Throughout my life, the criminal justice system has impacted me in many ways. When I was in the second grade and my family’s apartment was broken into, I learned how long it took for police officers to respond to emergencies in low-income areas. In middle school, I watched one of my brothers go in and out of jail for years and had to figure out how to build a relationship with someone when our only means of communication were talking through handwritten letters and five-minute phone calls. The criminal justice system has been a heavy and looming presence in my life since before I was even born, as it impacted my father’s mental health and the decisions he made. I have always felt that the United States criminal justice system was flawed in many ways, from disproportionately affecting Black people and other people of color to how privatized prison systems can get away with modern-day slavery. Being a 20-year-old Black female attending an HBCU has solidified the path that I am taking to change the world. I started out pursuing a degree in a medical-related field at the University of North Texas, where I quickly realized few students looked like me and only a few professors understood what it was like to navigate through life in my shoes. Watching a documentary about how easy it is to fall victim to recidivism in a criminal justice elective class encouraged me to pursue a criminal justice degree. After watching this documentary, in only my third week of class, as a freshman, I changed my major, and after my spring semester, I changed schools. Finding out that my school, Prairie View A&M University, is where Sandra Bland was arrested and then taken to Waller County jail has fueled my passion for fighting for change in the United States criminal justice system. With my criminal justice career, I want to educate and motivate my community’s children to fight back against this system and create a complete change in how the system works. My goal is to become an outreach worker and serve the youth of my local communities in the city of Dallas. Creating more after-school and summer programs, fostering better relationships between police officers and the communities they serve, and creating big sibling/little sibling mentorship programs are all a part of my plan to make a positive impact with my degree and my career. These programs are essential in ensuring that our unprotected youth do not fall victim to a system created to harm them.