My goal is to earn my bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota while completing the prerequisites to apply to pharmacy school, earning a Doctor of Pharmacy degree and becoming a clinical pharmacist. I chose pharmacy because it offers a very stable career while letting me directly help people receive the medications they need. I also have family members in the field, which has given me a personal connection to this profession. My long term goal is to build a career that allows me to be financially independent while helping others. I am beginning at the University of Minnesota in September 2026 as a full-time student and expect to spend at least four years completing my undergraduate studies. My estimated annual cost of attendance is $65,000 before aid. I have a $10,000 scholarship renewable for all four years and $800 in FAFSA assistance, reducing the estimated annual cost to $49,000 before my employment and savings. I currently have approximately $4,000 saved. Because my family is unable to contribute financially toward my education, I know I have to take responsibility for closing this gap myself. I will continue applying for scholarships throughout college rather than treating scholarships as something I only do before enrollment. I will use my work-study award and seek an on-campus position. In addition, I plan to work 15 hours per week on campus and 20-30 hours off campus, with an estimated combined income of approximately $1,000-$2,000 per month. Balancing this with college will be hard, so my education will be my priority. If working two jobs significantly risks my grades, I will reduce my employment rather than risk my long-term goals. I also plan to gain experience related to healthcare and pharmacy whenever possible. If I can get internships or other opportunities, I will prioritize those positions because they can provide both income and professional experience. I will continue applying for scholarships, seeking work-study opportunities, and building professional connections throughout my education. My goal is to minimize student loans rather than assume borrowing is unavoidable. If necessary, I estimate that I may need to borrow $50,000 for undergraduate education, but I will treat loans as my last financial resort after scholarships, grants, work-study, employment, and savings. If the financial gap becomes too large, I will to take a gap year to work and save rather than borrow more than I can reasonably repay. After graduation, I plan to continue toward pharmacy school and pursue employment as a clinical pharmacist. I hope to find an employer tuition assistance and other repayment benefits available through healthcare employers. I would also be willing to live with family after graduation so that I can make larger loan payments before taking on the full cost of independent living. If attending the University of Minnesota becomes financially impossible, I can return home and attend a community college. If pharmacy school can't happen, I can use my bachelor’s degree to pursue related careers in psychology or social work. My goal is to keep moving forward. I have been working since I was fifteen and have learned to plan for myself because I cannot depend on family financial support. This scholarship would not just make college easier, it would reduce the amount I need to borrow and bring me closer to becoming financially independent. Every dollar would help me turn a difficult financial situation into a path toward the life I am working to build.

My goal is to earn my bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota while completing the prerequisites to apply to pharmacy school, earning a Doctor of Pharmacy degree and becoming a clinical pharmacist. I chose pharmacy because it offers a very stable career while letting me directly help people receive the medications they need. I also have family members in the field, which has given me a personal connection to this profession. My long term goal is to build a career that allows me to be financially independent while helping others. I am beginning at the University of Minnesota in September 2026 as a full-time student and expect to spend at least four years completing my undergraduate studies. My estimated annual cost of attendance is $65,000 before aid. I have a $10,000 scholarship renewable for all four years and $800 in FAFSA assistance, reducing the estimated annual cost to $49,000 before my employment and savings. I currently have approximately $4,000 saved. Because my family is unable to contribute financially toward my education, I know I have to take responsibility for closing this gap myself. I will continue applying for scholarships throughout college rather than treating scholarships as something I only do before enrollment. I will use my work-study award and seek an on-campus position. In addition, I plan to work 15 hours per week on campus and 20-30 hours off campus, with an estimated combined income of approximately $1,000-$2,000 per month. Balancing this with college will be hard, so my education will be my priority. If working two jobs significantly risks my grades, I will reduce my employment rather than risk my long-term goals. I also plan to gain experience related to healthcare and pharmacy whenever possible. If I can get internships or other opportunities, I will prioritize those positions because they can provide both income and professional experience. I will continue applying for scholarships, seeking work-study opportunities, and building professional connections throughout my education. My goal is to minimize student loans rather than assume borrowing is unavoidable. If necessary, I estimate that I may need to borrow $50,000 for undergraduate education, but I will treat loans as my last financial resort after scholarships, grants, work-study, employment, and savings. If the financial gap becomes too large, I will to take a gap year to work and save rather than borrow more than I can reasonably repay. After graduation, I plan to continue toward pharmacy school and pursue employment as a clinical pharmacist. I hope to find an employer tuition assistance and other repayment benefits available through healthcare employers. I would also be willing to live with family after graduation so that I can make larger loan payments before taking on the full cost of independent living. If attending the University of Minnesota becomes financially impossible, I can return home and attend a community college. If pharmacy school can't happen, I can use my bachelor’s degree to pursue related careers in psychology or social work. My goal is to keep moving forward. I have been working since I was fifteen and have learned to plan for myself because I cannot depend on family financial support. This scholarship would not just make college easier, it would reduce the amount I need to borrow and bring me closer to becoming financially independent. Every dollar would help me turn a difficult financial situation into a path toward the life I am working to build.

I’ve always lived with this feeling of being alien. I feel as if I have taken over a girl’s life, took her memories, and stole everything from her. My body feels foreign to me. It quietly picked at my skin, irritating me to the bone, a nagging feeling that never went away. It was always with me, shouting, yelling, you’re not supposed to be here. 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, it hardened into stares. Paranoia rooted itself so deeply that every hallway, all I could see and hear laughs, that I don’t belong here. So, I tried putting on a character, to make myself feel more human, to the point where I stopped referring to myself. I was just an alien puppeteering someone, viewing the experience. 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 trying to outrun this foreign feeling 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. That an alien didn’t belong here, and maybe if I just stopped, I’d return to my ship. I’d belong again. My freshman and sophomore year were defined by isolation, no one wanted to be around an alien. Eventually in junior year I finally got some friends. But even with them there it felt like I was fated, no, cursed to always fade into the background, and be left. These thoughts took root so deeply into who I was, but no one knew. To everyone else I was just a bubbly personality, a caricature. I wanted someone, I wanted anyone to witness and see the pain that I was going through. 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 just a minute at a time. It’s a choice to fall down the endless hole. 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 a line rather than a point on a graph, because it’s hard to leave those thoughts in the past. I will always be an alien, but now it’s just something that is a part of me. I’m not stuck with it, it’s just me.

I’ve always lived with this feeling of being alien. I feel as if I have taken over a girl’s life, took her memories, and stole everything from her. My body feels foreign to me. It quietly picked at my skin, irritating me to the bone, a nagging feeling that never went away. It was always with me, shouting, yelling, you’re not supposed to be here. 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, it hardened into stares. Paranoia rooted itself so deeply that every hallway, all I could see and hear laughs, that I don’t belong here. So, I tried putting on a character, to make myself feel more human, to the point where I stopped referring to myself. I was just an alien puppeteering someone, viewing the experience. 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 trying to outrun this foreign feeling 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. That an alien didn’t belong here, and maybe if I just stopped, I’d return to my ship. I’d belong again. My freshman and sophomore year were defined by isolation, no one wanted to be around an alien. Eventually in junior year I finally got some friends. But even with them there it felt like I was fated, no, cursed to always fade into the background, and be left. These thoughts took root so deeply into who I was, but no one knew. To everyone else I was just a bubbly personality, a caricature. I wanted someone, I wanted anyone to witness and see the pain that I was going through. 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 just a minute at a time. It’s a choice to fall down the endless hole. 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 a line rather than a point on a graph, because it’s hard to leave those thoughts in the past. I will always be an alien, but now it’s just something that is a part of me. I’m not stuck with it, it’s just me.

Just focus on the words on the page, read them. Just read them. The words all blurred together, my eyes flashing, jagged ribbed lines. The overwhelming sensation of vomiting was overcoming me, but I’m strong, so I’ll deal with this until it goes away. But for some odd reason, it never quite does. It lingers, maybe giving in for a second, before a needle finds its way to push into my scalp, its sharp end stabbing into my brow. This disability has hindered my educational journey by a lot. A migraine can take me out for days, and no medicine ever seems to help. It’s severely affected my abilities, especially in concentration. It's made me slower, made things that should be easy, infinitely harder. Sometimes, it just feels like I could do so much more, but this thing that claws at my brain, makes me feel like I’m just evolutionarily inept. That I am just as a person, broken, and no matter how hard I try to pick up the pieces of myself and put them together, I will never actually be fixed. But despite the extreme pain that comes with my life, I trudge through.I have learned that there will always be this pain that’s just out of my control, but that doesn’t mean I have to just stop doing things that make me happy and fulfilled. Even though there is always something going to be wrong with my head, there isn’t anything stopping me from overcoming it. Despite the pain, despite the discomfort, I can, and I will try to get a higher education, even if it puts me through days, even months of hurt. I want to do this. I want to be in school. I want to pursue medicine. I want to keep being a force that will, no matter what, move forward. I want to be more than this pain that happens to overtake me. Independence for me means that I can sustain myself and not have this disability determine my life. I hate that I have to, but sometimes my brain just doesn’t want to work when I get a migraine. I have to lean on other people, asking for assistance. It makes me feel like a burden. But the people who have helped me have also taught me independence does not mean never needing anyone. It means being able to direct my own life. If I get a higher education that will launch me into a good career, pharmacy. Then with that, I can finally find medicine or a treatment of some kind that will alleviate this pain. After that, I will finally be able to operate independently. I’ll finally be able to repay the kindness of people who’ve helped me over the years. I’ll finally be free. I chose pharmacy because I want to build something that gives me purpose and stability. I want to understand medicine not only as a career, but as something that can improve people's lives. Just in my own experiences with this chronic pain have made me especially aware of how much people depend on treatment. I want my education to give me the skills to become one of those people. One of the people who will help, people just like me. I want to be free, not from having a disability, because I can’t just make that go away, but from believing that it has the power to decide what my life can become.

My bed is a couch. I didn’t clean the table good enough, so today I have to sleep here tonight. Today I got into an argument with her, now I have to sleep here again. I talked too loud today, so I have to sleep on the couch again. I dropped a plate, and she took my bed. I don’t know when I’ll get it back. But I know I’m sleeping here tonight, again. My life was full of these little mistakes that were oversized into big consequences. I learned that no matter how hard I tried to be better, it didn’t matter. So I’d argue back. My eldest sister never took kindly to my protests of her ultimate rule. Which led her to taking every frustration she had with being condemned be a young mother unto me. My mom stood silently as she took everything that I cared for away. I tried most of my childhood just trying to disappear, hiding and sleeping in a closet, for just some sense of privacy, but always having the door opened. School was the only place I felt I could be free. Most people describe their middle school experience as horrible, but nothing was better than it was at school for me. I joined every single club the school had to offer, just to escape the fear of being home. I hoped someone would notice, that was odd wasn’t it? I tried crying out for help in my art, and in my writing, and eventually it caught a counselor's attention. But when it got back to my mom, she laughed. She said a story is just a story, nothing else. I remember staring out the car window, just thinking wow. It meant nothing. After that I felt like I could only rely on myself. No one will save me. I have to do everything. Eventually in freshman year of highschool, the second I turned 14, I started applying everywhere. I only had a pair overalls, 2 sweaters, and a hoodie to my name. I was embarrassed, and I needed to change that. I got a job, and my first check came in. Most people would spend it on a game, makeup, but I spent all of it on basic clothes, a new tooth brush, shampoo and conditioner. As the years went on, college became something in my mind. My parents approved of college, but they made it clear they would not financially support it. In many ways, higher education became symbolic to me. It was something that would be just mine, away from all that was home. At this point I am grown, and I have learned, no child should ever have to rely on themselves to live. This has been a staple in what I want to make my career. I want every child to feel heard, and not silenced like I felt. I am pursuing psychology and forensic interviewing because I know what it feels like to be a kid trying to say something unbearable and being met with “oh it’s nothing.” I know what it is to have your attempts at being understood turned just a joke, or nothing. I don’t want that experience to repeat itself for anyone else. No child should have to rely on themselves to survive. This is what guides me now. I want to become someone who can sit with children in their hardest moments and actually hear what they are trying to say even when they can’t say it clearly themselves.

I have had this love letter for my best friend written for a long time. It feels intrinsically true even to this day. I get this sick sick feeling when I think about her not being in my life. This connection fills my heart so deeply, that I feel I will never feel with anyone else. Me and her are one in the same, and I know after this year I will not be seeing her often, for a while. It makes me wonder, if I were to lose her, could I ever love anyone like her again? This connection is something once in a lifetime, and I know that I will forever view things in the perspective of, if she were here, this moment could be better. I feel like I need her in my life to be happy, and I do not ever want to lose her. Everything is in the lens of her, but I know she’d be okay without me.And I need to learn to be okay without her. She has helped me reach my arms out from the wall flower I used to be, she helped me bloom into who I am today. I just want my future friends and people to know her, like I do. To appreciate and love her. I see how I feel about her, and I started to wonder, there is so much more to every person that I will ever meet. I want to know people so deeply, I want to see into their souls. I want to play the instrument of their soul, and hear them. I want to cradle them, and not have this countdown I always seem to have, before connection ends. This beautiful friendship I have with my best friend has shaped my perspective to try and see the beauty within everyone. I want to give all these people I will know, the love they deserve. I wish I could expand my heart to others and make them see what I see in them. I know they will all be someone who deserves the world. They deserve to find the perfect person, I want no heartbreak to fall onto them. I want them to be loved, I want to be at their wedding, and smile so wide because I know my friend is there with someone they love. All of this bloomed into me because of the beautiful connection I have with my best friend. She helped me stop being selfish as I was, and look outwardly. I feel like I see flowers bloom when I see new people I can be friends with now. I used to always see things in a lens of how friendship could benefit myself. I used to think every friendship was a timer waiting to go off. I hope my “timer” never ends in the future, and it is more like a stop watch. I want a deep connection with anyone and everyone I come across with, forever and always.

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. And this other person, decided to never talk again. 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 I couldn't even bring myself to talk. 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, and 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 psychology so I can reach people who feel the way I did. I want to connect with children going through the worst, so I can help them in their most dire times of need. I want to save kids from the worst, whether that be in their mind, or the physical.

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. I turned to weed, but the quiet still 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, my only friend being a high, 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, and the only thing that could sorta quell it was weed. 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.

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.