Personal vision
I know some families enforce the mentality of planning. Plan to be a writer, or a doctor, or a teacher. That has never been the culture in my house. My dad has been everything - juggler, professional improv artist, glassblower, philosopher, marine biologist, and even a stay at home dad (a job he didn't know he wanted). My mom started as a dancer. She founded a dance company that is still running today. Is she still a dancer? No. Her fiancee at the time was murdered, and she overcame and changed her career path. I know to a lot of people, my parents don't read as conventionally successful. Conventionally successful has never been a point of pride in this family. We do what we want, we do what makes us happy, and we move forward no matter what life throws at us.
The reality is this: my personal vision is a never-ending spiral of countless possibilities. Big cities, rural towns. On the map, off the map, maybe even on a boat in the middle of the sea. All I want out of my life is to live authentically. My personal vision is to run barefoot through the evergreen forest, and scuba dive till my fingers are wrinkled. My personal vision is to help people and make a difference, to improve the relationship between us and nature. I want to experience everything I can get out of life, the same way my parents have. Maybe I'll own a house, maybe I never will. Maybe I'll have a lifelong career, but maybe I will travel and look for odd jobs along the way. The only thing that matters to me is that I never feel the way I used to.
I never want to feel like I'm living a life that isn't my own. m y o
Reflective Essay
This "reflective essay" is an assignment where I'm supposed to talk about my best attributes, as both a person and a student. If I'm honest, writing this in a conventional way would make me really uncomfortable, so I will instead be sharing a few stories about myself that expose my character and my presence as a student.
I am what you call an animal person. Birds, insects, arachnids. Any animal I could get my hands on was my friend, but bees have always had a soft spot in my heart. I don't remember this, but when I was three I caught a bee. Not a dead bee, or a hurt bee. Just a bee. I had grabbed it behind the wings, and she couldn't sting me. I showed her to my mom, then deposited her on a flower where she then sat to pollinate for us. I was enamored with her. I've always loved bees.
Kids down the street used to salt snails. It would make me cry, and I would sit on the sidewalk and grieve for the lives that suffered an unnecessarily cruel death. I started going to their house every morning and collecting all the snails I could into big buckets, and moving them to parks around my house. After I learned that the overpopulation of snails was actually bad for the local ecosystems, I would collect the snails into big buckets and give them to my chickens. In my mind, nourishing another being has always been a much more noble death. Even snails deserve that much. I've always loved snails.
Bringing home injured animals has always been an odd specialty of mine, but my favorite example of this was Big Man. Big Man was a crow that I saw get hit by a car. Badly hurt, he was in a total panic when I caught up to him. I sat with him for about an hour before he was calm enough for me to pick up, wrap in my jacket, and bring home. It very quickly became obvious that my bathroom was no place to treat a broken wing and a crushed foot, so with many tears, we brought Big Man to the local wildlife center. I was terrified that he was unsavable. He was released a month later, missing a foot but completely functional. I still see him around my neighborhood often, and I like to think that when the local murder of crows passes by my house and I find bottlecaps, hairpins, and coins in a neat line on the grass that he is thanking me for picking him up when I did. I've always loved crows.
It has always been very hard for me to turn away from anyone in need. In 2019 there was a horse I met, later named Parker. Parker was with a family who did not treat him well. He trusted no one and was deemed a dangerous basket case by most. He needed someone who could save him, and I made myself into his savior. He spent a year with me, relearning how to be ridden, and how to trust. It was probably the most challenging thing I have ever done. He injured me more than once, even making me take a few weeks away from the barn. That was my first break from riding since I started. He was well and truly terrified, but I didn't give up. He is now with his forever home in Idaho. He is happy, well-taken care of, and has become a little girl's dream. I have always loved horses.
Overall, I am loving, hard working, inutuitive and kind. I have tought myself a lot of what I know, and my empathy has given me so many opportunities and taught me so many lessons. My compassion is what fuels me, and it has always been my strongest asset.
Work Samples
This essay is one of my favorites that I have written in high school. The Things We Carried unit was very special to me, so I put some serious effort into this paper. I received a decently high mark, and seriously enjoyed the process of writing this essay.
This was a report that we wrote in Biology in my sophomore year. It was just a really fun project where we got to observe duckweed over a long period of time! I thought I did a really good job managing my time and my resources.
This was a creative writing assignment where we had to do for english in the 11th grade. We had to write a spin off of a poem that we covered in class, then preform our version live. I chose to write a spin off of America by Allen Ginsberg. Preforming this live was truly amazing, and hearing my classmates preform was so fun.