Salivating when you see your favorite food, the excitement you feel when you smell your mom’s cooking, and the happy chemicals that are released in your brain when you eat something new and delicious for the first time. It’s all too familiar of a feeling. As someone who previously had an eating disorder, the relationship I have with food has always had its ups and downs. I remember when I felt like all my work was supposed to be done since I had barely been eating but when I truly stared at myself in the mirror, I was honestly scared of what I saw. From that day on I vowed to myself that I would figure out how to rekindle my relationship with food. There is a very strong stigma around eating healthy: It doesn’t taste as good and it is expensive compared to processed foods. However, I believe with the right recipes and combinations, eating healthy becomes more and more appealing over time. I remember when I discovered a smoothie bowl for the first time. It looked very pretty and tasted delicious, which intrigued me since when I used to visualize healthy eating, it would always be a boring green salad. And even if it was more expensive than the one-dollar burger you can get at a drive-through, it pays off later in life since it means fewer trips to the hospital due to poor eating habits. It’s so important to eat healthy because those feelings that I described earlier are only enhanced with healthy eating. Not only can we feel excitement and happiness while eating, but eating healthy enables us to overall feel better day to day both mentally and physically. Although fast food and sweets taste good in the moment, over time they can make us sluggish, irritable, and even sick. While I wasn’t eating, the people around me noticed just how much of a toll it had taken on me. My skin was always dull and lifeless, I was constantly getting sick, and I didn’t have the energy to do things that used to make me happy. This shows just how connected food is in all aspects of our life both physically and mentally. After recovering, I am now as happy and healthy as ever. I’m no longer constantly tired and even had enough energy to burn that I joined the tennis team. My skin and hair reflect my eating habits as my skin and hair have never been so full of life. Developing healthy eating habits has also helped me develop my self-love. I can now say that I am fully proud of what I see, and I would encourage anyone that was in my situation to do the same and change their eating habits instead of attempting to find a quick fix that can damage both your health and well-being permanently.

Going out of state for college, I understand that everything is going to change, and while most people find change to be a scary idea, I am excited to embrace it like I always have. Growing up as a military child I have been accustomed to moving every 3 or 4 years and since my father has been retired for 4 years now, I have been craving a drastic change so I'm happy to explore my new environment while simultaneously pursuing my passions. I know that when I feel overwhelmed while I am at college, I can always go out and explore the beautiful city of San Diego. I’m looking forward to waking up early to go to the beach to watch the sunrise after a stressful exam season. Seeing the mixture of orange and yellows light up the sky as the sun rises over the buildings, illuminating the ocean. Feeling the warm sand between my toes. Hearing the waves slowly crash over one another. Smelling the salty ocean air as well as almost being able to taste it. Being able to experience all my senses in a calm environment allows me to clear my mind and become one with the world around me. As an extrovert, surrounding myself with others allows me to feel energized and happy, so I can’t wait to take advantage of the workout classes my school offers to its students, reminding us we aren’t alone in our journey and keep us practicing healthy habits. I also plan to immerse myself in clubs so I can find like-minded people to grow alongside through our academic journey and creating relationships that can last a lifetime. I plan to join the Japanese Student Association to continue to feel connected to my loved ones back home, bringing me peace of mind as a part of home is still with me. In addition, asking for help allows us to clear our minds as it’s easy to become overwhelmed with information we may not understand. I plan to take advantage of the counseling services provided by my school so I can have more room in my mental space to learn. And when talking to another person in counseling seems unappealing, I am glad to know my school has therapy dogs that I can hug when I feel overwhelmed. In high school, one of my favorite things to do was hit out my stress on the tennis courts. Being able to redirect my energy playing tennis, truly helped me get to a better mental space while I was juggling AP classes, band, and extracurricular responsibilities. My body also never felt better. I developed a regular sleep schedule, grew stronger, and satisfied my need for constant self-improvement. I look forward to taking this hobby to college as well as continuing it for the rest of my life since it has done so much for me already. To nurture the soul, I want to take time for myself to do the things I know I enjoy. This might look like me baking cookies in the community kitchen of my dorm, making jewelry on a picnic spread in the grass, or simply taking a nap after a long day of classes. Taking this time to myself allows me to stay just as connected to my academics since I am dedicating myself to creating a healthy balance between academics and myself. I hope to carry the excitement and the habits that I create in college into my future after graduation, so I can’t wait to curate my life in college to take those lifelong habits.

Throughout my time as a high schooler, I understood that not only should I use my talents to help people but to give people the opportunity to use my talents to better themselves in turn bettering our community. In my freshman year, I had offered to tutor one of the girls in my English class with her algebra class since I had taken algebra the previous year. She responded, “I would but I can’t afford to pay for a tutor.” To which I replied that I’d never even thought of charging people and asked when she was readily available. I regularly tutored students for free because I knew that not everyone was in the situation to be able to pay to receive help, even if they knew that’s what they needed and had the ambition to want to succeed. At the end of the year, she thanked me for helping her stating that she had never had an A in a math class before and that she couldn’t have done it without me similar to the other people I’ve tutored over the years. It always sparked me with joy seeing their faces light up when they finally understood a concept and now with their passing grades would later be able to go on and find ambition for other things or create new goals for themselves. One of the peers I had tutored is now going on to get her degree in medicine early because she had taken college classes throughout high school and simply needed my help with understanding the equations in her college math classes. I also became a science fair mentor to help middle school students with bright ideas make their projects not only something they love but something others would too. When I was in their shoes, I was very unsure of what I wanted to do for a project and when I finally decided, I didn’t think the project would be impactful. However, after assistance from my teacher, I truly learned how meaningful and worthwhile my project was and I was happy that the judges also shared the sentiment that my project had the potential to make other’s lives better. As a mentor, I hoped to find a student like myself that just needed a push and a small taste of success to want to go even further in everything they do. I finally found that student while I was in 8th grade. There was a student that engineered a stepping stool that was targeted toward the elderly. She believed her project wasn’t going to win the local science fair but after talking with her and assisting her with her project for weeks, she finally had the confidence to be able to go in front of a judge and display and present her project with confidence. The judges adored her project seeing as they themselves were older or had a parent or friend that could be in need of the stool, she won second place. In the future, she now has the confidence and potential to sell her product and make the world a safer place, one step stool at a time. I think that instead of being selfish with our talents, we as a community should be able to help others without seeking a reward or gratitude but to hopefully lead people into a better situation whether that be to accomplish a goal or to lead them to have a better day