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2022 Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship
Graduating high school seniors in Orange County, California are welcome to apply for the 2022 PLV Scholarship. I (Ann-Margaret Mercier) founded the scholarship in 2019 in loving memory of my mother, Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (1952-2014). The PLV Scholarship seeks to honor Patricia’s kind and giving spirit by supporting an outstanding young man or woman who has overcome personal hardship or adversity. I welcome you to read more about my mother’s life and legacy in my inaugural PLV Scholarship post. In past years, the scholarship application essay has emphasized the ways in which applicants have helped others or given back to the community. This year, our focus has broadened to more…
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2021 PLV Scholarship Winner: Nina Yến Nhi Nguyễn on Constructing Her Cultural Identity and Initiating Empowering Conversations
I am proud to announce the 2021 PLV Scholarship winner, Nina Yến Nhi Nguyễn, who graduated valedictorian at Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove. Nina’s story includes her experience as a six-year-old child immigrant from Vietnam fiercely determined to help her family members create new lives in America. Nina assumed tremendous responsibility from a young age, not only translating regularly for her parents, but also overseeing such major financial operations as completing mortgage paperwork and choosing insurance plans before she was even old enough to drive a car. She worked multiple jobs throughout high school to help support her family, as well as provided financial assistance and transportation to…
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2021 Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarship
As we are all well aware, this past year has been unlike any other in recent history. In addition to claiming the lives of many thousands of friends and loved ones, the COVID-19 pandemic has cost each one of us the safety and predictability of the lifestyles we knew before. It has tested our resilience on many scales: as individuals experiencing collective hardship; as a nation undergoing rapid and tempestuous sociopolitical transition; and as a globe in a constant state of flux. As such, the PLV Scholarship Award seems particularly universally relevant and far-reaching in 2021. Graduating high school seniors are welcome to apply for the third annual PLV Scholarship,…
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2020 PLV Scholarship of Orange County Winner: Alexis Votran’s Interview
Now for Alexis’s interview questions, which range from bullying to LGBTQIA+ issues to the aesthetics of feminine beauty. You can read more about her remarkable character and thoughts on everyday activism in Part One of this two-part winner’s series. The following questions were posed to Alexis last summer. Her responses were so complex and insightful, I decided to feature them in their own separate post. In addition, Alexis is a talented photographer, and her portraits have been featured on this page. What are some of the ways high school students can take a stand against bullying at school? What advice would you give to someone who is being targeted by…
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2020 PLV Scholarship of Orange County Winner: Alexis Votran on Everyday Activism
I could not be happier or prouder to introduce Alexis Votran of Costa Mesa as this year’s recipient of the PLV Scholarship of Orange County. Her application essay embodies the spirit of this scholarship program — it was raw, honest, and painfully jarring in places, but filled in equal parts with hard-earned resilience, mature insight, and a commitment to transform her own experiences into vehicles for positive change. Alexis emerged as a deeply compassionate young woman who feels called to impact her community and the broader world for the better, always pressing onward with bold and brave steps. Since Alexis’s own words express her story more powerfully than I could,…
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PLV Humanities Scholarship Winner: Ben Chlarson
I am proud to introduce Ben as the first PLV Scholarship recipient who applied as part of our recent partnership with the Newport Harbor Educational Foundation. Ben’s application essay on the importance of studying the humanities touched on many of the ideas expressed in the introduction to my Black Lives Matter post: namely the need to bridge differences in a polarized political climate by combating ignorance and hostility with curiosity, understanding, and an increased appreciation for diversity. As a Global Studies major, Ben hopes to examine the cultural frameworks that underlie our common humanity in order to someday make an impact on a national or international level. Global Studies is…
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BLM Interview: Deija Brantley on Early Childhood Education
Black Lives Matter is trendy right now. It’s a time for tearing down statues, renaming public spaces, and engaging in virtue signaling on social media platforms. But Deija Brantley, an early childhood educator at a predominantly Black school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania feels that to truly combat the forces of systemic racism, much more than performative anti-racism is needed to build lasting change in communities of color. Change is best built from the bottom up, beginning with the children of today who will inherit whatever world we create for them. I had the pleasure of meeting Deija in my Multicultural Counseling class for my master’s program in clinical psychology. In this…
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Reflections on Black Lives Matter in 2020
2020 is certainly shaping up to be an interesting year. And we’re only halfway through. When I got married last fall, the stuff of 2020 would have sounded like science fiction meets the Book of Exodus meets the ramblings of conspiracy theorists: video footage of UFOs was confirmed by the Pentagon last April; parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are facing a near-biblical plague of locusts; an almost 4,000-mile dust storm has migrated from the Saharan Desert to the southeastern United States; and the pandemic that has brought the world to its knees continues to rage. Not every unfortunate happening of this new decade, however, appears quite so…
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Curb the Curve: COVID-19 Safety Tips
Please note that this article has not been updated since April 6, 2020. For more up-to-date information, please consult other sources. For once the doomsdayers were right: we are in the midst of a pandemic, a defining historic moment that may create a “new normal” with its indelible social, economic, and political reverberations. Its cost is measured in human lives lost to the virus. Governments around the world are struggling to stave off a worst-case scenario in which too many people get sick at the same time, leading to a shortage of medical supplies and the unnecessary and preventable loss of life. My best friend (who, might I add, has…
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2020 Patricia Lynn Vermeulen-Tomocik (PLV) Scholarships
* Please note: As of 4/20/20, the deadlines for all three scholarships have been pushed back due to COVID-19. Please see details at bottom of page. Scholarship season is here again! And the PLV Scholarship Board has exciting plans in store for this year’s program: three different scholarships will be awarded to graduating seniors in Orange County, all aimed at helping students who have achieved academic excellence while experiencing personal hardship. In contrast to last year’s program design, each of the three PLV Scholarships is tailored to a specific kind of student who must fulfill a unique set of eligibility criteria. Details and application documents are provided below for those…
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