My top two ideas for the “This I Believe” assignment are summarized below:

1. When my grandpa (dad’s stepdad) died I was in 3rd grade, I didn’t quite understand how death worked so my reaction to the news was filled with innocence. After a long conversation with my parents I leaned that family doesn’t always share blood and who I was and about my culture.

2. With COVID my life came to a stop which was very difficult for me because the last months of my senior year were filled with things I was looking forward to for years, including national tournaments for speech. I was on the track to go to state and nationals for speech but COVID took that away. Through this I learned the lesson of not letting regret take over your life and the lesson of giving it your all when you have the chance because it’s never 100% certain you will get another chance, in my case another chance to share my story and speech.

My two ideas for my passion blog are:

1. Drive to a new Minnesota city each week (that I have never been too) and explore and write about the city.

2. A food blog where I would try to cook a meal each week and give a review. One of my 2021 goals was to learn how to actually cook not just pasta and pizza so this would be a blog coming from someone with very little prior cooking experience.

My two civic issues blog ideas are:

1. Foreign language and culture education in schools, many schools don’t have a solid language requirement and almost every US public school does not have opportunities to learn languages and cultures outside of the main 5; Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin.

2. National felon voting rights. All felons should have the right to  vote according to the country not the state. A policy should be created to give ex-felons voting rights.