It was during my first semester of college that I was diagnosed with an illness that causes excruciating pain and chronic fatigue; at age eighteen I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. The pain I feel sometimes confines me to my bed all day because I am unable to move. Some days are better than others, but pain is a constant feeling for me. I have had to leave class because of extreme pain, and other times because I was about to fall asleep. I have slept in my car on campus in broad daylight because of the fatigue the Fibromyalgia causes, even after seven hours of sleep the night before.

Through all of this pain and fatigue I manage to go to school full-time and hold a part-time job. I fight through this challenge because having an education is the most important thing to me. After changing my major many times, I am about to change it one last time and I will be working towards a degree in English because I feel it will help me in every aspect of my life. I plan to be a high school English teacher in the future, and I also plan on starting and running a non-profit youth center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. In that position I will need to know how to write professionally for grant proposals and organization policies. I feel as though not nearly enough people these days know how to write well enough. I want to be one of the few that have the ability to write and communicate as fully as possible.

Economically, I'm stuck in that middle position- my mom makes too much money for me to qualify for a Pell grant or any free financial aid, but not nearly enough to help pay for my education. Waiting to go to college was never an option for me, so already I have thousands of dollars in student loans. Earning this scholarship will help take some of the stresses of paying for college off my mind and allow me to focus more on my schooling rather than how I am going to pay for my education.

I am in my third year at AWC and I maintain a GPA above 3.2 while working part-time and dealing with the stresses and disabilities of having Fibromyalgia. More recently, my mother and I are on our own now, emotionally and financially because my step-father passed away suddenly on a Saturday in September. I was back at school for my first class of the week that Tuesday. Through all the challenges life throws at me, school will continue to be a priority in my life and nothing will get in my way of earning the education I deserve.