Yuri!!! On Ice is a motivational show for me. Despite only being twelve episodes long and not very action-based, it is an anime that I've been able to watch over and over again. It shows a story of following dreams, admiration for a celebrity, and what hard work and devotion can do. It is extremely inspiring to me to watch Yuri's growth throughout the show as he works with his childhood hero to achieve the highest scores he can in ice skating competitions. This leads him to rank higher than he ever has before. He is able to do more than he ever thought possible, and this means so much to me. As somebody who has big goals, I want to be able to see other people's determination and hard work pay off. Seeing other people achieve their goals inspires me to work harder in order to achieve my own goals. Yuri is a shy and compassionate person who is pushed past his usual boundaries in order to achieve his goals, and it makes me also want to test the limits of what I can do. I want to see how far I can go with my personal goal of publishing books, and in doing so, I have been going to college, presenting my work to classmates, reached out to publishers, and so much more.

My greatest achievement to date is writing my own book. It isn't published yet, but I have had several offers on it. I continue to write every day, and have a total of three finished books, and plots drawn out for even more. I've always wanted to be an author, but this achievement has shown me not only that this is something that I want to do with my whole life, but also that I am very capable of doing anything that I put my mind to. I learned that I can be more hardworking than I realize and that I am dedicated to my work. I am also more creative than I had previously realized, and others enjoy my work as much as I do. This has helped me to boost my confidence in my skill levels and self image as well as helping me ease any anxiety that I previously had about reaching out to publishers and other writers. I hope to someday find a deal that I feel comfortable accepting for publishing, and using the platform that I create to be able to help people and give representation that different communities need. I want to be able to spend time and money helping people in need and charities that help those people and animals. I would also like to make sure that all people feel welcomed and that they have their own representation in the world, whether it be people of color, people of different genders, or other people of the LGBTQ+ community. I want people who have struggled to also have a platform and representation in my work so that my audience will understand that heroes (whether they are real or not) do not always have to be rich white men. Though diversity has been growing over the past several years, there is still a long way to go. For myself, I look forward to a future where I can write and live off of a job that I enjoy, rather than a job that makes me unhappy. I want to be able to have the funds to one day have a place with enough space for myself and my partner to live comfortably, live happily by doing the things we enjoy, and help those around me that I can help, whether that be family or friends. I am also excited to be able to express myself freely and live my life regardless of what others may think about me.

I have been working on writing my own novels and stories for about ten years. I have worked on developing different characters, plots, stories, and places to help better my writing, and one day, I hope that I can get my work published so that I can share it with other people. However, I still have a long way to go with my writing before I can do that, and that is a large part of why I am studying creative writing. I have a lot of ideas and would like to share them with other people, but my skills still are not where I need them to be and I would like to learn new ways to organize my writing and new techniques that I can use to better my writing as well. Once I can better my skills and therefore my writing, I can go over my work again and prepare it to show others. If I can ever get it published, even if it isn't anything big, I would like for other people to get to experience the stories I have written and the characters that act in them. All of the characters have something that I relate to in one way or another whether it is through my personality, appearance, background or thought processes. I want to make a large diversity of characters that will have something for everyone to enjoy and relate to. Even though my biggest goal in writing might be to share stories for others to enjoy, I also think that it is very important for people to be able to relate to the stories or characters in some way. When I struggle with mental health or get nervous, I can find comfort in books. Even if I am not currently reading the book, I can usually find comfort in it just by having it nearby. I want to give others the chance to have this comfort as well whether it is just by holding the story or reading it and getting to enjoy it. Writing has been a big part of my life and I have already spent years working on different things for my writing. Someday, I want to give back to the people and communities that have supported me and help those who need it. I would like to get back into volunteering my time more to help my community and feel that with my writing, I would get a chance to expand my horizons further and understand different groups of people better. I would like to help people with different backgrounds and help them accomplish goals that they have set for themselves. Writing is my dream and when I accomplish it, I want to show others that they can accomplish their dreams too.

I have struggled with anxiety and depression for a couple of years, and these are things that many people in my family also struggle with. There are many days where I struggle to motivate myself to do simple day-to-day things. I get nervous in large and crowded areas and in high school, I would almost always have a book with me, even if I wasn't planning on reading it. Books have always been a source of comfort for me and help me relax when I'm stressed or anxious. My love of reading has sparked a love of writing for me and for about ten years now, one of my most steady hobbies and interests has been writing. I enjoy writing novels and series, and it brings me a new level of happiness to be able to create my own stories and characters. Writing helps me to get out of bed some days and makes me feel like I have a purpose. Through my writing, I'm able to connect myself to my characters and I can put different parts of myself into my writing. Just like how I can identify with my own writing, I want my writing, when I share it with others, to be something that others can identify with as well. Maybe others won't necessarily be saving a planet or have superpowers, but they can identify with the characters and their backgrounds, personalities, and characteristics. I want people to be able to identify with my characters so they know that they aren't alone in feeling the things they feel or going through seemingly impossible moments of their lives. No two experiences will be exactly the same, but identifying with different characters in books always comforted me. I want to be able to pay this forward and create relatable and interesting characters to show others that they aren't alone and that they are in their own way special. Even the most mundane things are special and sometimes it can be difficult to see that. I want to share my writing with others so they can see this too.

For the past several years, I have struggled with anxiety and depression, and this hasn't affected just me but also the people around me. A couple of my friends and family members have dealt with depression in the past or struggle with it now as well. This has caused days where we cancel plans or have to take a step back and change our plans so that we can better help ourselves on some of our worst days. I have been fortunate to have people in my life to help me, but over the last several months, even with different kinds of help, it has been a bigger struggle than usual. But also looking at how my depression and anxiety are affecting me now, I also try to focus on some of the ways it has shaped my life for the better and not only for the worse. My anxiety has caused me to overthink many things. Sometimes it is something like how I will pay for college or what my plans after college will be. Other times, it can come to the point where I simply overthink the exact amount of minutes it will take me to get ready for work and be there with time to spare. But because of my habits of overthinking, I have learned to be better prepared for different situations and have begun to plan out my future in more detail. I know now that I am allowed to believe in different things than my family and that we might not always agree, and this is okay. I know that I can do what I want in my life, and by using this newfound belief, I am pursuing an English major so that I can have better skills to further my dream of being an author. While my mental health issues have caused me to grow apart from some people, I have also grown closer to others. Looking back at this, I realize that some of the people that I would spend a lot of time with were actually not the best influences that could have been in my life. However, because I have grown closer to others, I have a few close but strong relationships with my friends and have also connected to somebody else and made a new friend in them in recent months. I might not have been such close friends with this person if I had not faced my mental health issues. Along with these beliefs of being my own person, having the support of close friends, and working harder than before to accomplish my goal of being an author, I keep coming back to what I would like to do in my spare time in the future. I would like to volunteer at animal shelters, help others who are struggling with their mental health, support members of the LGBT+ community who are having their own problems, and overall, I want to help so many people. In the future, I want to write books that will help people find enjoyment in reading as well as having a connection to characters and hopefully find that they are understood and accepted. I want to do what I can to give back to my community and help those who need it. This is something that I had considered before, but because of my depression and anxiety, I can better understand these struggles and how difficult it can be at times. I want to be able to help others who may not have the kind of support I was given with my friends.

I am not a professional chess player, I don't even play in leagues, but chess is still an important part of my life. I have played chess since I was approximately eight years old when my dad taught me how to play. Since then, I have played with various family members over the last ten or eleven years and thoroughly enjoy playing with my younger cousin. This has brought me closer to many of my family members allowing for discussions with each other and learning about the different ways each person handles different situations, or how different people may react to the same situation. From chess, I have learned to think ahead and how to deal with unexpected circumstances. In chess, I have had to learn how to think ahead in order to plan moves that will lead up to something great and that will have a minimal amount of losses along the way. Using this, I am able to think of things in my life and how each scenario could turn out, such as how different factors could all lead to the same end goal and which ones could lead to another goal that could be better and hold more opportunity. I have also learned to work around unexpected scenarios. In life, almost nothing is certain, there are always surprises waiting around every corner. Sometimes these surprises are good and sometimes they are bad; some bring about minor changes while others will bring about major changes. During chess, whether it is something I have overlooked or something that I had not expected from my opponent, I have to become flexible and stay calm under pressure if I want to succeed. This has taught me to take a breath, stay calm, and assess a situation that may come as a surprise in life and figure out how to work around it. I can use this during work, school, or any other possible aspect of my life. My goal in life is to become a young adult fiction author, despite being told that this is perhaps not a realistic or strategic move on my part. Ironically, chess is a game that highlights strategy and thinking things through, which is the opposite of what many could say about my goal. However, I can connect chess to my goal of writing in the way that chess taught me how to think things through, which allowed me to think through how I could work my way to becoming an author. I know what degree would be desirable to help continue my writing career and help me to develop skills along the way. During my time at college, I can develop writing skills through my classes, through work experience, and during my free time when I write my own stories. I have a head start on this goal and dream of being an author as I have been writing for several years, which sets up a strong foundation and love of writing for me, just as the first few moves in a game of chess may be the essential moves needed to win the match. It may not be the strongest connection, but chess has given me the skillset I need to begin setting up my career.