Throughout my childhood, I remember playing a lot of Nintendo games with my family. Rather than be Mario Kart 64 on the Nintendo 64, or Mario Kart Wii on the Nintendo Wii. Some of the best memories of my childhood that I have contain my parents and me playing Mario. However, the best memory that I have comes from when I was in pre-school. We lived in a trailer park and we had just gotten the Nintendo 64 as a family Christmas gift. Every day from the day that we got the game we would play Mario Kart, and Super Mario 64 all of the time as a family. One thing I will never forget is the ending to Super Mario 64. I loved the ending of that game. When I would go to school, my dad would beat the game and pause it before the ending scene happened and I would come home from school and be able to watch the ending! It always put a smile on my face. When I am down I always think of moments like that. It is neat how little memories that do not seem important and were just for fun at the time end up being a moment in life you turn to when you are down.

Everybody overcomes some form of adversity throughout their lifetime. Adversity has a negative connotation. People just see it as an obstacle, a reason they cannot do something they want to do. In my opinion, the key to overcoming adversity is simply looking at it differently. If you look at adversity as a challenge, you will be more motivated to conquer adversity and achieve your goals. I am James O'Dell and I am from Oil City, Pennsylvania. I am a senior at Oil City highschool getting ready to attend PennWest Clarion University in the fall to major in business management. I have a lot of experience with adversity. The only abnormal thing about that is most of the adversity that I have to overcome strands from my own mind. What do I mean by that? I mean that I am my biggest critic. Most would tell you that I am a very hard worker and that I demand the most from myself and do not accept less than great. I have had to overcome adversity since middleschool, which is when I developed the mindset that I need to achieve perfection and any less than that is unsatisfactory. Having a mindset where you want the best for yourself is not bad, it becomes bad when it turns into something you have to overcome because it is holding you back. That is the kind of adversity that I have to overcome daily. My adversity that I have to overcome relates strongly with the goals I want to achieve. That is because they will require a lot of work that has to be great, and they are going to be challenging. They are to be the first person in my family history to go to college, and be the first person in my family to obtain a master's degree. That is a little goal compared to my career goal which is to be a regional manager at Giant Eagle, which is where I am employed now. Now, how does my adversity contribute towards completing my goals and dreams? Like I stated earlier, they are not obstacles that I cannot get over, they are just challenges that are making me the best person possible for that career, or degree program that I aspire to achieve. An example of my adversity is not giving myself credit for how well I have done or not appreciating how far I have come while acknowledging every mistake I make. One may ask, how is that considered a challenge? Well, in the career that I want there is a lot of criticism. If I can learn to deal with my own criticism, which is much worse than what any of my bosses have told me, then I can deal with any one else's criticism. You can turn it into a challenge like so. Instead of saying " I messed up and I am not good enough and I need to do better." You could say, " I have learned a lot today. Now I know the necessary steps to not make that mistake again!" Overcoming my own adversity is bettering me by the day preparing me for success in college and in the workforce. If there is anything that one retains from this essay, it should be that adversity can actually be a positive thing if you turn it in to a challenge that you can overcome, rather than an obstacle that you cannot get over.

Community service is an important factor in community togetherness and all-around health. Many different types of community service range from community gardens to helping the elderly, and other things such as food drives. These are all great examples of community service that people have done in my community. I am James O'Dell and I am from Oil City, Pennsylvania I have done a few community service commitments, and projects throughout my time in high school. I have helped with orginizations such as Upward Bound, a college prepratory program doing things such as garbage clean up in my neighborhood, and the community of Clarion as well. I have also commited to bettering my local community through my place of work. Wait, how could someone better their community through their place of work? Well, working in customer service, it is not an impossible task. I am currently employed part time at Giant Eagle in Franklin, Pennsylvania. There I have made the personal commitment for myself to better the community as much as I can by providing the best customer service possible while making the environment of the store a better place by being freindly and helpful. I know this does not seem like it is helping the community, however, through the Voice of Guest Survey, people are happier and enjoy being in the store more since making that commitment. Another way I have done community service deals directly with a passion of mine. That passion being the world of sports. During the spring sports season, there are multiple teams that compete in the OIl City Area School District, the multiple track and field teams neing one of them. A lot of competitions, meets, and matches means a lot of help needed to run these matches smoothly, and effeciently. I not only participated in Varsity track and field but I helped run the meets for the junior high track and field teams. During meets, I would run the throwing events for both the girls and boys junior high teams, keeping score and reporteing them to coaches so they could calculate score to eventually decide a winner for the meet. I would also help maintain the track by putting hurdles up when it was tim efor that event and I would also sometimes help at the scorers table. I also helped during the most important part, the clean up after the meet has concluded. This is where I shined because a lot of people did not want to stay after the meet. I took these opportunites to showcase how much I care about the wellbeing of my school and my community by helping out after being there all day and others left. In conclusion, I have used my passions such as my job, and sports as pathways to community service by implementing mehtods of community service in those activities with the overall goal of just making my community a better place for everyone in it.

Volunteering and helping out in my community have always been at the top of my priorities since middle school, which is when I developed a service-first mindset. I am James O'Dell and I am from Oil City, Pennsylvania I am a senior in high school. Throughout my whole life, my parents have taught me that I should treat people the way I would want to be treated. Those words led me to develop a community-first mindset and I apply those ideas through my job at Giant Eagle in Franklin, Pennsylvania. If you were to ask people who know me, they would say my employment is my life. Working at Giant Eagle long term has become a goal of mine because of the community-first mission, and the fact that all Giant Eagle team members are willing to work together with one another to achieve a common goal. These principles align greatly with my philosophy. I come from an athletic background so the team-first mentality is always first in my mind. My competitive spirit also comes from sports, which helps me to do well academically by challenging myself. I challenge myself in every aspect of my life. I have also challenged myself to go to and graduate from college. I will start my college journey next fall at PennWest Clarion majoring in business management. Now that you know a little about me, if I were to start my charity, I would start one that involves giving food to people who need it while completing community service projects to not only keep the people of the community safe but the environment of the community as well. I would recruit local businesses and grocery stores to conduct food drives or to simply donate canned goods, or any goods for that matter. During my time at Giant Eagle, I have witnessed and contributed to several food drives not only donating food, but funds to get food as well. Creating my own volunteer food and community health volunteer program is a goal of mine to do. The mission of these kinds of volunteer programs is amazing and should happen more often to help better communities not only around ourselves, but around the world as well. Now that you know what kind of community service charity I would like to start, let's go over some of the steps to getting it started and how I would plan to get the program up and running. Firstly, you have to come up with a mission statement that identifies the objective of your charity. I would use one such as, "The O'Dell food and community charity promotes a welcoming chance for community members to better their community through community service, and food drives to help out the families in need." Secondly, you have to recruit volunteers and local businesses to help you in your journey. Places such as Giant Eagle and Walmart are great places to start. Writing letters to these companies is a great way to show them what your plan is. Lastly, have fun! This is hard work but it is supposed to be enjoyable. In conclusion, My mentality and personality would motivate me to create my food drive, and community service volunteer group to help better the community through community service projects and food drives.

Community service is an important part of customer service in business careers. Why do I mention business careers? That is because it is my goal to one day become a regional leader for Giant Eagle. I am James O'Dell and I am a senior at Oil City High School. I am admitted to Pennwest Clarion for the fall of 2024 to major in business management. A scholarship such as this one would help tremendously in my journey to becoming a regional leader because it would help further my education to get the degree necessary for the career. Many do not really start their careers until after college. This fact separates me from that standard due to my current job currently, and what it will be in the future. I started my Giant Eagle career in January of 2023 as a cashier. At that time, I did not know if I even wanted to go to college. I just got the job to get extra money. This turned into a position as a coordinator and cash office team member with a drive to do better every day, go to college, and graduate to further my career at Giant Eagle. A scholarship would help tremendously because it would go towards studies that are necessary to obtain the degree I need to become a regional leader. With college being a very costly necessity for this career, any bit of help that I can get is greatly appreciated. Although scholarships are completely necessary and needed, they are not the only thing that I need to prepare myself for this career path. Some steps that I have taken that have prepared me for a career with Giant Eagle is getting admitted into the Pennwest Honors program, which contains an additional scholarship. Going to the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA). A leadership workshop that recognizes one leader from certain schools, Oil City High School chose me to attend RYLA. Lastly, actively starting my career with Giant Eagle by maintaining a coordinator position and working thirty-two plus hours a week while maintaining all A's in the current academic year. Sadly, when it comes down to the bottom line the only thing that I can do to achieve my goals is to "control the controllable factors", like grades, attendance, going to work, maintaining a positive attitude, striving for the best for my community, and team members. The only thing that I have zero control over is the fact that no matter where I go to college, it is going to be a lot of money to go. A scholarship like this would help substantially with the one thing that is not controllable, and it would also help me sleep better at night and be able to put all of my effort into controlling what I can to eventually have my dream career.

Throughout a lot of my life so far I have had to conquer some form of adversity to achieve the goals I have. Getting past roadblocks, and proving to myself, and others about my abilities to achieve goals have been a normal occurrence throughout my high school years especially. A scholarship like this would help me tremendously to achieve my goals in life and to achieve the ultimate dream of being the first person in my family history to go and graduate from college. I live in Oil City, Pennsylvania and I turned eighteen in September. I played varsity football for two years after that came to a halt due to injury and medical complications. If you were to ask others about me, they would most likely tell you that I am reserved, and quiet, but smart. I tend not to brag about my accomplishments and not many people know about them. I consider myself introverted. However, just because I am considered an introverted person does not take away that most would say that I am smart. I am currently ranked twenty-five out of one hundred and eighty-six in my class and I am admitted to Pennwest Clarion for the fall of 2024 and majoring in business management. A scholarship such as this one would help tremendously in my journey to achieve my goal of being a regional leader for Giant Eagle. I am currently employed through Giant Eagle store number eighty-five located in Franklin, Pennsylvania where my role is a front-end coordinator and cash office team member. My job essentially is to keep track of where the money is, and to keep the lines at checkout lanes going smoothly, and according to Giant Eagle policies. This scholarship would get me one step closer to getting my dream position. If one were to ask my team members and managers at Giant Eagle they would describe me as a hard worker, with a drive to do the best that I can for not only myself but for my community and my other team members. They would describe that I maintain a team-first mentality helping others before I complete my own tasks. My time at Giant Eagle has been spent learning a lot about myself. I have encountered many situations where elite leadership skills were needed and I succeeded. They have also coached me to become the leader that I am today. A scholarship such as this one would help me reach a limit that no one thought I could get to. In summary, this scholarship would be very helpful in my journey to achieving my goals. It would go towards studies that are crucial to the career that I want to pursue. However, I do not want to pursue this career just for me, I want to pursue this career to provide the best that I can for my community.

My family and I have watched the office from the time that the show came out. Normally, the topic of discussion that we have while watching consists of who we view ourselves as. Personally, I view myself as Stanley, and there is good reason for that. Stanley is a guy who works hard when he is at work and can have fun when he wants to. I would not say I am 100 percent like Stanley, but when I am at school I am there to work but outside of school I can be fun. I work in customer service at a grocery store and it kind of runs like the office in a funny way. We get our work done but an occasional prank happens. We also all like The Office and have watched the whole series. The Office has shaped my sense of humor on workplace dynamics by seeming so much like real-life work. The Office feels like a real documentary and not a comedy TV show. Most of the time when I am at work I feel like I am in the office and that is how my co-workers make it feel too. Looking at each other like we are the camera creates some of the funniest moments I have had while working.

I am James O'Dell from Oil City Highschool and I am close to achieving my goal of being the first person in my family to go to college. I am going to PennWest Clarion to major in sports management and eventually earn a Master's degree. I chose PennWest Clarion because it is close to home and it carries the Master's program in an online format. I enjoy spending time with family and working. Cancer has affected my life through a different kind of Family Member. A family pet that we had sadly lost her battle to cancer. Mazzy Mae O'Dell was a white pitbull and was the sweetest, most loving dog that people around us knew. She was always in a happy spirit and got along with friends and neighbors who came to the house. Sadly, On February, 24th, 2021, Maze passed away after a long fight with liver cancer. She did put up an amazing fight and we did all that we could, we just did not catch the cancer in time to stop it. Months prior in December we had just thought that she was sick and that it would eventually pass. Months later we are all in a battle and trying to fight it. This has put a permanent hole in my heart that probably cannot be replaced. However, I always try to display a little bit of Maze by treating everyone how I want to be treated and by just enjoying life to the fullest in every moment. Maze also displayed full happiness in every situation she was faced with, whether it be breaking her foot, or messing up her leg, it always seemed like she was in high spirit or at least trying to be in high spirit. During that time that Maze was fighting, I learned a lot of valuable lessons that I still cherish to this day. One is that you will never know how much you love something until it is gone. I am not saying that I did not love Mazzy or that I did not spend enough time with her, It is just I loved her so much and realized I loved her more after her passing. The next lesson that I learned is people that who appear to be there for you are not always who they claim to be, and that family will always be here for me. I had a lot of "friends" who claimed to be there for me at that time but were not. My family was the only thing there for me like I was there for them in that time. All of these people just told me that it was not that serious because it was just a dog. I obviously did not take that well because we treat our pets like sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters. Lastly, It is to really enjoy and try and appreciate the time you have with loved ones because you never know when it could be your last. Maze was only 8 years old when she passed and it seemed as if she got cancer out of nowhere. That was probably the most valuable lesson I learned and it has changed how I view spending time with my family and friends. Even if I do not get the scholarship, for whoever is reading this please appreciate the time you have with your loved ones and cherish those times. Do not take those times for granted and be thankful for every chance you get.

I have always been the type of person known for overcoming challenges and hardships throughout my life. Whether that be in sports, school, work, or home. I have always been able to do it. I have always played sports from the time I was allowed to, which is around nine years old. I have had some good coaches, but have also had some bad ones too. However, the good coaches have been there for me and some still are to help me overcome challenges and adversity with more than just the sport. Varsity football was the sport I decided to play after middle school. Through my sophomore and junior years, my coaches helped me overcome my lack of experience and helped me to get on the field. That was just the first impact they made on me when I joined the team. I was a lot like David, I expected a lot out of my team but more importantly, I expected way more out of myself and wanted the best for the team. I was determined to do whatever it took to win and to help my teammates succeed. My coaches have always helped me with problems on the field or court, however, there were not many coaches that I had that I could go to for issues off the field. One coach I have had stands out in this matter and his name is Eric Cole, an assistant coach for the Oil City football team. He was the one person that I was able to go to for anything. On the field, off the field, he was there to help me and truly wanted the best for me. My father has multiple health issues and is sick a lot of the time. It is not easy to play well when you are unsure of how things at home are going and that was a big mental block for me. Coach Cole was there for me the whole time and still is. The next issue came this year. Last season, I dislocated my shoulder in practice and was out for the season. It turned out to be a career ending which meant I had played my last ever football game. As someone who loved to play football and loved being with my teammates, I did not take this well and went on a downward spiral. Coach Cole was there for me the whole time and drove the fact that even if I am not playing, we are still family and here to help each other. Thank you, Coach Cole, and all of the other parts of the Oiler coaching staff. It was a pleasure to play and I am so thankful for all of you.

I am James O'Dell from Oil City Senior Highschool and I live in Rouseville, PA. I have had to overcome a lot of adversity in my life from when I was a toddler, to even today while writing this. Everyone goes through adversity at some point in their life, there is no doubt about that. However, what separates great from amazing is how you handle, and tackle that adversity. Coming from a low-income household, I have experienced adversity firsthand, and have watched my parents go through it since I could remember. There had been times when we had to stretch thirty dollars over the span of five days, and by some miracle, we always were able to do it and sometimes had money left over. Watching my parents overcome adversity all of the time taught me that adversity should never hold you back from something, it should only motivate you to do it even more. During my sophomore and junior years, I was a varsity offensive tackle for the Oil City Football team. Being an athlete, you have to overcome adversity all of the time whether that be with an opponent or someone online. The best way to handle adversity like that is to ignore it and push past it. I always tried to set an example for the underclassmen on the team by not buying into what other people said and simply worrying about me. Another form of adversity came in week four of my junior year season. I dislocated my left shoulder participating in a drill and was sidelined for the rest of the season including the playoffs. This was one of the hardest times for me to overcome adversity because I had to stop doing something that I loved. Sadly, I still am not 100 percent so I am still not playing but I am overcoming mental adversity by doing other things I like. Those things include getting a job and saving money, along with putting more time into my studies. I have overcome a lot of adversity but the most important thing is to push through it and prove yourself wrong. That is how I always overcome adversity proving myself wrong, and sometimes proving the people around me wrong. Set goals, and take the necessary steps to achieve them, and with enough determination you will make it happen. Just a week ago I overcame adversity by achieving a goal a lot of people said I would not do which is going to college. I will be attending Clarion University in the fall and I will be majoring in sport management. If there is one thing you need to remember, it is that overcoming adversity starts with you setting goals for yourself and taking steps to achieve them. A lot of the time, we are our biggest critics. If you can prove yourself wrong, you can prove anyone wrong.