Within the first week of fourth grade, me along with my friend Valerie were made classpresident. By the end of the following week, I was no longer class president. I was chosen in thefirst place because of my evident drive and enjoyment for learning. I was proud of my role andeven happier to know I had authority over my classmates. What my fourth grade teacher didn’taccount for was how much I love to make people laugh. The moment she exited the class andleft me and my fellow president in charge, I started goofing around. Being loud and dramaticwhile encouraging my classmates to do the same. Little did I know, my teacher didn’t wander offtoo far. She was actually just on the other side of the door and heard it all. She taught me avaluable lesson that day, regardless of who I’m around, I should always be presenting the bestversion of myself.

I used to be embarrassed of my father. He would lick his finger to clean my nose in front of my school where all of my friends could see him, he would yell at anyone that looked at me in a way he didn’t like, his Belizean blood didn’t allow him to stay silent when he felt intense emotions. It wasn’t until middle school, during my older sister’s step performance, did I see things differently. My older sister was a great stepper and during the performance, my 6 foot father stood to his full height with his camera pointed directly at her and made exclamations of joy. Yelling and jumping with a huge smile on his face, not worried about the people that couldn’t see past his tall stature. All that mattered to him in that moment was how proud he was of his daughter andthe rest of the world didn’t matter. At times he would say “We are our own gods” and in moments like that I get reminded of what that means. We are in complete control of our lives. We determine what we allow to impact us and how we advocate for the things that we love and care about. The entire world comes second to the things you love. I decided to stand next to him and cheer my sister on too after that.

My middle school didn’t provide many after school clubs but one that I really enjoyed was the debate team. I became captain of the debate team in 8th grade and it taught me the importance of preparation. I joined in 7th grade and one of my first debate topics was “Should the United States legalize the use of recreational marijuana?”. It was a lot easier to support legalizing marijuana so arguing for the opposing side was difficult. Instead of extensively preparing for making marijuana illegal, I put it aside and hoped that I would get an opponent that wasn’t the best at debating. It was just my luck to get an extremely difficult opponent. I don’t remember exactly what happened during the match but I do remember being silenced after the opponents rebuttal. Embarrassing doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt and from every debate moving forward, I made sure to know how to argue the opposing and supporting side.