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[Rachel Hestress:] My name is Rachel Hestress and I'm a 
music education major. [Carolyn Henry:] My name is Carolyn  

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Henry. I'm from Cocoa Beach, Florida and I'm 
studying electrical and computer engineering. 

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I chose music education because I love to 
teach music and music was something that I  

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was surrounded by in my childhood and I 
wanted to share that gift to other people. 

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When I was growing up, I grew up near the 
space center so engineering was always kind of  

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on the table and then when I was 15, you know my 
dad had this old 1961 Porsche and I was like this  

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is it we're gonna fix it together, I'm gonna learn 
so much it's gonna be awesome. And then I hated  

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every single second of it and the only part 
that I liked was we tested the spark plugs  

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using a little test light that was it and then 
I took physics and the only part of physics that  

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I liked was the circuit analysis. So I was like 
this is it, this is what I have to do I have to  

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be an electrical engineer. Giving the gifts of 
music definitely makes my day. Just seeing the  

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light, and especially younger people, like 
seeing that in their eyes just light up,

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it's amazing. The thing I love most about 
electrical engineering is problem solving.  

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It's really rewarding to be given a circuit and 
to analyze it and then at the end come out knowing  

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the answer and knowing how it works. Here at UWF, 
the students and faculty are amazing. The students  

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here, especially in the music department, I consider 
family and friends. They are always there to tell  

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you like to give you not only feedback, but to tell 
you it's okay you can do this let's try this again.  

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I would describe UWF to a member of the community 
as a place where I feel supported. I feel supported  

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by my professors, I feel supported by the faculty 
and staff, I feel supported by the peers around me  

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and I think that that has been really important. 
So I received the Arthur Tall scholarship  

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and I was like wow, that's amazing, I got 
a scholarship and that helped me a lot.  

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Well not only it helped with financial expenses, 
but it also helped me get to where I needed to  

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be academically and get to where I need to be as 
a performer. I received the future women's engineer  

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scholarship. Because of this gift, I was able to 
take additional courses that led me to internships  

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allowing me to increase my experience and be 
financially stable. I would definitely tell the  

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person who gave me this gift thank you, thank you, 
thank you, thank you. I feel like I don't deserve  

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it, but I'm very grateful. If I could talk to my 
donor who gave me this gift, I would really have  

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to say thank you. I don't think that you know how 
much your gift has directly impacted really every  

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single success that I've had at the University 
of West Florida. It means so much to feel like  

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you're supported by members of the community 
who around you by people who really believe  

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in what you're doing and who want you to 
be successful and I have to say like a huge  

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thank you for all of that. After I graduate I hope 
to teach elementary music or become a director of  

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an orchestra locally. So in five years I will hope 
to be well on the way to establishing my career. I  

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would like to hike the pacific press trail after 
graduation so hopefully I'll have done that.  

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I will have attended law school and receive my 
law degree and I would like to work in industry as  

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an in-house patent attorney and hopefully on the 
way to establishing a career within that industry.  

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I believe people should pay it forward not only 
to be generous but to show that they have kindness.  

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In the world we live in, kindness can be 
a rare thing. I think that it's important  

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to give back to the community from a student's 
standpoint to set other people up for success.