Actress to Advocator by Michelle

Actress to Advocator by Michelle - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

Growing up with leukemia meant no dairy, and absolutely no ice cream. Instead of ice cream, I got IVs and football-shaped pills. My mother was instrumental in distracting me from my hospital room, acting out stories for me, transporting me to worlds populated with heroes and villains, just as I struggled daily to fight my own villain.
From the age of 2-5 years old, I lived vicariously through plot lines—I was the protagonist in my battle against the monotony of chemotherapy and blood tests. I wanted to leave the hospital’s white walls and enter the theater’s black stage, so once I was declared a survivor at the age of 5, youth theater became my emotional and creative outlet when I was 6. I wanted more than anything to become a famous actress. Onstage, I was a real-life hero, while for once also interacting with other real-life kids. Unfortunately, reality caused my curtain to close. A month after my first main stage performance, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Roles reversed, and I found myself being the “adult”: my mother had shielded me from the bitterness of cancer, and I wanted to do the same for her. To help out, I decided to face the unfamiliar world of traditional school. Until then, I’d been enrolled in independent study programs, but my mom could no longer help me with them, so freshman year, I entered traditional public high school. Little did I know that my initial villain had been conquered, yet more loomed.
At my new school, I was enrolled in the Seminar program, designed for high achieving students. However, on the first day of class, I was already deemed an outlier. Other students noticed that I wasn’t in their advanced Algebra II course—they’d watched me enter the remedial Algebra I class—and they decided to bully me about it. I tried to defuse the situation by explaining that leukemia had disrupted my math education, but, astonishingly, they just continued to tease me. I couldn’t believe it. Right then, I realized that cancer and all it entailed was uncontrollable, but my future was not. Their cruel words made me want to change the atmosphere of disrespect at my new school; after all, I had already learned how to battle villains.
The following week, after campaigning and plastering posters all around campus, I was elected Freshman Class president, with an agenda to change my school’s atmosphere. I’d never imagined that students would have so little respect for others, so in addition to organizing freshman activities and fundraisers as class President, a group of students and I also founded an anti-bullying club on campus to try to mend the division amongst my classmates. My student government teacher noticed my determination to change my environment, and she nominated me for the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Conference, which allowed me to interact with 270 students from Southern California who were just as motivated to fight for positive change in their communities.
As my mother entered remission, our world transformed once again. The time I’d devoted to hospital visits was free again, so I decided to rejoin the theatre program that had given me some normalcy in my childhood. This time, I stepped behind the scenes as the assistant stage manager for “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”. I saw myself in the characters: four kids who journey from one world to another and face villains with the faith that they can make their new world better. They fought their battles with swords while I fought mine in the hospital and in student government, but we shared the belief that environments are ultimately molded by the individuals who fight to make things better. Having fought the battle myself, as a 19 year old at the University of California-Berkeley, I now hope to pursue a career that allows me to alleviate the pain associated with cancer treatment, as well as research and practice forms of therapy. I strive to hone my skills, master my passions, and practice them on the world stage.