I have chosen to pursue higher education not only to end the poverty cycle in my family, but to be in a position that I can help others. My family has struggled for generations to be able to make ends meet and support ourselves. While some of my family were able to get decent jobs, it was still a struggle and they would have been better off to have a college degree to get an even better job. As far as helping people goes, that has always been one of my goals for pursuing a career. Originally I wanted to be a nurse, but I had an injury that prevented that dream. So I reassessed and decided to study to be a part of the mental health profession. That way I could help people without baring a physical load that would aggravate my injury further. Working in healthcare has also shown me the need for mental health professionals, many people would benefit tremendously from it, but there are few resources especially in my area. I have prepared myself as a first generation student by taking Advanced Placement classes on high school, participating in clubs and activities, determination, and persistence. My activities in high school gave me resources to use to further my education. Through FFA, I participated in parliamentary procedure, I worked on resumes and interviews, and I wrote business letters for donations and fair activities which has helped me with my professionalism. FFA also helped me to work on my interpersonal skills and work ethic. Advanced Placement helped me to develop college level work skills. I also used my clubs to gain experience in community service, fundraising, business transactions, and other useful life skills. I have had some difficulties thrown my way that have challenged my career including and injury, bullying, financial difficulties, and familial issues that have hindered my progress at some points. However I am determined to continue my journey and I am almost finished with two Associate’s Degrees and I am registered to a university to work on obtaining my Bachelor’s Degree. Even though it has taken me longer than I would have liked, I have persisted and continued to make strides in my education. I worked and saved money to get myself into a better situation, I have done some work on my family, and I have addressed the bullying situation and sought out help. Through all of these steps and difficulties, I believe that I will be the first in my family to obtain not only one college degree, but multiple. Through this I hope to end the cycle of struggle that my family has endured for generations and to be an asset to my community.

My best friend is more of a sister to me than a friend. We grew up together. We have been inseparable since I was six and she was eight. We have done everything together: proms, birthdays, movies, carnivals, trips, and even been roommates. We taught each other lots of things, and we are always there for each other during all of the important times in life. She taught me how to draw stars, although it was on the wall, I could never quite get the hang of it without her help. I got my license first, and I took her driving to be able to get hers. We went on walks, hikes, and other adventures together. We would spend hours outside looking for lizards and frogs out behind the house. Sometimes, we would catch tadpoles and little fish in the ponds and bring them home. One time we even found a litter of kittens and snuck two of them home. When her mom found out, we had to take them back because she was super allergic. We spent more time with each other than anyone else growing up. We were usually with each other, either at one of our houses or running around town and having fun. One time, we wanted to go downtown, and it started raining, so we went into a bookstore that had a cat to wait for the rain to let up, but we, unfortunately, got kicked out for loitering. We also found little treasures around town that we would drag home to an endless collection of things, usually cool rocks. We did a lot of arts and crafts and other projects together. Her mom would get us painting projects from the dollar store to work on when it was her weekend to have us. My grandma would arrange for us to do gardening activities with her. My other grandma would take us hiking. My great-grandma spent a lot of time with us at her house, we would usually watch shows with her and play video games. Lately, we have been more at a distance because of adult responsibilities, but we have a trip planned to the ocean in two weeks. We have room to share, and we plan on getting tattoos together. Later on in the summer, we are going to try to go to the waterpark again. Most importantly, if either of us needs the other one, we know that there is only a phone call between us. She is one of the most important people in my life.

I am motivated by higher education to learn the "whys" of the world. I want to know why things happen, why people do things, and how things work. Working in the medical field, I see a lot of behaviors that seem to be unexplainable. There are a lot of behaviors that I would like to know why they happen, but even more so, I would like to be able to help the person overcome those difficult behaviors. This is why I chose Psychology as my field of interest. I want to be able to address and correct behavioral issues. I want to be able to help people who seem to be suffering from mental illness and psychological disorders. Even if I could only help some people to have a better life that is less burdened by psychological distress, that would be a win in my book. I could also help family members of those who are suffering by providing them with support and explanations for the behaviors that are happening. I could also help the healthcare workers who are being overworked and stretched too thin to be able to be happier at work. I think this could also help with healthcare worker burnout, which would ultimately improve overall patient care in healthcare settings. I am excited to learn about the innermost workings of the brain and what causes disorders to develop, and the best treatments to correct them. I am also excited to grow as a person along my educational journey by improving my own behaviors and mentality along the way. Psychology is not only helpful for those you are helping, but it is helpful to learn about yourself and your family, too. Overall, I am excited to learn about the brain, how people think, and how to improve people's day-to-day lives through psychology. I am excited to learn about myself and discover what has affected me in my upbringing and why I think the way that I do sometimes. But most importantly I am excited to learn to heal people so that they can have the best versions of their life available to them. I think that this will make a pivotal change in healthcare and the community if we have more mental health workers who are available and willing to help the community with the mental health crisis. I think it is even more important for healthcare after the massive amounts of burnout and leaving healthcare positions after the pandemic.

Being a non-traditional student has given me a lot of guilt and anxiety. As I was growing up, I thought I would be done with all the hard things like college, marriage, home ownership, and having children by 25. Here I am at 26, turning 27, returning to school while several of my peers are the teachers. It is definitely humiliating to feel like you are starting over and everyone else has already finished. I have to continuously remind myself that I am doing it to better myself and my future family and try my best. Another way that I am non-traditional is that I am a first-generation college student, a low-income student, and one in a handful of my family who got my high school diploma rather than my GED. I am the one who is making the ruts for my family. I am the one who is going all the way with college and has goals higher than my associate's degree; although that is a wonderful accomplishment, don't get me wrong. I want to surpass my associate's degree to my bachelor's degree and, ultimately, my master's degree, and I want to do it with honors. It is hard to do this without family to whom one can turn for advice. My family helps me the best they can, but their advice is limited without going through it themselves. It is hard to not only be the first but also to try to juggle school and finances. I am in school almost full time and work full time while taking care of all of my other responsibilities and obligations along the way. Unfortunately, I work just enough to barely make ends meet but too much to receive significant help from most resources. So, it is an added stressor to try to put away extra to achieve my goals. Overall, these adversities will only make me stronger. It will show the work and dedication I have put into making it as far as I have. I can also say that I have been able to make more informed decisions than I would have if I continued with college right after high school. I have a much better understanding of the world now than I did then. I am on a much better career path that will make me happier now than I was then. I also have more patience, a better work ethic, and more appreciation for education now.

I plan to become a therapist so I will be able to help people both with mental disabilities and physical disabilities that they are struggling with. Both types of disabilities can be taxing on your mental health especially with a lack of resources. Sometimes we really need words of encouragement and guidance which is what I plan to provide when I am Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I know that therapy has helped me in my battle with depression and anxiety. It would have been really helpful when I hurt my back too because it caused a deep depression when it happened. It is permanent and then, it felt like it took my future and all of my options away. I hope to alleviate someone else’s burden in the future

I have overcome many problems in life. the biggest so far has been the loss of my home in a fire in 2018. It was the day before my 21st birthday. I had just gotten to my birthday destination and was receiving dozens of calls that my home was on fire. Luckily my best friend, her baby, and my dog had made it out of the house before it was engulfed. But, we lost our family home of almost 60 years. We lost priceless memories and things that we could never replace. I had to have my home rebuilt and go through tons of paperwork, meetings, and endless tasks for my home and my family while going to work and trying to take care of my family. This has also made me more cautious going forward to try to catalog and keep track of everything in case another emergency arises. This scholarship will help me to pursue my degree in psychology to become a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Once I am finished with my schooling I will be able to give back to my community by providing mental health services to those who need them. My goal when I do become an LMFT is to be as available as I can to the community hopefully through insurance and low-cost services. I would also like to be able to eventually work for an emergency mental health care service like CRISIS or the suicide helpline to help give back to the community. I know that I could have benefited from these types of services when I was struggling with the fire. I was waking up to panic attacks that lasted a couple of years and I still get nervous leaving home. If someone were interested in pursuing philately, I would strongly encourage them to have computerized backups as well as physical copies because emergencies can come out of nowhere and you could lose your work in an instant. This applies to both physical work and computerized work. There should be a physical copy or two, a digital copy, and a copy to a cloud-type service. This would ensure that your collection is safe in case of a natural disaster, a cyber attack, or a computer failure. It can be tedious to save the collection in all of these avenues but it could come in handy if a disaster strikes. I would have never guessed that our house would have burned down but with it, we lost things that can never be recovered and it still haunts me.

Nintendo is my favorite gaming company! My absolute favorite system was the game cube. I had the adapter to pay game boy games on there too. Me and my best friend used to play the collectors edition of Zelda every time she would come over to my house. We would get in trouble for playing when we were supposed to be sleeping. I loved playing Luigi's Mansion I even got the remake and the new installments for the Nintendo 3DS. It is a game that I still play over today> I actually just did a play through a couple months ago. I also love to play Mario Party with my friends and family. I used to play with my aunt and my cousins when I would go to their house for the weekend on the Wii. I would play myself to unlock everything on the various systems so that we could choose when we had company. I also would take my Nintendo DS on the bus and a lot of us would play battles together on Mario Party because you could link them up without everyone else having the game. We would all alternate playing together since it was a long bus ride to school. This is probably what solidified it as my top choice for a co-op game. I got to play with a lot of my peers even though I wasn't very popular.