I wouldn't want to convince anyone to do anything. Some people know what is best for themselves, and college is not for everybody. There are jobs in our society that need to be fulfilled and do not require or even recommend a degree for. If we convinced everyone to go to college we would be investing in the wrong things. Why waste time and money to end up in a job that did not require anything you accomplished in the previous four years. You may not know what is best for your peer, you cannot completely live in his shoes so you will never fully understand that peer. Yes, college is a good path to find a job to make money. College is not always a path to find a career that you love. I personally would rather spend my life doing what I wanted to do rather than chasing someone else's dreams. If it is one thing I have learned in the past few years, it is that people will do what they want to do. Sometimes their aspirations line up with what is best for them. And what is best for them is to let them figure out things for themselves. There is only a handful of circumstances that I would try to convince a peer to attend college. For instance, if they recently went through any form of trauma and their outlook on life radically changed as a result, yet preceding the events, they had plans to go to college. Temporary setbacks shouldn't influence a long term decision.

The simplest pleasures in my life include the feeling of accomplishment. It can be something small like studying and reading until I understand that concept well enough to complete problems on my own. Or something big like the project truck that I have been working on for two and a half years now. I built the engine and completed a manual transmission swap. It was no easy feat on my own but I was determined to get it done and I have never felt more satisfied when I started driving the truck and it drove smoothly. A few other simple pleasures in my life include spending time with my family. Growing up, family was always complicated and cold if you would put it that way. Despite the hardships and divorce I feel closer than ever to both of my parents, I never felt that before and I could not be more grateful. I love cooking, it is also a feeling of satisfaction when I can assemble a tasty meal that my roommates also enjoy. Which brings me to the last pleasure I can think of. I will go out of my way to help people, even if it inconveniences me. No matter what I do receive something back and that is that joy I feel when I see someone's grateful smile for the service I was able to provide or just the gratefulness in their voice thereafter.

My Native American heritage has a bitter sweet positive impact on my life. It's one of those not so pretty things that pushes me to strive for success. I am a Pueblo Native American, from Katishtya in San Felipe, New Mexico. My family is part of the Eagle Clan. My heritage is rather subtle and minute because I did not grow up on the reservation and my family was looked down upon because we are not full Native American, my dad is half white and I am a quarter white. Hearing how my dad grew up on the reservation is what fuels me to go to college and try to make the world a better place. The conditions he lived in were not suitable for children, he had it rough from the beginning of his life. What amazes me is that despite he always seemed to be against the odds, he kept going and kept progressing in life to eventually have a family and do everything he could to provide for them. My dad quite literally started with a rake, shovel and a wheelbarrow. He's labored since he was a teenager and now he is a contractor, running his own business. He now has heavy equipment and can proudly keep his family under a roof and fed. This grit that I saw in him came from his Native American heritage no doubt and I believe I have it too. I want to succeed so that I may have a shot at improving the lives of Native Americans, it is not just this Pueblo. Other Pueblos in that state suffer the same state, especially the Navajo Nation. Because of my lack of cultural knowledge, my inability to speak Keres, and inability to participate in the feast day dances inspire me to do what my dad did. Just keep going, and then go some more because why stop. From what I have heard, Katishtya used to be a good, thriving Pueblo where everybody worked hard and had a good community. Now the Casinos have infiltrated the lifestyle of the Pueblos and made them lazy by giving them checks just because. These checks are pretty girthy, enough to comfortably sit back and waste on alcohol. I want to be able to show my people how to work hard to make an honest living. What better way to show them than by example, if they truly know my lineage they know that my family had to build from the ground up, hopefully they can see that.

My most passionate hobby would be any form of racing. I find absolute joy and thrill in pushing the limit of a machine, figuring out the best combinations for the car and track because no two are alike. There is always something new to learn about racing. As the famous F1 driver once said, "Once you stop looking for that gap, you are no longer a racer." To elaborate on what he meant by gap, it is the area to improve. You may think you posted the perfect lap, which would consist of having the perfect throttle, brake control, and driving line but even then there is room for improvement. Innovation in the car's design is the next step and having the grit to keep striving for perfection is what makes racing my favorite hobby. That mindset is valuable as it can be applied to anything else in life. If you have that determination with everything, you can accomplish multitudes of milestones in life. I recently watched the movie, "Ford vs Ferrari," where Carrol Shelby said something that stuck with me. "There's a point at 7,000 RPMs where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless. It disappears. All that's left, a body moving through space, and time." The feeling of speeding through a chicane or double switchback, reaching seven-thousand rpm, experiencing multiple g's from the braking force and lateral grip in the turns is surreal. Racing is something I've loved since I was a kid, I would always yell at my dad from the back seat telling him to drive faster on the straights in his Mustang. I hope one day I can afford to start a racing career, that is why I am here at a university. I am pursuing my dreams because I believe I have what it takes.