“My freshman year of college I played basketball at Vanderbilt. I started out the year trying to get playing time. I eventually began starting and was very fortunate. I made the SEC All-Freshman team. Freshman year was amazing. The Fall semester of my sophomore year, I took a Religion of China course and I was writing a paper. I was writing about a mountain and there was the PDF version and the website version, both saying the same thing. I ended up citing the PDF because it looked good but I used the website. I got called out for plagiarism. I found out in December. Mentally that was tough. I had never faced adversity until that. I kept playing basketball but my mind wasn’t in it. I just kept thinking what are people going to think of me. I kept wondering if I was going to get kicked out of school, and I did. I ended up getting sent home in February. So I missed that semester. I came back in the summer to make up time. I had to sit out in the Fall to become eligible again. After my junior year, I lost my total love for the game. I don’t know what it was, I just wasn’t into it. I feel like going through what I did was the worst, yet best thing that has happened to me. I found out who really cared about me and who supported me. It affected my mental health so much. I ended up deciding to transfer. I have one year of eligibility left and I will be playing my last year at Iowa State. Right when I got there, I don’t know what it was, but a chip had been lifted off my shoulders. It felt like my high school days again. My passion is completely there again. I’m honestly so excited. I’m going into this last year without any expectations. I’m going to go to Iowa State and be the best me I can be on and off the court. I think maybe I needed time to figure out who I am. Going through what I went through was really hard. I felt like I was letting so many people down. I’ve always had so much support from my high school, my hometown, my friends and my family. It was a stupid mistake. I used to need to tell people it was a stupid mistake, but now I just take fault for it. I made a mistake. You learn and you grow and you move on from it. I learned that it’s ok to not always be ok.”