28 May Comstock Park Public Schools: Shelby Rogalski
Our recipient shared with us her struggles with mental health and appropriately titled her essay “The Day I Asked for Help”. In 2021, she was quarantined with COVID and felt like nothing was going right. Once back in school, she felt her seasonal depression coming back. She lost the ability to care about anything. She wrote, “I had piles of schoolwork that were miles high yet was not motivated to even read the directions. I didn’t care about what I was wearing, because I would go right back to bed as soon as I got home. I was never on my phone unless I was selecting a playlist best fit for my mood before I took my daily 5-hour nap.” She shared her experiences with being on medication and how that made her feel, or ultimately not feel much of anything writing “I felt like the medications were turning me into...