Spring "Future of STEM" Scholarship

For the first twelve years of my existence, bed rest seemed like the heaviest diagnosis. It meant that I could not function without a healthy body. That I would have to cancel my friends’ birthday party or that I could not get ice cream after school. It changed when I did not strive to get up from the bed nor longer find a fascination with going for ice cream. Bed rest was the only thing I felt like doing. Coming from a background where mental health was “cured” by working and shutting it down, I had no sword to fight what seemed to be monsters in my head. Growing with this led me to embrace the numbness that came with dissociation. Feeling like I was not enough led my grades to flunk. Being told that I was depressed and anxious felt different like it was an introduction, but was I supposed to say it? As I recall my mental health journey, I see that language itself was inefficient for expressing it most times. As part of the Latinx community, the idea of explaining that pain was not to be physical; seemed like a challenge itself. However, defying my own and my family’s concept of health ended up being rewarding. While realizing that many underrepresented communities shared the misinformation and lack of resources, I discovered that several people suffered because of mental health issues but did not get the opportunity to be diagnosed or treated. When I was fourteen years old, I received a package that was to be my mother’s. It read “Mental Health for Kids”; I never quite feel understood by her, but I have found comfort in the growth in her approach and her belief in my consistent recovery. As a future computer science major, I intend to connect technology to the amplification of resources in diverse communities. Mental health should not be a privilege, as it is more common than not to possess these struggles. I find that mental health has shaped the circumstances I aspire to see others in, the applications that I find for what I aim to study, and the treatment I give to others. I used to find safety in repeating the same scenes and listening to the same artist as I knew what was happening. Some would argue that by remaining on the same path, there would not be an end to the bumps on the road, but staying meant living for me. Suddenly, Taylor Swift saying that the monsters turned out to be just trees, in her 1989 album song, Out of the Woods, felt different. I took a different meaning from the lyric I may have heard a lot before: more importantly, in my life. My mental health was part of me, but I consider it now as part of a view. It comes and goes like trees in the wind. I aspire to continue healing and to foster the whole scenery. Like the trees, resembling my anxiety and depression; grass, mirroring my education development; and clouds, signifying each person that has been part of my journey towards awareness and mental health. With tech, I aspire to connect my passion with my drive for the greater good.