Growing up within a single-parent, working-class, Afro-Chicano-American household in a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood in San Bernardino County CA, I was afforded not only a contrasting perspective of the external factors necessary for survival but also the invaluable wisdom of unlearning harmful, intergenerational coping mechanisms and institutionalized constructs so one could also thrive. And looking back now as a graduate student on the opposite coast, I realized that despite one's modest victories, there always exists the priority endeavor to improve oneself as a means of improving one's community outcomes. Like many others from families blighted by institutional classicism and racism, I'm not immune to an overdependence on recreational substances and an imbalanced cultural diet of delicious yet greasy, cheesy, and red-meat-heavy foods. Despite a challenging family history of bipolar depression, substance abuse, poverty, type II diabetes, and the stigma of psychiatric therapy to address intergenerational trauma, I continue to embark on a transformative journey towards a healthier lifestyle. Through abstaining from unhealthy diet foods, engaging in body positivity/weight improvement classes, regular exercise, and meditation, I find the strength to overcome my community's obstacles and achieve personal growth. Growing up and seeing my father pendulum back and forth between the THC-mellowed yet married, breadwinner to a meth-addled, self-destructive narcissist, I experienced the toll of self-medication in the midst of refusing to accept one's trauma and undiagnosed bipolar depression. Needless to say, his habits continue to take a toll on his surviving mother, children, and siblings. Yet now his aged body has succumbed to renal failure, his mind has since regressed to a mutual state of paranoia and depression. From a young age, I recognized the urgent need for change so I made a conscious decision to abstain from drugs and alcohol and by extension people who did not know how to use them in moderation. Determined to break that insidious cycle, I sought refuge in education and embarked upon an academic journey from community college to UCLA, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to continue to graduate school at JHU. However, despite these pursuits and commitments, after moving away from my support system, I began to wage an additional war against a relatively under-researched learning disability called Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome and clinical depression. However, rather than succumbing to this adversity, I chose to embrace my problem head-on with cognitive-behavioral therapy, clinical treatment, and daily incorporation of meditation to improve focus, reduce stress, and cultivate inner peace. Through these healthier strategies in managing my mental health, I can say that I've not only experienced a significant reduction in my learning disorder's impact, but I've also attained a newfound sense of clarity and resilience to assist in my navigation of the world's continuing challenges of their academic and personal life with greater ease. I honestly appreciate the opportunity that this Health Journey Scholarship provides. Not only in a potential monetary alleviation to my Biotechnology MS program's cost but also as it allows me to chronical my struggles to another person in a carefree and composed manner that I have not yet been able to communicate verbally up until now. As such, I thank the reader for their time in receiving my account of overcoming a family history of socioeconomic struggle to adequately and efficiently help others facing similar challenges.

As I was being denigrated for not contributing to the project as much as my teammates, I could not even offer a response, let alone an apology. My eyelids were strained and heavy from chronic insomnia from obstructive sleep apnea and my chest began to ache as I revisited my greatest hits of learning difficulties, deficits in interpersonal communication, tardiness, and amotivation, all of which continue to haunt my thoughts and blight my self-esteem even as I write this essay. Of the total thoughts and memories I’ve constructed at the end of my life, I wonder what percentage of them will be tinged with self-deprecation toward my inability to reorient my attention as neurotypical people do so unconsciously. Looking back now, my research team's primary investigator was at her wits-end and I did not blame her as she was only expressing her frustration. Nevertheless, I should have put more effort into explaining my issues and not succumbing to the fatalistic surrender that 16.6 million US residents may also be experiencing according to retired clinical psychologist Russell Barkley; a recently studied disorder I've since come to understand as cognitive disengagement hypoactivity syndrome. In any case, two months later from the stress of the project, my late-life diagnosis with CDHS and major depressive disorder, and a recently coincident suicide attempt of my bipolar father, I temporarily bowed out from my endeavor to serve the FDA so that I could secure the clinical support I so desperately needed. How could I contribute to epidemiological research that could serve to inform public policy decisions and emergency management strategies for communities in distress if I was in distress? Who was I supposed to help if I couldn’t even offer help for myself? With my gray-tinted outlook beginning to color with daily pharmaceuticals and weekly cognitive-behavioral therapy sessions, I was beginning to undergo a metamorphosis that was neither Kafkaesque nor Disney-delusory; I was beginning to accept myself as I am, to temper my unhealthy expectations of who I can be and not should be. Fortunately, I’ve managed to reach a point in my acceptance of having a learning disability in addition to familial trauma but not letting either summarily define my personhood. And with that newfound courage in myself, I was primed to continue my academic journey toward a graduate degree in the vein of public health and infectious disease surveillance. I have recently taken up the role as a Community Health Worker Pharmacy Technician at my local CVS Pharmacy in Washington, D.C., USA to advocate as a voice for people who suffer from persisting challenges including intergenerational trauma, socioeconomic friction, and a wavering sense of disillusionment with the public healthcare system. I have also been accepted to a Master of Science program in Biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University and I am thankful for not abandoning my aspirations. I’m hopeful that I'll attain the public health competency and the summative principles that the JHU Biotechnology MS program will offer. And with the financial support from the Bulchand and Laxmi Motwani Memorial Scholarship, I will one day be able to effectively coordinate with a diverse ensemble of scientific personnel while bartering my informed cultural perspectives to collaboratively mend the quality service and public healthcare gaps of which I speak and know firsthand. While my professional and sociological challenges may be numerous, the essential act of accepting my atypical cognitive traits as an aspect of myself and not necessarily as a summation of my personhood will at the very least serve to break the negative feedback loop of fatalism and self-doubt. Thank you for listening to my story.

In the dream version of my future self, I will have become a sentinel public health microbiologist who uses their higher degree in Biohazardous Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Diseases to effectively coordinate with a diverse ensemble of scientific personnel while using my informed cultural perspectives to collaboratively mend the quality service and public healthcare gaps of which I know firsthand as a gay Afro-Latino, first-generation college graduate who nevertheless thrived from a single-parent upbringing.