I have become a horde of poetry that sleeplessly pours out of me in the small hours of the night, of the lyrics behind songs without melodies, of novels whose endings I am eager to pen down.

Since COVID started my mom has been laid off and my dad only works 3 days out of the week

I faced fierce economic instability for a total of 4 years. Without truly understanding how or why, I was being displaced from my childhood home and parts of my family.

" I moved halfway around the world, from a busy city of Fuzhou, China, to a small town of Niskayuna in upstate New York. "

I've been stuck in quarantine for many months now and recently I have been scrambling for scraps to keep my bank account from dying.

"Between the political tension from where I come from to racism in the country that received me, I feel like I have to fight three times harder than others."

I want to be many things: an entrepreneur, a scientist, an engineer, a movie producer. If I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to achieve these things in the magnitude that I envision.

I am a 20 year old black female Muslim and I am a sophomore at the University of Illinois majoring in social work. I have always wanted to be a doctor.

" My endeavor is to change how our current society views food in an effort to reverse the negative effects that has hurt our country and its current health problem. "

"As an international student because of Covid, my mother lost her job and my father had to take a 40% salary cut which made funding my Fall tuition a near impossibility"

" I simply want to succeed. All I need is a chance and the financial help takes away from the stress and headache that persists today. "

I worked until 11 p.m. everyday, so juggling all of this became extremely difficult on a daily maximum if 4 hours of sleep.

My name is Jakub Klocek and I am currently a sophomore studying biology here at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.