Hello my name ia Yalena Andrew I'm 19 and attending Haskell Indian Nation University going into my second year. My career choice has always been the same since I was a young kid which is working within my community and preventing and giving education to youth but mostly helping the addicted in my community. I'm currently working towards an associates in social work. Drugs and alcohol have affected my life as long as I could remember. Ever since I was a child I was living in a house surrounded by drugs and parties in a very low- income home, as the oldest of 3 I had the job of taking care of my siblings. I lived with my grandparents most of my childhood because both of my parents were addicted and running around and in and out of jail. I helped take care of my grandparents until they recently died of cirrhosis. My father died from an overdose in 2014, which made my mom go into a spiral until my baby brother died of SIDS also in 2014 is when she decided it was time to sober up and create a safe home. She's been sober since 2015 and all of my siblings live under the same roof in a good home now. Some of the main sacrifices that have made an impact on my personal and educational goals were cutting off the toxic people who I love and grown up with but don't have the same goals as me. Most of my friends are really heavily into partying and going out for drinks every weekend but I would by hypocritical if I were to party if that's the exact thing I wanted to stop was the cycle of trauma my community is so heavily held down on. I sometimes find myself missing these people in my life but we aren't currently aligned in life to be apart of each others life. I could go into much more detail but as you can see addiction has had a heavy weight on my shoulders and my career choice would to prevent that as the best as I could. I am a pretty active advocate now in my community but can't really do as much as I was to if I were to be educated which is why I'm so eager to do so and in hopes get the financial barrier off of me to not worry about that. I