Help Me Attend College!

Ever since I was young, I was always different than the rest of my family. My mom was a coach of multiple sports, most notably softball, and my dad worked in facilities for a credit union but had his fair share of high school sports. My sister and I both played sports, but I always felt like there was more out there for me. In my spare time, rather than shooting hoops or learning to throw a perfect spiral, I "played pretend," as my parents called it. I could be found making my own costumes, fighting imaginary bad guys on the trampoline, or writing my own scripts. While my parents found it cute and assumed it would be something I would grow out of, little did they know that it was just my personality. I was born to be an actor.

When I decided to start pursuing acting in middle school, I was bullied on a daily basis because of who I was becoming as a person. I was learning that my place in the world didn't involve working in a field or tossing a pigskin. My place involved a stage, and costumes, and music, and writing. Growing up in a rural school district, theatre and arts were not widely accepted among the rodeo and football crowd, so plainly put, I became an outcast among even my closest friends. I began to use theatre to forge a new identity for myself. I had accepted Christ into my life at a much younger age, but as a very ambitious dreamer, I felt like I lacked purpose and therefore lacked identity. I would use each new character I played to adopt different personalities and traits as I began searching for some version of myself that would be accepted among my peers. This pattern continued until my freshman year of high school. Three years and two schools later, I couldn't even remember who I was before all of this had started. I had become lost in my own array of personas. I learned that bending who I was to conform to what others wanted was not the solution to connecting with people. Instead, it had made me lonelier than when I was the actor among cow folk. I used my sophomore year as a period of regrowth and redevelopment. I decided that if I was going to fulfill my Christian destiny of treating everyone as Christ would, while spreading His love, I would first have to love the person who is doing the spreading. Through the help of some very loving and very patient friends, I began to reshape into who I was meant to be.

I am still striving to improve myself daily. I am now very aware of when I become arrogant, or treat someone wrongly, or try to be someone that I am not. But at least now I know for certain who God designed me to be. As a human, I know that I want to spread the love of Christ and use my story to help others who are also going through hardships. As an actor, I have become very inspired by those who have come before me with similar struggles such as Jennifer Lawrence or Henry Cavill. My ultimate goal as a performer is to inspire others in everything that I do. I will work my absolute hardest until I can work no more to produce the best art possible. To say that I want to entertain people is too small. I want to touch people's hearts, to send chills down their spine, or set their minds on fire with imagination and passion. I want to leave a lasting impact on someone's life with my own creations. Because every person who watches me perform is an opportunity to make a lasting impact on their day or potentially their entire life.

Through this funding page, I hope to be able to afford to go to a school that will allow me to pursue this dream. If I can make it into the professional world, I plan to one day change Hollywood for the better. I want to give people an image of hope to look up to in the entertainment industry; someone who stands for the good of pure entertainment and storytelling. God has given me many wonderful opportunities to do this in high school and I can only pray that this trend continues after I graduate. I know the road ahead of me will be hard and filled with many challenges, but I am confident that if this is what God wants me to do, He will provide a way.