As someone who grew up playing a variety of sports, I know first-hand how drastically things can change in an instant. In my own personal experience, one second I'm at football practice working through the drill(s) and in the next second I'm on the ground unable to move, pretty much making me think I've wasted nearly half of my life as I was forced to put an end my athletic career. Almost. While I no longer play tackle football or really any other sport I've played before, I've been able to continue my athletic journey in college with the flag football team at Tiffin University. Not only am I grateful for being blessed to regain my movement and functionality, I am also very grateful for such an opportunity to be presented to me by the people of Tiffin University. I will be sure to take full advantage of this chance and make sure the people of Tiffin don't regret presenting it to me. In order to make full use of this opportunity, I will need to work hard both in the classroom and on the field. Furthermore, to maximize my success, I will also need to take the lessons I have learned throughout my overall athletic journey and put those to good use, on such lesson being that it isn't over until the whistle sounds/bell rings. In other words, it doesn't matter how good or bad a situation may seem, it is still possible for it to change in a big way, for better or for worse, so I should continue to stay optimistic and work as hard as I possibly can to achieve the best result possible. I can use this to impact others because another lesson that I've learned all through my athletic path is that attitude can and will rub off on others and by staying optimistic I can possibly inspire the people around me to stay optimistic and hopeful. By having a good attitude and a strong work ethic, my older teammates often lead by example. Without directly saying anything they influenced me to keep a positive mindset at all times and to work even harder than I thought I could in the classroom, in the weight room, on the field or on the court, and wherever else I was. With this I would try to keep that influence going, often asking classmates to spend more time studying with me or asking teammates to spend more time practicing or studying film with me. When we finished up, I kept in mind some of the other advice my coaches would always tell me: leave every place better than when you came in. When this phrase is used, it is most often used to say that you should keep the place clean and tidy. When my coaches used the phrase they most often meant to say that your presence leaves the room far after you do, including how messy or tidy you left the place. It's why I always try to, of course clean up places before I leave, but also leave people with a good memory whether it is because of how kind and light-heated I try to be or how much work I put in. With that good memory it becomes easier and easier to build good relationships with others each time we interact. After a scary time in my life, I am grateful for the ability to continue playing the sport I love. As a student-athlete I will continue to use each lesson to become better as a person and leave good impacts on others.

As a student at Tiffin University I have focused on marketing throughout my time there. This is because my main professional goal is to make a career out of helping people grow their brands and businesses. My first step to making the goal a reality is to attain my bachelor's degree in marketing. The degree is not only a stepping stone to achieve my primary goal, but also a goal in itself. This first goal is also a representation of the journey I am on during my current educational pursuit from the grades I earn, to the knowledge I gain in & out of the classroom, and the overall experience I gain through each situation I am in. Another essential aspect of earning my degree is networking with people who are also working towards earning degrees and knowledge as well as people who already have experience. Throughout my time in college, I am also planning to earn an internship, whether it is with an established company or a start-up company. With an internship, I can get more experience in the actual business field of marketing rather than just the academic field of it. I can also get more practice in putting what I have learned into real usage while still learning more, as while the world of marketing, the world of business, and the world itself continues to evolve there will always be more to learn so that I can evolve with it. Additionally, an internship would be massively helpful for achieving some of my other subgoals on my professional pathway. Firstly, an internship is required in order to graduate from my university. Secondly, I can either turn that internship into an eventual full-time job or I can add it to my resume, helping me to get a full-time job after graduation. With a full-time job, I can begin to stabilize my overall career more than I could while in college or with an internship. Furthermore, similar to an internship, with a job I can put the information I have learned AND the information I am learning to use. This is enhanced by the fact that it will likely be in a more direct role within a company than an internship and within that role I will possibly have more responsibilities to learn about and to take care of. It will also potentially open up more opportunities for networking, this time with more of a focus on the type of people I am networking with. I say this because in college there are a large variety of majors for people to study which means as a marketing specific business student I may be connecting with a biology specific science student. In the workforce, it's more likely and more often that I'll be connecting with people in similar or related career fields as me, like someone who works directly with digital marketing or someone who works more within the sales team. Finally, I can use what I learn from all of my experience through the overall journey and the finances I get from my job to invest in doing my own freelance marketing to help more people grow their brands from athletes and artists to small business owners and everyone in between which is the main reason I got into the career field of marketing in the first place.

Math is such a fun and essential subject in all aspects of life. It doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, numbers are always going to play a role in situations so it is important to be able to understand those numbers. For example, when you're working out you need numbers to understand how much weight you may be moving, how many reps you are doing, and how many sets are taking place. For weight lifters it's important to know what their maximum weight is for a workout so they can be able to understand what weight they need to be working out with in order to improve. For instance, to determine the weight needed they often need to know how to find out how much weight is 50 or even 75% of their max is. Another example, that everyone can relate to, involves making, saving, and even spending money. This can be broken down in many ways, considering the many situations money is involved in. For example, when you gain income, you add that income to whatever money you already have. When you lose money, you subtract that loss from the money you have. When budgeting, people often work within percentages, similar to weightlifters, in order to determine how much money is being placed into different things whether it's a savings account, a purchase, bill payment, investment, or something else. Speaking of savings, or pretty much anything involving a bank, it involves interest which is essential to understand how much money is coming in or being spent over time and how much time it will take to build up to a certain amount. These are some of the quickest examples I could think of as to why math is such a great subject and why I love it so much, even if it isn't always the easiest. I could go on and on about how math plays a role in just about every aspect of our lives and within the society we all live in, which again brings me back to my original point. How could you not love a subject that plays a role in so many things?

Most people want to be a leader but most people don't know how to lead. With so many positions of authority that require some form of leadership, whether it be as simple as being the captain of a team/group or as complex as being the leader of a nation, I think on book everyone should read is called "Leaders Eat Last." Not only is is a good book for becoming a better leader, but it helps to become a better partner, teammate, or coworker as well as an overall better person. That is a big part of why I enjoy reading the book because I believe the kind of character a person possesses plays a big role in how impactful they may or may not be as a coworker and leader. Furthermore, the book helps the reader to get an idea of what each leadership trait looks like in action. Part of what makes the book so good is that it provides real-life examples for each lesson within the chapters. For instance, the very first chapter speaks on taking initiative while using some military history as an example, with the air troops watching over the ground forces. In this particular case, they were in the opposition's territory and they were not much familiar with the area. To make things worse, it was dark outside which made it harder to see and in turn, leaving the ground troops more susceptible to ambush. The rule is typically that the pilots aren't supposed to go below a certain level but with the low visibility they made the executive decision to go lower anyway so that they could get a better line of sight for what may have been going on below them. They discovered the opposing forces while they in preparation to ambush and took them out, essentially saving the lives of their comrades. This is just one of the lessons and one of the examples used for teaching people how to develop leadership abilities. The author also uses many other forms of examples to teach these lessons, examples that are much more relatable to the average everyday citizen. To reiterate, a book I think everyone should read is "Leaders Eat Last." It has helped me to improve my leadership skills and helped me to improve as an overall person. I'm sure it would have the same effect on many other people.

I am a former athlete who wants to use my education within the field of marketing to assist people in building themselves up both professionally and personally. I believe that everyone has something unique about themselves, but not everyone knows how to utilize or advertise that gift, much less often do people get the chance to capitalize on their gifts for whatever reason. This often leads to many bad situations in multiple ways including mentally, emotionally, socially, and financially which all leads to a negative impact on society. This is why I want to use my education to aid people in achieving more success within their lives in some way. Throughout the world, people attain success and people go through failure. The more success a person has compared to others, the more there becomes a gap between them and everyone else, at least in whatever are it is they that have achieved success in. This gap often creates feelings of envy and resentment. These feelings can cause people to (seemingly) act out of character as they try to pull a more successful person back down to their level, as the saying goes. This is where I believe people within positions such as the one I aim for should come in. While everyone can not be able to achieve the same levels of success, it is possible for everyone to achieve success. Part of that is talent, part of that is hard work, part of that is luck, and possibly the most important part of it is opportunity. Many people do not get near their desired level of success not because of a lack of talent or hard work, but because of a lack of opportunity which has been proven to affect the other parts to achieving success. Without opportunity, people are typically less motivated to work hard and the amount of luck they have becomes much more limited, almost to the point where they begin to think they they are unlucky which leads to them not honing in on using their gifts as much as they originally would have. As a marketer, I want to help these people get as many opportunities as possible whether that includes new customers, more people to collaborate with, more mentorship to learn from or even give out, more overall awareness of who they are and what they offer and whatever else. With this opportunity people really get two options, to keep working hard to realize their dreams, or to plateau or even fall off right when they may be near the mountaintop. While this may seem contradictory to the rest of my essay, I mention this because as previously mentioned, the people who get such opportunity are often more inspired to work harder as they often see they are able to realize their goal as long as they put in the effort. On the other hand, when people do not think they can realistically achieve their goal is when they begin to stop putting the effort. That is why with this this scholarship I will be able to further pursue my academic goals in order to achieve the knowledge to help people gain more opportunity, helping them become the best versions of themselves and in turn helping society become the best it can be.

Two people that have had an impact on my educational journey are my father and my brother. Anytime I was struggling in school they were there to help guide me toward an answer rather than just telling me the answer. This helped me a lot because it gave me the ability to try and work a question around to better understand it as well as gaining the ability to work problems and formulas in my way to find the right answer. While in most cases it may be better for people to use the formulas originally given, I did not always understand them and there were times when attempting them would take me to a completely different answer than what I was looking for. Additionally, even when they were busy, my dad and brother would always take time out of their day to help me practice whatever I had learned whether it be simply spelling and defining words or as complex as trying to speak a whole new language. I was never able to be good at things the first, second, or sometimes even the fifth time so I will always appreciate them for helping me work on those skills. Even now I still call my brother sometimes to make sure I can still have a sensible conversation in Spanish instead of just speaking a bunch of gibberish. Besides helping me practice and develop new skills, my brother and father both directly funded my education during my first two years of high school and are currently funding my education in college. It is not easy paying for private school just once so I know that it sucks that they are doing it twice. However, they didn't complain...not much at least. Both my brother and father just want me to go to a place where I can feel comfortable and receive a quality education. As much as I appreciate them for all they have done for me, I cannot forget about all the people in my community who were just as influential in my life both academically and personally. Right now, the most I can do to give back is give out gifts and help out on projects but when I finish college, I plan to invest money and proper supplies into the schools in my area as well as start a tutoring program for all the students. I would also like to bring more programs into the community for people of all ages to work with whatever passion projects they have. There's more that I want to do, but that's about all I can think of right now. Thank you for taking the time to read my essay. I hope you consider me to be a worthy scholarship applicant.

A quote that I always think of is "history is written by the victor" - General Sheperd. One person from history (although he isn't necessarily historic yet) is UFC fighter Tony Ferguson. Despite whatever he may go through mentally, physically, or emotionally, he was and is always a fighter both literally and metaphorically.

I was a student-athlete my whole life. I had dreams of playing football in college and having both my athletic ability and academic ability pay for my education. That all changed on August 11, 2021, right before my senior year began when I sustained a spinal cord injury. It sucked that I could not play sports on a competitive level any more because that was the only time I felt like I had any meaning, any purpose to my life. Eventually I had to just deal with my situation and move on and now I am ready to use education to pursue my dream job.

My favorite ways to clear my mind are to listen to music and do stuff I enjoy. These methods help me to calm down whenever I start to feel worked up.

Optimism is defined as "hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something." Staying optimistic is essential for staying motivated to get through life. I try to stay optimistic by thinking about two things one of which being the quote "tough times make tough people" - Benny Binion. The other thing I constantly think to myself that making things difficult now will make it easier in the future.