I have had many amazing teachers throughout my years of high school, but when I think about them all, the one who inspired me most was my Orchestra teacher, Ms. Gero. Ms. Gero, while strict, is a well good person who works hard and devotes lots of time to teaching the school's orchestra, to too little recognition or appreciation. She taught me the virtue of being humble, of working hard, and also the importance of preparation and hard work. In my freshman year of high school, I played the cello in the school orchestra. I had been playing for seven years, so it only seemed natural to join. Despite all the time I put into it, I held a negative opinion of my abilities. The orchestra teacher was nice, but when I looked around myself I saw incredibly talented kids. Kids who practiced more than me, had played longer than me, and who were better musicians than me. And it scared me. When auditions for Symphony Orchestra first opened, I avoided it. I thought that I didn’t have a chance of competing with my fellow orchestra mates, and that signing up would only waste my time and embarrass myself. It was only after my mother and private tutor found out about it that I decided to sign up only a couple of days before sign-ups closed. I tried my best, I practiced all I could, but in the end, I didn’t get in. If I had a chance of getting in before, my waiting and avoiding the opportunity ruined my chances. After I failed the audition, I felt like a failure, like I just wasted my and everyone else’s time. But while Ms. Gero broke the news to me, I had the opportunity to talk to her. She told me that I was a good student, and that if I only practiced more and prepared better, then I could get into the Symphony Orchestra my junior year. When I talked to her, I felt her empathy, and it made me realize that if I tried, if I put effort into it, I could get into the Symphony orchestra. The next year, I took her advice to heart. I asked Ms. Gero for more advice on how to prepare, my mother pushed me to practice more, and my private teacher helped teach me cello techniques that I did badly on in the first audition. When the audition sign-ups opened, I didn’t hesitate to write my name. It wasn’t easy, but I got in. For my junior and senior year of high school, I would be playing in the Symphony Orchestra, with the cellists I was intimidated by two years prior. Because of this experience, I learned the importance of studying and preparing beforehand. Since then, I've slipped up a few times, but I always make an effort to study, practice and prepare before I commit to and do something. But more than that, I learned how helpful and useful support from grownups can be in your formative years. If it hadn’t been for Ms. Gero, along with my parents and private tutor, I wouldn’t have even signed up for the auditions, much less gotten into the Symphony Orchestra. Because of their guidance and kindness, I succeeded. It was around this time that I decided to pursue a career in teaching. I wanted to be for kids what my teachers and family were for me; to support them, educate them, and encourage them to excel and try their hardest to achieve their goals. Kind of like a certain someone.

As far as I can remember, I’ve always loved books. My parents were very smart people, and they wanted their children to be intelligent as well, so they always made sure that we had access to the most convenient mode of education. When I was a child, I’d go through all the books on my shelf, mostly looking through the pictures or having my mother read them for me. As I grew older, I began to read more and more. Soon, the knowledge I gained from books was more than I gained from school itself. This was partially because I would read in class, to the disappointment of my teachers. In this way, I was unique to other children. Other children would get in trouble for bringing toys or video games to the dinner table. I’d get in trouble for reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid when we were having dinner with guests. Other kids would decorate their desks with drawings or stickers. I decorated mine with a large stack of books that I was determined to read. As I grew older, I started experimenting with more mature books, and began to read long chapter books that seriously informed my understanding of the world. Through The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I learned about the inequalities America faced, while looking at the singular case of a kid from Harlem going on the wrong path and escaping this direction through the prison library. Through Ready Player One, I learned about the vast and diverse entity that is popular culture, while watching as Wade Watts searched for the Keys to the Oasis. In these experiences, I gained knowledge. Books for me were entertaining, but a huge side effect was that I was gaining more and more insight through these books, even if it was random information. In my eighth-grade science class, we learned through a video about how two things with different mass would get to the floor at the same time if dropped from the same height. I had already learned this back in third grade. Not through the education system, but from a book in the My Weird School Dayz series, in which the school principal demonstrated this to the class while also accidently falling over and hurting himself (Or something like that, this was a long time ago). In this sense, books really are powerful tools. There’s a reason why throughout history, the ability to read and access to books were always an important and sought-after prize: they give you knowledge just by turning a page. It was because of all this knowledge, all this information gathered, that I became the intelligent nerd I am today. And it's also the reason I want to be a teacher. Through my experiences reading, I have gained a vast array of knowledge. And I want to share this knowledge with the world. At the end of the day, books provide so much of the knowledge the world has to offer. I hope I’ll be able to share this piece of information with the next generation of students.

I give back to my community by doing everything I can to encourage awareness of important issues. I am a member of multiple clubs at my high school, and in all these clubs I have tried to spread awareness on topics that I feel should be talked about and learned about more. In the Green Team, I always try to contribute to conversations on how to help the environment, and I make sure to help spread the word by making posters and helping at school clean-ups to encourage participation in the club. In the Black Student Union, I share my experiences at my high school as a person of color and help make it so that voices like mine are heard more at my school. I do this by helping organize assemblies for topics of importance such as honoring Martin Luther King Day. I also speak with teachers and administrators on how things can change for the better for Black Students. During my time volunteering at the Seattle Aquarium as a Youth Ocean Advocate, I helped educate the public on the wide variety of marine life the Puget Sound had to offer, and how important it was to help protect these species. In this way, I feel I have really helped spread awareness on important but often overlooked topics. A teacher who really impacted me was my sophomore year language arts teacher. She always helped us students connect with one another and find relevance and meaning in what we learned about. And something that really stood out to me was how she tried to make topics that were important but not popular, such as experiences in the Vietnam War, more prominent in her class. She felt that these topics were worth learning about, that we students should be more aware of them, and I hope to do the same. For context: I'm a history buff. I'm obsessed with historical facts, historical events, and how they contributed to our world today. In this, I often deal with topics that other students would find very boring: for example, Supreme Court decisions. But despite this, I believe that these topics impact our society greatly and deserve a place in our minds. For that reason, when I become an educator, I hope to inspire the next generation to love learning. I hope to share this love of learning with the next generation by inciting the feeling that makes me love these topics as well. One of the reasons I love history is because all these events and people came together, and helped make our world unique. The absence of even one of these events or people would lead to an entirely different society. Knowing this, you somehow understand the world better, and this drives me to love history. I want to inspire this feeling in my students as well. If I get the opportunity, I will show them how our world was created, and how the events of today could help influence the future. Even just the small, overlooked things could help them understand how our society functions, how it was created, and what they can do to influence society. I feel that I can really make a difference for the better this way, and I hope you feel the same way.