My Mom, My Hero by Tylor

My Mom, My Hero by Tylor - March 2023 Scholarship Essay

My name is Tylor Brents, and I am a first-year honor student at my dream college, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). The person who most influenced my education has been my mom. From the moment she began fostering me at three months old, she began researching to give me the best life. Once she adopted me, Mom took me for evaluations to understand my challenges.

At age five, I became interested in taking pictures when I would accompany my grandfather while he took photographs of parks, waterfalls, and covered bridges near his home. My Mom had also gotten me a video camera, and I had been making mini-documentaries for years. When my grandfather died, we had to move into their home to care for my grandmother, who has dementia. Our new home is in the mountains, and one can see bears and other woodland creatures crossing through the yard. We live next door to a national forest surrounded by the beauty of nature. Eagles, falcons, and owls are all around us. I inherited his cameras and started taking pictures of everything, which made me happy. I would hear bears trying to steal from us, so I would alert my mom and then grab my cameras to film the hilarity of her yelling at bears. The act of filming or photographing this interaction with wildlife pleased me.

In fifth grade, my mom became disabled, and because I was experiencing difficulties in a brick-and-mortar school, we began homeschooling. My mom took me to therapists, and she and I learned new ways to help me succeed. She would often stay up many nights researching neurodiversity to help me. From the moment she got me as a foster child, she would study my needs to meet them.

Mom had me take a career test in high school as part of my standardized testing. The test confirmed I should be a filmmaker. I got better equipment, and Mom got me into online filmmaking, photography, macro photography, and art and design classes. I attended a week‐long art program at Kennesaw State in digital animation and took additional art and photography classes throughout high school. In the meantime, I was taking pictures of every frog, bug, and flower I saw.

Mom got me into counseling for my depression and ASD after Papa died. She helped me realign my classes after that by guiding me through a reflection exercise on what brought me the greatest joy. She found ways to make school more fun by including those things that made me happy, which improved my ability to learn.
I am in the honors program at one of the world’s most prestigious art and design schools. I am studying for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography with a minor in Film and Television. My concentration is Documentary Photography because I aim to save endangered species like the African Elephant, Cheetah, Black Rhino, and Grévy’s Zebra. I want to use my camera lens to capture them in their natural habitats and then develop visual campaigns to help save them.

As a creative, neurodiverse person, I have overcome numerous challenges and channeled them into beneficial ones, thanks to the help of my mom. I want to use my vision to raise awareness of the planet's challenges in a way that appeals to everyone, including those like me who are also neurodiverse. My mom helped me have the vision to focus on what I needed to do. She inspired and guided me. I know that because of her changing how I was learning, she gave me a great gift - that will stay with me for life. My mom is my hero - she has influenced my education and life the most.