“Engineering is terrifying.” That is the first thought I remember when entering what would become the robotics team room under my high school’s low budget. While I had received an invite to be the leader of community outreach and marketing in the team, the squiggly red lines piqued my interest. I grew up listening to an industrial engineer that had overcome poverty by being the first to graduate in his family, who I knew simply as my dad: yet the admiration for what he did was vast. When the second one to achieve the same; was my brother, who took me to a car industry headquarters, where he was doing an internship, I wondered why I could not see myself in this world yet felt so intrigued by it. As a Latina student, whenever I would go into classrooms enthusiastically trying to prove my place, I always felt like it was a shortcoming whenever someone else would repeat my words more shortly after or build on my idea without crediting me. The collaboration in STEM activities seemed impossible when I had to be a know-it-all to be someone there. Yet, years later, as the vice president in a robotics club, the coding lines look softer, less red. While my persistence and creativity helped me, I now realize that building a community around it influenced me the most. There have always been a lot of great minds to admire, yet I do not see myself represented in only one community. I had built a community that encourages and learns together with a focus on distinct issues. I hold that by giving more voices the access to STEM fields and careers, more solutions will come, as everyone senses differently. I aspire to use my education in settling the matters of broad access to mental health services, repairing environmental systems, and education for underrepresented communities. Working at the intersection of social justice, design, and technology, I aspire to share my story and ideas with others, that are willing to build together; rather than build up an invisible competition. As a now first-generation rising sophomore, I found a passion for technology and the intersection of sustainable design, education, and gender equity. I am interested in not only following the path Latinx women, like Cecilia Aragon, have paved for young women in tech but amplifying it and collaborating with diverse voices. While pursuing a double major in computer science and environmental engineering is challenging, I think the feeling of curiosity keeps me going: the joy of understanding how double linked lists work after reading the chapter for the millionth time when coding, the satisfaction of collaborating with the organization that motivated me to go into STEM to recruit more international students, the realization that I am overcoming my background’s expectations. As my ultimate dream career goal, I would like to have a tech and design company that welcomes diversity and focuses on gender equity practices when operating to create a better environment in tech. A company that works to provide young women opportunities to become familiar with STEM and computer science. A company that is both sustainable and creative. Further, I wish to achieve a career that makes me proud and always allows growth and curiosity for new lessons. Engineering may still be terrifying when I do not get something, but thanks to the people I have met and the passion for accesibility, that is a scary I can thrive with.

I think of the number of lenses I use, the ISO, the aperture; everything has to be calculated before capturing that one photo I would, later on, share and hold forever. My enthusiasms for math and photography become more together than they could ever be separate. From the moment I hold the camera to the editing decisions, I think of stops and numbers: to get the perfect exposure, "the value has to be 0". To keep this amount, if I add a second to the shutter speed it would be +1 overexposed, to fix this we have to subtract a stop of light via aperture by halving the amount of light that comes into the camera. However, my story with math goes way back since from a young age, I would use it when counting my belongings and organizing them. That habit extended onto spreadsheets, equations, and calendars. For me, mathematics is a tool for finding solutions to daily problems and understanding the whys. Everything that picked my curiosity and creativity would return to science and math to maximize its results. When thinking about math, there had always been a lot of great minds to admire, yet I did not see myself represented in these minds. Therefore, younger me thought I could not "love math." It was not until the second semester of my first year of college that my multivariable calculus professor asked how I was able to solve problems with such joy. I had to build a community that encourages and learns together with a focus on distinct issues. I hold that by giving more voices the access to STEM fields and careers, more solutions will come, as everyone senses differently. I aspire to use my education in settling the matters of broad access to mental health services, repairing environmental systems, and education for underrepresented communities. Working at the intersection of social justice, design, and mathematics, I aspire to share my story and ideas with others, that are willing to build together; rather than build up an invisible competition. When I was accepted as an incoming Computer Science and Engineering college student, I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders, ready for knowledge and new challenges, unafraid to pursue and combine my interests to create global solutions that benefit others. I intend to make a difference by irrupting the stereotypes of mathematics and technology and opening its doors to others... as for me, math is right next to these goals; when I look at my life from a math perspective, it all makes more sense and I get to enjoy the process of figuring it out.

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.