For much of my life, I've struggled with my mental health on my own. I was an unidentified autistic person with unrecognized ADHD, anxiety, depression, and complex PTSD who, for safety reasons, didn't tell anyone about my problems. That was an incredibly difficult part of my life that I wouldn't wish on anyone. The stress from it contributed to my developing and/or worsening multiple physical conditions, including migraines, POTs, and hyperthyroidism. It was only through therapy, learning about techniques like meditation to feel more at home in my body-mind, and finding safe communities to be a part of that I was able to heal and feel more fully myself and also able to get a better handle on not only my mental health but also my physical health. Because of this, my mental health is important as it is the lynchpin for my overall wellness and, thus, my ability to succeed. For the last few years, as I've gained more insight into my mental health and identity, I have taken more opportunities to advocate for mental health awareness and measures to help others with it in my community. I volunteered with the Trevor Project's Crisis Line to provide support and advocate for the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth. At the Pride Center of New Jersey, I co-facilitated two groups that provided social support for LGBTQ+ folks. I often recommended different mental health services and resources accessible to group members. Through doing these things, I realized I wanted to get a dual degree in social work and public health so that I could continue to advocate for others' mental health, especially those who are LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, and otherwise marginalized. I also realized that connection to and the ability to support others was incredibly beneficial for my mental health, but I also needed to be intentional about continuing to care for my mental health while doing that work so I can do it sustainably and not burn out. Because of this, I'm intentional about continuing my therapy, meditation practice, and social relationships. Now, at school, I am a leader in four organizations that help me advocate for the mental health of my fellow students. As a student leader of multiple clubs, I create and advocate for spaces where students can work to manage their mental health better. Outside of extracurriculars, in my first-year practicum at Tech Kids Unlimited, I taught social-emotional learning workshops for neurodivergent youth and advocated for their needs within the learning environment. In my current practicum at Equality Mental Health, I'm providing support to LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent individuals so that they can better care for their mental health as a part of helping support their holistic well-being. Overall, this program is training me to be a psychotherapist and community health worker specializing in mental health. I am improving my ability to create safe places, teach skills, provide support, and speak up for others' needs. With this, I hope to work with LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent individuals who are at a greater risk of mental health challenges while also building community spaces and advocating for systemic changes that will create a world that is safer and, therefore, more mentally healthy for them to be in. This would provide not only immediate emotional support and treatment but also help to create the long-term support that everyone needs and deserves. The program is also helping to work out the best ways for me to balance this kind of work with taking care of my mental health, ensuring that I can continue helping others to the best of my ability.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was told that careers in public service were an unrealistic luxury. If that was really something I wanted to do, then I should do it in my free time. Since both of my parents were accountants and all of their friends worked in some kind of business, they all had a limited point of reference for this. They tended to perpetuate a lot of misconceptions about working in public service. At the same time, I wanted to do community organizing, advocacy, and mental health care work. Growing up in a severely abusive household as a queer, trans, and neurodivergent person with siblings who were also neurodivergent made me want to make the world a better place for my siblings and others who were in similar and worse situations to us. Still, because that same abusive situation made my first priority to gaining the financial stability to cut off my parents and create a safe place for my siblings, for a long time, I defaulted to the model of having a main job and making my public service work secondary in volunteer roles and telling myself I was ok with that. Some examples of these were helping students in low-income neighborhoods through free dance classes I taught through the New Brunswick 4-H, students with subjects they struggled with at 826NYC, and families in need access books and hygiene products when running a Little Free Library in a Title I school district. Through all of these, I was giving myself to others and seeing how much it helped them. Then, I came out as trans at my workplace at the end of 2020, after over a year of working things out for myself, and advocacy became an unpaid part of my job. I was the only trans and non-binary person who was out and vocal about my identity and how, despite the written policies, in many ways, the workplace was still not safe for trans people. Through this and the other volunteer and pro-bono roles I took on, I became more familiar with people who did do different forms of public service for a living and were able to have financial stability and actually let myself consider the possibilities. Helping at work made it more comfortable for other trans and non-binary people in the office to come out and volunteering at the Trevor Project and the Pride Center of New Jersey, I got to help groups and individuals access affirming spaces and resources that helped with everything from their darkest crises to just finding appropriate medical care. Through what I learned in these experiences, I decided to pursue a dual master's degree in Social Work and Public Health. With this degree, I hope to start a career as a psychotherapist and public health worker, balancing work with individuals with marginalized experiences on their mental health while also doing research, advocacy, and community health to create a world where those individuals can thrive. Building on my volunteer experience, I know I can do so while maintaining the financial stability to care for myself and those I care about, despite what I was told growing up. Using these skills, I particularly hope to advocate for improvements in crisis services, as both LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent people have an increased risk of suicidality, but most services aren't accessible or affirming for neurodivergent people in particular, putting an already vulnerable group at risk. All of this is how I hope to use my career to embody selflessness by helping individuals and populations in need through resources, emotional support, and advocacy.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was told that careers in public service were an unrealistic luxury. If that was really something I wanted to do, then I should do it in my free time. Since both of my parents were accountants and all of their friends worked in some kind of business, they all had a limited point of reference for this and tended to perpetuate a lot of misconceptions about working in public service. At the same time, I wanted to do some kind of community work, advocacy, and mental health care work, because growing up in a severely abusive household as a queer, trans, and neurodivergent person with siblings who were also neurodivergent made me want to make the world a better place for my siblings and others who were in similar and worse situations to us. Still, because that same abusive situation made my first priority to gaining the financial stability to cut off my parents and create a safe place for my siblings, for a long time, I defaulted to the model of having a main job and making my public service work secondary in volunteer roles and telling myself I was ok with that. Then, I came out as trans at my workplace at the end of 2020, after over a year of working things out for myself, and advocacy became an unpaid part of my job. I was the only trans and non-binary person who was out and vocal about my identity and how, despite the written policies, in many ways, the workplace was still not safe for trans people. Through this and the other volunteer and pro-bono roles I took on, I became more familiar with people who did do different forms of public service for a living and able to have financial stability, I actually let myself consider the possibilities. Pulling from my personal experiences and time volunteering with the New Brunswick 4-H, 826NYC, Little Free Libraries, the Trevor Project, and the Pride Center of New Jersey, as well as on pro-bono projects and advocacy at my job, I decided to pursue a dual masters degree in Social Work and Public Health. With this degree, I hope to start a career as a psychotherapist and public health worker, balancing work with individuals with marginalized experiences on their mental health while also doing research, advocacy, and community health to create a world where those individuals can thrive. Building on my volunteer experience, I know I can do so while maintaining the financial stability to take care of myself and those I care about, despite what I was told growing up.

When I first came out as transgender and non-binary in December 2020, the following months were some of the most stressful of my life. In addition to the several complications this added to my personal life, my full-time job at an international advertising agency with 5000+ employees had policies around what to do for trans employees that addressed transgender and non-binary inclusion, but they had never enacted those policies. This meant I was the guinea pig who got to find out all the problems with that policy while on the job. My deadname kept showing up in places it shouldn’t because of unaddressed IT issues, my bosses never remembered to give my pronouns to new people until I had to correct them, and HR told me it wasn’t possible to turn some bathrooms into gender-neutral ones, despite that being a legal requirement in the state of New York. This led to a lot of back-and-forth with HR and the rest of my team just to sort out what went wrong and how to keep it from happening again. At first, this was really lonely work, since I was doing it on my own with minimal support from my managers. However, eventually, I was connected with the DEI council of the company, who offered to help me with my individual difficulties and also with implementing changes to make sure things were less difficult for any other transgender and non-binary employees moving forward. By getting support from others in this group, I could take more of a leadership role when doing advocacy and community work and, ultimately, a path to meaningful change at my job. By working with them, I was not only able to get a gender-neutral bathroom in the office and the beginning of IT updates so that the correct name was showing up throughout the system but also to help organize and speak on two panels on Gender Neutral Pronouns and LGBTQ+ Health Disparities. This work led to the creation of a guide on interacting with transgender and non-binary people in the workplace and representing them in advertisements that were adopted by the company and translated into six languages. Overall, while it was a stressful and draining experience, it ultimately resulted in a connection with the community at my job and a lasting impact I still hear about from formal coworkers that can benefit new employees at that company. It also led to me realizing I wanted to do that kind of work full-time. As such, I decided to begin a dual Masters of Social Work and Public Health program to help me continue building skills and get the credentials to change my career. Social work appealed to me because it meant that I could become a psychotherapist or case manager, which seemed in line with the aspects of my volunteer roles that I liked, while giving me a basis in policy and community program building that would make it easier to take on leadership roles like I had at my job. Now that I am in my program, my experience and network as a researcher, advocate, and support worker has grown in ways that I can't wait to continue in the fall. Using these skills, in the future, I hope to become a psychotherapist, researcher, advocate, and community health worker focused on the LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse communities with emphasis on those facing multiple additional forms of marginalization. In doing so, I hope to continue supporting the communities I’m a part of, especially those most marginalized within them.

When I was thirteen, my youngest sibling, who was three, was identified as autistic. At the time, I was confused because all the things that people said made him autistic were traits that I had, and the only difference seemed to be that he was assigned male at birth and had meltdowns a lot. In contrast, I had been assigned female at birth and didn’t have public meltdowns, so I wasn’t seen as a “problem” in the same way. I often struggled with sensory overwhelm, connecting with others in social situations, and completing tasks, but I was seen as a able person who was just lazy and odd rather than someone with a disability who needed support. It wasn’t until I was 24 and could see a psychiatrist on my own insurance that I was able to confirm that like my sibling I was both autistic and an ADHDer. In the more than a decade in between, I had been walking a line of compensating and finding round-a-bout ways to advocate for my needs and had also developed or discovered further disabilities and chronic illness, including chronic migraines, hypermobility, and hyperthyroidism. My experiences in this odd, in-between space of recognizing I was disabled but not being in an environment where it was safe to openly seek accommodations, then appearing to "suddenly" have all of these support needs and all the while seeing how my brother's disabilities were treated and advocating for his needs to be met, led to my desire to provide better one-on-one support to disabled and neurodivergent people as well as create and advocate for more community support initiatives and policy changes. Seeking a dual Masters' of Social Work and Public Health will give me the skills to provide both individual support and system-level advocacy for needed system-wide changes. Studying these two fields would also enable me to create integrated services for people who are disabled with other intersectional identities, such as services for people who are trans and autistic, since these are often separate, thus forcing disabled people with other marginalized identities to prioritize needs or communities to engage with. This experience is already informing my career in school for social work and public health as my current social work practicum is at a place that specializes in working with neurodivergent youth and I've advocated for several systemic changes to program to help students, including making resources for BIPOC and LGBTQ neurodiverse students, honoring the Disability Day of Mourning, and ensuring a student who prefers to communicate using sign language can do so rather than needing to try to be verbal consistently. I also recently gave an hour-long presentation at the school's community showcase on Neurodiversity and Disability Justice because this isn't currently recognized a lot in the curriculum or the field. I also joined our student governing council to advocate for several of my classmates whose accommodations haven’t been met and for the inclusion of disability in the curriculum. As I’m starting my second practicum, I’m mainly working with clients who are both neurodivergent and otherwise disabled, where I can use my new skills and personal experience to help them reach a point where they feel they can thrive. In doing this work, I feel like I can help other neurodiverse and disabled students like myself moving forward.

This is the grid I created in case you want to do the puzzle: Rib Purl Paths Chest Garter March Science Head Linen Mixed Whistle Abstain Divergent Speak Write Plastic Here are the groupings I have for the words: Yellow/Straightforward: Forms of protest Write, March, Speak, Abstain Green: Voice tones when singing Head, Chest, Mixed, Whistle Blue: Knitting stitches Purl, Linen, Garter, Rib Purple/Tricky: Words following “neuro-“ Science, Plastic, Divergent, Paths For the yellow/straightforward group, I chose to use a series of verbs because that's often used in straightforward grouping. The verbs I chose were forms of protest because, as a disabled student at NYU studying Social Work and Public Health, the last year has raised a lot of questions in terms of what forms of protest are effective in given circumstances and also what forms are accessible to different people. They seemed appropriate for the straightforward category because they stand out as a group and are seen frequently together if you've ever read about protests, which many have in the last several years. For the green group, which is a little less easy, I chose to do different registers of voice because I sing and am familiar with the words, as using one's head, chest, and mixed voice are frequently part of vocal warm-ups and going into whistle tones in warm-up exercises is good to reset one's voice if you're like me going through a voice change while on gender-affirming hormone therapy. I also chose these words because I thought in combination with the blue group. The blue group is also made up of words I know well from a hobby (specifically knitting), and referencing a rib stitch seemed like a good way to throw people off because with "Head" and "Chest" already in the grid, it would become easy to fixate on finding another body part rather than seeing if they should be in another group altogether. The last group is just based on my immersion in the neurodivergent community, where I see a lot of words put after the prefix "neuro-" and it seemed only fitting if making connections puzzle to do one of their, "Follow [prefix]" or "Words with [prefix/suffix]" prompts for the hard one. Additionally, I thought "Plastic" and "Paths" would be good additions to confuse people as one might think that "Plastic" and "Linen" would go together or that "Paths" and "March" should be in a group together in a category like "walkways." Having divergent in the mix also just seemed like it could throw people off from solving the puzzle, and thus, it would be fun to play around with. I really enjoy making these puzzles every day and had fun making my first one on my own. I hope you have as much fun solving this as I did making it and that you also learn a little bit about me.

When I was in the fourth grade, I was introduced to meditation with a one-off exercise during rehearsals for a school play I was in. I had never felt so calm and aware in my life and tried to continue practicing on my own as it gave me the little safe space I had in a severely abusive environment. By the time I got to high school, I wanted to explore it more deeply, and so I went to the internet, which is how I stumbled upon more in-depth readings on not just meditation but Buddhism. Though I had been raised Catholic, the principles and practices of Buddhism resonated more with my sense of spirituality. The Four Noble Truths, Eight-Fold Path, and Five Precepts aligned with how I saw the world. As such, while in my undergraduate degree, I began attending events with the Buddhist Association to learn more and discuss with others. Following graduation, I tried a number of different Sanghas before settling into the Sangha at All Souls NYC and AutSit, a virtual Sangha for autistic people. Exploring and deepening this area of my life has given me clarity, stability, and community in a way that fundamentally shaped who I am today and who I want to be moving forward. Now, as a student pursuing a dual Master's degree in Public Health and Social Work, I hope to use the precepts I've learned from Buddhism, as well as the mindfulness and meditation techniques I've learned over the years, to help others. As the student leader for Outbreath, an LGBTQ+-centered mindfulness group, I'm gaining experience leading student meditations and discussions that center on marginalized experiences. This experience and the values I've learned from studying and discussing Buddhism with others will directly inform my practice as a social worker, psychotherapist, and public health worker who hopes to work with individuals at the intersection of LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent identity. These are groups that experience higher levels of stress and greater risks of mental and physical health problems and can benefit from many of the mindfulness and meditation practices that are used in Buddhism. At the same time, learning concepts about non-attachment can help with a world that isn't accepting or affirming of one's identity, something I have already found many clients find helpful. Further, taking more from the social activist part of Buddhism, I hope that as a public health researcher and advocate, I can work to support these communities that I am a part of by expanding our understanding of the challenges and risks facing these groups and improving their ability to access a world where they can thrive. These goals are directly informed by the values I've clarified while practicing and studying Buddhism, and pursuing them has only deepened my practice. As I continue to move towards these goals, I hope this relationship with my spiritual practice only grows alongside my ability to serve my community.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was told that careers in public service were an unrealistic luxury. If that was really something I wanted to do, then I should do it in my free time. Since both of my parents were accountants and all of their friends worked in some kind of business, they all had a limited point of reference for this. They tended to perpetuate a lot of misconceptions about working in public service. At the same time, I wanted to do some kind of community work, advocacy, and mental health care work. Growing up in a severely abusive household as a queer, trans, and neurodivergent person with siblings who were also neurodivergent made me want to make the world a better place for my siblings and others who were in similar and worse situations to us. Still, because that same abusive situation made my first priority to gaining the financial stability to cut off my parents and create a safe place for my siblings, for a long time, I defaulted to the model of having a main job and making my public service work secondary in volunteer roles and telling myself I was ok with that. Then, I came out as trans at my workplace at the end of 2020, after over a year of working things out for myself, and advocacy became an unpaid part of my job. I was the only trans and non-binary person who was out and vocal about my identity and how, despite the written policies, in many ways, the workplace was still not safe for trans people. Through this and the other volunteer and pro-bono roles I took on, I became more familiar with people who did do different forms of public service for a living and able to have financial stability, I actually let myself consider the possibilities. Pulling from my personal experiences and time volunteering with the New Brunswick 4-H, 826NYC, Little Free Libraries, the Trevor Project, and the Pride Center of New Jersey, as well as on pro-bono projects and advocacy at my job, I decided to pursue a dual masters degree in Social Work and Public Health. With this degree, I hope to start a career as a psychotherapist and public health worker, balancing work with individuals with marginalized experiences on their mental health while also doing research, advocacy, and community health to create a world where those individuals can thrive. Building on my volunteer experience, I know I can do so while maintaining the financial stability to care for myself and those I care about, despite what I was told growing up. I hope to do so in my local community by advocating for more accessible and affirming spaces, something I have already done by giving presentations at my church and my school on disability justice and neurodivergence and which I will continue to do now that I am the Social Justice and Diversity Co-Chair for the Graduate Student Association of the School of Social Work. Using these skills, I particularly hope to advocate for improvements in crisis services, as both LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent people have an increased risk of suicidality, but most services aren't accessible or affirming for neurodivergent people in particular, putting an already vulnerable group at risk. I'm already working on a resource for neurodivergent-affirming services in collaboration with professionals from my social work practicum and I hope to do more once I finish my degree. Overall, I am excited and proud to be pursuing a career in public service and am hopeful for the impact I can make.

When I was thirteen, my youngest sibling, who was three, was identified as autistic. At the time, I was confused because all the things that people said made him autistic were traits that I had, and the only difference seemed to be that he was assigned male at birth and had meltdowns a lot. In contrast, I had been assigned female at birth. By the time I was two, I was advocating with daycare workers about things like how I didn't like my food touching or found certain noises to be a lot or sometimes repeated stuff for fun and to please not get annoyed by that, so those traits hadn't been viewed as a "problem" in the way my sibling's meltdowns were. Then I saw how all of our family members reacted to him, a three-year-old, having a meltdown due to what was distress and responding by going, "Oh, your poor mother," even though at home she'd react to these by threatening violence and decided not to tell anyone these observations until I was 24 and could see a psychiatrist on my insurance, who confirmed that like my sibling I was both autistic and an ADHDer. In the more than a decade in between, I had been walking a line of compensating and finding roundabout ways to advocate for my needs. I had also developed or discovered further disabilities and chronic illnesses, including chronic migraines, hypermobility, and hyperthyroidism. My experiences in this odd, in-between space of recognizing I was disabled but not being in an environment where it was safe to openly seek accommodations, then appearing to "suddenly" have all of these support needs and all the while seeing how my brother's disabilities were treated and advocating for his needs to be met, led to my desire to provide better one-on-one support to disabled and neurodivergent people as well as create and advocate for more community support initiatives and policy changes. Seeking a dual Master's of Social Work and Public Health will give me the skills to do just that, as well as work to integrate services for people in this group with intersectional identities, such as services for people who are trans and autistic, since these are often separate, thus forcing disabled people with other marginalized identities to prioritize needs or communities to engage with. This experience has already informed my career in school for social work and public health, as my recently completed social work practicum was at Tech Kids Unlimited, a non-profit specializing in working with neurodivergent youth. I've advocated for several systemic changes to the program to help students, including making resources for BIPOC and LGBTQ neurodiverse students, honoring the Disability Day of Mourning, and ensuring a student who prefers to communicate using sign language can do so rather than needing to try to be verbal consistently. I also gave an hour-long presentation at the school's community showcase on Neurodiversity and Disability Justice because this isn't currently recognized a lot in the curriculum or the field (in fact, most of our materials have the opposite of that lens, which seems out-of-line with social work values). I'm now in the Graduate Student Association as a Social Justice and Diversity Chair to help advocate for these. I hope to continue these efforts beyond school to make the world more accessible and accepting of neurodiverse and disabled people in any way I can as a psychotherapist, community organizer, and public health advocate. This combination of careers feels both accessible to me and like they can help others like me to have a more accessible world.

When I was thirteen, my youngest sibling, who was three, was identified as autistic. At the time, I was confused because all the things that people said made him autistic were traits that I had, and the only difference seemed to be that he was assigned male at birth and had meltdowns a lot. In contrast, I had been assigned female at birth. By the time I was two, I was advocating with daycare workers about things like how I didn't like my food touching or found certain noises to be a lot or sometimes repeated stuff for fun and to please not get annoyed by that, so those traits hadn't been viewed as a "problem" in the way my sibling's meltdowns were. Then I saw how all of our family members reacted to him, a three-year-old, having a meltdown due to what was distress and responding by going, "Oh, your poor mother," even though at home she'd react to these by threatening violence and decided not to tell anyone these observations until I was 24 and could see a psychiatrist on my insurance, who confirmed that like my sibling I was both autistic and an ADHDer. In the more than a decade in between, I had been walking a line of compensating and finding round-a-bout ways to advocate for my needs. I had also developed or discovered further disabilities and chronic illnesses, including chronic migraines, hypermobility, and hyperthyroidism. My experiences in this odd, in-between space of recognizing I was disabled but not being in an environment where it was safe to openly seek accommodations, then appearing to "suddenly" have all of these support needs and all the while seeing how my brother's disabilities were treated and advocating for his needs to be met, led to my desire to provide better one-on-one support to disabled and neurodivergent people as well as create and advocate for more community support initiatives and policy changes. Seeking a dual Master's of Social Work and Public Health will give me the skills to do just that, as well as work to integrate services for people in this group with intersectional identities, such as services for people who are trans and autistic, since these are often separate, thus forcing disabled people with other marginalized identities to prioritize needs or communities to engage with. This experience has already informed my career in school for social work and public health, as my current social work practicum is at a place that specializes in working with neurodivergent youth. I've advocated for several systemic changes to the program to help students, including making resources for BIPOC and LGBTQ neurodiverse students, honoring the Disability Day of Mourning, and ensuring a student who prefers to communicate using sign language can do so rather than needing to try to be verbal consistently. I also gave an hour-long presentation at the school's community showcase on Neurodiversity and Disability Justice because this isn't currently recognized a lot in the curriculum or the field (in fact, most of our materials have the opposite of that lens, which seems out-of-line with social work values). I'm now in the Graduate Student Association as a Social Justice and Diversity Chair to help advocate for these. I hope to continue these efforts beyond school to make the world more accessible and accepting of neurodiverse and disabled people in any way I can as a psychotherapist, community organizer, and public health advocate. This combination of careers feels both accessible to me and like they can help others like me to have a more accessible world.

All of my life, I’ve had trouble choosing which of my passions would be my career. Entering my undergraduate program, I knew I always loved STEM, so I started as a Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major. Then, when I realized I didn’t want any of the specific jobs that came with that degree, I switched to English and Classics to follow my love of reading, writing, and the mechanics of language. After graduating, at first, working in Healthcare advertising seemed like a perfect combination of these two passions. Still, at the same time, I wished there was a way to incorporate my desire and experiences from volunteering and my love of helping individuals and groups achieve their goals into this. This desire only became stronger after I came out as non-binary and trans at my 5000+ employee international company and, as the only out and vocal trans person, at least at first, I got more experience with organizing with a group and achieving better treatment for myself and others. Simultaneously, I was gaining experience helping my younger siblings’ trans friends one-on-one and eventually building on those skills as a volunteer Crisis Counselor with the Trevor Project and co-facilitator of a support group at the Pride Center of NJ. It dawned on me that I wanted a way to combine my passion for STEM, communications, healthcare, advocacy, and counseling, but I struggled to find a degree or career that had that combination. Then, one day, while looking at programs, I stumbled upon the dual degree option for Public Health and Social Work. It seemed like the perfect way for me to train more in my areas of interest and have a career with them in the future. In particular, they would enable me to pursue these interests while giving me the skills, experience, and network to use my passions to help the LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent communities that I’m a part of and create a better world for those of us in the present and the future. Even better, it lets me do so without having to choose one or the other interests, but instead, it ties them all together in a way that works for me. My passion for all these areas has propelled me through my degree so far, allowing me to get a 4.0 while working a couple part-time jobs, completing my social work practicum, and having a leadership role in multiple clubs. When I finish this degree, I hope to start a career as a psychotherapist and public health worker, balancing work with individuals with marginalized experiences on their mental health while also doing research, advocacy, and community health to create a world where those individuals can thrive. Far from being forced to choose one of my passions or whether to help others or have financial stability, I will be able to have a career propelled forward by all of my passions, with plenty of room to incorporate more. Furthermore, my focus on neurodivergent, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized identities has already impacted others in my profession because speaking about them has provided classmates and professors with new information on disability, trans, and other issues that they've since acted on by whether advocating for them to be incorporated into the curriculum or actually adding them in. Since I'm already having this impact while in school, I hope to continue to help others learn more about marginalized issues and create a safe space for those at this intersection of identities in my career. While it took a while to get here, I can't wait to see where it goes.

There are many kinds of leaders and, in the past, I've generally been the kind that is overlooked until the moment is needed. I try to always listen first, so that I understand a situation, so I can come across as quiet and reserved. However, that means when conflict arises, or people have trouble figuring out how to approach a problem, I can use the information I got while listening and my creative problem-solving skills to come up with a solution. For example, when I was the editor of the student newsletter and director of media for the school's Honors Program as an undergraduate, it took me four months to fully step into the leadership aspect of that position. This only happened after attending many meetings discussing the lack of engagement of our program compared to others in the school I came up with three programs that utilized resources we already had and also empowered other student workers to create more engaging social media, emails, and videos so that students would be better informed about programs, which increased engagement with digital resources and also attendance at in-person events. However, in recent years, I've been getting more comfortable acting as a leader in ways that are more obvious, like leading meetings, advocating for improvements in institutions, and mentoring others. This shift started when I became the first out and vocal transgender and non-binary employee while working full-time as a copywriter at IPG Health. I needed to speak up about conditions at the company that weren't inclusive for non-binary and transgender folks, such as different programs showing old legal names instead of updated ones, a lack of gender-neutral bathrooms in the office, and a general lack of understanding of how to include people who used they/them pronouns. My advocacy resulted in not just policy updates but two panels educating staff on transgender and LGBTQ issues that I both helped to organize and spoke on. My experience with this led to me taking on many other leadership positions, co-facilitating support groups with the Pride Center of New Jersey, and organizing a Little Free Library in front of my apartment. Getting this experience pushed me to realize I wanted to make my career the kind of leadership roles where I can provide support to others, build community, and advocate for change, which led me to my current dual Masters of Public Health and Social Work program. This will allow me to advocate for changes at a policy level, act as a community healthcare worker, and provide support to individuals as a psychotherapist. Through my time in the program, I've already expanded my skills as a compassionate leader with a focus on intersectionality, both through leading workshops through my practicum and acting on the executive board of multiple clubs that center on creating a safe space for LGBTQ+ individuals or improving programs overall. In the next year, I hope to continue improving my leadership skills through continued involvement with the groups, my second-year practicum, and my part-time jobs as a course assistant and research assistant. In these roles, my knowledge, compassion, creative problem-solving, assertiveness, and improving ability to delegate will continue to make me a leader. At the same time, considering how much the type of leader I am has already shifted, I'm excited to see what is in store in the future.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was told that careers in public service were an unrealistic luxury. If that was really something I wanted to do, then I should do it in my free time. Since both of my parents were accountants and all of their friends worked in some kind of business, they all had a limited point of reference for this and tended to perpetuate a lot of misconceptions about working in public service. At the same time, I wanted to do some kind of community work, advocacy, and mental health care work. Growing up in a severely abusive household as a queer, trans, and neurodivergent person with siblings who were also neurodivergent made me want to make the world a better place for my siblings and others who were in similar and worse situations to us. Still, because that same abusive situation made my first priority to gaining the financial stability to cut off my parents and create a safe place for my siblings, for a long time, I defaulted to the model of having a main job and making my public service work secondary in volunteer roles and telling myself I was ok with that. Then, I came out as trans at my workplace at the end of 2020, after over a year of working things out for myself, and advocacy became an unpaid part of my job. I was the only trans and non-binary person who was out and vocal about my identity and how, despite the written policies, in many ways, the workplace was still not safe for trans people. Through this and the other volunteer and pro-bono roles I took on, I became more familiar with people who did do different forms of public service for a living and able to have financial stability, I actually let myself consider the possibilities. Pulling from my personal experiences and time volunteering with the New Brunswick 4-H, 826NYC, Little Free Libraries, the Trevor Project, and the Pride Center of New Jersey, as well as on pro-bono projects and advocacy at my job, I decided to pursue a dual masters degree in Social Work and Public Health. With this degree, I hope to start a career as a psychotherapist and public health worker, balancing work with individuals with marginalized experiences on their mental health while also doing research, advocacy, and community health to create a world where those individuals can thrive. Building on my volunteer experience, I know I can do so while maintaining the financial stability to take care of myself and those I care about, despite what I was told growing up.

For much of my life, I've struggled with my mental health on my own. I was an unidentified autistic person with unrecognized ADHD, anxiety, depression, and complex PTSD who, for safety reasons, didn't tell anyone about my problems. That was an incredibly difficult part of my life that I wouldn't wish on anyone. It was only through therapy, learning about techniques like meditation to feel more at home in my body-mind, and finding safe communities to be a part of. For the last few years, as I've gained more insight into my mental health and identity, I have taken more opportunities to advocate for mental health awareness and measures to help others with it in my community. I volunteered with the Trevor Project's Crisis Line to provide support and advocate for the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth. At the Pride Center of New Jersey, I co-facilitated two groups that provided social support for LGBTQ+ folks. I often recommended different mental health services and resources accessible to group members. Through doing these things, I realized I wanted to get a dual degree in social work and public health so that I could continue to advocate for others' mental health, especially those who are LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, and otherwise marginalized. Now, at school, I am a leader in four organizations that help me advocate for the mental health of my fellow students. As a student leader of multiple clubs, I create spaces where students can work to better manage their mental health and advocate for changes that will lessen student stress. Outside of extracurriculars, in my practicum at Tech Kids Unlimited, I'm teaching social-emotional learning workshops for neurodivergent youth and advocating for their needs within the learning environment. Overall, this program trains me to be a psychotherapist and community health worker specializing in mental health. I am improving my ability to create safe places, teach skills, provide support, and speak up for others' needs. With this, I hope to work with LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent individuals who are at a greater risk of mental health challenges while also building community spaces and advocating for systemic changes that will create a world that is safer and, therefore, more mentally healthy for them to be in. This would provide not only immediate emotional support and treatment but also help to create the long-term support that everyone needs and deserves.

The child of two accountants, for much of my early childhood, I thought that math was boring. I did well at it in school, but I associated it with boring calculations about money. It wasn't until eighth grade when I started studying Algebra and had a teacher who showed us examples of how math could be applied in the real world that I began to take more of an interest. Because of that teacher, I had a better sense of how math could be used to do things like build bridges, assess problems, and even improve my ability to do a turn in dance class. Since then, an understanding of the importance of math has grounded everything I do. When I first started my undergraduate degree, I was a Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major doing research. The majority of my job involved some amount of math, whether it was determining how to adapt different laboratory techniques for the size of the experiment we were doing or completing a statistical analysis of the results. When I switched to an English and Classics major, the jobs I took on in school involved writing and communicating, which meant you needed to understand what you were talking about. That was where I found that I really enjoyed explaining math and science in writing to others, which ultimately led me to Healthcare Advertising where I was translating the math in clinical research trials into understandable communications for doctors and patients. Still, I found myself missing doing the research myself and navigating the intersection of study design and calculations. As much as I enjoyed explaining the clinical trials, I also wanted to be a part of them and to help others. Ultimately, my discovery of dual degree programs for social work and public health seemed like the perfect combination of application and calculation for me. Now that I'm in my program I'm working in an epidemiology lab and math is a large part of my projects there so we can better understand the trends in behavior and disease. Without math, I wouldn't be able to do a large aspect of what I love and I'm more than happy to do it.

When I first came out as transgender and non-binary in December 2020, the following months were some of the most stressful of my life. My family had questions about my "decision," and my full-time job at an international advertising agency with 5000+ employees, which had policies around what to do for trans employees that addressed transgender and non-binary inclusion, had never enacted those policies. This meant that in addition to navigating already complicated family relationships, which became more estranged, I also had to have a constant back and forth with the Human Resources department and management team at my job about why my deadname kept showing up in different programs/documents that my team regularly used, why there wasn't a gender-neutral bathroom that I could use, and why I needed to educate my managers about basic things like sharing my pronouns when introducing me to new team members. At first, this was really lonely work since I was doing it essentially on my own with minimal support from my managers. However, eventually, I was connected with the DEI team. By getting support from others in this group, I could find easier ways of doing advocacy and community work and, ultimately, a path to meaningful change at my job. Having a taste of this and the increasingly anti-LGBTQ+ political landscape, I continued seeking communities where I could find support and change. I volunteered at the Trevor Project to help LGBTQ+ youth and advocated for more neurodivergent-friendly practices. At the Pride Center of New Jersey, I helped to co-facilitate a support group for transmasculine people. The more I could help others, the more I wanted that to be my job. This was especially true the more I saw how many services failed to meet the needs of those with intersectional identities, particularly those who were BIPOC, neurodivergent, and otherwise disabled. As such, I decided to begin a dual Masters of Social Work and Public Health program to help me continue building skills and get the credentials to change my career. Social work appealed to me because it meant that I could become a psychotherapist or case manager, which seemed in line with the aspects of my volunteer roles that I liked, while also continuing to build advocacy skills at the mezzo and macro level so I could more effectively work with others to advocate for change. Adding a public health degree seemed like it would provide good support by providing ways to evaluate situations and services through research, build community health programs, and advocate for policy shifts in a way that complimented my desire to do social work and also appealed to my background in biology. Now that I am in my program, my experience and network as a researcher, advocate, and support worker have grown in ways that I can't wait to continue in the fall. Using these skills, in the future, I hope to become a psychotherapist, researcher, advocate, and community health worker focused on the LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse communities with emphasis on those facing multiple additional forms of marginalization. In doing so, I hope to continue supporting the communities I’m a part of, especially those most marginalized within them in the ways a social worker is uniquely qualified to.

"How can you go on the elliptical for forty minutes daily and not even run a mile in gym class? That doesn't make sense." "Seriously, you can't even walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath?" "Your ankle can't hurt that much. You're nine years old. Stop making such a big deal out of everything." These are just a few of the many comments I received growing up. I would be able to do some physical activities incredibly well but then struggle with others, and the reason for the difference would be described as laziness. For years, I would have an on-again-off-again relationship with regular exercise that was dependent entirely on my energy levels that I could only explain as the result of a lack of motivation or willpower. It wasn't until 2019, when I was in my early twenties, when a traumatic brain injury resulted in me developing light-sensitive migraines and an exacerbation in other symptoms, that I found out that I am hypermobile and have POTs, after getting a concussion that left me with chronic migraines. It took four years and the use of all of my short-term disability leave to get these conditions in a manageable enough place that I can get the majority of my work done and get to the majority of places, with the assumption that I am in an environment that is supportive of the needs related to those disabilities. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. My current social work practicum requires me to spend most of the day standing and had to request a space where I could lie down with my feet up in the middle of the day. For my second practicum in the fall, I had to advocate for a position that didn't require home visits or a long commute. Additionally, I needed to request practicums that had a hybrid model of working and extra flexibility so that if I get a migraine, I can still complete my hours. Beyond this, for extracurricular clubs and employment, my options have been limited based on the amount of time I can spend upright or in areas with bright lights. While many positions do offer hybrid options that I can do at home while in a reclined position so that I don't faint and maintain the energy to do my work and basic living tasks. As such, I need extra time to manage my condition and advocate for workable conditions for it while also completing schoolwork, part time work, extracurriculars, and daily living tasks, which can be vary draining, make my disabilities more difficult to manage, and make it difficult to access opportunities that my classmates can through the school or to do additional part-time work to cover expenses. While my certainly gotten better as I've understood my body and its needs more, these extra challenges remain which has made my schooling career much more difficult and stressful. Any amount of additional funds will allow me more space to both manage my conditions and complete school without aggravating anything or making my physically disabilities worse.

From middle school through my undergraduate degree, I struggled with many basic social interactions. Writing emails to people would take hours because I kept worrying about saying the wrong thing. When I got a reply, the thought of opening the email to read it was terrifying. I was convinced that I had done something wrong and that the other person would be berating me through the email, which felt like the end of the world. Similar thoughts and feelings would come up around day-to-day conversations and phone calls, even ones for simple things like getting a haircut. Generally, I found ways to manage or work around this, developing template emails that I wouldn't have to think about too much before sending, having friends read emails for me, and finding places that had online forms for services. Still, there were a lot of emails that I just let slip through the cracks that were important for classes, activities, and other things just because I was too anxious to read them. Usually, my schedule was busy enough that I could pass off these missed messages I missed due to mere business, but I lost many opportunities and relationships because of this during that time. Since then, I've been to therapy and have greatly improved my ability to manage and ultimately decrease my social anxiety. Through exposure therapy, I became better at managing my distress around emails and better able to maintain relationships and community to support myself. I worked out aspects of my identity that were contributing to my social anxiety, including being transgender, non-binary, neurodivergent, and disabled, and how to navigate the inherent difficulties that come with them without internalizing negative experiences. In doing so, I gained the confidence to participate in more work with the broader LGBTQ+ community, including volunteering as a crisis counselor with the Trevor Project, a group co-facilitator with the Pride Center of New Jersey, and as an advocate for transgender and non-binary people at my job. These experiences made me realize I wanted a career more oriented around public service and counseling, so I decided to pursue a dual Masters' degree in Social Work and Public Health. Through this program, I hope to gain the skills and experience to become a psychotherapist, and public health researcher, advocate, and community organizer. These are skills I want to use to help LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent people with their mental health and also work to improve services and policies that affect them. In my current social work practicum at Tech Kids Unlimited, I am helping students learn social-emotional learning skills, supporting students with social anxiety, and creating resources for students with intersectional identities and their parents. I will continue to develop them in my second-year practicum at Equality Mental Health in the fall, where I will be providing counseling to LGBTQ+ people dealing with a variety of issues, including anxiety. Outside of this, through my involvement in numerous clubs and public health research, I am learning how to advocate for larger changes that can benefit these communities. Even though my social anxiety still comes up, I have more tools to manage it and continue to learn and move forward. With these degrees, I hope to help others gain those tools and have long-term improvement as well so that they can not only get through basic tasks that are necessary for daily life, like sending emails, but also so that they can thrive.

When I first came out as transgender and non-binary in December 2020, the following months were some of the most stressful of my life. My family had questions about my "decision," and my full-time job at an international advertising agency with 5000+ employees, which had policies around what to do for trans employees that addressed transgender and non-binary inclusion, had never enacted those policies. This meant that in addition to navigating already complicated family relationships, which became more estranged, I also had to have a constant back and forth with the Human Resources department and management team at my job about why my deadname kept showing up in different programs/documents that my team regularly used, why there wasn't a gender-neutral bathroom that I could use, and why I needed to educate my managers about basic things like sharing my pronouns when introducing me to new team members. At first, this was really lonely work since I was doing it essentially on my own with minimal support from my managers. However, eventually, I was connected with the DEI team. By getting support from others in this group, I could find easier ways of doing advocacy and community work and, ultimately, a path to meaningful change at my job. Having a taste of this, I continued seeking communities where I could find support and change. I volunteered at the Trevor Project to help LGBTQ+ youth and advocated for more neurodivergent-friendly practices. At the Pride Center of New Jersey, I helped to co-facilitate a support group for transmasculine people. The more I could help others, the more I wanted that to be my job. This was especially true the more I saw how many services failed to meet the needs of those with intersectional identities, particularly those who were BIPOC, neurodivergent, and otherwise disabled. As such, I decided to begin a dual Masters of Social Work and Public Health program to help me continue building skills and get the credentials to change my career. Now that I am in my program, my skills and ability to affect change have greatly increased. In my practicum, I have worked with neurodivergent youth of all identities to improve their social-emotional learning and feelings of safety by making resources and running workshops for those with LGBTQ+ identities. Within school, I have a leadership role in several LGBTQ+ clubs, including the Queer Health Collective, OutBreath, and Pride in Practice, that run events and advocate for better LGBTQ+ inclusion within school curricula and policies. Next year, I plan to continue this work as the Social Justice and Diversity Co-Chair of the Graduate Student Association at the School of Social Work. This coming fall, I am also excited to work more directly with the LGBTQ+ community during my practicum at Equality Mental Health. In addition to classes, my current roles have given me the experience and network to grow as a researcher, advocate, and support worker in ways that I can't wait to continue in the fall. Using these skills, in the future, I hope to become a psychotherapist, researcher, advocate, and community health worker focused on the LGBTQ+ community. In doing so, I hope to help ensure that, moving forward, no one feels alone when facing issues like discrimination at work, difficulties with family, or the many other challenges faced by people in our community. I hope that increasing knowledge, visibility, and access to support services and broader policies using the skills I have built and continue to work on in my education will help me achieve this.

For much of my life, I've struggled with my mental health on my own. I was an unidentified autistic person with unrecognized ADHD, anxiety, depression, and complex PTSD who, for safety reasons, didn't tell anyone about my problems. That was an incredibly difficult part of my life that I wouldn't wish on anyone. It was a constant struggle and cycle between wanting to connect with others, feeling like I failed at doing so, getting reminded of previous bad experiences, and self-isolating with a cycle of negative emotions and feelings that I didn't have a healthy way to manage. It was only through therapy, learning about techniques like meditation to feel more at home in my body-mind, and finding safe communities to be a part of. For the last few years, as I've gained more insight into my mental health and identity, I have taken more opportunities to advocate for mental health awareness and measures to help others with it in my community. I volunteered with the Trevor Project's Crisis Line to provide support and advocate for the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth. At the Pride Center of New Jersey, I co-facilitated two groups that provided social support for LGBTQ+ folks. I often recommended different mental health services and resources accessible to group members. In the Title I school district where I lived, I opened a little free library to provide children and adults with access to learning that could greatly benefit their mental health during a stressful time. In doing this, I realized I wanted to get a dual degree in social work and public health so that I could continue to advocate for others' mental health, especially those who are LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, and otherwise marginalized. Now, at school, I am a leader in four organizations that help me advocate for the mental health of my fellow students. As the president of the Queer Health Collective at the New York School of Public Health, I've worked with my executive board to make events to help students fight stress, feel affirmed in their identities, and build community, including queer yoga events, clothing swaps, and crafting events. As a student leader of the LGBTQ+ meditation group Outbreath at the Global Center for Spiritual Life, I work with the faculty leader and others to teach students mindfulness techniques to help them be present and manage their emotions. Additionally, by co-leading the Pride in Practice group that a friend and I restarted this spring at the School of Social Work, we've given LGBTQ+ students at the school a place to find community and share aspects of their experience at the school that are negatively affecting their mental health. This fall, as the newly elected Social Justice and Diversity co-chair of the school's Graduate Student Association, I plan to advocate for updates to the curriculum and program based on these meetings to help future students have a better experience and more options to cope with their mental health for the coming year. Outside of clubs, in my practicum at Tech Kids Unlimited, I'm teaching social-emotional learning workshops for neurodivergent youth and also advocate for their needs within the learning environment, a role I hope to continue this fall in my internship at Equality Mental Health. Overall, this program is training me to be a psychotherapist and community health worker specializing in mental health. I am improving my ability to create safe places, teach skills, provide support, and speak up for others' needs. With this, I hope to have a career that can help ensure that no one faces mental health challenges alone.

Growing up, expressing my emotions, especially negative ones, wasn't safe. Yet, the adults around me blew up all the time. This left me constantly feeling like a clogged pipe, with a lot of anger and anxiety stuck inside where they always felt on the edge of exploding. That is until I found Linkin Park in middle school. Listening to "Burn It Down" and "Numb" on repeat and singing along to them when I was alone or even just imagining doing so helped me make sense of the feelings coming up in my body and brain and get comfortable with them to the degree that was possible. This coping tool eventually led to my discovery of Korn, then As I Lay Dying, then In This Moment, and so many more artists that allowed me to make sense of and feel validated with my frustration. Turning to metal as a way of emotionally regulating supported me through middle school, high school, and my undergraduate degree, where it was especially helpful during my senior year when I worked four jobs while taking classes. They also allowed me to work out halfway through my junior year that, despite excelling in my Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major, I wanted to do something more applied, leading to me switching my major to English so I could have the time for more direct experience in areas that applied the science I really loved. The combination of theatricality, raw emotion, and lyrics gave me the space to sort through that experience, which greatly improved my life. Then and ever since, metal has meant feeling seen, connecting with others, and the freedom to express emotions and be who I am. I am carrying these values into my dual master's degree program in Public Health and Social Work. The systems that provide health and social services are often structures that make people feel isolated, misunderstood, and disempowered, especially people from marginalized groups. My understanding of this has been informed by my experience as a queer, trans, disabled, and neurodivergent person as well as my experiences working in healthcare communications and volunteering at multiple LGBTQ+ organizations. There are many barriers to getting the care and support one needs, and I wanted to bring my background in research, communications, and community organizing to the forefront. Addressing these barriers and finding ways to highlight their impact or knock them down would be very metal. That is why I hope to use this degree to become a public health and social worker, doing research and advocacy as well as creating community programs and providing mental healthcare to marginalized groups. Epidemiology has proven to be a persistent love of mine, and this degree is giving me the experience and credentials to develop and grow my abilities in this area through classes and my job at the Complex Public Health Disasters Lab. This is a scientific skill that I hope to bring forward when doing research on the broad needs of marginalized communities, such as those who are trans and neurodivergent, that I can utilize in any advocacy, therapeutic, or community work. My ultimate goal is to unite my love and skill with epidemiology with my persistent need to find ways to apply clinical knowledge in a singular job, but to get the experience to do that, I will likely need to work two jobs following school to complete my licensing hours and also continue to develop my scientific skills. That is why my current plan for paying for school is a combination of merit-based scholarships from the school, part-time jobs, and loans, with the understanding that I will likely have two incomes to help pay those off after graduating. However, having additional funds so I need fewer loans would make it a lot easier to take a job with lower pay but better experience after school, particularly since I don't have familial support. Through it all, I have and will continue to lean on metal as a support, whatever happens here.

At the beginning of the third grade, I had my first thought about wanting to die. I grew up in a severely abusive household and had just changed schools, separating me from my previous support system. I had just worked out that what was happening at home wasn't normal or alright, so I had told some teachers and the adults in aftercare about it with the understanding that they were able to do something about it and get myself and my younger siblings out of our home. They all said I was either misunderstanding things or making it all up. So, as an eight-year-old, I sat there and considered my options, which were to keep trying, run away, or wait until I was 16 or 18 when I could get a job or a full ride to college and leave, and the thought just came to my head. There was a highway behind the school. I could just run into it, and it would all be over. It didn't really seem like anyone cared about me as a person anyway, and I was just really, really tired already without doing the work any of those things involved, so it seemed like a simple solution. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties and finally able to see a therapist that that experience, as well as the many after it, would get recognized as depression and anxiety largely caused and compounded by complex PTSD and my experiences as an autistic person. Between third grade and then, I was left to manage my mental health on my own because I thought if no one believed me about what was going on at home, they wouldn't believe me about what was going on in my head. Not to mention, the way everyone at school, family parties, and on TV talked about mental health struggles were not things I wanted them to say about me, so I just learned to hide it and deal with it on my own. This had incredibly mixed results, including one suicide attempt that failed but went unnoticed, apart from my mother saying, "You just fell asleep on the floor, and it kind of looked like you were dead, but I figured you would get up in the morning." Still, I eventually just started reading up on psychology myself and adhocing my own therapy to the best of my ability so that I could be around for my younger siblings. Now that I have been able to be in therapy for several years, I haven't experienced suicidal ideation in a long time and have gained the ability to manage my symptoms. Eventually, this led me to my current degree program, where I am studying for a dual master's program in Social Work and Public Health. With this degree, I hope to become a psychotherapist and community health researcher and worker with the hopes of increasing access to quality mental healthcare, developing community programs, and decreasing policies that increase the risk of mental health problems for the LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse communities, as well as other marginalized groups. No one should have to cope with mental illness and mental health struggles alone. While talking about it is rarely the only cure, as additional support and internal work are necessary, destigmatizing conversations about it and increasing visibility for both individual struggles and the systems that exacerbate them is a necessary first step if any meaningful change will occur in the future.

At the beginning of the third grade, I had my first thought about wanting to die. I grew up in a severely abusive household and had just changed schools, separating me from my previous support system. I had just worked out that what was happening at home wasn't normal or alright, so I had told some teachers and the adults in aftercare about it with the understanding that they were able to do something about it and get myself and my younger siblings out of our home. They all said I was either misunderstanding things or making it all up. So, as an eight-year-old, I sat there and considered my options, which were to keep trying, run away, or wait until I was 16 or 18 when I could get a job or a full ride to college and leave, and the thought just came to my head. There was a highway behind the school. I could just run into it, and it would all be over. It didn't really seem like anyone cared about me as a person anyway, and I was just really, really tired already without doing the work any of those things involved, so it seemed like a simple solution. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties and finally able to see a therapist that that experience, as well as the many after it, would get recognized as depression and anxiety largely caused and compounded by complex PTSD and my experiences as an autistic person. Between third grade and then, I was left to manage my mental health on my own because I thought if no one believed me about what was going on at home, they wouldn't believe me about what was going on in my head. Not to mention, the way everyone at school, family parties, and on TV talked about mental health struggles were not things I wanted them to say about me. They certainly weren't things that they could say about me and still see as someone eligible for the advanced classes and programs I needed to be eligible for to get a full ride and get out, so I just learned to hide it and deal with it on my own. This had incredibly mixed results, including one suicide attempt that failed but went unnoticed, apart from my mother saying, "You just fell asleep on the floor, and it kind of looked like you were dead, but I figured you would get up in the morning." Still, I eventually just started reading up on psychology myself and adhocing my own therapy to the best of my ability so that I could be around for my younger siblings. Now that I'm in a more stable place and can recognize how hard and unnecessary all of that was, I've made a point of normalizing discussions of mental health and increasing access to resources in both my personal and professional life. I've discussed my history with both of my siblings as well as friends, which in turn has made them more comfortable sharing their struggles with me. While I was working as a copywriter, I played a large role in the background research and strategic development for a pro-bono campaign to address the high rate of deaths by suicide among physicians, including finding policy changes to advocate for that directly impeded physicians seeking mental health treatment. Outside of that I volunteered with the Trevor Project as a crisis counselor to help youth who were struggling and also helped to facilitate groups at the Pride Center of New Jersey to support members of the trans community that I'm a part of. While doing all of this, I've worked on my own mental health issues to the point that I haven't experienced suicidal ideation for several years and have gained control Eventually, this led me to my current degree program, where I am studying for a dual master's program in Social Work and Public Health. With this degree, I hope to become a psychotherapist and community health researcher and worker with the hopes of increasing access to quality mental healthcare, developing community programs, and decreasing policies that increase the risk of mental health problems for the LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse communities, as well as other marginalized groups. No one should have to cope with mental illness and mental health struggles alone. While talking about it is rarely the only cure, as additional support and internal work are necessary, destigmatizing conversations about it and increasing visibility for both individual struggles and the systems that exacerbate them is a necessary first step if any meaningful change will occur in the future.

“The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus is something that everyone should read. It is a fundamental text for the absurdist branch of existentialism, while still being very short and accessible. This can help introduce readers to existential questions and different ways of handling them, which seem like important tools to have since we will all confront existential questions in our lives. Having students passages from it starting in 6th or 7th grade and get to the whole book in 9th or 10th grade would be a great way to have students engage with existential questions at a younger age and normalize conversations about how to give life meaning, which I think would make the world a better place in general if more people considered that and didn’t find conversations around that scary. Considering these questions undermine a lot of ideology that fuels things like bigotry and supremacy, because it’s hard to think of yourself or any group as superior to others when you’ve confronted that life has no inherent meaning, having everyone read it when they’re an age that their just working out their identity would have the most potency. Having them read it in school, where teachers can help them work through the difficult feelings and questions that this reading can bring up would also be important to help students actually process the reading and feel supported while doing so. Still, even without that, having everyone of any age read this can help to facilitate healthy ways of handling existential questions and thus mitigate existential crisises and the many unhealthy behaviors and beliefs that people adopt to avoid those. This can help to increase people’s resilience and appreciation for life.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was told that careers in public service were an unrealistic luxury. If that was really something I wanted to do, it was something I wanted to do, I should do it in my free time. Since both of my parents were accountants and all of their friends worked in some kind of business, they all had a limited point of reference for this and tended to perpetuate a lot of misconceptions about working in public service. At the same time, I wanted to do some kind of community work, advocacy, and mental health care work. Growing up in a severely abusive household as a queer, trans, and neurodivergent person with siblings who were also neurodivergent made me want to make the world a better place for my siblings and others who were in similar and worse situations to us. Still, because that same abusive situation made my first priority gaining the financial stability to cut off my parents and create a safe place for my siblings, for a long time I defaulted to the model of having a main job and making my public service work secondary in volunteer roles and telling myself I was ok with that. Then I came out as trans at my workplace at the end of 2020, after over a year of working things out for myself, and advocacy became an unpaid part of my job. I was the only trans and non-binary person who was out and vocal about my identity and how, despite the written policies, in many ways the workplace was still not safe for trans people. Through this and the other volunteer and pro-bono roles I took on, I became more familiar with people who did do different forms of public service for a living and able to have financial stability, I actually let myself consider the possibilities. Pulling from my personal experiences and time volunteering with the New Brunswick 4-H, 826NYC, Little Free Libraries, the Trevor Project, and the Pride Center of New Jersey as well as on pro-bono projects and advocacy at my job, I decided to pursue a dual masters degree in Social Work and Public Health. With this degree I hope to start a career as a psychotherapist and public health worker, balancing work with individuals with marginalized experiences on their mental health while also doing research, advocacy, and community health to create a world where those individuals can thrive. Building on my volunteer experience, I know I can do so while maintaining the financial stability to take care of myself and those I care about , despite what I was told growing up.

All of my life, I’ve had trouble choosing which of my passions would be my career. Entering my undergraduate program, I knew I always loved STEM, so I started as a Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major. Then, when I realized I didn’t want any of the specific jobs that came with that degree, I switched to English and Classics to follow my love of reading, writing, and the mechanics of language. After graduating, at first, working in Healthcare advertising seemed like a perfect combination of these two passions. Still, at the same time, I wished there was a way to incorporate my desire and experiences from volunteering and love of helping individuals and groups achieve their goals into this as well. This desire only became stronger after I came out as non-binary and trans at my 5000+ employee international company and, as the only out and vocal trans person at least at first, I got more solid experience with organizing with a group and achieving better treatment for myself and others. Simultaneously, I was gaining experience helping my younger siblings’ trans friends one-on-one and eventually building on those skills as a volunteer Crisis Counselor with the Trevor Project and co-facilitator of a support group at the Pride Center of NJ. It dawned on me that I wanted a way to combine my passion for STEM, communications, healthcare, advocacy, and counseling, but I struggled to find a degree or career that had that combination. Then one day, while looking at programs, I stumbled on the dual degree option for Public Health and Social Work. It seemed like the perfect way for me to train more in my areas of interest and have a career with them in the future. In particular, they would enable me to pursue these interests while giving me the skills, experience, and network to use my passions to help the LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent communities that I’m a part of and create a better world for those of us in the present and the future. Even better, it lets me do so without having to choose one or the other interests, but instead, it ties them all together in a way that works for me. My passion for all these passions in combination has been propelling me through my degree so far, allowing me to get a 4.0 while working a part-time job, completing my social work practicum, and having a leadership role in multiple clubs.

Throughout my undergraduate career and after, I was constantly doing community service with programs adjacent to Social Work and Public Health. In college, I volunteered with the New Brunswick 4-H, running a free dance program at the local public library. After graduating, I volunteered with 826NYC as a community ambassador and tutor for children. These gave me a lot of experience providing groups and individuals with academic and emotional support. During the pandemic, my involvement with community service increased. I began stewarding a Little Free Library in the Title I school district I lived in to help improve the availability of books while the library was closed, eventually expanding what we provided to toiletries, school supplies, some basic non-perishables, and clothes like hats, gloves, and socks as those were things people really seemed to need. Additionally, I started volunteering as a crisis counselor with the Trevor project and a co-facilitator at the Pride Center of New Jersey to help provide members of my community with social and emotional support. I also volunteered on the DEI committee at my job since I’d run into a lot of issues as the first out and vocal transgender and non-binary person at an international 5000+ employee company to create educational resources and institutional change so that others like me wouldn’t run into as many issues beyond this, at work I worked on pro-bono projects focused on lowering physician suicide rates, removing the ban on blood donations for men who have sex with men, and increasing flu vaccinations. Eventually, I realized I would like to work in roles similar to these volunteer positions and the pro-bono projects full-time rather than as an add-on to my full-time role. In particular, the Counselling and co-facilitator roles led to me working out that I wanted to be a psychotherapist as well. Because of this, I applied to dual-degree programs that combined social work and public health, as that combination would allow me to be a therapist and also work on the more community- and systemic-based service in which I’d begun to participate. Now, as a dual degree student in the process of getting my degree, most of my program requires me to work 21 hours a week in practicums in addition to classes. While I have found my current placement at the non-profit Tech Kids Unlimited incredibly rewarding and anticipate my placement at Equality Mental Health in the fall, this also limits my ability to have a job while in school to cover expenses and keep tuition costs down. This scholarship would give me more ability to focus on my service and develop my skills in this role so that I can better serve others moving forward.

During my senior year of college, I had four on-campus jobs while taking the maximum course load, writing a thesis, and performing in two choirs. This was the result of switching from a Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major to an English major halfway through my junior year. All of my experience was in biology research and I wanted to quickly build up skills to get a job quickly out of college and support myself. My parents making this switch what I refer to as my second worst “coming out” experience also made this necessary as, despite having a full-ride for my four years of college, I needed to set up an emergency fund and cover basic living expenses outside of room and board like new clothes, computer repairs, etc. after this, I was burned out and getting hired to a singular full-time job that could cover my expenses was such a relief that it was only after four months of fifty to sixty-hour weeks that I questioned it. At the time I was just proud of the amount I accomplished and how I came through a deeply destabilizing time to a level of safety that I had been able to build through a combination of my work ethic, existing privileges, and luck. Still, when over the course of the next five years I developed multiple disabling chronic illnesses, several that are usually the result of stress, I began to question how much this was worth it. On the one hand that experience set me up to be in a position where I was financially stable enough to consider going to graduate school full-time, but on the other hand, it also certainly contributed to the physical conditions that were leading me to struggle now. Add to that, as a dual degree student studying Social Work and Public Health, I would be required to do an unpaid 21-hour a week practicum for four out of the seven semesters in my program, severely limiting the degree to which I would be able to do work and school at the same time anyway. At the very least, that meant it wouldn’t be four jobs at once again. As such, while I still have one job at school that I am committed to ten to fifteen hours a week in addition to my practicum, I’m often left to supplement that with savings or scholarships to cover things like medical expenses. I still use the same time management techniques I developed when I was younger, including time blocking, prioritization, making use of downtime, and clear communication about my schedule, just not in the same way. Any additional funding would greatly decrease the burden and stress around this so that I can focus on school and maintaining my health, as my work ethic remains as diligent as it was in my undergraduate program and, thanks to union negotiations, am at least making the same amount I was when I did have four jobs back then. Still, I simply am unable to make that funding go as far as I was back then or to do paid work for the same number of hours. I am capable of getting by, but a little help would go a long way.

Growing up, I was in an abusive household that I couldn’t get out of. I told every adult I could about having insults raged at me every night, about being grabbed by the neck then slammed against a wall more than once, about the swelling and bruised finger I came into school with one day being the result of my mom shutting the car door on it while in a rage. Still, no one believed me and I was stuck there. The only real light I could see at the end of the tunnel was that, since I was good at school, getting a full-ride to a college, leaving, and never coming back, even if at the age of eight this seemed like an interminably long-time to wait for something as basic as a safe environment. This resulted in a myriad of mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, CPTSD, and suicidal ideation, most of which I could not get treatment for until I was an adult. This meant I experienced years of essentially trying to bootstrap my way through serious mental health issues with no support, especially once it became evident that, because I was doing well in school, being honest about things like hating myself, being terrified of any other people, or feeling like no one would care if I “disappeared,” it would get dismissed as me being dramatic or faking it or just not actually something to worry about. After all, if I actually had a problem, my grades wouldn’t be so good, right? Including when I did actually attempt to take my own life by ODing on things in the house, no one believed me and it was only though luck that I am still here. So I was left alone to try to manage all of these things on my own, at least enough to achieve the goal of getting a full-ride to college and, considering how ill-advised that is I did relatively well. At least, well enough to reach a relatively stable place where suicidal thoughts weren't a concern and I could achieve that first step towards financial independence from my parents. However, I then faced another obstacle when I did get to college where I could see a therapist through their mental health services: after all of those previous experiences, I did not trust what was essentially a stranger to actually believe me if I said things directly, limiting the impact of mental health treatment for several years to essentially just being a way to learn better coping skills while I was treading water. It wasn’t until I had a full-time job and could pick my own therapist that I could get the treatment I needed. It was truly life-changing. I finally had the space to work out my sexuality and gender identity, which I hadn’t before because I was only focused on surviving. I regained the ability to do basic things like sit through a sitcom episode without constantly needing to fast forward through the parts where characters embarrassed themselves because those moments were too anxiety provoking. I was also able to become safe enough to explore my interests and values and dream about a future, which led me to apply for my current master's program. It's really why I am able to pursue a dual degree in Social Work and Public Health, in the hopes of both being able to treat others as a psychotherapist and to help address many of the systemic problems that contribute to them. Hopefully, because of this, I can use these experiences to help others moving forward.

When I first came out as transgender and non-binary at age 24, I immediately had younger transgender and queer people asking me for help. This was primarily through my younger brothers, who have an almost entirely trans, non-binary, and/or queer friend group, many of whom were struggling with family issues, trouble getting gender-affirming care, and the ability to access basic things like housing, jobs, and food. As someone who had previously done quite a bit of community programming and resource coalition through volunteering at the New Brunswick 4-H, interning with the Sanar Wellness Institute, and starting a Little Free Library in a Title 1 school district during the pandemic. I’d additionally gotten a lot of experience with research and communications through previous research positions and my job in healthcare advertising. This meant I was able to help my brother’s friends, even when I was not initially equipped to do so. Still, I didn’t always feel equipped to answer these questions, so I started volunteering at the Trevor Project so I could get training and also share the resources I was finding with more LGBTQ+ youth. At the same time, the more I researched resources for LGBTQ+ people, especially in NJ, the more I realized there were huge gaps in services and awareness of services, especially in NJ. As someone in a healthcare communications role, I kept looking for a way to help with this, but my company wasn’t interested in pursuing that. At the same time my roles at the Trevor Project and the Pride Center of New Jersey made me more aware of how rewarding I found it to have more of a Counselling role. As such, when I found out that dual master’s in Social Work and Public Health existed, that path seemed like a great way to continue serving individuals in my community as a psychotherapist and also the entirety of it by building out resources and systems for those who need them, with a particular emphasis of those with intersectional identities, particularly disability and neurodivergence. With my education, I hope to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a community health researcher, advocate, and organizer. The skills from both these degrees will allow me to evaluate the needs of individuals, families, communities, and systems to better support those who are disadvantaged and to advocate for change. As these are trying times for the LGBTQ+ community continuing to advocate for more human rights and support for them are more important than ever, and I hope that with this degree I can help to create a world where everyone can not just safely be who they are, but to be able to thrive as themselves as well.

My CPTSD significantly impacts my academic performance. When I was an undergraduate, it was neither recognized nor treated, leading to me missing classes and assignments due to spells of self-isolation following triggers, shutting down when I felt boundaries had been violated due to fear of communicating my needs, and difficulty completing assignments due to long periods I would spend alone in my dorm engaging in activities like binge-watching to avoid feeling the level of distress that would come up. Additionally, the degree of dissociation that I would frequently experience exacerbated my ADHD in a way that made it difficult to manage assignments. Now, I see a therapist two times a week, have greatly lowered my anxiety, and have a much more expansive set of tools to handle any distress when it comes up, increasing my tolerance for stress and triggers in general. I also make sure that I have at least one day off during the week, get adequate time to rest/process anything going on, and have time for relaxing activities like meditating and singing with the school choir, in addition to basic health activities like exercise, getting adequate sleep, staying hydrated and maintaining adequate nutrition. This has also greatly helped my ability to ask for things I need as they come up, like extensions or clarifications with work, which both increase my opportunities to do well academically and also decrease my stress if I am falling behind on schoolwork a bit for any mental health-related reason. By taking a break between my undergraduate and graduate degree programs, I was also able to build up my support network and now have multiple strong relationships where I feel understood to reach out to when I run into issues. One really important aspect I discovered was the management of my sensory needs as a neurodivergent person as a significant factor in my mental health. Establishing a sensory diet and having grounding activities based on things like proprioceptive and vestibular stimulation (i.e., a weighted blanket, sensory beanbag, sensory swing, balance board/exercise ball, etc.) greatly helps my mood and ability to manage emotional problems. Still, it is important I prioritize my mental health in general to ensure my mental health issues don't significantly impact my academics this time around, in particularly since I am a dual degree student who has a particularly heavy courseload at any given time. This is especially true as someone in a clinical social work program, where I am helping others with their mental health and doing a significant amount of emotional labor. Having all of these options and increased awareness of my emotions and needs, has greatly improved my academic performance and relationships. Continuing to prioritize addressing them will only benefit those areas of my life more.

As a dual degree student studying social work and public health, I'm planning to enter the field of clinical social work as a psychotherapist and to also do research, advocacy, and community health building as a public health professional. An area of specialization that I'm particularly looking to explore is the use of techniques from occupational therapy, specifically sensory integration therapy and building interoceptive skills, in psychotherapy. This is an area of interest firstly because I plan to primarily work with neurodivergent clients who have different sensory needs that can significantly affect their emotional experience and secondly because of the research showing how people with PTSD and anxiety can also have sensory differences. These areas' are only just being considered in an interdisciplinary way for people outside the neurodivergent community who have mental health conditions in-depth, despite the brain-body connections affect on mental health being well-known and sensory processing being a key component of that. This is informed by not only my own reading and research but my experiences volunteering to teach free dance classes at the New Brunswick 4-H, tutor with 826NYC, co-facilitate groups at the Pride Center of New Jersey, and be a crisis counselor with the Trevor Project, as well as my current social work internship at Tech Kids Unlimited. In all of these roles, being able to have options to manage sensory needs (whether they were based on hyper- or hyposensitivity) and break down interception awareness into more basic parts helped to ground people in crisis, expand the tools they had to manage emotions, and increase their awareness of their needs. I want to enter this field and explore this specific area because, as a neurodivergent, trans person, there's a shortage of affirming care and affirming environments to access care or even et basic social support for both of the neurodivergent and trans communities, which I want to address by providing services, decreasing barriers, and expanding access and understanding. I think utilizing knowledge from occupational therapy is vital to this because of the sensory processing differences, high rates of trauma, and differing skillsets people in both of these communities have and being able to build those in a psychotherapeutic setting, particularly for adults who may have a harder time accessing an occupation therapist for sensory-related need, can be highly beneficial. Additionally, knowing when to refer out to an occupational therapist because something is more of an issue that they can address versus a social worker is vitally important and not done as much as it should be. Overall, I want to use my position as a social worker and public health professional to increase the health and well-being of these populations and utilize that knowledge to help others with their mental health as well.

As a neurodivergent, disabled, and chronically ill student with complex PTSD due to childhood abuse, my mental and physical wellness is important to me to function. This is difficult to explain or have others consider when living in a society that often prioritizes productivity over everything else, but my body and sensory processing can only handle so much, meaning I need to do things like get proper sleep, nutrition, exercise, and decompressing time without needing weeks or months to recover. This limits the time and ways I can socialize with my peers, the things I can do in my program, and the amount of time I can do schoolwork but respecting those limits is necessary for my ability to participate in those sustainably over the long-term. Still, there are significant challenges to taking care of my mental and physical wellness. As a dual degree student in social work and public health, I often need to do thing like complete 21 hours of a practicum each week and study Biostatistics. Additionally, as one of few trans students in either of my programs, part of taking care of my wellness has been starting and leading clubs for queer and trans students in the program so that they have a safe place to network and also advocate for things like professors using gender-neutral and queer inclusive language when discussing public health interventions for things like sexual health, for clearer processes to address when a social work placement is not affirming for queer people, or updating the social work curriculum to include reading on transgender people that were written after Gender Identity Disorder was removed from the DSM and that acknowledge non-binary people existing. I've also advocated for increased accessibility and neuroinclusive practices at school, because that is needed for my and others' physical and mental wellness, even though that also means I need to take extra care of my wellness in order to functionally get through classes, a part-time job, and other activities. Balancing this, daily meditations, daily yoga, two therapy appointments a week, regular doctor's appointments, social interactions with my loved ones, at least one day off a week, and adequate nutrition and hydration for someone with POTs and an autoimmune disease is a lot and stressful in its own right. Any amount of financial support can help create more room for me to continue caring for my mental and physical wellness so that I can help to create an environment where others can do so as well.

While Andrew Garfield is my favorite actor of the three to play Spiderman, Tobey Maguire is my favorite Spiderman. Part of this is nostalgia as I was very young when the Tobey Maguire movies came out and they made a lasting impression, but, having seen them again recently, his performance is the most human of the Peter Parkers specifically because of his understatement. Additionally, as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD later in life, it only recently dawned on me that his Spiderman was so relatable to me because of how ADHD-coded his experience was, especially in Spiderman 2, with him constantly running late to everything to the confusion of everyone, not being able to hold down a conventional, non-freelance job because of time management, and not being able to meet his "potential" due to a perceived lack of effort, at least according to his friends, professor, and employers. This only hits because of Maguire's performance and gets at the enormous logistical nightmare that any superhero would face in needing to keep food on the table in addition to being a superhero in a way that the other two Spiderman haven't, mainly because they've been confined to high school. As such, while there are many things to make of in Maguire's performance, especially in Spiderman 3, it will always remain close to my heart due to a combination of nostalgia and relatability.

My undergraduate career was colored by indecision. I started off as a Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major with a background in neuroscience research and an undergraduate research position focused on epigenetics. However, I ended up adding on a second major in Classics, because I found studying Latin and Ancient Greek fascinating. Outside classes, I found more potential areas to learn, such as volunteering with the local 4-H to provide free dance classes at the local library and learning about non-profits. Eventually, my overcommitment to all of these resulted in the realization that, at the time at least, I wanted to focus more on the communications and organizing side of my interests, just having it informed by my background in science, which led to my switching to an English and Classics degree, with a minor in Biology. Working four jobs during my senior year to get experience due to this change led to me getting a full-time job in healthcare advertising. At the time, this met all my needs as a combination of science, writing, and considering systemic factors related to health as I got to work on informational materials for healthcare providers, pro-bono ads for patients, and pro-bono campaigns related to issues ranging from physician suicide rates to the ban on men who have sex with men donating blood. However, I found myself missing research and the direct contact with individuals I'd had in my undergraduate work and volunteer experience. I got at least some of the latter through volunteer roles with 826NYC, the Pride Center of New Jersey, and the Trevor Project, but none of them fully met my needs. That's why it seemed like a perfect fit when I found out about the dual degree in Public Health and Social Work program. I get to combine my background in research and community organizing while expanding my skills to apply at an individual and a population level. Pursuing this degree qualifies me to deepen my relationship with STEM by enhancing my research experiences and skills through learning epidemiology and biostatistics, while also qualifying me to apply those at individual and community health levels through psychotherapy, advocacy, organizing, and more. It truly seemed like a perfect balance of my learning interests and where I want to take them moving forward. With this degree, I hope to use these skills to help my communities and other marginalized groups and also to potentially come back to further build on my research experience and continue to learn, as I intend to my whole life. A scholarship would help me to engage with this area more fully without having to worry about the financials as much as I would otherwise, so I can fully immerse myself in the material.

In childhood, I was severely abused and neglected. This resulted in symptoms of OCD, depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and later PTSD that I was not able to seek treatment for until I was in my mid-twenties. At that point, using open psychology course online and research I could find, I had mostly worked through the depression, eating disorders, and OCD, much to my therapist's confusion, but was still struggling with anxiety and dissociation as a result of complex trauma. I also found out the I am autistic and have ADHD, two things that contributed to the trauma in increased minority stress and systemic invalidation from not having accommodations be understood or met throughout my early life. Working through these things on my own in my late teens and early twenties was not ideal and not something I would wish for anyone, but it also meant that I had a decent point of reference when looking for a therapist to determine when they were falling short and it took a while to find one who would actually meet my needs. At the same time, I've been helping my younger siblings struggle with similar experiences and guiding them to resources that I wish I'd known about when I was their age so that they don't have as difficult a time as I do. In doing this and working with others through volunteer roles at the Trevor project and 826NYC as well as placement within my degree at Tech Kids Unlimited, the Complex Public Health Disasters Lab, and Equality Mental Health. These experiences have significantly shaped my beliefs around mental health problems as not just an individual problem, but the result systemic stressors that need to be addressed as well. I told every mandated reporter I encountered between the ages of eight and 18 that abuse they legally should've reported was happening at home and was routinely dismissed. I've seen a number of therapists and very few were equipped to handle complex trauma, let alone complex trauma for someone who is neurodivergent or queer/trans. Outside of these institutions, I've consistently had to navigate how open to be about these things due to stigma, societal taboos, and discrimination due to those things. All of those are systemic problems that directly harm people, usually the most vulnerable. That is why I'm seeking a dual Masters of Social Work and Public Health, so that I cannot only provide compassionate mental healthcare to people in vulnerable groups, but also advocate for improvements or overhauls of systems that aren't working. This also shapes my relationships with friends and classmates, I am often the "resource" friend because of the years I struggled with my mental health on my own and also someone who can help put struggles into a context that they may not have previously, because of my systemic understanding of these issues. In applying this biopsychosocial approach to mental health both individually and societally, I have a perspective that a lot of my classmates don't seem to have this early in their career and I hope to use that perspective to push for broader changes that can benefit everyone.

For me, success is achieving a life with enough stability that you can do what is fulfilling for you and contribute to your community in a positive way. This goes beyond traditional narratives of success focusing on what one "achieves" within a set time limit to include achieving goals set by the individual for themselves and what they would find meaningful. While attaining a degree may be part of a person's success, it doesn't need to be a be-all-or-end-all. For me personally, this applies in how I'm approaching school as a way to professionally do something I'd been doing anyway. Prior to going back to graduate school, I had worked in healthcare advertising and worked on many pro-bono public health campaigns, including ones related to decreasing physician suicide rates, increasing people who get flu shots, and advocating to end the ban on men who have sex with men donating blood. Outside of work, I have a lot of experience with community organizing and volunteering in social services, including volunteering with the Trevor Project, opening a little free library, and running a free dance program for kids. Additionally, I have research experience that I wanted to use more consistently in my career. Getting a graduate degree would allow me to combine these disparate experiences into one career in a way that provides stability, creates a life I find fulfilling, and contributes positively to the society around me. In going back to school to study social work and public health, I hope to gain the skills to create stability for myself and others, as well as initiate changes that can have a positive impact on the world around me. In particular, as someone who is queer, trans, disabled, and neurodivergent, I hope to help individuals in my community by being a psychotherapist and to help the larger community through research, advocacy, and community organizing. By working across these levels, I hope to not only help individuals cope with the difficulties they face as members of marginalized groups, but also to improve the world for them and others who face those challenges. To me success would be being able to do this work while also being able to take care of my physical and emotional health and well-being, which requires financial stability. As someone without family support, a scholarship would enable me to focus on school and extracurriculars that will enhance my experience, while having to spend less time on outside part-time jobs. I already I have an assistant research position and some savings that I've been using to support myself, but having more funds for school to decrease student loans and also put towards living expenses would be incredibly helpful. In particular, as someone who is disabled and neurodivergent, I have extra living expenses related to nutrition, sensory management, and medical appointments and prescriptions that increase my expenses compared to classmates and, while I can work to cover those, I'm constantly edging towards burnout in doing so which is not helpful for my long term success. Additional funds would significantly help me in creating more balance in my life and focus more on my chosen fields so I can have a stable base to build on moving forward.

I am a trans and autistic graduate student pursuing a dual degree in social work and public health. Previously I volunteered for the Trevor Project and was frequently frustrated with how their crisis model failed to consider the needs of neurodiverse people. This was problematic because not only are LGBTQ youth more likely to be neurodiverse, but neurodiverse people, particularly autistic people and ADHDers, are 7-9 times more likely to attempt to kill themselves than the general population. Once the Trevor Project became a part of the 988 hotline, it became clear that many of these non-inclusive practices were standard and affecting the quality of support that neurodiverse contacts were getting, just based on the number who cited having poor experiences previously before talking with someone who was internationally using neuroaffirming approaches. This frustration, combined with my years of experience in healthcare communications, community organizing, and scientific research, as well as being the first out and vocal trans and nonbinary person at a 5000+ person international company, IPG Health, led me to the dual degree program. It would credential me to continue supporting individuals in the way I did as a crisis counselor and also learn how to advocate for and implement systemic changes including neuroaffirming practices at a crisis line. Already, in my current social work practicum, I am continuing to work with neurodiverse youth at Tech Kids Unlimited while also creating resources for those with intersection identities, for their parents, and for those struggling with mental health issues. I've also run two workshops on considering the needs of neurodiverse and other disabled people as a part of social work and mental healthcare as their needs are often misjudged or overlooked, exacerbating isolation, mental health conditions, and suicidality. This scholarship would enable me to continue my degree and to continue this work, as well as take on more pro-bono projects like building a resource for neurodivergent people experiencing crisis, that can be used both by those in crisis and those supporting them. It will also enable me to take care of my needs related to my other chronic illnesses and disabilities as well as care for my own mental health, while continuing to advocate for better awareness, support, and care where I can. I find this combination of field to be rich with tools to accomplish this through research, healthcare, intervention, and community and resource building, so any financial support I can have in learning those tools will make it easier for me to bring them for into my future work.

As a trans, autistic person who experienced severe abuse and neglect growing up that resulted in CPTSD and significant dissociation, I've struggled a lot to find mental healthcare that both met my needs and respected my humanity. This is in line with statistics that show trans and autistic people having higher rates of suicidality, difficulty finding mental health treatment that meets their needs, and feelings of isolation overall. Similarly, people facing complex trauma and dissociative disorders face significant risks in addition to barriers to finding effective care. That's why, as a social worker and public health advocate, I'm hoping to provide informed, affirming healthcare for neurodivergent, LGBTQ, and traumatized populations that is difficult to find as of now. Through leading by example, advocating with fellow mental health counselors, and providing training, my goal is for this work to have a larger impact on the mental health field by helping to improve care for these groups and especially those at the intersection of these groups. My approach to this care will come from a humanistic and existential approach informed by queer, trans, and neurodiversity theory as well as work by the disability justice and MAD pride movements, making use of Internal Family Systems, somatic techniques, sensorimotor therapy, and mindfulness techniques, in addition to standard care like CBT, exposure therapy, and DBT. By combining this with broader systemic advocacy, I hope to both help clients create meaningful, fulfilling lives and build a world where they can thrive moving forward. This can hopefully serve as an example to fellow clinicians and model for clients how to change what they can. This will all be informed by my experience as a former biologist, writer, and community organizer who can bring scientific backing to treatment, tie in artistic expression where it would be beneficial, and build a community through mental health practice. My experience as the first vocal trans and non-binary employee at a 5000+ person company, former crisis counselor, and older sibling to two queer, neurodivergent teens will also enable me to bring real-world experience to client's situations that may help find alternatives when needed. Overall, my dream is for my dual degree and diverse background to enable me to help clients in these high-risk populations individually and systemically, as combining these two things will allow my individual work to be informed by an understanding of systems and an understanding of individual experiences will inform my community and system level work.

When I was thirteen my youngest sibling, who was three, was identified as autistic. At the time, I was confused, because all the things that people said made him autistic were traits that I had and the only difference seemed to be that he was assigned male at birth and had meltdowns a lot whereas I had been assigned female at birth and by the time I was two was advocatingw with day care workers about things like how I didn't like my food touching or found certain noises to be a lot or sometimes repeated things for fun and to please not get annoyed by that, so those traits hadn't been viewed as a "problem" in the way my sibling's meltdowns were. Then I saw how all of our family members reacted to him, a three-year-old, having a meltdown due to what was clearly distress and responding by going, "Oh, your poor mother," even though at home she'd respond to these by threatening violence and decided not to tell anyone these observations until I was 24 and could see a psychiatrist on my own insurance, who confirmed that like my sibling I was both autistic and an ADHDer. In the more than decade in between I had been walking a line of compensating and finding round-a-bout ways to advocate for my needs and had also developed or discovered further disabilities and chronic illness including chronic migraines, hypermobility, and hyperthyroidism. My experiences in this odd, in-between space of recognizing I was disabled, but not being in an environment where it was safe to openly seek accommodations then appearing to "suddenly" have all of these support needs and all the while seeing how my brother's disabilities were treated and advocating for his needs to be met, led to my desire to provide better one-on-one support to disabled and neurodivergent people as well as create and advocate for more community support initiatives and policy changes. Seeking a dual Masters' of Social Work and Public Health will give me the skills to do just that as well as work to integrate services for people in this group with intersectional identities, such as services for people who are trans and autistic, since these are often separate, thus forcing disabled people with other marginalized identities to prioritize needs or communities to engage with. This experience is already informing my career in school for social work and public health as my current social work practicum is at a place that specializes in working with neurodivergent youth and I've advocated for several systemic changes to program to help students, including making resources for BIPOC and LGBTQ neurodiverse students, honoring the Disability Day of Mourning, and ensuring a student who prefers to communicate using sign language is able to do so rather than needing to try to be verbal consistently. I also recently gave an hour-long presentation at the school's community showcase on Neurodiversity and Disability Justice because this isn't currently recognized a lot in the curriculum or the field (in fact most of our materials have the opposite of that lens, which seems out-of-line with social work values) and I'm running to be on the student governing council in the fall to advocate for more disability representation in the curriculum moving forward. I hope to continue these efforts beyond school to make the world more accessible and accepting of neurodiverse and disabled people in anyway I can.