I've played volleyball for six years so far and while I've had many incredible moments playing myself (many playoff games, tournaments and great saves), my favorite moment on the court happened when I wasn't on the court, I was standing on the sidelines. During my junior and senior years of high school, my coach asked me to help him coach his middle school boys volleyball team. I was honored that he had the confidence in me to help him introduce these boys to the sport. I grew to love the team and was dedicated to making them win. My favorite memory takes place at a tournament I accompanied them to. It was local, but it was a lot of big schools with a lot of funding, many coaches and good equipment. We had support from our school district but we had one official coach and our equipment was mediocre at best. However, we didn't count our boys out of the game yet. They had passion and talent and I know that that goes farther than money ever would. In the game that determined who went to playoffs, we played one of the biggest schools there. All of the boys were really tall and had been playing for a couple of years, versus our boys who just started playing. The game stayed really close the whole time. At points it looked like we weren't going to win. We called a time out and my coach told me to give the boys a good pep talk. I tried my hardest to motivate and encourage them to go out on the court and try their hardest and put up a fight. They fought their hardest and won the game 25-23. We were so proud of our underdogs, and nothing could ever beat the feeling of knowing you helped them get to this happy point. We didn't end up winning the tournament, but that game felt like we did. I got to share my love of the sport and also include in my pep talk everything that I know I would want said to me, if I was on the court. We had many good moments like that throughout the season, and I am so grateful that I was a part of that. Many of those boys are now playing at the high school level and I always read the news articles after the games about how many kills or aces they had and I beam with pride. I love playing volleyball and being the one written about in the newspaper, but it might be possible that I love coaching it even more. I hope after completing college to coach a team of my own. I'd love to continue having an impact on young player's lives. I am also in the process of studying to become a volleyball referee. I am excited to take the test for it and get back into the games and really show my love for the game. I can't see volleyball not being a part of my life in some way, whether I'm captain of the team, a coach, or a referee. I love the sport, and I love who it has shaped me into.

Self-love is something I struggled with for years growing up. I still struggle with it sometimes but I have come a long way on my journey to accept myself. It has impacted my life in almost every way. My self-love journey has impacted my beliefs because I made the change to validate my own thoughts and opinions. When I had extremely low self-confidence I would often find myself questioning the things I believed in and the opinions I had. One thing I had to learn was that my opinions matter and I deserve to be able to put my input in. One of the areas of my life most impacted by my self-love journey has been my relationships. Growing up no one found me attractive and that hurt me. My friends were all getting in relationships and I felt so far behind them. In high school, some boys finally began to find me attractive. This was so new to me that I found myself accepting behavior from them that I shouldn't have. They didn't want to be seen in public with me, or they would only find me attractive enough to talk to but not to date. I thought this was normal and I was fine with it. I realized however, that I was more than my appearance and that I deserved to find someone who would be proud of me and be seen with me. I have not yet been successful in finding anyone, but most importantly I know the best relationship I can have is with myself. I don't need a man to validate myself anymore because I do it myself. The relationship I've built with myself has been one of the most positive and beneficial things I've done in my self-love journey. My ultimate career goal is to become a math teacher for grades four through eight. This is such an important time in children's lives and they are extremely impressionable. This is also a time where I know I personally struggled with self-love. So much can change during this time period. Your looks change, your friends change, everything around you seems to be changing. It can be hard to love yourself when you are trying to adapt to these changes. As a teacher, I will not only teach math content, but I'd also like to teach my students the importance of loving themselves and how to do so. Learning how to have self-love from a young age can make it last throughout their lives. I would love to teach them that they are beautiful and that they matter in this world. Self-love is one of the hardest things to achieve, but it is also one of the most important. It makes such an impact in every aspect of life, which I learned through my own journey with it. I know now that my opinions matter and how I deserve to be treated. I hope to teach this to my students one day.

Communities have a major influence on people's lives and can truly enhance them. Being involved in your community can introduce you to amazing people that will have enormous benefits. The more you involve yourself in your community, the better. In my lifetime I have tried to get involved in my community and make a positive impact. One way I have done this is through tutoring elementary students. I helped third through fifth grade students study math and English and increase their test scores. Education is an important aspect to a community and helping the youth enhance their knowledge is important. By tutoring them I taught them the importance of working hard and putting in their best effort. This is an important idea in communities. Another activity in my community I helped with was being a junior coach/assistant to the local middle school's boys volleyball team. Volleyball is an important part of my life and I have always loved it. When I got the opportunity to help introduce young boys to the sport I was so excited. Our community has an amazing high school boys volleyball team that has brought us a lot of pride. One of the greatest bonding activities for a community is going to the sporting events and supporting the teams, win or lose. I personally love going to the games and cheering and celebrating after the big wins. I enjoyed having the opportunity to teach the younger boys the game so that they will continue the amazing legacy left by the older boys and continue to bring the community together. It was always so nice to see members of the community coming to the middle school games to support the boys and they loved having a packed audience to watch them play. Having the community's support always encouraged them to play their best and to be proud of themselves, win or lose. I loved teaching them and I loved having the support of the community that accompanied them. My future career plans involve becoming a middle level mathematics teacher. Teachers truly make the school and the community great. They have such a major influence on the minds of the youth and I am excited to make a positive impact on them. I have the opportunity to educate the future leaders of the world and I hope those leaders come back and help the community they grew up in. The future leaders I teach could even become leaders within our community. They could become school board members, township supervisors, police chief or even the mayor. While the content I will teach them will be math, teachers also have the responsibility of teaching them to be responsible citizens and encouraging them to follow their dreams and give back to the community. I know how important my community has been to me and I am excited to one day teach them about how wonderful our community is.