Until I graduated high school, my life growing up in Houston,TX, as an only child was fairly normal. I was raised in a divorced household and often helped my mother with chores and spent most of my time studying and playing with my next door neighbors. However, it was when I started going to public schools in middle- and high-school that my curiosity for life and people grew into an insatiable creature that I believe will never be fully satisfied. After attending a private school for eight years of my life, the diversity of people I came across at public schools was overwhelming and I reveled in it. After graduating high school, my travels through 20+ countries over the course of four years continued to feed my desire for knowledge and experience. I hope that my education and career path in photojournalism at UT will lead me to even more places where I will have the opportunity to meet new people in strange places and develop cross-cultural friendships that will last a lifetime.

I ride for my second mother, mentor, and companion; I ride for the person who has always been one of the most positive influences in my life; I ride for one of my best friends, my stepmother, Mikhal White. When Mikhal was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 2008, I heard and felt it all: disbelief, anger, powerlessness, fear, and despair.

Almost immediately, however, my family and I, with my stepmother in the lead, approached the situation with a positive outlook.

My stepmother has always told me that you can never take life too seriously and that you always have to laugh in the face of negativity, insecurity, and doubt. Throughout the past year, through all of her treatments, her sense of humour has not been conquered by the other forces that were at hand. She liked to call herself the poster child of cancer because she took pride in the fight. She has, once again, shown me that if the willpower is there, something as atrocious as cancer can be overcome.

So, every mile of the way I will ride for her and for everybody who has been affected by cancer and who needs the support in going the distance.