About Me

I live by a quote that my grandma once told me in middle school, “Nothing is impossible, it is just a challenge that you must overcome.” Having this quote in my mind, has allowed me to push myself to become the best person that I can be. I focus on recognizing these challenges and using them to motivate myself into transforming challenging tasks into personal accomplishments and achievements.

One academic accomplishments that I am most proud of is being awarded the African American Heritage Award four times. I am proud to have the opportunity to show individuals that being an African American should never be portrayed as a barrier, or a reason not to do the best that we can be. I want to be a leader for those in my community, and provide a positive perspective to other African Americans who have been degraded by society and need the inspiration to show them that it is possible to rise above it all. Besides the African American Heritage Award, my second academic accomplishment that I am proud of is being nominated to be titled a “Groundbreaking Woman” by my peers. I think it is incredible that my peers saw me as an individual that holds the characteristics of being a young woman that is a “originator, innovator, risk-taker, and pioneers in a particular discipline. Strives to improve her community, leads with courage and compassion, and despite adversity, reaches high levels of success in her chosen career path.”

When focusing on personal accomplishments, one that I am proud of is being able to be involved in band, basketball, track, kickball, and other out of school organizations, all while maintaining straight A’s. I think it is important to stay busy while being capable of balancing and handling the personal activities that I enjoy as well as making time for school. My second personal accomplishment that I am proud of is continuing to be an active writer (Youth Brigader) for Austin’s local Villager Newspaper. I have been writing since I was six years old, and I am proud of myself for being able to write about things within my community as well as in society as a whole, bettering myself and informing others who read my articles.

I believe that my greatest academic strength is perseverance. Just as discussed in the beginning, no matter how difficult an assignment/activity is, I push myself to strive for excellence and success. An example of this is that I often find being involved in sports and dealing with numerous hours of homework a night difficult and tiring. I will wake up super early for practices, even though I went to sleep late from studying, and preparing the night before. Although difficult, I persevere and over time, learn to adjust my schedule to help better myself physically and mentally. In opposition to this, I believe that my greatest weakness is time management. I have always struggled with setting out time frames to work and to prevent myself from procrastinating. Procrastination is something that comes frequently, but I am constantly working on addressing it.

Throughout my high school experience, I have enjoyed my band class the most. Band allows me to relax my mind from academics. I am able to focus on my instrument and the art of music, rather than having to stress over grades and work. I am not saying that it is an easy class, because that would be a false statement, but it allows me to open myself up and embrace something that I truly enjoy. The most difficult class for me has been AP US History. I find it difficult to retain the information as the course is such fast paced, sometimes becoming overwhelming. It is a course that is required of me as a junior, but I am still glad that I am taking it. It is challenging my knowledge and teaching me how to be a better student in a subject that I find difficult.

On the subject of academic strengths, I believe my greatest strength is trustworthiness. I find it important to be reliable when making connections and relationships with others. I believe my peers are frequently aware that they can depend on me, and I like to have the same expectations for them in group projects for example. I believe everyone should contribute, to make the most out of the opportunities given within a project, or life in general. I am always open to those who simply may need someone to talk to, or ask for help, while they can trust me with the information that they have confined in me with. My personal strength weakness is self criticism. I have recognized over time, that I am often too hard on myself. I frequently over criticize myself, causing me to over evaluate, stress, and even challenge my self-confidence. This is something that I work on bettering each and every day. I hope to be able to eventually change my way of thinking and say that self-criticism is another strength of mine, rather than a weakness.

Adjectives I would use to describe myself include, outgoing, over-thinker, and hardworking. I chose outgoing because I am a talkative person. I enjoy having connections and friendships with other individuals and learning from them, as well as sharing what I know. My second adjective I would use to describe myself is over-thinker. Some may think of this as a bad thing, but I believe it has its pros and cons. I often, overthink in situations, but this also sometimes causes me to push myself to work harder. Lastly, me third adjective is hardworking. I put my best effort forth within and outside of a working environment when tasks are brought to me. I like to accomplish goals, allowing me to know that I must do my best in order to reach them. Besides what I would describe myself as, I believe my friends would use adjectives such as funny, and confident. I hear my friends use these adjectives often to describe me, especially funny as I am actively trying to bring joy to others as it makes me happy to do so. Secondly, my friends use the adjective, confident. I do my best to try to lead by example, not only for my family members who are younger and look up to me but also to my peers, to allow the opportunity of success for everyone who is willing to put forth their best effort to reach it.

When it comes to teachers and their thoughts on me, I believe Ms. Langley, and Ms. Bingham would both be great people to ask to speak on behalf of my abilities. I have had Ms. Langley for two years, once in middle school, and now in high school, as she is my AP Language teacher. I feel like she has truly seen me develop, both academically and personally. I believe that she would be able to speak confidently about my abilities. Secondly, I have known Ms. Bingham since middle school and had her all throughout high school as she is my percussion teacher. I believe that she could speak confidently about my abilities as she has also been around to see me develop as a person, percussionist, athlete, and student.

To conclude, something that most people don’t know about me is that when I was an infant, an adult that my mom knew well, addressed my mom and told her that I would never be a successful individual as my mom was an African American single mother. I completely disagree with this. I believe that my mother did an amazing job raising me. I could’t ask for a better mother, bigger supporter, or best friend. My mother has pushed me, and shaped me into the young woman I am today, and I am extremely grateful and blessed for that. I refuse to let anyone tell me that I am incapable of being great and successful in life.