The way that I actively listen to those around me is by making sure that whoever it is knows that they have my full attention. I believe that active listening is not about understanding somebody's feelings or situation, but rather allowing them to say what they want to say without interrupting them and being willing to just listen, not offer an opinion. Many people try to offer solutions and opinions when they have somebody who wants to talk to them, but often that is not what is desired from them. I know that there are times when I just want to talk to someone, anybody, to get something off my chest, but I don't want them to offer me opinions on what they think I should do or only pay little attention to what I'm saying. Because of this I always try to be an active listener when people want me to be. This means, giving the person your full attention and not saying anything unless they want you to.

The most inspiring book that I have read is "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow. The story is an autobiographical account of how Randy Pausch prepared for a lecture he was invited to give at Carnegie Mellon University when he only had months left to live due to pancreatic cancer. The book over shows how chaotic Pausch's life was in his final months as he had to prepare his wife and kids for his death while trying to prepare the most perfect lecture he could create. It is incredible to think that a man who was about to die, and had a wife and kids to worry about supporting after his death, would be so willing and excited to take the precious time left in his life to give a lecture. In his lecture, he didn't talk about his knowledge in computer programming, but rather about living your best life. Since reading his book, I have tried to live by my favorite quote from the book where Pausch says, "The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people." I hope that as I move throughout my life that I can be as brave and generous as Randy Pausch was.

I first started to play baseball when I was probably about 5. My dad always wanted me to wrestle or play football, but I fell in love with baseball and was never able to play another sport seriously. When I was playing for my local summer travel team in 7u and 8u, we were extremely successful. We won all but two tournaments over the course of those two years. After this success, I decided to play for an AAU team, the Pittsburgh Outlaws. They provided me with elite coaching at a very young age. I developed very quickly in their organization, however, I played for them during my first season of kid pitch. This led to me struggling offensively because not only was I facing an actual pitcher for the first time, I was also facing some of the hardest throwing and most accurate players in the area. I ended up being labeled as a "defensive specialist" by the coaches. This led to me being assigned to their "B team" for the next 3 years that I played with them. During my 10u season, I began to pitch. I was good enough to become our first elimination game starter and was a stand-out outfielder on defense. However, when we got a new assistant coach I was relegated to a backup outfielder and only pitched on rare occasions. After 2 years of barely playing for a team that only cared about winning, I decided to come back to my local travel team for 13u and 14u. I wanted to do this because the Outlaws had taken the fun out of baseball for me and I wanted to go back and play with my friends that I started playing with back in 7u and 8u. When I got there, many of our best players had either moved to another township or, like me, went to an AAU organization. We were dreadful. I think we won like 5 games in 2 years, and we were mercy-ruled in 3 innings more often than not. However, this allowed me to actually play and to get to know some of the new faces before playing for my high school. When I was in 8th grade I made our Freshmen team. I did not play much for most of the season until I got an opportunity with like 5 games left in the season, and earned a starting spot for the remaining games. I made the Freshman team in 9th grade as well. Though I am a pitcher primarily, I played mostly centerfield for our Freshman team. I now hold the record for outfield assists in one season, and in two seasons. I had 13 outfield assists in 17 games my freshman year, the previous record was 8 over the course of 2 seasons. I was able to make Varsity as a pitcher my sophomore year and as a pitcher and outfielder my junior year, but I have only played a total of 3 innings of Varsity baseball. This is because Covid shut us down before the start of my sophomore season, and I tore my labrum in the winter of my junior year. Because of my torn labrum, I was unable to be a real contributing member of our State Championship this spring. Despite this, I am committed to Chatham University to continue playing baseball.

Possibly the greatest adversity that I have faced in my life, is still going on right now. Baseball is something that is necessary for me in college, but I suffered a season-ending injury last winter. This forced me to navigate the recruiting process without being to show coaches my true abilities. When I first started to try and overcome this I thought I would never be able to find a school that I liked and that I could play baseball at. This is how I tend to start my journey anytime I face adversity. I feel like there is no possible way that I could manage to achieve my goals when faced with formidable obstacles. At this point, I am often unsure of what, if anything, I can do to rectify my issue. I find that I usually will not try to push past this stage until I find some realization of a way to overcome, or until my parents push me to. Though I am not proud that I need this motivation to do what I need to do to be happy, but I find myself struggling to find another way to overcome. Once I start trying to overcome my adversity, I keep pushing all the way through. However, I occassionaly tend to get drawn off course. I find myself working as hard as possible, only to achieve a goal that I did not set out to achieve. Though I may have failed in achieving my central goal, knowing that I was able to achieve something similar often fuels me to right the ship and complete my original goal. I know that when facing adversity I will fail sometimes, I will accomplish my goals sometimes, and other times I might just accomplish more than my goal. Whether I follow the afore mentioned process exactly or not, I know that when I face adversity I am going to find something about myself that I never new before or needed to be reminded of. I only hope that I will learn from my experience, and become better for it.

My favorite book that I have read is "Map of Bones" by James Rollins. This book is the second book in James Rollins's "Sigma Force" series. The book follows a team of former special forces soldiers who all have advanced degrees in a scientific field of study. The team is sent to Germany to investigate a massacre during a midnight mass. The team is then sent on a high-stakes mission across the globe when they are attacked at the chapel where the massacre took place. This chapel also contained the bones of the Magi from the Bible. The team must then follow both the scientific and historical trail of the Magi's bones to prevent an ancient, secret organization from unleashing terror upon the world. This book is my favorite because I greatly enjoy Rollins's Dan Brown-style stories with a scientific twist. Rollins can take historical events and cutting-edge scientific methods and theories to create an impressive mix of fact and fiction that is a thrill to read. This book also allowed me to learn more about the history of the Magi and other scientific things in an entertaining book. Of course, Rollins has to deviate from, or sometimes bend, the truth to make his story work, but at the end of each of his novels he separates: what is true, what is theorized, and what he made up. I prefer this installment of the series over the first book because the first book is similar to a grand prologue that sets up the rest of the series. It introduces important information but is far less thrilling and entertaining. I also prefer this book over the later installments because this was the first time the readers were introduced to the main protagonist throughout the rest of the series.

I plan to get a Bachelors Degree in General Psychology, before continuing on to get a Master’s in Forensic Psychology. I ultimately want a degree in Forensic Psychology because I want to be a profiler for a federal law enforcement agency. I am currently in the process of trying to decide where I want to go for my undergraduate degree, but I know that I want to attend a fairly prestigious university to attain my master’s, and possibly my doctorate. Whether I attend a prestigious private school, that is Dickinson College, for my bachelors degree, or I attend a cheaper public school, that is California University of Pennsylvania, largely will depend on how many scholarships I am able to earn. Scholarships are extremely important for me because since I want to work in law enforcement at the federal level, I will not make enough money to pay off extremely expensive student loans in any reasonable amount of time. I was drawn to Forensic Psychology because I have always been interested in law enforcement because I want to help and to protect people, and because during High School I have become fascinated with Psychology. I have taken both a regular semester long and full-year AP Psychology class at my High School. I have also watched many lectures on psychological topics on iTunes University because I find that all most all topics of Psychology are interesting to me. I tend not to care for Biological Psychology as much because I struggle with memorizing where things are, which is pretty important to that field of Psychology. I hope to be able to leave a positive impact on this world, even if only on a few people. And I hope that I am also able to live my life without the perennial worry of student loans hanging over my head.