Music has changed and shaped my life in nearly every way you can imagine. I have so many memories of my dad bringing in his guitar to sing to my sister and me when we were little kids, every Sunday school song you can think of and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”, changing the words so that my sister and I would call out for him to fix it. I always thought “in excelsis deo” in “Angels We Have Heard On High” was in Chelsea’s deo after our old border collie. I think these moments founded my love for music, and the desire to have it in my life always. When I was younger, I would sit behind our electric keyboard and makeup songs, plunking out tunes with no real direction. I would sing about whatever I was doing, regardless of how much it annoyed my poor sister, and my love for music only grew as I got older, performing as “cat” for the church musical of the ark story, getting my first solo in “Away in the Manger". I remember seeing my first orchestra concert at Colorado State University and falling in love with the Cello, which I would later play in middle school and part of high school. Music always led me away from tough times, from sorrow. For some time, being held accountable for Madrigals Choir or the musicals that I was part of were the main things that kept me going, even when I truly wanted nothing more than to give up. Music provided me with a community and a place to believe in myself and a future that I was happy in. Eventually, through a lot of self-work and continuing down the musical path, I achieved that future. I started showing up to rehearsals not just to survive, but because it was my choice, because it was what I loved and what fulfilled me. I started working even harder at home and kept up with my friends in voice lessons. I let the music move through me, rather than just pushing me along, and with that and my wonderful community of teachers and peers, I found true joy. I could not have done that without my choir teacher. She is an amazing woman, a person that I admire and that worked with me even when I did not believe in myself. For a long time, up until my Sophomore year, I was only singing Tenor and some Alto; I thought that my high register was lackluster and that it would never get better. My teacher, however, believed in me and worked me up to singing soprano pieces. The next year, I auditioned for All-State with a mezzo-soprano piece and got in, and a year after that, I got in again. So, music has shaped my life, both internally and externally, pushing me through when I am at my worst and being my joy when I am at my best. I love music, and I don’t think I could get away from it even if I tried. I am excited to go to college and continue pursuing music through Music Therapy. I feel that I have found my calling and that the professors at CSU will help me develop the skills to show others how music can transform them too. Thank you for your consideration.

As a high school senior, I have had to solve many problems for myself and others. For my friends, I love to help create plans to help them stay organized with their schooling and personal lives. For me, my health has gotten in the way of many things that I have loved to do in the past, and I had to find ways to maintain a high standard while also working with the illnesses that work against me. This was especially evident last year when my health was at its lowest. With this, I had to think hard about my priorities and imagine ways that I could get through the year at the challenging school that I have gone to during the hardest year. Many of my teachers were impressed by the fact that I did not just drop out, but after all the time that I had spent working hard, I was not interested in giving up or even working at a lesser standard than I had been. One way that I came up with to persevere was by audiobooks. As a person with chronic migraines, I was unable to read the usual 20-40 pages a night, and that best way I could continue to understand the material. I used music not only as something to work on and improve but also as a conduit for peace. I set my room up to help manage my ADHD and the general stresses of life, working by a window for natural light and listening to lo-fi music as I worked. It is hard to pinpoint one specific thing that I created that solved the overarching problem of my health struggles against my schooling. It was more a collection of things and a management of my environment that helped me get through everything. My school is small (my graduating class is 18), and because of the school's relative youth (I started in first grade the year the school was founded), they did not have the recourses or the general knowledge on how to help me, so I had to come up with these methods on my own. While this was frustrating for me, I was determined to communicate with my school about the methods that helped me and what they could do to support me, as I knew these problems would affect other students after me. I have always wanted to make my community a better place, and I hope my efforts will help others in the long run. I think a problem I would love to solve if I had the recourses would be specific support for people with health struggles in smaller schools. I would love to create classes not only for counselors but for other administrative staff to help them understand the problems that students like me face. I do not have illnesses that show obvious physical signs, so I believe the biggest problem I had in gaining understanding was that they could not see my issues obviously, and they had a hard time because of that. I worry for other people in a similar position because of this, as the energy that has to be spent getting people to listen can be extremely difficult to maintain when you are already facing these issues. I would want to institute a culture of understanding and kindness, and make sure that even small schools have an understanding of how to help students with unique needs thrive, as everyone deserves support and love from their communities, and there is no more important time for it than in your youth.

I have a Big Brown Dog (TM) named Mowgli whom I love very much. Mowgli is about one hundred pounds, but he is quite unlike any dog we have ever had. Mowgli can be a little intimidating at first, being a German Shepherd, Pitbull, and Rottweiler mix, but once he's in his blue bow tie, it is pretty hard to feel scared. He enjoys spending his free time chasing butterflies and catching locusts in the backyard (and maybe accidentally eating them). When he feels lonely, he cries like a Husky, and it is so cute it is only a little bit annoying. Mowgs is a very good boy, a bit chunky, but with a truly impeccable spirit. When we first got Mowgli, it was really my older sister who championed getting him. You see, I was only a fourth grader at the time, and I was pretty much just excited about everything in the whole world. My parents really wanted a pure-bred Australian Shepherd. My sister, however, had other plans. The one day that we went to the very sketchy animal shelter, my parents were looking at labs, I was distracted by something random, and my sister had chosen the scrappiest looking, mange-ridden dog in the building. My parents were not impressed. Regardless, my sister persisted. She wrote my parents a six-paragraph essay on why we needed the scrappy puppy and converted her closet mirror into a brainstorming list for names (I could look, but my suggestions were apparently very stupid). The final straw for my parents was when she tearfully told them that they could get the other dog and she would be ok. We got Mowgli. The beginning of having him was pretty stressful though. He was a great dog, the kind that has one accident in the house and then never does it again, the kind that chews up some of your furniture legs but never your shoes. Still, we found out that he had a very severe heart murmur, so severe in fact that our vet had us take him to Colorado State University so their vets could be shocked by it too. We were told that he was not going to make it past one and that many shelters would have put him down by now. We were not going to do that of course. Like Clifford, the more we loved him, the more he grew, and now, almost seven years later, Mowgli is better than ever. I really love my dog, he is a ridiculous, gigantic lap dog (he loves to sleep directly on top of you), and he makes me excited to have a dog (albeit smaller) in college.

I have encountered all kinds of people in the online space. Playing games like Overwatch and Destiny 2, I am no stranger to sexism and bullying because of my gender. As soon as people hear my voice, the entire tone of the team chat will often shift. While I strongly believe in the benefits of these online spaces, I also think there are many hard-to-solve problems, as it is so easy to cover your tracks and avoid punishment in these spaces. I believe that the best course to take while engaging in these spaces is to know yourself. If you are the kind of person to take things seriously, open chat might not be for you. Then again, I believe this issue deflects blame that should be placed on the corporation and those actually causing the problems. Sometimes, people will know just what to say to cause the most harm, and it is important to take breaks while playing. I hope that gaming companies will find better solutions so that online spaces will become safer for consumers. Of course, these interactions have every ability to seep into our real lives. When people begin to think that there will not be any consequences to their words, it can have disastrous consequences. We see this often in our world, people radicalizing under causes that they hear about on the internet, and of course, they hear it there because it is the only place where our social consciousness does not always exist. The lack of filters can also have a negative effect on young children, especially considering how children are engaging on the internet at younger and younger ages. While these children tend to have more generalized protection, there are many ways to bypass the safety measures in place, a worrying thought when thinking about a child's social development. In general, I think a stronger message on the impacts of our online interactions could be crucial in cultivating a safer society. Many people go online to find some sort of escapism from their normal lives, but this dissociation from oneself and ones online identity can also do great harm. We have seen a decrease in bullying in schools, but many have moved to doing this online. Still, I think there is great hope for these spaces as they mature, and it is important to remember that these chats are still in their infancy.