mock trials which is where students come together to enact a court trial against other schools. This was far out of my comfort zone but as soon as I went for the interesting meeting I knew this was something I had to come back to. I loved how I kind of got to be an actress and be a lawyer for one of my friends. My favorite memory from this time is when I went against a school when our club instructor was at a hockey game and couldn’t really help us (it was all virtual because of covid). Our school was known for losing, and even the year I was there, there wasn’t a single win but this case run felt like a win. It was the first time that our team didn’t mess up or stutter, we even got complimented by the judges. When the zoom meeting ended all we could do was cheer and congratulate everyone for just putting in the effort and having fun. Ever since then, I've made so many friends and love being at school to get to do these activities. I think people in my community can benefit in the same ways that I did by being able to have less anxiety and see a new kind of light in school which most people in my community see as a dark space.

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In my first year so far I have done game designing, worked with adobe illustrator, Photoshop, after effects, and filmed a short film. This is why I am pursuing a STEM (or more so STEAM) career. Art and Technology are what I do the best in and what motivate me through high school. As of now I am a freshman in a magnet program, which is a high school that offers college like courses in certain subjects. My course is interactive media and production. In my first year of high school I have done a lot of things to push myself forward. I have joined GEM, which is a girls empowerment movement set to help me grow more in all areas. As of today I have applied to a college program that allows me to go to that college and during the summer stay 6 weeks in their dorms and take classes. There is still many more things I would like to push myself to do to ensure that I am the best I can be to continue my education after highschool. How I as a young woman can influence the tech world is by adding more diversity and new ideas. I plan to create thing that will illuminate people and inspire them into the art world. As I grow, I start to realize how little people think of graphic designer when looking around. When most people look at movie they don't think of who designed the logo or who edited the entire movie, they usually focus on the actors, directors and producers. The same can be said with big companies. Most people think of the CEO while glancing over the Creative Director. I wish to change that and give more light to the industry itself. Through out my life I have faced a lot of challenges such as the health of my family, finances, moving and making new friends, and academic. By putting myself out there and taking on these types of opportunities I do plan to over come all of them. Since moving during my last month of 5th grade and going to a school none of my old friends used to, I have started to make new friends and bonded with my new teachers. A lot of people have told me that high school was going to be horrible, but for me it's great. I have fun everyday and school and on the weekends I looking forward to the weekday. Maybe not Monday specifically due to having to wake up early, but I do wake up and enjoy the day.