I'm a writer. My job is to take my own experiences and put them through fictional character perspectives so everyone can see them. When I was assaulted by my partner, I wasn't sure if it happened. I wasn't sure if I'd said yes and forgotten, or if maybe it was my fault. I stayed with them for months. I didn't know how to leave. If they could do that to someone, they said they loved, what would they do to someone they hated? I write about what I've been through by using my own experiences to shape that of fictional characters. It gives me the freedom to talk about guilt and fear and the anger without labeling myself as the victim. With my education, I plan on working on publishing books. I want to tell stories and help publish other stories. I want to make sure that everyone has a voice. After it happened to me, I felt like I didn't have a say in anything. I went back through my memory of every time I'd chosen to do anything and reexplained if I'd wanted to do it, or if I'd felt forced. What I found shocked and terrified me. So, after we broke up, I started deciding to say yes to people because at least it was my decision. I started making bad choices because it was better than someone making the decision for me. I want to write about that. I want to write about how being sextually assaulted can change your view of yourself as well as your body. How you can just want to let anyone have whatever they want from you just to feel worthy again. I want to write a novel about someone who isn't the 'perfect victim'. Someone who doesn’t become celibate after the SA happens, someone who doesn’t become meek and scared. I want to write about someone who becomes angry after, and how they deal with that anger as it feed on them like a parasite. These are the stories I will tell with my degree. I will be getting my bachelor’s in communication: Journalism & Multimedia Studies and a bachelors in English: Creative Writing starting next year at UNF. Having this scholarship would help me to be able to do that, and one day, be able to uplift my voice and the voice of others. I don't ever want to be silenced again.

I'm going to be an author. I want to write and use fiction to hold up a mirror to society. I want to write about morality and prejudiced and hatred and mental illness and love in all of its different forms. I want to write about how complicated people are, and yet how amazing they can be. So far, obstacle I've encountered is people believing I'm too young to be able to write a novel. And if I write and publish a novel, people tend to believe that there is nothing significant in the text. My senior year of high school, I wrote and published my debut novel, Good Luck Babe by Z. E Lewis. Writing and publishing this book has showed me how difficult publishing is and all of the steps that go into writing a book that I didn't know about. I even designed the cover art myself. This also showed me how dismissive people can be about the book. The main theme of the novel is how someone's identity is tied to their morals. This is shown in the dual protagonists, Cat and Andi, who both approach this differently. Andi stands up for herself but is also kind to people that aren't kind to her. Cat starts off as rude and mean in order for people to like her, and learns to stand up for herself and others throughout the novel. It was also very important to me to write complex women main characters. I wanted to have them be wrong and learn from their mistakes, and regret their mistakes, and get angry at people but also be kind to others, and take care of each other, and fall in love and be soft. The main way I've overcome people's assumptions about my work is to stay confident in what I believe. As someone who has read Good Luck Babe over 15 times while I was writing it and rewriting and editing it, I know it's a good story. Just because other people don't like it, doesn't mean it's not a good story. And just because other people won't give it a chance to read the entire novel before deciding the quality of its content, doesn't mean it's bad. It means that not everyone enjoys it, which is an unrealistic expectation for literature. Another obstacle I've encountered is people view on me writing queer fiction. The majority of the main characters in my books are apart of the LGBTQ+ community, like I am. I've had several people ask why I needed to include this in my stories, or tell me that I'm alienating part of my audience by telling a coming out story. At this, I point towards award winning novels such as I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson, or Simon vs. The Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. These books are incredible novels, and focus on queer characters coming out. Just because a story is queer, doesn't mean it cant be universal. As cliche at it sounds, love is love. If you like romance novels, it shouldn't matter the subject of the romance as long as it's well written. And it's important for people to see all different kinds of romance represented in literature.

I'm going to be an author. I want to write and use fiction to hold up a mirror to society. I want to write about morality and prejudiced and hatred and mental illness and love in all of its different forms. I want to write about how complicated people are, and yet how amazing they can be. So far, obstacle I've encountered is people believing I'm too young to be able to write a novel. And if I write and publish a novel, people tend to believe that there is nothing significant in the text. My senior year of high school, I wrote and published my debut novel, Good Luck Babe by Z. E Lewis. Writing and publishing this book has showed me how difficult publishing is and all of the steps that go into writing a book that I didn't know about. I even designed the cover art myself. This also showed me how dismissive people can be about the book. The main theme of the novel is how someone's identity is tied to their morals. This is shown in the dual protagonists, Cat and Andi, who both approach this differently. Andi stands up for herself but is also kind to people that aren't kind to her. Cat starts off as rude and mean in order for people to like her, and learns to stand up for herself and others throughout the novel. It was also very important to me to write complex women main characters. I wanted to have them be wrong and learn from their mistakes, and regret their mistakes, and get angry at people but also be kind to others, and take care of each other, and fall in love and be soft. The main way I've overcome people's assumptions about my work is to stay confident in what I believe. As someone who has read Good Luck Babe over 15 times while I was writing it and rewriting and editing it, I know it's a good story. Just because other people don't like it, doesn't mean it's not a good story. And just because other people won't give it a chance to read the entire novel before deciding the quality of its content, doesn't mean it's bad. It means that not everyone enjoys it, which is an unrealistic expectation for literature. Another obstacle I've encountered is people view on me writing queer fiction. The majority of the main characters in my books are apart of the LGBTQ+ community, like I am. I've had several people ask why I needed to include this in my stories, or tell me that I'm alienating part of my audience by telling a coming out story. At this, I point towards award winning novels such as I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson, or Simon vs. The Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. These books are incredible novels, and focus on queer characters coming out. Just because a story is queer, doesn't mean it cant be universal. As cliche at it sounds, love is love. If you like romance novels, it shouldn't matter the subject of the romance as long as it's well written. And it's important for people to see all different kinds of romance represented in literature.

Being a writer is so ingrained in my identity, I don't know how to separate myself from it. I've been writing since I was 8, although the stories are not the same. When I was 8, I used to write these stories on my mom's old laptop about this girl who grew up on a farm and then found out that she had magic powers and had the save the world. It was very much a mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Spiderwick Chronicles. As I grew older, I'm a little embarrassed to say I used Wattpad to write. There are stories online that I wrote because I thought that Wattpad counted as being published. I was 12 when I wrote a fantasy trilogy that I proudly put online without any else having read it or spell checked it. It was about a girl who had super powers that was recruited to be a soldier for a underground agency that prevented crimes by seeing into the future and eliminating the threats. It was heavily influenced by my reading the Hunger Games and the first two books in the Throne Of Glass series. When I was 14, I tried to write a high fantasy series. I never finished more than 80 pages before finding a huge plot whole and re-writing the story. At 17, I was influenced by several sapphic romcoms I was reading and decided to write my own. The original story was about 2 girls, Cat and Willow, who had to work together on a science assignment but Cat was in the closet and dating the guy but fell for Willow anyways and ended up breaking up with Willow in the third act and making a grand gesture to get back together in the last 50 pages. I wrote 50,000 words in the span of one month and re-read the book and decided I hated it. I had the option to rewrite it, or try and write a different story. I read the book and took notes on who I liked and didn't like and tried my best to fix it. Now, Good Luck Babe is a novel about Andi (Andrea) and Cat who work together to take down a gossip blog at their high school that outed Andi's friend and is black mailing Cat. I tried my best to think about everything I hate in romcoms and everything I love. There is no longer a third act break up. The character's never cheat. They never yell at each other or insult each other. Their entire relationship is based on them constantly choosing to trust each other. Good Luck Babe will come out December 4th, 2024, on my 18th birthday. This is to celebrate everything I am. I'm a writer, and soon I will be a author. With this scholarship, I plan on going to college to get a degree in creative writing to become a traditionally published author. Although not all authors have degrees in Creative Writing, some of my favorite authors do. For example, Anna-Marie McLemore, Angie Thomas, and Jandy Nelson. I aspire to be great authors like my role models. With this scholarship, it'll help me make my dreams come true.

My favorite book-to-film adaptation is Aristotle & Date Discover The Secrets Of The Universe. It tells the exact same story as the book. It barely changes anything. The book was the first book I ever read that won the Stone Wall Book Award. I was in middle school when I read it and I thought I might be gay. I was scared and confused and I didn't have anyone to talk to, so I turned to books. I read as many stories as I could about queer people and I felt seen in a way I'd never been before. I was lucky enough to have the library at my middle school have a queer romance section, which is even more surprising knowing I'm from Clay County Florida. The books have mostly been banned by now, including Aristotle & Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe. The great thing about the book is that it doesn't follow the typical 3 act structure or even the 7 act structure of most novels. It's all over the place. It's less like it's trying to tell a story and more like a catalog of events This writing styles makes the novel feel so much more realistic then other novels. It also isn't your typical romance. Although there is the incredible romance between Dante & Aristotle, it also talks about the complete family dynamics that Aristotle deals with. He's struggling to have a relationship with his father and he's trying to find out why his family doesn't talk about his older brother who is in jail. This shows how in reality, romance isn't the only thing on teenagers minds. In fact, in the cast of Aristotle, its one of the last things on his mind threw the majority of the book. The movie does a fantastic job at displaying the novel. It doesn't change anything to make it better fitted for people who are new to the story like I've seen many movies do. It keeps true to it's original source. I believe that the writers and directors of the film knew that the movie wasn't going to be a box office success. They knew that this wasn't going to make millions of dollars and have A-List actors lining up to act in it. The movie was truly made for the fans of the novel. It was made for people who loved the story, which is the best way to make an adaptation.

My junior year, I was the President of our school's student council. During that year, I learned from my mother and volunteered at many different places to help people. First, we volunteered at the Clara White soup kitchen. The soup kitchen was in downtown Jacksonville and my friend, Elliot, and I volunteered together. We were supposed to have more people, but we were the only ones that showed. The soup kitchen made breakfast for the homeless or anyone who needed it. I was in charge of making peoples name, age, gender, and veteran status before they could enter. This allowed me the unique position to talk to everyone. I didn't realize how many people there were that ate there until I was on my 100th name. There were older veterans by themselves or young single mothers pushing carriages. I didn't know what else to give them, so I gave them my respect. I looked them in the eye and treated them like humans, and they were kind back. Later, I had a manger of the kitchen pull me aside and thank me for being respectful to them. For saying ma'am and sir. How many people didn't. Later in the year, Student Council volunteer with Habitat 4 Humanity. We helped build a house for low income communities. My parents helped, along with my friends and another Senior from Student Council who needed the house in order to get the cord for graduation. I helped put together the bathrooms because I knew how to use a drill. We cleaned the floors and walls, went around the outside of the building to pick up nails, helped plant flowers, and anything else that we were asked. I plan on becoming a writer after college. I want to get my degree in Creative Writing and work at a publishing house and help get people's stories told and their voices published while also writing my own stories. Everyone is so individual and unique that it's impossible to generalize. Ever since I was little, I was taught to care about others and treat everyone fairly. I plan on making a positive impact on my community by using my degree to help people's voices be heard. I believe that reading is the best way to increase empathy. If you can't understand what someone is thinking, its hard to understand their actions. So, by working in book publishing, I plan on helping people.

I believe in donating what you can, when you can. I have a tendency to carry around 1 dollar bills in case I see a donation bin. Ever since I was little, every time I would go to downtown Jacksonville, there would be a man playing the saxophone. He would see me and my brother and play the batman theme song. I would go up to my grandmother and ask for a dollar to give to him. Every time, she gave me one. My mom always hated that. She though that it was just giving away money and wasteful. She didn't believe in donating money unless it was to a proper organization, like St. Jude's. She believed more in donating time. When I was 5 or 6, we used to go to the Ronald McDonald house when we lived in Charleston SC. We'd spend many weekends there. My father doesn't believe in donation. He believes that if you make money, you should keep it. It probably has never occurred to him to help anyone other than himself. Maybe that's why he's alone. All of these people have served as an example to me of who I want to be and who I don't want to be. I want to be a generous as my grandmother and as helpful as my mother. I won't be as selfish as my father. So now I carry around one dollar bills in order to donate whenever I see a sign. I carry around more bills when I go out with my cousins or my little sister so if they ever ask for a dollar to donate, I can give one to them. My junior year, I was the President of our school's student council. During that year, I learned from my mother and volunteered at many different places to help people. First, we volunteered at the Clara White soup kitchen. The soup kitchen was in downtown Jacksonville and my friend, Elliot, and I volunteered together. We were supposed to have more people, but we were the only ones that showed. The soup kitchen made breakfast for the homeless or anyone who needed it. I was in charge of making peoples name, age, gender, and veteran status before they could enter. This allowed me the unique position to talk to everyone. I didn't realize how many people there were that ate there until I was on my 100th name. There were older veterans by themselves or young single mothers pushing carriages. I didn't know what else to give them, so I gave them my respect. I looked them in the eye and treated them like humans, and they were kind back. Later, I had a manger of the kitchen pull me aside and thank me for being respectful to them. For saying ma'am and sir. How many people didn't. Later in the year, Student Council volunteer with Habitat 4 Humanity. We helped build a house for low income communities. My parents helped, along with my friends and another Senior from Student Council who needed the house in order to get the cord for graduation. I helped put together the bathrooms because I knew how to use a drill. We cleaned the floors and walls, went around the outside of the building to pick up nails, helped plant flowers, and anything else that we were asked. I try my best to help people. I enjoy helping people, and try and go out of my way to do it. Due my my family's examples, I've set a good example for my little sister and my friends. Now, whenever we go downtown, my little sister remembers to bring a couple dollars for the man playing the saxophone.

I came out to my mom when I was 12 because I was stupid and young and naive. I asked to talk to her in the garage and told her I liked girls. She told me that I was being dramatic and that I only liked girls because I had a friend who was bisexual and I was trying to be like her. I can't remember if I told my stepdad or she did. My brother told my dad because he though he was helping me. When my dad found out, he told me I couldn't call myself a Christian anymore and that God wants me dead and that I should kill myself. The funny part of this is that he's an atheist. So, I did. I dug my nails into my wrist until I drew blood and when that wasn't enough, I used a razor. It didn't work. I remember going to school the day after and having to wear a hoodie in Florida summer and not being able to type well because the scabs on my wrist hit the edge of the Chromebook. My mom and stepdad found out. I think my mom walked in or me or read my diary or something to find out. They made me sit in the living room for hours while they lectured me on being dramatic and how this was because I was gay and hated myself and how I'd be fine if I was straight. This had never happened when I was straight, they'd said. They blamed me being gay on why I did it. So, they took my TV and my phone and every book out of my room. Anything they though could be turning me gay. They made me go to them before reading anything so they could check and make sure it was straight. I could only watch Disney shows from when I was little because 'if I wanted to act like a kid, they would treat me like one'. After a few months, that ended. But I still wasn't allowed to talk about anything gay at home. I wasn't allowed to say I had a guy friend who had a boyfriend, or that I was reading a book with gay characters in it. It was as if I just found this amazing, beautiful part of myself that I wanted to celebrate and they were dousing it in gasoline and lighting a match. For the first couple years, it was them threatening to send me to Catholic School where I'd learn to stop being gay because the teachers were allowed to beat me there. It was my stepdad telling me that if I ever had kids, they would kill themselves because once they started going to public school they'd realize how fucked up their moms were. It was my mom begging me just to stop, go back in the closet. How she said she could deal with this when I was 20 or 30, but not now. It was her begging me not to humiliate her by telling anyone else. It took almost 5 years, but now my dad and I talk again. He's trying to be supportive. My mom's okay with it and has been trying to learn more. She even got involved in local advocacy. My stepdad doesn't care anymore, or at least he doesn't care enough to object. Within 2 years after I came out, so did every one of my three siblings. I like to think that the hell I went threw showed my parents how to be better parents to queer kids.

During testing season my junior year, I was so stressed out and anxious that the blood vessels in the right side of my left eye popped. It made half of my eye almost completely red. I was all too nauseous to eat most days, which resulted in me passing out for exhaustion and malnourished. I wasn't sleeping more than an hour at a time, as well. Mental health and physical health of very important. I know that when I'm not taking care of myself mentally, it often leads to physical decline. I've struggled with mental health for years. It runs in my family. My bio dad is bipolar and an addict. My mom has anxiety, depression and ADHD. My brother has ADHD as well. It almost makes me forget that the way our brains work is seen as unusually. As a senior, something I hear is that Senior year should be my most relaxing. I've worked hard my junior year to be able to enjoy this year. That's true. My junior year, I earned my AICE diploma, got accepting into the United States Naval Academy Summer Seminar, got into a Florida Speech & Debate summer camp. I was President of Student Council & GSA, and Treasurer of the Debate Team. I held two jobs. I even was able to give a speech in front of the Clay County school board about the book bans in Clay County and have a representative for a civil rights organization come in and talk to GSA about the book bans. Realistically, I know that those are great things. But I don't feel them. I don't feel accomplished unless I'm working, but then working causes the stress, too. Then, everyone is just telling me to relax. But how can I when I don't know how? I'm a gifted kid, an AICE & AP kid, I was NJROTC & Band. Relaxing is not something anyone ever taught me how to do. Senior year can be relaxing, but it hasn't been for me. I've been stuck in this mental in-between of wishing I was older and an adult, but also wishing I could go back in time and be a kid. There's also a certain level of grief that I thought I'd be closer with my family then I am now. I thought I'd have people to support me when I don't, and I cant undo that. I can't make my bio dad want to raise me, especially when the time has passed for me to be raised. I can't make my mom want to show me how to cook or do laundry or manage money, because I had to teach myself. A way that I try and relax and take care of my mental health is by writing. I can take all of the messy bits of humanity out of me and form them into new people an then make those people have a happy story. I can make them have high school sweethearts and get married, or I can make them fight dragons and marry a princess. I'm working on releasing my first novel in December of 2024. I take care of my physical health by making sure to eat right. I used to do crazy, 500 calorie a day, diets. They didn't work and just made me feel ill. Instead, I now prioritize eating 3 meals a day. I'm also cutting back on caffeine. I usually walk to school, too, which is around a mile a day.

I struggle with anxiety. I've had to go to a Student Assistant Program at my school since freshman year to help with my anxiety attacks. The best way I can describe my anxiety is when my body goes into fight or flight without anything happening. At the end of my sophomore year, I was stuck in a bathroom during a Code Red lock down because a student was found with a gun. I didn't know what was happening or if it was a drill or not, so I had to sit on top of a sink in the handicap stall for almost four hours. I was on the sink because I was with another girl who was crouching on the toilet. I was fine the rest of my sophomore year, but for some reason during the beginning of my junior year anytime I would need to leave my 6th period (the same time the lock down happened the year before) I would panic because I was scarred we would go into lock down again and I'd be stuck outside of the classroom. It got to the point that once class started in 6th period, I would be glancing at the door every few minutes in case someone came in with a gun. Nothing ever happened. But for some reason my anxiety made me plan a million different ways I would be able to survive if it did. I started going to the SAP counselor my freshman year after I had a panic attack in front of my NJROTC class. It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life. It was on a Monday, and I'd had a terrible weekend. My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer in there thyroids a few months before but she was starting chemo and everything looked good. But we got news that weekend that her cancer was also in her lungs and brain. I was also told I wasn't able to visit her because the chemo lowered her immune system. I lived with my grandma two months out of every year, so this was very hard for me. On top of this, when I got to school I got yelled at by my ex's best friend about how I was a terrible person and how I shouldn't be around them anymore and how our entire friend group hated me. Nobody stood up for me, so I left. Then I had to go to NJROTC and run a mile, do push ups, and sit ups. I had the lowest score of push ups and sit ups in the class, and I could barely run the mile. So during the mile, I had a panic attack. It felt like I was dying. Thankfully, my teacher, Master Gunnery Sargent Jamie Willis, knew what was happening. While others though I was having a asthma attack, he knew what a panic attack was. He excused me from the class and called his therapist. She didn't pick up, so he took me to the SAP counselor where she was able to talk me down. Because of him, I was able to learn methods to calm myself down and treat my anxiety. I've also been able to talk to my family about this and I'm in therapy. I've been able to do things I'd never been able to do it it wasn't for him. I've traveled to different countries, given speeches in front of school boards, act in plays, ran club meetings, held officer positions, and I've been able to help other people who struggle with mental health.

"We are all headed towards each other on a collision course no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story." - Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You The Sun. I've always wanted to write. Ever since I was little, I would tell everyone I was going to be an author. Over the summer, I decided to stop saying I was going to write a book, and do it. I'd been working on a fantasy novel for almost two years and I realized I needed more writing experience to be able to write it. The fantasy novel will be amazing one day, but it can't be if I write it now. I love reading young adult novels. I went to a trip to the USNA Summer Seminar and during that week, I packed 2 books and ended up finishing both and having to purchase a third book it the airport. One of the books was by a newer author who I'd never heard of before. The other two were by established authors, and they were all great books. The books were Every Time You Hear That Song by Jenna Voris, I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuinto, & Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler. This made me come up with my story for a young adult romance novel. So, I started writing. Then, I started editing and reaching out to illustrators and beta readers and researching KDP & Ingramsparks publishing options. I knew I was going to self publish, but I didn't know all of the steps that go into it. This changed my view on writing. I loved writing the book, so I thought I'd hate editing it. I did hate killing my darlings, but everything else I loved. I loved coming up with the cover design and the format and brain storming social media posts. Within the new few months, I'll need to call up local bookstores and ask them to purchase my book and try and plan some book signing events. I've never been so excited for anything like I am for that. This made me realize that I want to go into book publishing. I want to help edit books and organize book tours and signing events. I want my life to revolve around books. I've learned a lot from books, but the most important thing I've learned is that I love being around them. I love stories and the authors and the art of it. Everything, truly. I've learned how I want to spend my life.

I was raised by a single mom for the majority of my life. My mom got married when I was 13 to my stepdad. My mother struggled with depression all of her life. She still struggles with it, even though she's on anti depressants. When I was in 4th grade, my stepdad lived in Korea and we lived in Florida. I lived in an apartment with my mom and my brother and my mom was struggling very badly with her depression. She would get home and go straight to bed, or just stay in her room and barely eat. I learned to cook and take care of the house during this time. I learned that people can be fighting battles that only they can see and that they require patience and support instead of criticism. That year, I remember getting up early and making my brother and I breakfast and walking to school with him. Then when we'd get home, I'd put on a movie or a TV show while we did our homework and made dinner. During 5th grade, Ed (my stepdad) moved to South Carolina with his job and would drive down on the weekends and spend time with my mom. He though my cooking skills were horrible and was shocked that we'd lived off of oatmeal and frozen meals for so long. He bough fresh food and taught me how to cook more. Before, it was rare for us to have fresh food because I didn't know how to cook it and mom hated wasting food. That year, I got sick because I over indulged in a bunch of cheeses I didn't know existed. Before Ed, we only had American cheese which we used for grilled cheese or to give medicine to our dog. During 6th grade, it turned out Ed was a liar. He'd made himself out to be a beaken of truth and safety but he was a fraud. Instead of the amazing, loving boyfriend he said he was, he was married. He'd told my mom he got divorced in the early 2010s, and had one daughter with his ex-wife who was 18. He'd told her that he raised his older daughter by himself. It turned out, he'd been living with his wife and two daughters for the entirety of his and my mom's relationship. He had a secret daughter who was 9 that he didn't tell my mom about and now he was asking to have her visit over the summer. So, my mom let him. Which ended up in his wife asking him to have the kid with him for an entire year instead of just a few weeks. So we moved out of our apartment and into a bigger house so we had more room for his daughter. This has taught me how important the truth is. If you ever want people to trust you, you need to be honest. It also taught me that educated people are harder to control. This has lead me to be incredibly passionate about journalism. I want to make sure that the stories of the few are told to the masses. Everybody has a story and a life so unbelievably complicated it would blow minds. I want to be the person to speak to people and make sure their voices are heard. I want to be able to call out liars and show the public the truth.

I've felt a distance between me and my piers since a young age. I was the type of kid who would rather sit inside and help grade papers than play outside during recess. I've always loved books. I love the way that human beings can create their own worlds and their own complex characters that can exist complexly separate from the author. When I was 6, I told my grandfather I wanted to be a writer. He told me that if I wanted to be a writer, I would have to push myself outside of my comfort zones in order to gain experience. "You write what you know," He'd said, a fairly common bit of writing advise. Still, at that young age, it was validation that I could be a writer one day. From that point on, I did everything I could to become a better writer. I listened to international podcasts to understand what it is like to live outside of the US, I've been to France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Jamaica, and The Bahamas. I've been to around a dozen different states. I've acted in theater and helped behind the scenes. I've been in band as a musician and as a color guard member. I've been in NJROTC, Debate, Student Council, and several other clubs. Any opportunity I get, I take it so that I can one day write about it. I've also read hundreds of books. During 2020 when the world was on lock down, I felt more connected to people then I ever had by reading. I read 150 books that year. To me, it was self studies to one day become an incredible author. What I love about writing is the way it connects people. I can show people how my mind works, and who am I threw painting them a portrait with ink. I can understand how people see themselves and others in a way that would be incredibly different to verbalize. Writing connects people and builds communities and one day I am going to be one of the millions of authors who do that. I want to further my education in order to work in book publishing. I want to help people get their stories published and I want to help people find stories they love. Furthering my education will help me be more competitive in the hiring process. I want to get a degree in Journalism so I can tell stories of people that deserve to have their story told. I can make a difference in thousands of people's lifes.

Mental Health is important to me because many of my family members have mental health conditions. My mother has anxiety, depression and ADHD. My brother has ADHD. My biological father, who I see twice a year, has struggled with addiction and bipolar disorder. These factors will always have an impact on my life. There were weeks when I was younger that my mom would get home from school and sleep till she had to wake up for work the next day. I'd be in charge of making sure my brother got his homework down, the house was clean, and that everyone had dinner. I've dealt with the highs and lows of my father's disorder. One day he can be calling me to tell me how proud he is of me and how I'm going to do amazing things in the future, and the next he can be saying how much he hates me and that I should kill myself. Although I have never been formally diagnosed, I went to a therapist during middle school and she asked me to get diagnosed with insomnia. I never ended up getting diagnosed, but I have many symptoms. I have incredibly vivid nightmares where I'll wake up yelling or crying. It is difficult for me to sleep for more than three hours at a time. I've learned how to deal with this, mainly by taking naps during the day and staying up later at night so when I do sleep, I'm exhausted enough to sleep soundly. I also have dealt with anxiety attacks and panic attacks since middle school. During my freshman year, the anxiety attacks got so bad that one of my teachers helped me sign up for the S.A.P program at my school, also known as the Student Assistant Program. The program involves counseling from a mental health professional. Threw this program and years of counseling, I've been able to get my anxiety attacks to lessen. Instead of getting them up to three times a week, it's rare if I have one once a month. Due to my personal experience with mental health, I've tried to help people who have dealt with the same issues I have. I have done this by being very open about my family and my anxiety. I've learned how to communicate effectively with my friends to talk about what makes me anxious. I have also used my position as Student Council President during the 2023-2024 school year in order to create mental health posters around our school to raise mental health awareness. We did this during the testing season when students are already very anxious. The posters varied from asking people to "Be Kind To Your Mind" with fun drawings, or a checklist of things students can do to relax. This serves two purposes. First, it helped the people that read them. Secondly, it helped the students that made them have a creative outlet during a very stressful time.