As I sat down after getting caught trying to hide candy underneath my bed, I thought my mom was the meanest person in the world for taking it from me. In my short time on planet Earth, I have had things in my life that were very unhealthy. I went through terrible eating habits, and bad mental health habits, but learned how to find a balance in my life. I had terrible eating habits in my early life because if I liked how it tasted then I ate it. It led to me eating a crazy amount of candy, and a lot of carnival-type foods and ruined my stomach. I thought eating how you pleased was how to stay happy and my mom and dad allowed this behavior because I listened and would eat as many vegetables and fruit as my parents would ask me to. I wasn’t a difficult child and I believed candy was just a part of who I was. Once I figured out that candy shouldn’t make up 50% of my caloric intake, I moved to be the nice guy. I decided as a class clown, a compassionate person, and a mentor that displaying my emotions didn’t matter so long as I inspired the people around me to be happy. As my mental health started to take a toll from this style of living, I also happened to lose one of my friends. Since it was the same time as the Coronavirus, I believed pushing those emotions down was an appropriate way of dealing with it. I chose to inevitably do some reflection and found a hole in my personality. I had no personal feelings, almost as if I had nothing to give myself but only to others. It took three years to combat that feeling and try to address those feelings to become a man that can look at himself with assurance in the mirror. As these compounded on my body, I found out that eating less candy made me feel better as a student and an athlete. Now it was time to fight the internal war that I am still dealing with today. I was trying to identify how to make myself feel fulfilled and more than a happy guy. Through Covid-19 I started to meditate and even though I lost a part of myself in my friend’s death I found the rest of myself in the dreams and aspirations I had. As a black man, I have been told how strong we are, but I learned no man should be classified as the stereotype that isn’t true. I found myself by myself which has been a hard battle every day. In my life, I have found healthy in unhealthy ways. I never had a clear answer on how to live in the norms of society because I have a dad from Nigeria and a mom from North Dakota. I was a product of two opposite lives and as I grew up, I found that made me feel unhealthy and out of line in a sense. As I write this essay, I have found this is the reason I became healthy, I want to show the world that no matter what circumstances anyone can be what they want. I wanted to be a man known for his vulnerability of his experiences and I have found that to be the healthiest habit I have accumulated in my life. My healthiest change in life is being vulnerable to

I am Adedokun Abdul-Amid Alarape-Crowe, and I am currently attending the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology to become a Civil Engineer. Coming from a mixed household of a Nigerian dad and an American mom I had plenty of obstacles that most kids don’t experience. My challenge originated in high school in the year 2020. This event caused my whole life to fall to the ground leaving me speechless. I was a sophomore the year my whole life changes for the worst, and I am not talking about Covid-19. I was part of a friend group consisting of 5 people: Zayne, Levi, Tinaiden, Mario, and myself and we hung out all the time. We all became a friend group in 2019 after our first football season in high school was completed. I grew a bond that I didn’t think was possible to obtain other than with my family. We fast forward to January 30, 2020, and I get a call from Ashleigh one of my girlfriends who was the girlfriend of Levi when she tells me that she can’t find Levi. I knew Levi was on an emotional rollercoaster and believed that he was just not talking to Ashleigh and dismissed the conversation. This is where I found the most regret in my short time here on Earth. I went to school the next day and couldn’t find Zayne anywhere as we always talked and walked to our first hour. I got to the first hour alone and the counselors call me and a couple of fellow football players into the cafeteria to break the news that Levi died in a car accident last night. As my work came crumbling down, I never found my coping mechanism. My “coping” mechanism became crying myself to sleep and lifting weights. Once I was ready to open up to someone about how I truly felt we as in the world fell into Covid-19 leaving me to be confined in my room with a feeling of loss and being broken. As I went through this time, I found a reoccurring feeling of being lost, betrayed, and forgetting who I was. I felt betrayed by God because I prayed every day, lost because I couldn’t talk to anyone about how I was, and forgot what made me truly smile. This form of coping didn’t work for me as I am still dealing with it today, but I have learned a lot. As a black man, I feel that the stereotype is we are the strongest and never mentally challenged. I found after my close friends passed that no stereotype is truly real when it comes to a specific person or people group. I find my purpose in life has been shifted to carry Levi’s legacy to the heights he would have and to be kind to everyone. When I sit down with his father and brother when I am back home, I find a sense of purpose in making them proud of me; it is almost like I made it a mission to live for Levi. The biggest lesson I learned from my hardship is grief is unforgiving. To make growth you must allow yourself to experience every part of it.

My name is Adedokun Abdul-Amid Alarape-Crowe. I am the son of a Nigerian Muslim dad and a North Dakotan mom. My Muslim identity has always been a prominent part of my life, and I tailored my dreams to represent my beliefs. I painted my future dreams on a canvas of religion and the cultures in my household. My dreams came from my late grandfather as he always would thank me for visiting him in Nigeria and seeing him. I didn’t know my grandfather’s true devotion to Islam until 2021 when I last saw him before he passed away. As I pictured my dreams, I wanted a job that would allow me to spread my beliefs around the world and live in the hometown of my father to become more integrated into my faith and my culture. I decided I can become a Civil Engineer and travel anywhere in the world to spread my vision and hopes of the world with ease. My dad has been devoted to his faith and as I have grown up, I have found an extreme ease to be a Muslim. As it has taught me the discipline I needed to get this far in my life. Ramadan in 2022 was extremely eye-opening to me because as I was trying to find my way I identified my why not. I finally understood why I needed to fast, and what sins I had in everyday life that I wasn’t acknowledging. I also now found a keen interest in the wasteful personality I had adopted after being in college for one year. I used this event to take a step back and evaluate why I was a Muslim and what I hope to give the world before my inevitable passing. The one thing that is hard for me to achieve my dreams is the financial aspect of college. As I have been in college I have applied for many scholarships and worked jobs to pay for my loans, but the inevitable reality of going into this much debt has truly hit. If I receive this scholarship, it won’t only go to my education, but to the incredible community of Islam. I want to empower other minorities in America to elevate to their true calling regardless of the limitations others have set for them. With deciding to do this I don’t plan to force religion but have open conversations to learn from everyone I engage with. I want to spread my faith to others in a way that would bring satisfaction to my grandfather and make my family proud.