I am paying my own way through Kansas State University. Between shifts, a maintenance job, and student loans that grow a little heavier every semester, I've learned that an education isn't something handed to you. It's something you build, one exhausting week at a time. I've never resented the cost, though, because I know what I'm building toward: a legal career spent representing people the system was never really built to see. That became real for me this year interning with the Kansas Attorney General's Office in Victim Programs and Crime Victim Compensation. I thought I'd mostly be filing paperwork. Instead I sat in on case after case where the problem wasn't a missing law, it was a bad fit. A survivor whose experience didn't match the narrow way a statute was written. A claimant who had no idea compensation even existed because nobody had told them. A case brushed off as a "misunderstanding" or a "civil matter" simply because the law had no real language for what actually happened to that person. Watching that pattern show up again and again taught me something I didn't expect from an internship. The law doesn't usually fail people loudly. It fails them quietly, through gaps that nobody's gotten around to fixing yet. I think a lot about the people this work is actually for. Not "victims" as some abstract category, but specific people sitting across a desk from an advocate, trying to explain something the system doesn't have a word for. I'm inspired by the attorneys I've worked with this year, who treat the actual wording of a statute like it matters to someone's life, because it does. I'm inspired by my own family, who never had a legal safety net and taught me early that the people who need the law most are usually the ones it was least built for. And honestly, I'm inspired by the simple fact that someone has to write these laws. I'd rather that someone be a person who's actually sat with the people the law is supposed to protect. My goal is specific. I want to help find and close the gaps where victims fall through: outdated definitions, compensation programs nobody knows how to access, protections written for one kind of harm that quietly leave another kind out. I want to do the unglamorous part, the actual research into where the law and people's real experiences have drifted apart, and then help rewrite it until they line back up again. I want to be in the room, whether that's a legislative hearing or a courtroom, making the case that overlooked doesn't mean unworthy of protection. None of this requires me to have gone through trauma myself to take it seriously. It just requires showing up. Semester after semester, loan after loan, shift after shift, and not letting the cost of school be the reason this work doesn't get done. Every dollar of tuition I've earned myself has gone toward the same goal, becoming the kind of attorney who makes the law actually see the people it keeps overlooking. This scholarship wouldn't just take some financial weight off. It would be a direct investment in work I plan to spend my life doing, for the people the system still hasn't found a way to help the way they need.

Consent is supposed to be simple: yes or no. But the law has never actually treated it that simple. It requires that a yes be knowing and freely given, based on the truth. What it has failed to do is protect that second half of the standard. A partner who lies about wearing a condom, who conceals a diagnosis they know would end the encounter, who impersonates someone else entirely. These are not partners who pushed the boundaries of honesty. They are people who obtained sex the victim never actually agreed to. Yet in most of this country, the law has no name for what happened to that survivor. I am a political science junior with hopes to attend law school specifically because I want to help write this idea into the criminal code. I've already started. As an intern with the Kansas Attorney General's office, I've spent this year researching how to modernize our state's sex offense definitions, with a focus on making the law more trauma-informed, built around validating what survivors actually experience, not just what's easiest to prosecute. A central piece of that research has been seeing where states are regarding updating their own definitions so that the courts can be harsh on offenders and supportive to survivors. Right now, Kansas doesn't distinguish between an exaggerated compliment and a lie that determines whether someone would have consented at all. That gap isn't a technical oversight. It's a message to survivors that their violation doesn't count. If I had five minutes in front of a state legislative committee, I would not open with statistics. I would open with the law's own words. Consent statutes already require agreement to be "knowing." Fraud is a direct assault on that word. When someone agrees to sex with a person they believe is disease-free, unmarried, or simply who they claim to be. That belief is false because the other party built it deliberately and the person did not consent to what happened to them. They consented to a different act, with different terms, and something else occurred instead. That is not a misunderstanding. That is not a civil dispute over damages. That is rape, and the only reason we hesitate to call it that is because the perpetrator used words instead of a weapon. I would expect pushback, especially in a conservative red state like mine, where legislators are afraid to change the status quo on much of sex offense terminology to protect others or their own image. However, the law needs to draw this line. Similarly to this common sense proposition, contract and property fraud statutes distinguish immaterial lies from lies that go to the essence of the transaction every day. The same test applies here: a lie about a condom, an identity, a medical risk, these go to the nature of the act itself, not its flattery. California and Massachusetts have already built narrow statutes proving this distinction can work. Kansas doesn't need to invent this wheel. It needs the will to adopt it. This is the career I am building toward. I do not want to comment on the law from the outside, but have a hand in writing it. I want to spend my legal career doing exactly what I'm doing this summer: sitting with survivors' realities long enough to translate them into statutory language that finally protects them. The law exists to name harm so it can be answered. I intend to spend my life making sure it finally names this one.

This summer, I will walk into the Office of the Kansas Attorney General as an intern in the Division of Victim Services. I will sit across from attorneys who fight for people who have been wronged. People who, without someone willing to stand in their corner, might never see justice. I have been working toward that room for years, and I have no intention of stopping there. My interest in policy was not born from a textbook, it grew from looking at what happens to real people when government fails them. Knowing families can blindsided by insurance companies that deny claims in bad faith, and working people pushed further behind by tax structures that were never designed with them in mind. Or of people who cannot be defended in court because there are not enough lawyers in my state and the system can not represent them. They are the reason I am pursuing law, and they are the specific areas where I intend to focus my career: advocating for Kansas residents who are being hurt by the very systems that are supposed to protect them. I want to serve at the state level, and I want to serve Kansas. The Attorney General's office exemplifies this: it is a place where legal authority and public accountability meet.That intersection of law and public service is where I believe I can do the most good, and it is where I am committed to building my career. Public service, for me, has never been something I planned to start later, it is something I am already doing. As a Student Ambassador for Kansas State University's College of Arts and Sciences, I volunteer my time giving campus tours and representing K-State to prospective students and their families. It is a small thing on paper, but in practice it means meeting people at a crossroads in their lives, listening carefully to what they need, and helping them find their footing. That kind of one-on-one, community-facing service has reinforced something I already believed: that showing up consistently for people, in whatever capacity you can, is the foundation of everything else. I believe civil discourse is the connective tissue of good policy. Without it, even the most well-intentioned legislation fractures along the lines of whoever was loudest. Real policy that lasts and actually helps people, that gets built through listening, through sitting with perspectives that challenge your own, and through the discipline to stay at the table when it would be easier to walk away. As a camp counselor responsible for guiding children through conflict. I have seen what genuine dialogue can accomplish. It does not always lead to agreement, but it almost always leads somewhere better than where the conversation started. I plan to attend law school in my state and to practice law in Kansas. And I intend to spend my career using the law as a tool for the people who need it most, those who are being ignored, overcharged, denied, or overlooked by institutions that were supposed to serve them. The accelerated program I am in to send me to Kansas Law my senior year has been hard on me, with studying for the LSAT most of my sophomore year of college. My internship with the Attorney General this summer will push me while I work full time in public service but still take classes at Kansas State. However I am thankful since it serves as one step toward my goal of serving the public as a lawyer.

My faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation of how I understand justice, human dignity, and my responsibility to serve others. I grew up attending Colonial Presbyterian Church in Overland Park, Kansas, not as a seasonal attendee, but as someone whose entire life has been shaped by that community. For years I have volunteered in the church's community garden, and for two summers I served twenty hours a week in children's ministry, helping coordinate programming, take kids to camp, and execute Vacation Bible School. That church did not just teach me about faith in theory; it showed me what it looks like to show up consistently for people who need it. After working in the children's ministry, I spent last summer at Kanakuk Kamps continuing to serve elementary-age children and teach them about Christ and his sacrifice. Working with these children for about $200 a week showed me what serving really meant. I found out quickly that service does not mean you will be appreciated, and I found myself content with the seeds I was able to plant in their hearts. That same consistency carried me into my academic life. At Kansas State University, I am pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Political Science with a 3.83 GPA, serving as a Student Ambassador and Pre-Law Ambassador because I believe that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing fully. This summer, I will intern with the Kansas Attorney General's Office under Attorney General Kris Kobach in the Division of Victim Services. I do not take lightly what it means to have been selected for that role. Attorney General Kobach is one of the most prominent pro-life voices in Kansas, constantly fighting to protect the vulnerable in our state, many time using bold methods to work to limit pro-choice policy and advocate for the souls who do not have a say in our state's policy. Working under his leadership is not simply a professional opportunity; it is a calling I feel deeply aligned with. In that office, I will have the privilege of serving people at their most vulnerable, people who have been wronged and who are looking to the law for protection. I intend to honor that responsibility with everything I have. My pro-life convictions did not come from a political platform. They came from a faith that taught me, from childhood, that every life carries inherent worth. Natalie Joy Poremski's story speaks directly to that belief. Her mother's choice to carry her pregnancy to term, even in the face of an agonizing prognosis, was a courageous act rooted in the same truth I hold: that a life, however brief, has immeasurable value and deserves to be honored. People like Natalie are exactly who I want to spend my career defending, those who cannot yet speak for themselves, those the world too often overlooks, those who need someone willing to stand in the gap. That is the lawyer I am working to become, one whose practice reflects the values my church instilled in me and the mission I will begin this summer under Attorney General Kobach; protecting the vulnerable, advocating for the voiceless, and ensuring the law serves the people it was always meant to serve. My faith demands nothing less, and the legacy of Natalie Joy Poremski deserves nothing less.

My interest has always been grounded in people. In the moments where I have watched someone navigate a broken system without the tools to fight back, or seen a child carry a weight they should never have to carry alone. Those moments do not leave you. They ask something of you. For me, the answer has always pointed toward law. At Kansas State University, studying Political Science and Economics has given me the frameworks to understand how power, policy, and institutions shape people's lives. But it is my work outside the classroom that has given those frameworks meaning. As a Student Ambassador for the College of Arts and Sciences and a Pre-Law Ambassador, I have spent considerable time helping peers think through their futures, listening, advising, and advocating. In have loved these opportunities to give back through volunteer leadership at the school and through my participation in these organizations, I have realized that advocacy is something I work to provide naturally, in almost every role I occupy. Another place that I get to advocate for other students on campus is within my fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi, where I serve as Vice President of External and Alumni Relations. That role has required me to represent our chapter to the broader community, manage relationships, navigate conflict, and speak on behalf of people who trust me to do so. It has been one of the most exhausting, yet formative leadership experiences in college. I have learned that effective advocacy means earning trust before you speak, and that the strength of any argument depends as much on the relationship behind it as the logic within it. My time as a counselor at Kanakuk Kamps deepened that understanding in a completely different way. Working with elementary-aged children around the clock, mentoring them, resolving their conflicts, keeping them safe, taught me that service is not always dramatic. Most of the time it is quiet, consistent, and unglamorous. It is showing up every day for someone who is counting on you. That lesson has stayed with me, and I believe it is one of the most important qualities a public servant can carry into a courtroom or a client meeting. Serving people even when you are not getting anything in return. I know in criminal defense or public prosectution, there are times when you will not be appreciated by your client for the work you are doing. I lived this out at camp after my freshman year, serving elementary aged children around the clock, who nearly all seem to have ADHD, while being paid barely $200 a week was not an easy task and frequently did not fill the desire we have to be appreciated for our work. However, I loved the experience and the reward of doing the unseen work and being a helping hand for those who need it will apply well to my career in public legal work. This summer, I will begin an internship in the Division of Victim Services at the Office of the Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a role I pursued specifically because it sits at the most human intersection of law and justice. Victims of crime need more than legal outcomes. They need someone who will listen, translate, and fight for them inside a system that can feel cold and indifferent. I want to be that person. I want to understand, from the inside, how the law serves the vulnerable and where it still falls short. Law school is how I close that gap. I am drawn to careers in public service such as prosecution, victim advocacy, or public interest law. All areas where the work is hard and the stakes are real. I believe access to justice is not a privilege; it is a foundation of a functioning democracy. My experiences have given me the empathy to understand what people need when they are most vulnerable, and the discipline to pursue the skills required to actually help them. I am ready to do that work.