1: I am just poor enough to not be able to afford collage very well but have enough that FASFA decided I need a little debt to spice up my future. Getting a job is rough living out in the middle of no where and having a physical disability cause oh boy do companies treat "reasonable accommodation" as "this person cost slightly more than minimum wage" 2: My career goal is to make prejudiced gamer boys cry and scream about how my games are sjw trash for doing outlandish things like having characters that are lgbt+ or something. 3: I have a chronic pain illness and my greatest obstacle is that 40% of people treat me like a poor little baby who can't be expected to do anything, 20% are convinced be being young should negate all disability, 30% have the firm belief that I'm used to suffering so it's fine, 10% are fine, and overcoming it is accepting 0% of this is a joke.

I have not known a day without chronic pain since I was twelve years old. Since then my life has been a struggle to prove myself. Everyday, from my diagnosis of Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome (AMPS) to now, has been an uphill battle I’m unsure it’s possible to truly beat. Because how does someone get past something permanent, with no treatment or cure? You don’t get past it, but you can get through it. It never gets any easier per say, but when you wade through water long enough your legs get strong. Maybe a bad analogy from someone who recently started using a cane, but the idea is there. There are a few things that have caused additional hurdles in getting to where I am today. I’m white passing, but am biracial and was no stranger to parents taking out their racism towards my mother by prodding me away from their children. Being queer in a rural christian area was not exactly pleasant. If anything I faced the least direct animosity from my community or peers for my disability. So it’s hard to understand from an outside perspective why it would be the most substantial challenge in my life. After all the only thing you seem to hear from the able bodied about people with disabilities is “Oh they can do everything normal people can do”, and that we’re just “differently-abled” because we’re just as capable. No matter how well meaning these claims boil down to less help and less understanding towards the fact that the “differently-abled” are different because they are less able to carry out the same thing as healthy people. In terms of societal standards at large there is this expectation to perform not just as well, but better than your abled peers because otherwise you look bad on your community. There is a constant mental strain because you never want to be that“ strain on tax dollars” that comes up on the news. You’re reminded that you have to be impressive because if you aren't, no one wants to hire someone who needs accommodations. Job offers will ask upfront if you can perform without reasonable accommodation. You’re told by parents and peers to never tell employers about your illness. Everyday I work through physical pain and mental illness towards my degree. I work to prove my worth to myself and get the education to back up that worth and confidently say I will not be abused or disregarded by workplaces. To push through and be loud about the difficulties I face so that less people in the future have to quietly suffer because they fear loss of opportunity. I overcame the expectation that to be strong about my illness was to ignore my limits, people need to know that life is hard for the disabled and chronically ill. In the future I want to use my art to be outspoken about discrimination and unrealistic expectations of disabled individuals. To make real change about how we’re treated I am more than willing to be one of the loud ones. Able bodied and healthy people need to be educated about how the worth of an individual should not be linked to how much assistance they need. The constant pushing against ableism with claims that we don’t actually need help is harmful and just feeds into the idea of an individual's worth being tied directly to productivity. There isn’t much a gaming arts career by itself can do systematically, but I plan to use my active club presence on campus to jump into more public activism.

Growing up in a small town is hard to remember with rose tinted glasses. The community is supposedly close and dependable, often made up of exclusively working class. While monetary donations would help as it helps everything, it alone wouldn’t change anything for the better. Thinking back on rural living versus rural culture in the US, my community was fairly rough and dismissive to me. Typically the idea of small town living is presented by someone who “belongs” in that setting. Growing up almost everyone around me had lived in the area for generations, went to church with each other, and were primarily fully white households save for a few exceptions, I had none of those things. At a young age it was hard to understand why some parents didn’t want me near their children or let their kids come over to my house. Why did the other girls in class only let me play Pocahontas with princess toys even though I was not even Native? Why exactly was I going to hell? What did I do? Things like that got better in some ways and worse in others as I got older. Around middle school I became completely white passing but also became chronically ill. A few years later I was out as not being straight but no one bothered to know in what way. People definitely eased on racism as a culture with a few who became worse out spite, they also either became kinder in their religion or got a better filter about it. It went from constant microaggressions from kids who didn’t understand enough to really be held too accountable yet, to the community just forgetting I existed. No matter how many teachers liked me or how friendly I was in the school population I was always passed over despite my best efforts. Everyone knew everyone, except for me. Despite all this I really do care about my community and above all else I want to make sure kids in the future who don’t traditionally fit into small town culture don’t come out of it traumatized and jadeded. Programs on learning about other cultures, religions, disability, and LGBT+ topics are something greatly needed. Children are never too young to learn about discrimination when they are old enough to be discriminatory. There were always individual peers and adults who tried their best, but I want to devote all the time and effort possible into making sure these things are taught by default. Active aggression turns into passive ignorance because it’s easier to not make accommodations or get to know someone who you haven’t been going to church with for your whole life. I want to give kids the knowledge to actually decide if they like their classmate, instead of if their parents don’t like the color of the classmate’s family.