Loara Senior Wins Essay Contest, $1,000

Michelle Lynn Kessler of Loara High School in Anaheim has won an essay contest and with it a $1,000 scholarship from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Orange County.

The 17-year-old senior wrote the best essay from among 19 applicants. All competed by writing about “a day in the life of a Mars explorer.”

She wrote of how she and four other astronauts spent three months on Mars, trying to discover if the planet is habitable.

Mars “is the closest planet to earth,” Kessler said. “If anything ever happened to Earth, going to Mars would be our only alternative, really, but because of its incredibly thin atmosphere and lack of water, it needs to be explored.”

Kessler said she will use the scholarship to pay for tuition at Claremont McKenna College in Pomona, if she is accepted there.

Dallas Bienhoff, the institute’s essay coordinator, said the annual contest helps promote interest in science, space and engineering and is open to any high school senior.

Yu-Jung Chen of Tustin High School was the second-place winner and will receive a $600 scholarship.

Ami N. Shah’s essay came in third, and she will receive $400. Shah attends El Modena High School in Orange.

Bienhoff said applications for next year’s competition will be available in October at public and private high schools throughout the county. The theme changes each year but always focuses on science or space.