As we all know, most of Olivia's songs are about exes, and her newest album "GUTS" is no different. We all love her music for its raw emotion and relatability. There was even a trend of girls asking their boyfriends to temporarily break up with them so they could experience her music through that relatable lens. However, I tend to associate the lyrics of these songs more with my relationship with my mother rather than an ex. Many of my teenage years have been spent trying to navigate my relationship with my mother, and I know the prompt says to choose a lyric but I can't just pick one line when a whole song resonates so deeply with me. As I was going through the album searching for a lyric to base my essay on, I came to the song "The Grudge" and it brought me to tears. Like most mothers and daughters, I have always had a difficult relationship with my mother, but during my senior year of high school, my parents went through a divorce which put a further strain on our relationship. The first couple of lines of the song go, "I have nightmares each week about that Friday in May one phone call from you and my entire world was changed." I still remember the day that I realized that something was going on between my parents and how badly it affected me. For a couple of days, I couldn't eat because I felt sick to my stomach because what I had just found out meant nothing would be the same, and the whole situation resurfaces in my mind regularly, haunting me. The next line in the song reads, "Trust that you betrayed, confusion that still lingers." The biggest thing about the divorce that haunts me is the confusion that lingers because I'm not sure I'll ever know the full truth and I'm not sure who to believe. I think that the worst damage that the divorce did to me was leading me to realize that I could never fully know who to trust. "I hear your voice every time that I think I'm not enough." I feel as though almost everyone can relate to this line. We've all had someone who put us down or someone who we wanted to please but never could. My someone is my mom. I've spent all of my life trying to please her and doing everything in my power to seek her validation. All of the things she has said to me over the years play in my head, affecting my daily life. Growing up I was called difficult, mean, and touchy for things I grew up to realize were normal. I often did and still do things I'm not comfortable with to make my family happy. For example, I'm not comfortable with physical touch from anyone other than my partner, but I have always given my family hugs and let them lay on my shoulder despite the discomfort because I was taught that was what I was supposed to do or else I was a "touch-me-not." It negatively affected me later in life, leading me to allow things that I wish I hadn't because I felt that it was more important to please others than to preserve my comfort. There are tons of lines that I wish I could write about, but the last one I'll use is, "It takes strength to forgive but I'm not quite sure I'm there yet." I'm currently stuck in the decision of forgive or cut off and it's an awful place.

Storytelling can be traced back thousands of years, even as far back as drawings on cave walls. It has been used for entertainment, information, and remembrance throughout the years. Storytelling connects us as a society through sharing experiences and emotions. My storytelling can make a difference in the lives of others because I often write about my own experiences and how they made me feel in a way that can make others who have experienced the same thing feel seen. Often in our lives when we go through trials and hardships we begin to feel alone and like no one can relate to what we are going through. Having books, short stories, and poetry available to read can make a big difference in these feelings by showing the readers that they are not the only ones who feel the way they do. I love to read books and poetry that relate to my life because it serves as a reminder that I am not alone and that others have experienced what I have and have felt what I have felt. That reminder keeps you from digging into this isolated hole that nobody can relate to you and you must suffer alone. I feel as though Christian writings take this a step further. As a Christian, I love to read Christian poetry and novels with Christian allusions such as The Chronicles of Narnia. It is so beautiful to see God in an author's writing. I feel like, as Christians, sometimes we need to hear about others' encounters with God to boost our faith a little bit. Storytelling about experiences with God is a good way to do this, whether it is face-to-face or through writing, it can be very encouraging to hear about what God is doing in the lives of others. When doubt starts to creep into my life, seeing the work of God in the lives of others, whether it be on social media, in books that I read, or through speakers telling the story of their testimony, truly helps restore my faith. Storytelling can change the world by bringing us together. There are so many things that writing can do to draw people together. Providing different perspectives through writing can help people see different sides of stories and bring empathy out of them. Raising awareness through writing can bring about discussions of important topics that can lead to change that needs to be made. Writing can also inspire others to make a difference on their own.

Writing was not always what I wanted to do growing up, but it was always something fun I loved to do. I can remember as far back as elementary school writing little picture book stories on Storybird. In middle school, I would write novels, though I never made it all the way through one. In high school and now college, I found a love for poetry. I love writing poetry because it allows me to pour out my deepest feelings onto a page in such a beautiful way. In school, my teachers always told me what a great writer I was. All of my peers always complained about having essays to write, but I secretly loved it. Something about letting the words and ideas from my mind flow from my brain through my hands into my keyboard was always so enjoyable, especially when I got in the flow of it. The only thing I loved more than writing the essays was proofreading and editing them as well as my peers' works. The enjoyment I found from giving feedback to others gave me the dream of becoming an editor one day. I am not set on this career, but I believe I would enjoy it. Writing has been with me through a lot that has happened to me in the past few years, good and bad. In my junior year of high school, I started dating my current boyfriend, who happens to be the muse of a lot of my poetry. I am somewhat of a hopeless romantic, and writing poetry is my favorite way to express my love. It allows me to illustrate my feelings in such a romantic, unique, and vulnerable way. I entered a few of these love poems into my university's Valentine's writing contest. Although I didn't place in it, one of my poems received an honorable mention and the Spirit of Saint Valentine Award. It was exciting to share my poetry for the first time since I had started writing it two years prior, and even more exciting to earn an award for it. In my senior year of high school, my parents got a divorce, which has been hard on me, even now, over a year later. My writing allows me to express the feelings that I feel I am unable to express to my family. Being able to write my feelings in the form of poetry has always been so relieving. I have never been very good at expressing how I feel, as I never had a good model of it growing up or even the room to do it. But when I sit down with a pen and paper, knowing that no one else has to know what I wrote, I feel so free. Poetry is such a great way to express feelings because feelings are complex and deserve a deep and intricate description that poetry can provide. Dealing with my parents' divorce, I have had a variety of feelings that sometimes cannot be explained with simple words. The confusion and hurt that comes along with a messy divorce can be difficult to process, but the complexity and depth of poetry can help. In conclusion, writing has been part of my life for a very long time. It has become important to me in my personal life to process and deal with feelings and hardships. Being able to express my feelings in a complex and beautiful way, without having to share them with anyone else, is so important to me to make it through life.

Education is such a big part of our lives. We go to school for eight hours a day, five days a week, nine months out of every year, for about thirteen years. Many then go on to college for the next two to eight years. School is where we learn almost everything we know. I strive to be an elementary school teacher to make a difference in young lives because early education plays such an important role in one's life and teachers make all the difference. First off, reading and writing are the basis of everything we do for the rest of our lives. We need these basic skills to function in life. These skills are used in everything we do, from cooking to driving to interacting with others. We begin to learn these skills early on in our education, and it is crucial for children to have good teachers at this time in order to put them on the path they need. If we do not get off to a good start in learning these necessary skills, then it can leave us behind for years to come. Second of all, we learn so much more than reading, writing, and math. We learn life skills. Going to school is the first experience we have outside of the home. We start to learn how to act and behave around others. In my education and training class this year, we talked a lot about teaching philosophy. We even wrote an essay about our own philosophy. We learned about a lot of psychological aspects of education through studying theorists and their experiments and theories including Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment. That class has shown me that education is so much deeper than teaching out of textbooks, and teaching is not as simple as one might think. After researching teaching philosophies, I have constructed my own opinion on the way a classroom should be conducted. I once listened to a TedTalk in class in which educator, Rita Pierson, claimed that students are not gonna learn from someone they do not like. I agree with Pierson's claim because I believe a connection between a student and his/her teacher is a critical part of his/her education. In my personal experience, I excelled in classes in which the teacher was friendly and fun, such as my ninth-grade math teacher. I maintained over a hundred in her class the whole year because she was a good teacher who managed to make learning fun. Another important aspect of teaching is the ability to adapt to each student's needs so that none are left behind. Through my research, I have realized the importance of being a teacher and the many aspects that contribute to being an effective teacher. Education has affected my life in so many ways. Essentially, it is a big part of what has made me the person I am today. The teachers I had, the classes I took, and the extracurriculars I participated in, all had a part in who I am now. My education has taught me many valuable lessons besides learning how to add and write a paper. It has developed me into a hard-working, determined young adult. I am passionate about early childhood education because I want to help children grow up to become smart, well-rounded adults.

Community service is often performed by some to receive credit, but others do it simply for the joy it brings them. For me, it started out as something I did just for Beta Club. I was not very interested in it, I did it simply because I had to. However, I soon realized that I enjoyed helping others. It is such a satisfying feeling when someone you have helped expresses their gratitude. I was invited to join Beta Club in my third-grade year, and I have been in it from fourth to twelfth grade. Throughout my nine years in the club, I was required to participate in various activities to earn a certain amount of service hours. Those activities ranged from painting the nails of nursing home residents to putting together care packages for the homeless. When I was young, it was an obligation, I had to earn service hours to stay in the club. As I got older, I began to realize the joy that helping others brought me. As I saw the smiles I was bringing to others' faces, I felt good that I had made someone's day just a little bit better. It became something I strived for. During my time in high school, I have always been the one that people come to when they need help with schoolwork and such. In math, I was always explaining what we were learning to my friends. I was helping tutor one of my older friends with her algebra. I was helping my peers understand if they were doing the chemistry correctly. I was always helping. My favorite part was when they expressed their thanks. When they called me a lifesaver or told me how nice it was to have someone to go to for help without receiving any judgment. It always made me feel good to be able to help others and hear how much I helped and how grateful they were. I wanted to be that person for as many people as I could. During the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school, I got my first job at Publix. I still have that job today. I love it there because Publix is known for its premiere service. I am always able to help customers in any way I can, whether it be helping them find something they are looking for or returning their cart to the store so they do not have to find their way to the cart corral. Every now and then, I will have a customer who expresses their gratitude with so much sincerity. It feels so amazing to feel as though you were a big help to someone. There is no other feeling comparable to the one you receive from knowing you made a difference in someone's day, even if it was small. I was not always fond of community service, but over time I grew to love all that came with it. The joy on others' faces, the gratitude they express, the difference you make in their day, it is all worth taking time out of your day to think of someone else and do something for another's benefit.