My goals for the future are to be happy and healthy. Although it seems cliche those are the two most important things to me. After losing my best friend to a drunk driver, and fighting depression and anxiety I want to have a future where I am happy. This is related to my academic goals because I want to be a doctor when I grow up. When I was younger I was extremely sick and I had a team of incredible doctors who were willing to help and learn with me what was causing me to be sick. I dream of becoming a doctor that has an amazing impact on future kids like my doctors has for me. By striving to get good grades and staying grounded with school I can complete my goal of becoming a doctor and help future children.

Although I don't know what my dream life 100% looks like, I know it looks like me being happy. Running around with my future children, and being an amazing, caring, pediatrician. Growing up I was constantly sick and in and out of the doctors office constantly. Having such driven, and inspirational doctors, who were willing to help me and learn about my disease and auto-ammunies along with me was truly inspirational. So although I am not 100% sure what I want to do when I am older, I know that the main thing is I want to become a doctor and have a positive affect on future generations, like present doctors have on me.

After my best friend died because of a drunk driver earlier this year, I created wristbands to sell to students, faculty or anyone who wanted them. This way I could help raise money for Jacks family. Jack had leukemia and was on active chemo treatment. This money also helped pay off hiss chemo treatment and give him a service he deserved. Overall I raised almost 4,000 for the families who kids were killed by a drunk a driver (two other of my friends including my best friend Jack were killed). By being to help with the financial burden for all three families is something extremely significant for them and helped leave a legacy for the boys.

Freshman through Junior year of school all I cared about was getting A+ on tests, being the perfect student, and being the best volleyball player I could be. I never hung out with friends, traveled, or did anything sociable, in fact I even missed a school dance to study for a test I had on that Monday. I stayed in my room and studied all the time. I went back and forth between my room and the volleyball gym. When Covid hit I started falling into a depression, I learned I needed the timeout and away from my room to help me stay stable, shortly after I started to not be so depressed, but I still haven't changed anything about my lifestyle. When my senior year started, my best friend Jack was killed by a drunk driver. I fell into a sinkhole, I became extremely depressed, and had anxiety so bad that I refused to get in a car for a while, and when I did I refused to drive. I didn’t know how to live in a world where my best friend was gone, it was like a part of me was gone. After he died I started changing my perspective on life. It took me a while but I realized that Jack would never want me to be like this and stop my for him. So I decided to start living my life for Jack. Jack was an extreme extravert; he would try anything and anything, so I did too. I went swimming in the lake in the middle of the night, jumped off a bridge with my friend, and skipped school. I didn’t lose sight of who I was freshman-Junior year but I modified my past self to become someone who is still focused on school but a;so someone who is learning to love life. When I was depressed and I made goals for myself, they were all bland and basic. Now my goals have come to be goals I actually want and I believe in myself more than ever. I have been through a hard thing but facing depression and losing my best friend has taught me that I am so strong and capable of accomplishing my goals. My new goals are harder, but I believe now more than ever I can accomplish them. I also value every person more than I did before. I make time in the day for my sisters, always say I love you to my parents, and talk to my friends everyday. I have learned that everything is so unexpected and by looking at the world, from the perspective of living for someone has taught me so much about not only the world but myself as well.

Being somebody who has lived with multiple life-affecting autoimmune diseases has definitely impacted the person who I am today. Growing up with fibromyalgia my body always hurts, it hurts to walk, move, and sometimes even breathe. I am an athletic kid, I always have been, by learning and being able to push through pain and the obstacles that I was faced with at such a young age has taught me so much about not only strength and courage, but mental toughness. When I was younger I used to get bullied for having celiacs disease. My “friends” would call what I ate weird, and wouldn’t invite me to hang out with them because they and their parents were scared of getting me sick. Infact one time in the 3rd I was uninvited from an overnight at a waterpark because my friend's mom didn’t want to “worry about me”. But through all of this I have learned how to stay strong and become very mentally tough. My best friend was killed 4 months ago by a drunk driver and if it weren’t for me learning at a young age about mental toughness and staying strong, this past year would have been terrible. I know with everything I have learned from my autoimmune disease that I can power through with strength and courage with any obstacle in my way. I decided that I can take everything I have learned about dealing with people, eating, pain from my other autoimmune and turn it into something good for society. Because of this I started a website that gives mothers tips and really good recipes for kids, so that way they know how to help their kid in situations (for example what to do when students bring in birthday treats to school.) This has allowed parents and other kids my age to have something to help guide them along on their journey. Another thing I have done is get an active member of a gluten free group and hang out with younger kids who are also gluten free. I play games with them, bake gluten free treats with them and just have fun. When I was younger I would have loved to have the opportunity to know or meet someone who was like me and gluten free, so being able to be a mentor for these kids is something that I am very proud of.

The quality I value most about myself is my strength and courage. Earlier this year one of my best friends was killed by a drunk driver and it has been a daily struggle to keep moving. I constantly keep pushing myself to get up and be better and live for my friend. It is the strength and courage I have inside of myself that has allowed me to be the person who I am today. Looking into my future I am confident that when I am hit with a tough battle, or maybe struggling with a subject in school, I can lean on the strength and courage I have learned over the last 4 months and pursue on keeping my head held high.