Hello my name is Melissa Huerta. I am a junior at Santa Ana High School. I am currently a veteran of Youth& government. I am generally a loud but friendly girl. My personality tends to help me out a lot because I am able to voice my opinions and speak in front of audiences. Also it helps me so that I can get along with the people around me and I can work with them without having a problem. Youth & government had helped me in many different ways. First of all, it has helped me to become a better leader. I am finally able to control situations when they are out of control. Also it has helped me to work better with people that I would generally not work with. It has helped me to become a better student in class. I pay more attention because it has helped to see that my education is important. I have heard stories from many people in this program about the obstacles they had to overcome in order to pursue their education and it helped me to learn to value my education. This program has helped me out a lot in changing my views on school and my future plans. I want to be able to become a successful businesswoman and I know that this program will help me to be able to achieve my goal. I came into this program as someone who did not know anything about the world that was revolving around me. Now I am aware of everything happening in the world. I keep up with all the events that occur locally or politically. Also what it takes to keep this country running and what people's jobs do to help out this country run sufficiently. This program has affected me in many ways but all of them have been helpful. I am perfectly aware of things in politics but also of my surroundings. I have got out what I had put in and I am glad that I had done that because I had learned many useful things from this program.

Melissa Huerta