My current role as a group leader at a youth rehabilitation center has awakened a purpose within me not granted with an outlet earlier in my life. I’ve now reached a level in my combined vocational and academic experiences where I am eager to prime my abilities. Inspired by the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” I am ready to start living and fully engage myself into the greater need of society. Born and raised in the heterogeneity of U.S. military bases, I grew up in a multiethnic community. My peers at school were from around the world and various walks of life. I was fortunate to view cultural diversity as a societal norm from a very early age. As my family moved from state to state and across the seas, life was never stagnant. Adapting to new surroundings is an innate ability of mine. In the military, social merits typically revolve around values like team morale, loyalty, integrity, and selfless service. Later in life I learned that there are aspects of loyalty that reach beyond military values. When I converted to Catholicism several years ago, I shamefully found that I was guiltily devoted more to Netflix shows than human charity. The nagging desire within me to give back to others and live up to the values I was raised with has always been integral to my aspirations, yet underdeveloped. As an art major, my studio focus concentrated around the investigation and study of human tragedy, consumption, suffering, and redemption. I feel the fabric of mankind is beautifully woven by diversity beyond just a cultural sense. Equality and fair representation are personal values that I have stood for since I was a teenager. When my Father was stationed to Alabama from Hawaii, I was stunned to find out in my junior year that my High School carried on a tradition of a segregated homecoming court well into the late 90’s. I remember the upheaval I stirred the morning my homeroom teacher passed out two separate ballots, one for “Whites” and “Black/Other”. My civil activist side emerged and the next day I pasted segregation literature all over the school halls. Due to my insistent self-protest unsupported by the masses of a student body resistant to change, I was relieved to find out the segregated tradition was abolished the following year. The experience confirmed the power of one voice. As a freshmen at Auburn University I was appalled that there was no societal club representing Asian Americans. One of the servers that worked with me at an off-campus Japanese steakhouse helped me draft a charter on the back of order tickets, we set a meeting with the Student Government Association, and shortly after the first Auburn Asian Association was born. A few years later when I transferred to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, I won the Chris McNair Scholarship for my art criticism essay dissecting a gallery exhibition of modern tribalism. Before “cultural appropriation” became a common literary phrase, I depicted the highs and lows of visual ethnic adaptations and comparisons from various perspectives. If I remember the closing to my paper well, acceptance of the visual representation of diversification without a premeditated assumption of intent was the thread that stitched all the controversial gaps closed. Sometimes even the best intended workers of social justice and ethnic representation are left misunderstood and also deserve fair and unprejudiced acceptance as people. No one is perfect. Learning how to recover from traumatic events in my pre-adolescent years took up significant time in my early adult life. Recovery is not a perfect process, yet I believe it to be the path of less suffering. I experimented with substances and engaged in the wrong activities. I am grateful to be alive and well today. Merited by the ranks of overcoming my own hardships I have empathy for the impoverished, abused, and afflicted. I am also unfortunately ripe with the first-hand understanding of the brevities of a broken family. The vehement drive within me stems from my experiences in family court as a single Mother. I have been to counseling, therapy, and various support groups for different matters. If behavioral treatment was a roadmap, I can honestly say I’ve traveled the courses and value the work of the tour guides. The counselors and therapists I have personally worked with have enlightened me to the healing power of the spoken word and a positive mental mindset. After receiving my undergraduate degree, I spent the next decade bouncing around metro Atlanta in various sales positions. My knack of building relationships was beneficial to my career yet I would end the day feeling underachieved. Exhausted, I moved back home in 2014 to live with my parents in Alabama. Short on career options, I decided to try my hand in law and enrolled in paralegal courses at the local community college. Eager to regain my independence I hastily landed a job at an esteemed Atlanta law firm after just a few semesters. For the first couple of months I lived in my car and took showers at a gym. I slept in different church parking lots at night. When I was able to pocket a little cash, I upgraded from sleeping in a car to a shifty Marietta motel. My neighbor was a sweet 22-year-old Mother with three young children who taught me how to get the “good towels” and showed me what to do when I ran out of coffee. I would often fall asleep listening to her argue on the phone out on the dark doorstep, tearfully pleading for her drug-dealing boyfriend to come home. Circumstances often define people. If every person received an opportunity to define their own circumstances perhaps we would all emerge in a brighter light. The lobby view from the thirty-second floor of that law firm was quite a spectacle. Behind shiny new Midtown developments and high-rise condos, I could take in the architectural sprawl that boomed Atlanta in the 70’s and 80’s. Further beyond, weathered industrial buildings blurred into the horizon of old South City neighborhoods. The downtown Turner Field Braves Stadium (soon to be relocated to suburban Cobb County) was still active at the time. The surrounding area of the stadium became impoverished and “too rough” people would say. A sweaty dope fiend scalping tickets in the mid-day sunlight must not have made it on the vision board of powerful Southeast commercial real estate partners. True diversity has many faces, and usually not as inviting as a colorful mural of smiling children with different skin tones. The word gentrification was often thrown around in the local media. As a paralegal I was trained to adhere to the legal code of ethical standards. I feel that the moral backbone of our country’s judicial foundation falls in line with the NSAW code of ethics. In the neutral eyes of moral justice, there is no difference between the privileged, underprivileged, educated, or poor. All people deserve fair and just representation; I do not believe there is an economic value or worth over the heads of human need.