1. I found TXT in 2019 just after they debuted. I listened to girl groups, if only to avoid the annoying accusations of "you only listen to those groups because you want to marry the members" that boy band fans get, but my friend was a huge ARMY and some TXT songs came up in the recommendations as we listened to BTS songs. "Cat & Dog" had just come out and I was hearing a lot of buzz about it. I was curious and listened to it, finding that I enjoyed them more than I was expecting, and I got sucked in from there. 2. I think one of the most important characteristics of a MOA is acceptance. By 2020, K-pop fans got a bad reputation as toxic self-haters who wanted to control idols. MOAs have always been a safe space to retreat and enjoy the community of fandom. I rarely saw toxic arguments, aggressiveness towards other fandoms, or demanding that TXT change who they were. They made edits, fancams, compilations of the boys just being themselves that gave me hope for the future of other fandoms. We got along so well, and they could too, eventually. 3. My favorite TXT member is Beomgyu. He is unhinged in the best way, loud and energetic in a way that is unapologetically him, and no one asks him to be anything but that. He brightens every room he walks in. Even when he's annoying with the other members, he never takes it too far, and you can tell that they would not have it any other way. 4. My ultimate bias has to be Dahyun from TWICE. I naturally gravitate towards goofy, confident people, and Dahyun stood out from the time her eagle dance video went viral. She is silly without overdoing it, a well-rounded idol who can act, dance, and rap, and treats the other members like best friends, which is a testament to their dynamic after eleven years of working with the same people. 5. My favorite TXT song is Anti-Romantic. It was one of the first TXT songs I had listened to, and it stood out in the upbeat pop era that K-pop as a whole leaned into. Its theme of avoiding love was far more relatable than the usual theme of liking someone and having to confess how they feel. The instrumental is soft like the vocals, almost sad, and dramatic without overpowering the lyrics. 6. I have never seen TXT live before. Concerts are unfortunately too overstimulating for me, but I envy anyone who can enjoy them. 7. Starkissed has a dual concept I find really pretty. The Alight concept is bathed in a romantic, ethereal light. The members are surrounded by artificial nature and plastic swans, wearing all white, in front of a lake background. It is beautiful, but obviously fake. The Uprise concept is dark but elegant, featuring the soft, warm light of candles and chandeliers as the members wear all black. 8. I am currently relying on academic scholarships from my school, working throughout the year, and my parents. 9. This scholarship will help me pay for next semester's tuition and alleviate a month or two of stress for myself and my family before the next monthly payment is due. 10. TXT has influenced me to stay positive. When I feel lost and confused, unsure of whether I am making the right decision with my career path or struggling to socialize, I find comfort in their cheerful demeanors, their lighthearted interactions, and of course their music. 11. I will use my education to fill the nutritional gaps in my community. I want to find ways to alleviate the food apartheid in my city by making nutritional food cheaper and more accessible to the everyday person with community gardens, especially in neighborhoods where there are more corner stores than grocery stores.

Taylor's live mashup in Cardiff of "I Hate It Here" and "the lakes" takes the wistful melancholy of both songs and turns them into an overarching story of lamentation from an artist who longs for an escape. "I Hate It Here" introduces the audience to a younger Taylor who felt worthless for not fitting in with her peers. In another life, she could have been a debutante, but in this one, she is not equipped to survive the social Darwinism that deemed her unfit. She retreated to her elaborate fantasies of another world where gentle souls like hers could live in peace. Similarly, "the lakes" are a creative's paradise, one that she does not truly feel she belongs at but yearns for nonetheless, only if accompanied by her lover. When combining the two songs, they form a story of a girl who escaped to her fantasies due to her loneliness. After growing up, she found someone like her, someone she could fantasize about running away with, to escape the flashing lights that came with fame. As a maladaptive daydreamer, I had to learn how to balance dreaming and real life. Sometimes I would spend hours in my own head. I used to brag about being able to tank three-hour car rides with nothing but my imagination, or how I could never get bored because I had my own thoughts to keep me company. Sometimes it feels like a superpower, and other times like a curse. Being unable to live in the real world because it is not made for someone like you was not a sentiment I heard expressed often in songs. When I stumbled across this song in a random Spotify playlist on a train ride home in the middle of my first semester of college, I was pleasantly surprised that another woman had the same fantasies I was told were abnormal. I listened to the song four times that day alone. I slipped back into my inner world very easily, living alone for the first time. I had a roommate in school, but she left after Thanksgiving break. I had not thought to make more friends, so I found myself alone. With no one to stop me, I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift performances before finding the live mashup of "I Hate it Here" and "the lakes". Here was a performance of a new obsession of mine, combined with a song from my favorite album of hers, Folklore. She glamorizes the escapism of her imagination, but in a way that one can easily infer this is a coping mechanism, not something she actually enjoys. No one would need to escape from a life they enjoy. Seeing my habits from an outside perspective for the first time made me realize that things get better. I did not have to stay stuck in a place where I was my own best friend. I became more sociable, started dating, and realized I had more in common with people around me, people who wanted the same things I did. I did not completely abandon my imagination. Creativity is very important in pastry arts, but I try not to stay stuck in the place I first stumbled across Tortured Poets Department in. I will always be grateful for the way Taylor's songs helped me get through the loneliest times of my life, and when I listen to them now, I can look back on those times fondly, knowing there was a better life waiting for me on the other side.

Olivia Rodrigo explores the anger of not living up to the typical teenage dream in her song "brutal." Some lyrics that stand out to me say "If someone tells me one more time 'Enjoy your youth,' I'm gonna cry," and later in the chorus, "They say these are the golden years, but I wish I could disappear." Going to a tiny school with less than thirty people in my graduating class, we had almost no extracurriculars outside of sports, and only basketball, volleyball, track and field, and cheerleading at that. I never went to a big homecoming football game, auditioned for the spring musical, joined a quirky creative club, or campaigned for student council president like students did in the movies I grew up watching. When I tell family and friends just how small my school was, they lament about how I was robbed of the high school experience. I only took solace in the fact that in college, things would be bigger, louder, somehow better. I would make a ton of friends, party, and enjoy college to the fullest. Unfortunately, big universities that offer the typical "college experience" do not offer culinary, let alone baking, as a major, so once again, I found myself in a school so small we only had one academic building. When I graduate, I will still be nineteen, heading into the workforce while my friends make the most of college. This summer I had to spend a lot of time grappling with the idea of wasting my youth. Am I really ready to get a full-time job with grown adults, move out, start a life for myself while everyone else gets to be a teenager? Then I realized I was mourning a sense of normalcy, not a future I wanted for myself. I never liked watching football, partying, or dancing, and those things would not magically change because I went to college. I love school because I love learning, not because I made a multicultural friend group I can study with in the quad. Despite only having two years in this university, I made the most out of my experience without being inauthentic to myself. I joined the Caribbean Student Society to reconnect with my roots, became a cheerleader, started dating and went to bible study with freshmen, then church on the weekends. Enjoying your youth does not always have to mean doing loud, reckless things with people you will never speak to again just for the sake of having a high school or college experience. Building meaningful friendships, prioritizing your education, and finding out who I am is not limited to high school and college. My life will not end when I turn twenty. School is only a small part of who I am and who I will become, and I am determined to make the most of my youth, even after graduating.

My name is Zion Jones, and for as long as I can remember I loved food. Nothing could beat a fruit salad in summer or the taste of bell peppers and cucumbers with tzatziki. Unfortunately, not everyone in my city has access to these fresh foods. The issue of food apartheids in the United States of America runs deep in urban communities, and it is especially apparent in my home city of Philadelphia. Especially in North and West Philly, there are pockets of the city that have little access to grocery stores besides corner stores. In fact, 66% of the city's food retailers only sold unhealthy food in 2024. These neighborhoods are often quantified as food swamps, though apartheid more accurately describes the malicious nature of redlining people of color into communities that lack resources, then refusing to put money into improving conditions for those stuck there. These problems are mostly systematic, but grassroots efforts to improve current circumstances temporarily relieve the strain on the community while activists fight for legal change. Community farms or personal backyard gardens are a great way to increase food sovereignty as officials drag their feet on concrete change. I know friends and neighbors who have fruit trees and grow vegetables in little planters on their porches, and I wanted to explore another way to grow food that did not rely on so much outdoor space. In high school I helped start a hydroponics club with a few others and my biology teacher to grow fresh vegetables that could one day be utilized in the school kitchens, and it opened my eyes to an easy way to grow food in small, urban areas. The lack of soil means they can grow indoors with nutrient rich water and enough light, and outside environmental factors like climate or a change in season do not affect their growth. Hydroponic gardening does not have to be expensive, either. Utilizing the Kratky method, one could grow plants in whatever giant tub they have lying around for under thirty dollars, hovering the plant over the bucket filled halfway with nutrient rich water so the roots just touch the water. I plan on majoring in food science after finishing my Associate's in Baking and Pastry Arts from Johnson & Wales University, and soon become an agricultural scientist. I want to raise awareness of hydroponic gardening, especially in cities like mine with such high rates of poverty and food apartheids. I want to get involved with community farms and encourage anyone who can, whether they run a community center, school, or small business, to grow hydroponic plants. Food is a human right, and despite race or income, everyone deserves to eat food that will nourish their bodies. Total cost for this year = $63,223 Current finances: Scholarships from school: $37,400 FAFSA: $6,500 Help from parents: $10,000 Total need: $9,323

My drive to bake is an extension of my passion for food science. Baking is precise where cooking is flexible. Ingredients must be measured out to exact gram. Substitutions can change the entire texture, bake, or taste of a product. I have especially become obsessed with the properties of different kinds of flours. Whole grain flours act fundamentally different than common wheat flours and experimenting with whole grains in breads and pastries has led to interesting discoveries. My favorite thing to bake has to be whole grain danishes. I find the layers open up beautifully in a way that is difficult to mimic with common wheat flour. Laminated doughs in general are quite labor intensive, requiring an overnight fermentation and hours of preparation before even rolling the beurrage, or butter block, into the detrempe, meaning dough. I find peace in the process of rolling the dough out over and over, creating thirty-three alternating layers of butter and dough, learning how to work with the increasing tension, applying enough pressure to thin the dough without rolling it into the table. Shaping the dough is my favorite part. Making pinwheels and bear claws is hypnotizing, and at some point, I reach a flow state where I could shape danishes for hours. I also enjoy the creativity and freedom of danishes. I can make them sweet or savory, fill them with cream cheese, frangipane, fruits, and vegetables. The world is my oyster. Danishes are labor intensive, but their overnight bulk fermentation and two-hour proof time allows a lot of time to prep for the next step without a real sense of urgency. After graduating from college, I hope to follow in the footsteps of the researchers working at Washington State University's Breadlab. It is the perfect marriage of baking and science. I want to help make whole grain baking accessible to the masses. Refined grains have become so normalized in baking many believe it is the only way to make desserts, but whole grains like spelt test well with consumers. Along with adding deeper flavors to baked goods, bran and germ contain fiber, folate, and many essential vitamins that could become an easy way for more Americans to reach their nutritional goals. I believe that bakers should not have to sacrifice taste for nutrition. Healthy desserts have had a bad reputation in the past, but in the dawn of this new era of health consciousness, I believe bakers can get creative and embrace the natural flavors of whole grains rather than fighting them to get baked goods to taste like refined grains, leading to better, wholesome products.

Cooking was so naturally ingrained in my life, I never realized how big of a part it played in it until recently. My mother cooked to keep us alive, not purely out of love for the game, so everything I learned from her about the kitchen was simple, for survival. I am grateful for the knowledge, and the time she spent to make sure her kids would never go hungry, but it informed me at an early age that cooking was a duty, not a hobby. My exposure to cooking for pleasure came from grandmother. I knew her in her much later years, so her version of Jamaican food was very healthy, substituting wheat flour for self rising in her dumplings and baking her chicken instead of frying it. She cooked for us often, just because she loved us. My father would take me to her house just to pick up tidbits of our culture, so estranged from us I hardly knew it. Now that I am older, my goal has been to reconnect with my roots. I stopped eating meat in high school, so searching for the flavors I used to love and recreating them became very important to me. Being in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes from other Jamaican vegetarians, made me happier than ever. I want to study culinary arts to bring others the same joy food brought me and to teach others to appreciate the diversity of global cuisine. Cooking is not just a survival skill, but culture, tradition, love, passed down from generation to generation, and it is meant to be shared.

Growing up I had always assumed that I had no testimony worth recognizing. I was raised in the church, bouncing around as an infant from Baptist to nondenominational congregations with my parents as they searched for their perfect church home. I never seriously doubted the existence of God beyond general curiosity about what life is like as a nonbeliever or if He likes me. I even helped my mom teach Sunday school in middle school. Most testimonials involve a near death experience where the speaker reached rock bottom before having a coming to Jesus moment. They are inspirational, yes, but not everyone’s story. My testimonial is not dramatic or inspirational, but it is mine, and God gave me this experience for a reason. I loved interacting with scripture more than anything. The Bible was not a chore for me, but a collection of stories I could read and reread whenever I needed comfort. Being a child in the 2010s meant there were always new ways coming out to engage with it, from the Action Bible to church choir to Sound and Stage productions. All of my interests had some Christian variation to them that brought me closer to God. I was surrounded by Him, so it was easy as a child to incorporate Him into my everyday life. In fact, I became an active leader in one of these former church communities, helping lead songs and reading easy-to-digest versions of stories to toddlers with my mother in an effort to share with these children what helped me fall in love with my own faith. But things get harder, and as we get older, we learn that life, and faith, do not always come that easily. I would not consider my preteens as an era of unbelief, but they challenged the worldview I held so close to my heart. It was the first time I made friends outside of my tiny bubble of Christian private school friends and various church friends I picked up and fell out of touch with over the years. For once, I had to face the fact that not every atheist was simply ignorant, and not every atheist was a bad person. Some were actually really friendly people that I got along with, but there would always be this wall that I hit anytime they made cynical jokes about God, or introduced me to musicals that were fun, sure, but were not so good for my soul. I had to navigate the difficult choice between setting boundaries with people that I genuinely cared about and choosing my faith over my friends, potentially isolating myself in an environment that relied on comradery and teamwork to thrive. Eventually I distanced myself from those kids, not due to a sense of superiority, but simply to protect my own spiritual well-being. Entering high school meant daily Bible classes, group prayers before just about everything, and once again, Jesus was naturally a part of my everyday life. I can admit, I started to become comfortable with my standing with Him. After all, I prayed every day, not individually, but listening to your teacher pray before eating counted, right? I did not drink, smoke, curse, or any of those big sins that other kids were doing, so I still had the moral high ground in my eyes. But at the time I could not wrap my head around the fact that not doing the wrong thing did not automatically excuse me from not doing the right thing, either. I became lazy, neglecting to read my Bible outside of class, only praying selfish prayers or the occasional "heal the world" lip service Christians pay to prove that they still cared about political and social issues. The people who sparked the change within me were actually underclassmen, three girls a year behind me that took their faith seriously. They showed rather than told us that they were believers. I took a silent vow to become like them when I went off into college. Going away would not fix my slothful approach to my relationship with God, but it would give me a clean slate, and broader opportunities to reach out to other believers, helping to keep me on the right path. Now that I am on the verge of adulthood and my interests have shifted, I have had to take a more active role in my faith. I tried and failed to find a way to consistently integrate faith into my everyday life again since junior year. Even a simple thirty day fast from all music not released by Christian artists was a struggle. I attempted to reinvent myself every few months, mindlessly saving Pinterest Bible study plans that I never planned on sticking to, until I found a way to make my journey more personal. It is simple, I admit, but taking notes during service and meditating on them throughout the week has brought me closer to God than the shallow devotionals I forced myself through for the sake of consistency. My main goal as of late has been to hear His voice for myself. Sometimes I wish I was born in the Old Testament when God would speak to His people directly, since I can never honestly say I’ve heard His voice. I have no clue if any of my prayers have been answered, or if He just chooses to let me suffer through hardships on my own. Personally, though, I believe that there is something powerful in not knowing. To stumble through your life blind, choosing to believe that there is a hand on your shoulder guiding you when you cannot see them, is a valid way to experience God. Maybe I have to try harder. Maybe I have to be more faithful. I will never know, though, until the day I meet Him face to face, and I have had to come to terms with it. I still have a long way to go, but I pray that as I mature, I will hear His voice one day, and I will allow it to lead and guide me along the path He laid out for me.