College essays...

Get close

"You can't understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close." As you begin your collegiate studies, how will you "get close" to the issues that are most important to you?

To get close you have to get involved. Sometimes you have to look at the details of a problem to figure out the solution. People complain about problems but they never do anything about it. For example during this election a lot of people were complaining about the possible presidential candidates for each party. When voting time came many Americans did not go and vote, since they didn't like the results they complained. If they wanted a different outcome they should have voted. They should have done something about it. It happened again with the presidential election. The only difference is that more people voted. Unfortunately many voters casted their ballots for candidates that were either obvious they weren't going to win, like Harambe and Hennessy, or candidates that had lost the primaries and asked the public not to write them in, like Bernie Sanders. Those same people who didn't take advantage of their vote were later complaining about how outraged they were that president-elect Trump had won. If they truly didn't want Mr. Trump to win they should have taken the vote more seriously. They did not get involved so they couldn't get close.

In the beginning of October I went to Mississippi Youth Legislature. Each person had to write a bill. The bill I wrote was called "ASL as a Foreign Language". The purpose of the bill was to make ASL, or American Sign Language, a foreign language credit in Mississippi high school. Schools would be required to count ASL as a foreign language credit but they would not be required to teach it. ASL is my passion. I wanted to help the deaf community as much as I could so I started learning ASL with books and apps. When I learned that the deaf community had little to no representation in the hearing community I was angry. Hispanics like me are faced discrimination every single day and it is hard dealing with it. The difference is that if I'm discriminated against I can speak up. Most deaf people are not able to speak up for themselves because the other person won't understand them. It must be extremely hard for them to deal with discrimination if dealing with discrimination against Hispanics is hard. Because of this I made it my one of my goals to change that, or at least give them a little more representation. More people knowing ASL means more representation for the deaf community in the hearing community. For example, on August 4th of this year a deaf man was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in North Carolina. The man was trying to communicate to the officer through sign language, but the officer thought he was making gang signs. The police officer shot the man the moment he stepped out of the car. This is not the first time something like this has happened. These accidents could be prevented if more hearing people were exposed to ASL.  Because of all the accidents happening with deaf people and the police I wrote the bill and presented it. The bill passed. Because this is such an important issue for me I am revising my bill and editing it to make it look professional so I can send it to a Mississippi representative. Sometimes you need to step back and look at the big picture but if you want to fix a problem you have to get close and you have to get involved.