Hello, my name is Adam Booker and I am now a 31-year-old, soon-to-be college Senior, working hard towards earning a Bachelors Degree in Psychology. While psychology is my major and main focus, at the same time, I am also workingin on a minor in Spanish. It is my ultimate goal to become fluent in the language so I may be able to utilize it not only in my everyday life, but in my professional career as a psychologist as well; perhaps working with immigrant populations.

In February of 2006 at the age of 19, after leaving the country club where I worked as a waiter, I was involved in a car accident that left me paralyzed from the neck down. Needless to say, that moment forever changed my life. After spending those initial weeks recovering in the ICU, I then moved to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta Georgia; a hospital and rehabilitation clinic. The two months that I spent there went towards teaching me about and, acclimating me to my new life as a 19-year-old quadriplegic. It was a hard adjustment that I had to make. When those two months were over, I moved back home. It took me the next five years, from 2006 to 2011, to really go through the five stages of grief; going from denial and anger, to finally reaching the last stage of acceptance. When I finally reached the acceptance stage, that's when I decided that I wanted to try and go back to college in order to make something of the life that I still had. And sure enough, I did.

I began my new journey at a local community college in the spring of 2011. Attending that community college, I managed to earn a 4.0 GPA while taking a variety of prerequisites. After spending three semesters there, I made a leap and transferred to the small private school, Millsaps College. When making that decision, I didn't necessarily take into consideration how exactly I was going to afford a private school education. I made the decision based on what I had heard from current students about the environment, class sizes, and the overall type of education they were receiving. Everything they told me made me want to become a student there. So I applied and was quickly accepted.

In order to afford it, my parents put together an annual golf tournament that would help raise the money I needed. Initially, the turnout was overwhelming and we had no problem raising the amount necessary to pay for tuition, transportation costs, and the cost of a personal assistant to drive me to and from school, stay with me in class, and take my notes.  While the turnout for my golf tournament still amazes me, over the years, there seems to be fewer participants, and with a recent hike in the cost of tuition, their donations are not enough to get me through the year. I deeply appreciate and certainly wouldn't be where I am in my journey today, if it weren't for those charitable donations from my local community. But I've now reached a point where I need to reach out to a much larger community and ask for help.

Hopefully, with your help, I'll be able to continue the journey that I started in 2011, that will one day end with me rolling across the stage and receiving my bachelor's degree in psychology. I sincerely appreciate any and all support that I may receive and I promise that I will continue to work hard in order to make that support, worth it.

Thank You,

Adam Booker