As my senior year comes to a close, I frequently enjoy looking back upon all my experiences and successes within the last 4 years of high school. Among my experiences are being involved in Student Government (as president), Women of Tomorrow (as President) and National Honor Society (as treasurer) from 9th to 12th grade, partaking in and being captain of the tennis, water polo, and swimming teams, running and winning class officer positions, volunteering for community service projects and much more. In participating with all these extracurricular activities, I was still able to maintain a G.P.A of 4.1. All were beautiful, fulfilling, and unstained memories in my life. However, none of these memories can suppress the one in particular that changed my world more than all combined. This would be my mother being diagnosed with brain cancer. It seemed as though the universe had come to a halt, that the sun had gone dark, my hopes and dreams blown away in the wind.
During the time of my mother’s diagnosis, my parents went through a divorce, my mother was put on disability, and there was no income in my home. Any money that had been saved toward my college education was now being used to pay my mother’s hospital bills, the house payments, and food for my two brothers and I to survive on. To help out, I attempted taking on jobs to assist with payments, but with nursing my mother back to help, it was too much to handle. All the while, I pushed myself to keep involved in school and strive to stay on track to graduate high school not only for myself but for my family, especially my mother. So many depended on me to keep going. My teammates, my alumni, even my school’s faculty counted on my dedication to pursue my leadership positions. Many applaud me for my strength, determination, and maturity in my time of struggle, but I’ve always been raised to “push on” even in our worst days. It has never been in my nature to throw in the towel and call it a day, and that...