I watch people very closely, not out of morbid curiosity, but out of sympathy, as I’ve struggled most of my life. When you’ve struggled most of your life, hiding behind a mask, you become more observant. I’ve seen the small pauses between people’s breath, an exaggerated sense of happiness to mask what’s truly going on, the small fidgets trying to relieve anxiety. My friends have all struggled, and I’ve learned that offering a kind, quiet solace, a hand is the best thing anyone can do. I try to be the person people can come to, because it is so hard to find in this modern world. I couldn’t find it when I was younger, so I will be that person. Psychology has been calling my name for as long as I can remember. There are so many people with illnesses that no one can put a name to, and I want to help in giving them a name. I am drawn to seeing the gaps in peoples masks, the motivation behind the actions, I want to understand people so deeply. I view people as a whole, why have they become the way they are? What happened in their past has shaped them to be the way they are? Is it their nature, or how they were nurtured? I want to understand all of it so deeply, so that I can help name what others fear, explain what feels unexplainable, and guide people toward clarity. I want to give people the help that they’re reluctant to ask for. When I was younger, I always wanted someone to see me, to recognize that I needed help, but I never said a word. I needed a hand, a steadiness to guide me to the light. I didn’t have that, so I learned to rely solely on myself to be okay. Now, I want to be that for others, I want to make an impact in this world, and being in this field draws me in. I can help people now, and so far into the future if I pursue this. When I am cemented in this field, I will have helped so many people who don’t know how to explain what they’re going through. By pursuing this, I will be lending so many different kinds of people the hands they need to get themselves out of the ruts that they’ve fallen into. This degree won’t just help me get a cushy job, it’s to help others find the path to healing. Psychology offers a way for me to turn observation into understanding, and understanding into healing. It lets me take everything I’ve lived through and transform it into something useful, something that lifts others instead of weighing me down. That’s the future I’m working toward.

I’ve always lived in this silence I never knew how to name. It quietly picked at my skin, irritating me to the bone, a nagging feeling that never went away. It was always with me, shouting and yelling. At 10, it was just knowing something had to be wrong with me, and the battle thinking I was faking or exaggerating it. By high school, that nameless silence hardened into stares. Paranoia rooted itself so deeply that every hallway felt like a stage. Everything I did felt like I was playing a character, to the point where I stopped referring to myself, I viewed myself as someone looking in on another’s life, viewing the experience. I didn’t feel like I had a choice in any of the actions I made, it was another person. My journals feel strange to look back on, because they were so desperate, hoping anyone would crack it open and just read it. I was just trying to outrun the quiet that haunted my mind. It whispered in my ears that everything about me was wrong, to my grades, my body, my face, to my future. My freshman and sophomore year were defined by isolation, when eventually in junior year I finally gained some friends. But even with them there it felt like I was fated, no, cursed to always fade into the background, and be another face in the crowd. These thoughts took root so deeply into who I was, but no one knew. To everyone else I was just a bubbly personality. I wanted someone, I wanted anyone to witness and see the pain that I was going through. I started to hurt myself on my arms, hoping, wishing, that someone would reach their hand out to me, to help me, to cry with me, to hug me. But, no one ever did. I sank further into myself, trying to keep the connections around me, but slowly just shutting down. Then one day, like lightning struck me, I realized no one can save me, but me. Recovery isn’t something someone else drags you into, it’s something you choose, sometimes one minute at a time. It’s a choice to fall down the endless hole, and you can never truly be okay, until you choose yourself. Once you do, climbing out will just feel like something you put off forever. I still don’t like talking to other people about these things, I still do want other people to notice when I’m not okay. But the difference now is that I don’t crumble when they don’t. I don’t depend on being rescued. Now I’m okay if no one notices, because I have the power to pull myself out of it. I treat recovery as practice rather than a finish line, because it’s hard to leave those thoughts in the past. They will always quietly brush past me, but it’s now something I can just move past from. I’m not stuck with the silence, it’s just sometimes there. Looking ahead, my goals are shaped by the person I once needed. I plan to study animation and psychology so I can reach people who feel the way I did. Storytelling has always been a place where I could breathe, and psychology has given me the language I used to lack. I want to combine the two to help others understand themselves, to create stories or environments where someone who feels alone can finally feel seen. I spent years wishing for a hand to reach out to me in the dark. Now, I want to be that hand for someone else.

I’ve always lived in this silence I never knew how to name. It quietly picked at my skin, irritating me to the bone, a nagging feeling that never went away. It was always with me, shouting and yelling. At 10, it was just a knowing something had to be wrong with me, and the battle thinking I was faking or exaggerating it. By high school, that nameless silence hardened into stares. Paranoia rooted itself so deeply that every hallway felt like a stage. Everything I did felt like I was playing a character, to the point where I stopped referring to myself, I viewed myself as someone looking in on another’s life, viewing the experience. I didn’t feel like I had a choice in any of the actions I made, it was another person. My journals feel strange to look back on, because they were so desperate, hoping anyone would crack it open and just read it. I was just trying to outrun the quiet that haunted my mind. It whispered in my ears that everything about me was wrong, to my grades, my body, my face, to my future. My freshman and sophomore year were defined by isolation, when eventually in junior year I finally gained some friends. But even with them there it felt like I was fated, no, cursed to always fade into the background, and be another face in the crowd. These thoughts took root so deeply into who I was, but no one knew. To everyone else I was just a bubbly personality. I wanted someone, I wanted anyone to witness and see the pain that I was going through. I started to hurt myself on my arms, hoping, wishing, that someone would reach their hand out to me, to help me, to cry with me, to hug me. But, no one ever did. I sank further into myself, trying to keep the connections around me, but slowly just shutting down. Then one day, like lightning struck me, I realized no one can save me, but me. Recovery isn’t something someone else drags you into, it’s something you choose, sometimes one minute at a time. It’s a choice to fall down the endless hole, and you can never truly be okay, until you choose yourself. Once you do, climbing out will just feel like something you put off forever. I still don’t like talking to other people about these things, I still do want other people to notice when I’m not okay. But the difference now is that I don’t crumble when they don’t. I don’t depend on being rescued. Now I’m okay if no one notices, because I have the power to pull myself out of it. I treat recovery as practice rather than a finish line, because it’s hard to leave those thoughts in the past. They will always quietly brush past me, but it’s now something I can just move past from. I’m not stuck with the silence, it’s just sometimes there. Looking ahead, my goals are shaped by the person I once needed. I plan to study animation and psychology so I can reach people who feel the way I did. Storytelling has always been a place where I could breathe, and psychology has given me the language I used to lack. I want to combine the two to help others understand themselves, to create stories or environments where someone who feels alone can finally feel seen. I spent years wishing for a hand to reach out to me in the dark. Now, I want to be that hand for someone else.

I watch people very closely, not out of morbid curiosity, but out of sympathy, as I’ve struggled most of my life. When you’ve struggled most of your life, hiding behind a mask, you become more observant. I’ve seen the small pauses between people’s breath, an exaggerated sense of happiness to mask what’s truly going on, the small fidgets trying to relieve anxiety. My friends have all struggled, and I’ve learned that offering a kind, quiet solace, a hand is the best thing anyone can do. I try to be the person people can come to, because it is so hard to find in this modern world. I couldn’t find it when I was younger, so I will be that person. Psychology has been calling my name for as long as I can remember. There are so many people with illnesses that no one can put a name to, and I want to help in giving them a name. I am drawn to seeing the gaps in peoples masks, the motivation behind the actions, I want to understand people so deeply. I view people as a whole, why have they become the way they are? What happened in their past has shaped them to be the way they are? Is it their nature, or how they were nurtured? I want to understand all of it so deeply, so that I can help name what others fear, explain what feels unexplainable, and guide people toward clarity. I want to give people the help that they’re reluctant to ask for. When I was younger, I always wanted someone to see me, to recognize that I needed help, but I never said a word. I needed a hand, a steadiness to guide me to the light. I didn’t have that, so I learned to rely solely on myself to be okay. Now, I want to be that for others, I want to make an impact in this world, and being in this field draws me in. I can help people now, and so far into the future if I pursue this. When I am cemented in this field, I will have helped so many people who don’t know how to explain what they’re going through. By pursuing this, I will be lending so many different kinds of people the hands they need to get themselves out of the ruts that they’ve fallen into. This degree won’t just help me get a cushy job, it’s to help others find the path to healing. Psychology offers a way for me to turn observation into understanding, and understanding into healing. It lets me take everything I’ve lived through and transform it into something useful, something that lifts others instead of weighing me down. That’s the future I’m working toward.

I watch people very closely, not out of morbid curiosity, but out of sympathy, as I’ve struggled most of my life. When you’ve struggled most of your life, hiding behind a mask, you become more observant. I’ve seen the small pauses between people’s breath, an exaggerated sense of happiness to mask what’s truly going on, the small fidgets trying to relieve anxiety. My friends have all struggled, and I’ve learned that offering a kind, quiet solace, a hand is the best thing anyone can do. I try to be the person people can come to, because it is so hard to find in this modern world. I couldn’t find it when I was younger, so I will be that person. Psychology has been calling my name for as long as I can remember. There are so many people with illnesses that no one can put a name to, and I want to help in giving them a name. I am drawn to seeing the gaps in peoples masks, the motivation behind the actions, I want to understand people so deeply. I view people as a whole, why have they become the way they are? What happened in their past has shaped them to be the way they are? Is it their nature, or how they were nurtured? I want to understand all of it so deeply, so that I can help name what others fear, explain what feels unexplainable, and guide people toward clarity. I want to give people the help that they’re reluctant to ask for. When I was younger, I always wanted someone to see me, to recognize that I needed help, but I never said a word. I needed a hand, a steadiness to guide me to the light. I didn’t have that, so I learned to rely solely on myself to be okay. Now, I want to be that for others, I want to make an impact in this world, and being in this field draws me in. I can help people now, and so far into the future if I pursue this. When I am cemented in this field, I will have helped so many people who don’t know how to explain what they’re going through. By pursuing this, I will be lending so many different kinds of people the hands they need to get themselves out of the ruts that they’ve fallen into. This degree won’t just help me get a cushy job, it’s to help others find the path to healing. Psychology offers a way for me to turn observation into understanding, and understanding into healing. It lets me take everything I’ve lived through and transform it into something useful, something that lifts others instead of weighing me down. That’s the future I’m working toward.

I watch people very closely, not out of morbid curiosity, but out of sympathy, as I’ve struggled most of my life. When you’ve struggled most of your life, hiding behind a mask, you become more observant. I’ve seen the small pauses between people’s breath, an exaggerated sense of happiness to mask what’s truly going on, the small fidgets trying to relieve anxiety. My friends have all struggled, and I’ve learned that offering a kind, quiet solace, a hand is the best thing anyone can do. I try to be the person people can come to, because it is so hard to find in this modern world. I couldn’t find it when I was younger, so I will be that person. Psychology has been calling my name for as long as I can remember. There are so many people with illnesses that no one can put a name to, and I want to help in giving them a name. I am drawn to seeing the gaps in peoples masks, the motivation behind the actions, I want to understand people so deeply. I view people as a whole, why have they become the way they are? What happened in their past has shaped them to be the way they are? Is it their nature, or how they were nurtured? I want to understand all of it so deeply, so that I can help name what others fear, explain what feels unexplainable, and guide people toward clarity. I want to give people the help that they’re reluctant to ask for. When I was younger, I always wanted someone to see me, to recognize that I needed help, but I never said a word. I needed a hand, a steadiness to guide me to the light. I didn’t have that, so I learned to rely solely on myself to be okay. Now, I want to be that for others, I want to make an impact in this world, and being in this field draws me in. I can help people now, and so far into the future if I pursue this. When I am cemented in this field, I will have helped so many people who don’t know how to explain what they’re going through. By pursuing this, I will be lending so many different kinds of people the hands they need to get themselves out of the ruts that they’ve fallen into. This degree won’t just help me get a cushy job, it’s to help others find the path to healing. Psychology offers a way for me to turn observation into understanding, and understanding into healing. It lets me take everything I’ve lived through and transform it into something useful, something that lifts others instead of weighing me down. That’s the future I’m working toward. A future where kindness prevails, and mental health is a normal thing to get help for.

My eyes focus on my room that used to be so full and colorful, now desolate, devoid of everything, only a bed, a desk and me standing in the center. I carry a box full of notes, happy birthdays, graduation, Merry Christmas's, Halloween photos, polaroid's, everything I’m meant to leave behind. My heart aches knowing all the struggle to get the people I have around me will for even a moment, feel like it never mattered. It’s hard to start anew, but it’s necessary to leave behind the world that raised me, to become my own. For so long my community has been something that held me in place, the only thing to keep going. It was, it is my heartbeat. I know that in the near future, in a year, I will be leaving them all. A fate that I never wanted, or wished upon myself. I had been isolated for so long, and now I have everything I’ve ever wanted. So quickly, it’ll all be gone. Another move, another reset, where everything is back to square one. I wish I could bring everyone with me, but I can’t. It was so hard to know that I needed to leave to grow. I still feel I can’t leave, but I need to. Growth asks for sacrifice, and sometimes the cost is the very place you learned how to stand. What makes this harder is knowing I’ll be doing it alone. My path to college won’t be cushioned by family help. No one is paying my tuition or covering my rent. While others settle into dorms their parents paid for, I’ll be working long hours just to live, balancing ambition with exhaustion, fighting sleep while people my age celebrate their freedom. But I’m still choosing this path because education matters to me. Knowledge matters. My future matters. Even if the cost is always being tired, loneliness, and this ache of leaving everything, I don’t care. I want to become someone who matters in this world, someone who changes lives instead of just surviving my own. Psychology calls to me because the brain is so vast and unexplored, we still don’t know a lot about it, I want to be part of that exploration. I want to study the disorders that steal people’s sense of self and work toward treatments that give that it back. I want to be the person that I needed when I was younger, someone to give their hand. Even if I'm leaving, even if I’m losing everything I have built. I will do anything just to get there. My education will take precedence over everything, and everyone. I want to learn everything I can about psychology so I can help little girls like me. This scholarship will help me achieve my dream, by even just helping a little with my college funds, every cent counts. I know better because of how much I've worked, help me be the change in this world, help me major in Experimental Psychology.

My eyes focus on my room that used to be so full and colorful, now desolate, devoid of everything, only a bed, a desk and me standing in the center. I carry a box full of notes, happy birthdays, graduation, Merry Christmas's, halloween photos, polaroids, everything I’m meant to leave behind. My heart aches knowing all the struggle to get the people I have around me will for even a moment, feel like it never mattered. It’s hard to start anew, but it’s necessary to leave behind the world that raised me, to become my own. For so long my community has been something that held me in place, the only thing to keep going. It was, it is my heartbeat. I know that in the near future, in a year, I will be leaving them all. A fate that I never wanted, or wished upon myself. I had been isolated for so long, and now I have everything I’ve ever wanted. So quickly, it’ll all be gone. Another move, another reset, where everything is back to square one. I wish I could bring everyone with me, but I can’t. It was so hard to know that I needed to leave to grow. I still feel I can’t leave, but I need to. Growth asks for sacrifice, and sometimes the cost is the very place you learned how to stand. What makes this harder is knowing I’ll be doing it alone. My path to college won’t be cushioned by family help. No one is paying my tuition or covering my rent. While others settle into dorms their parents paid for, I’ll be working long hours just to live, balancing ambition with exhaustion, fighting sleep while people my age celebrate their freedom. But I’m still choosing this path because education matters to me. Knowledge matters. My future matters. Even if the cost is always being tired, loneliness, and this ache of leaving everything, I don’t care. I want to become someone who matters in this world, someone who changes lives instead of just surviving my own. Psychology calls to me because the brain is so vast and unexplored, we still don’t know a lot about it, I want to be part of that exploration. I want to study the disorders that steal people’s sense of self and work toward treatments that give that it back. I want to be the person that I needed when I was younger, someone to give their hand. Even if I'm leaving, even if I’m losing everything I have built. I will do anything just to get there. My education will take precedence over everything, and everyone. I want to learn everything I can about psychology so I can help little girls like me.

I’ve always lived in this silence I never knew how to name. It quietly picked at my skin, irritating me to the bone, a nagging feeling that never went away. It was always with me, shouting and yelling. At 10, it was just a knowing something had to be wrong with me, and the battle thinking I was faking or exaggerating it. By high school, that nameless silence hardened into stares. Paranoia rooted itself so deeply that every hallway felt like a stage. Everything I did felt like I was playing a character, to the point where I stopped referring to myself, I viewed myself as someone looking in on another’s life, viewing the experience. I didn’t feel like I had a choice in any of the actions I made, it was another person. My journals feel strange to look back on, because they were so desperate, hoping anyone would crack it open and just read it. I was just trying to outrun the quiet that haunted my mind. It whispered in my ears that everything about me was wrong, to my grades, my body, my face, to my future. My freshman and sophomore year were defined by isolation, when eventually in junior year I finally gained some friends. But even with them there it felt like I was fated, no, cursed to always fade into the background, and be another face in the crowd. These thoughts took root so deeply into who I was, but no one knew. To everyone else I was just a bubbly personality. I wanted someone, I wanted anyone to witness and see the pain that I was going through. I started to hurt myself on my arms, hoping, wishing, that someone would reach their hand out to me, to help me, to cry with me, to hug me. But, no one ever did. I sank further into myself, trying to keep the connections around me, but slowly just shutting down. Then one day, like lightning struck me, I realized no one can save me, but me. Recovery isn’t something someone else drags you into, it’s something you choose, sometimes one minute at a time. It’s a choice to fall down the endless hole, and you can never truly be okay, until you choose yourself. Once you do, climbing out will just feel like something you put off forever. I still don’t like talking to other people about these things, I still do want other people to notice when I’m not okay. But the difference now is that I don’t crumble when they don’t. I don’t depend on being rescued. Now I’m okay if no one notices, because I have the power to pull myself out of it. I treat recovery as practice rather than a finish line, because it’s hard to leave those thoughts in the past. They will always quietly brush past me, but it’s now something I can just move past from. I’m not stuck with the silence, it’s just sometimes there. Looking ahead, my goals are shaped by the person I once needed. I plan to study animation and psychology so I can reach people who feel the way I did. Storytelling has always been a place where I could breathe, and psychology has given me the language I used to lack. I want to combine the two to help others understand themselves, to create stories or environments where someone who feels alone can finally feel seen. I've become more considerate and empathetic because of everything I've faced. I spent years wishing for a hand to reach out to me in the dark. Now, I want to be that hand for someone else.

I’ve always lived in this silence I never knew how to name. It quietly picked at my skin, irritating me to the bone, a nagging feeling that never went away. It was always with me, shouting and yelling. At 10, it was just a knowing something had to be wrong with me, and the battle thinking I was faking or exaggerating it. By high school, that nameless silence hardened into stares. Paranoia rooted itself so deeply that every hallway felt like a stage. Everything I did felt like I was playing a character, to the point where I stopped referring to myself, I viewed myself as someone looking in on another’s life, viewing the experience. I didn’t feel like I had a choice in any of the actions I made, it was another person. My journals feel strange to look back on, because they were so desperate, hoping anyone would crack it open and just read it. I was just trying to outrun the quiet that haunted my mind. It whispered in my ears that everything about me was wrong, to my grades, my body, my face, to my future. My freshman and sophomore year were defined by isolation, when eventually in junior year I finally gained some friends. But even with them there it felt like I was fated, no, cursed to always fade into the background, and be another face in the crowd. These thoughts took root so deeply into who I was, but no one knew. To everyone else I was just a bubbly personality. I wanted someone, I wanted anyone to witness and see the pain that I was going through. I started to hurt myself on my arms, hoping, wishing, that someone would reach their hand out to me, to help me, to cry with me, to hug me. But, no one ever did. I sank further into myself, trying to keep the connections around me, but slowly just shutting down. Then one day, like lightning struck me, I realized no one can save me, but me. Recovery isn’t something someone else drags you into, it’s something you choose, sometimes one minute at a time. It’s a choice to fall down the endless hole, and you can never truly be okay, until you choose yourself. Once you do, climbing out will just feel like something you put off forever. I still don’t like talking to other people about these things, I still do want other people to notice when I’m not okay. But the difference now is that I don’t crumble when they don’t. I don’t depend on being rescued. Now I’m okay if no one notices, because I have the power to pull myself out of it. I treat recovery as practice rather than a finish line, because it’s hard to leave those thoughts in the past. They will always quietly brush past me, but it’s now something I can just move past from. I’m not stuck with the silence, it’s just sometimes there. Looking ahead, my goals are shaped by the person I once needed. I plan to study animation and psychology so I can reach people who feel the way I did. Storytelling has always been a place where I could breathe, and psychology has given me the language I used to lack. I want to combine the two to help others understand themselves, to create stories or environments where someone who feels alone can finally feel seen. I spent years wishing for a hand to reach out to me in the dark. Now, I want to be that hand for someone else.

I used to sit in chemistry class feeling like I was trying to read a language in mesopotamian times. Concepts just evaded my mind, even though I always thought I was the best at those. Acids and bases argued in a dialect I couldn’t decipher. But then came stoichiometry, quiet and structured. For the first time all semester, something stayed still long enough for me to hold it. I understood it, and after struggling all semester long, I grasped something. I remember the exact moment it clicked, a worksheet spread across my desk, numbers lined up, and every single thing was even, nice, it all added up, it finally made a modicum of sense. I felt like sparkles in my brain, because I heard people struggling in the back of the class, and I actually grasped it. Multiply, divide, balance. If you followed the trail, the answer appeared. No tricks, no hidden variables waiting to jump out and make you feel foolish. Just order. Just logic. Just the simple promise that if you took one honest step after another, you’d end up exactly where you were meant to be. That evenness felt like a revelation. While the world around me spun in a dozen directions, stoichiometry held steady. And that steadiness taught me to love math, not the flashy, complicated parts, but the moments where the universe reveals its amazing, wonderful symmetry. Where chaos folds into something deliberate. Where everything, finally, makes sense.

There used to be a time where I stopped imagining a future for myself. Seventh grade, lights off in my room, homework rotting in my backpack, and a quiet knowing that sixteen would be the end of my story. I didn’t, I felt like I could not see a way out. Then, slowly, stubbornly, stories pulled me back. I had such love for these characters I made, not even realizing, I put a little bit of myself in each one of them. I held them so close to my heart, while still hating and loathing the person I was. I continued to write, to draw, to build, to create, not knowing I was slowly putting myself back together again. Growing up in a house that demanded independence before I was even in high school, forced me to learn that everything I did would never be enough. The table, my room, the kitchen, the living room, would never be clean enough. I worked through high school, working forty-hour weeks since I was 15, saving where I could, spending on literal essentials, pushing myself toward something bigger. I felt like I was meant for something more than this. But I never had anyone there to believe in me, so it was just a soft pang in my heart, while I still was giving up. And somewhere between exhaustion and imagination, I learned the most important thing, perspective changes everything. Once I started seeing people, including myself, as whole, complicated beings shaped by their circumstances, I found a sense of empathy that rebuilt me from the inside. I felt as if I was worth more than what I had told myself, and I began to try and be that hand that everyone is reaching out for. That if you don’t make that change, you can’t expect everyone around you to, too. That shift is why I want a change now. I want the chance to leave the environment that taught me to shrink and move into one that lets me grow. I want to pursue animation or psychology, two paths that look different but are actually the same. Both would let me give someone else what I needed at fourteen, a hand reaching back, a voice saying there is more than this. I want to give every single person, no matter from where, a chance to finally live, whether that be through a show I created, or through counseling. The scholarship would give me time to breathe, to study without carrying the full weight of financial strain, to finally focus on the work that brings me alive. And paying it forward feels like a promise I’ve already made. I want to be the person who helps someone else get their own second chance, continuing the cycle Nelson believed in, one life lifting another, and another after that.