Bravery, if it were a person, can lift away burdens that keep us from taking opportunities that we may never do so without him. He helped me to overcome my fear of swimming and enjoy it! After the day that I overcame my fear of swimming, he helped me keep going no matter how much life throws at me, allowing me to be able to play with dogs and cats and go on rides at an amusement park. If I see a challenge, I will dare to do so, only to achieve it a few minutes or days later! He allowed me to become a tutor at my community college and assert my plan to transfer to a university and becoming a physicist! Practicing bravery over time makes you more potent than when you are younger, and he's one of the best friends that I'll ever have! If anyone needs help conquering any fear, Bravery is the most recommended person to do so.

1. Why do you deserve this scholarship? Because boarding this scholarship will take me to all islands on the sea, whether it be a treasure in the caves or just finding a place for my cargo as a pirate! 2. What are your academic and/or career goals? My goal academic and career goals are in front of me— I need to kick the ball in order to score the goal! Once achieved, I keep going! The opposite team is right in front of me, but I keep going until my team has more points than the opposing team! My team will be the winners! 3. Tell me about a time you’ve overcome an obstacle. My obstacle? That green hill has a top. I need to climb it to overcome it. Up I went and I made it to the top! It was such a glorious day that I marked my victory with an X. Who knows how many obstacles are there? The bushes that block the path? No problem! I'll go straight through.

Roads are what take people to many places. If I wanted to travel across the nation, I would pull out my GPS to find the location. However, at times, I end up going to the wrong location because of the faulty directions that the GPS provides me. Nevertheless, I always try to figure out the location and how far I actually am from my destination. Every time that I make a mistake on that road, I would always find a way back to the road. When I was in elementary school, I remembered that there were about 5 of my classmates in my class. But that class was like no other. Why? I never understood until I looked more into my IEP and my autism diagnosis. It was also in elementary school that I started to develop a passion for STEM, and the passion was so strong that I dedicated my time to it more than I developed my time making friends. I wasn't against making friends, but it wasn't one of my high interests either. I sometimes couldn't trust the other kids. That's when I got shunned by my family for not having friends. I even made a ton of mistakes that resulted in getting 3 detentions and one suspension. I was also bullied sometimes, making me lose trust in other kids. However, in middle school, it is when my behavior improved and my passion increased— after playing tag too many times without permission, I only got one detention instead of a suspension like I did in elementary school. At the same time, I worked more and more on my passion that goes from high school to the first to 2nd-year undergraduate level. I still didn't make any friends, but it didn't mean that I couldn't talk to anyone. But still, I had trust issues. I trusted more in myself than others because I felt free when I was thinking for myself. My high school years were a time where my passion developed to the fullest and I had no more detentions! I only had to deal with slips that were wrongfully assigned based on a non-existent offense or when the person who made the offense is misidentified, which always results in them being struck down. But the behavior problems are still there. Instead of it being at school, it was at home, and they increased due to my anxiety of having undesirable thoughts, so on August 20th, 2019, I decided to visit a psychiatrist. He then decided that I had to stay for a week at the mental hospital. But since I actually remained calm for sometime and I actually wanted to fight that problem, I stayed 2 days less than the week that I was supposed to stay. I'm so glad that I managed to get out of the mental hospital! And finally, in my adulthood, which is late 2020 to today, everything was worse, not because of the pandemic, but the fact that I had to go into guardianship was when everything was hard. If I wanted to travel, it would be hard. My mom would have to call the police if I try to wander without letting her know or if I don't answer her calls when I didn't let her know. I've heard that there are also many people in guardianship who even though they have become able to make decisions on their own but remain in guardianship like there's no future. But thankfully, she has stated that if I can be able to fulfill every responsibility as an average man does, I can be let go of the guardianship. It seems that I may be lucky to be get out of it when the time arrives. From what I have experienced, I should never give up even when the future seems too gloomy or empty— I just have to keep trying until I get there— the future is mine!

Engineering is one of my passions along with physics. Why? Every day, I wake up in the morning to find multiple objects in my house— the binder on the nightstand, the pencils in the steel can, and the few marbles in a transparent Ziploc bag on the kitchen table. But sometimes, I would look at the curves of some furniture and try to measure them in some way. It's hard to measure with a ruler directly and the ruler is straight, so I often have to measure parts of the curve to be able to get close to but not exactly the length of the curve. I also would take a long walk to get to the city where public transportation is my main means of travel. I can see the cars changing speed without any point where the speed changes abruptly. Along with me feeling a few forces while on the bus as the bus changes speed, whether it goes or it stops. Counting items is a very easy thing to do— you just start at one and you go up until you reach the last item. If there are 10 items, you would get to 10. But there are some things that aren't countable— curves that have a measurable path length and areas from shapes that don't look anything like the simpler shapes— the circle, square, triangle, and any other polygon. Any curve that isn't a circle happens to be everywhere, from the more intricated designs of everyday objects such as couches and cups that cannot be measured using simple means to other physical phenomena that cannot be measured without special devices. Using a limit to approach and calculate the exact value has allowed us to track our precision and ensure that we got close to the real value. They also allowed us to measure phenomena that is continuous instead of discrete phenomena. When I saw those special shapes and the almost universal phenomena that is continuous instead of being bits that are countable, I knew immediately that engineering was one of my interests along with physics— it can intertwine with engineering. Many of the technology that is used to day cannot be described using simple arithmetic nor any other math taught in high school, not even the way that we were able to measure electrostatic and magnetic fields. Differential equations have allowed us to track the amount of current over time in circuits. Calculating and measuring continuous vector fields allows us to measure the direction and magnitude of electrostatic and magnetic fields, and such phenomena is present in modern technology such as computers, hard drives, and even the MRI machine to name a few! All of this makes up calculus— we can able to measure more stuff with a significant increase in precision, have dominated infinity in this sense of being able to approach to the exact shape, and the applications in STEM is so overwhelming that we cannot escape them nor can we ignore the appreciation the huge benefits that calculus provides even today, and that's how I decided to become an engineer in par with being a physicist.

It was 3 days before my Thanksgiving 5 years ago, and it was when I looked into a cookbook with special foods, but it can be hard to make such recipes, especially when it involves measuring a specific amount of cups or milliliters or whatever units the recipe requires. But sometimes, I wouldn't have the ingredients or have an insufficient amount of them. So if the required ingredient is flour, I first check how much flour is required and I check how much I have. If I have more than enough, then I can be able to make the recipe without problems. Otherwise, I have to buy more flour and it can be more difficult if I'm on a tight budget. Knowing the volume of flour and the price per pound or milliliter of flour can make it easier because then I know how much I will spend before I end up spending too much flour and not being able to buy other ingredients that I may need for the recipes of foods for Thanksgiving. That is algebra in action. You find the sufficient amount of bags of flour required to complete the recipe whilst satisfying your budget and making sure that you have enough to buy other ingredients that you may need for your other recipes, so math helps us determine the required quantity. I remember that time when I was in a team with a few other classmates in health class at my former high school. Our team was named "Sugar Daddies", which sounded funny to me, and we played a game about guessing the amount of sugar in a certain food or drink. Everyone guessed and so did I, but unlike them, including every other member in my team, I used a formula that involved the concentration of sugar in a drink or food to determine sweetness. Higher sweetness meant a higher concentration and lower sweetness meant a lower concentration. Thanks to the formula and my TI-84 graphing calculator, I managed to get the highest number of points for my team. It did come with only one caveat— I was shunned by some of my teammates for using my own answers and occasionally not giving my other team members a chance to guess even when they're more likely to be wrong because they go with their guesses instead of estimating the amount of sugar in the food or drink. The most interesting question that came was when the teacher asked how many grams of sugar are in water. Everyone tried to guess a non-zero number, and so did I, but I did so only because I was worried about getting shunned for guessing 0 grams of sugar even though I know that it is 0 grams. Luckily, I chose a number that is very close to 0 to minimize the amount of shunning that I get from my team members. When I revealed my method to my health teacher, he was shocked to see that math was the reason my team won, and he praised me for it! So from this, math can also be used to make better decisions for your life. It was thanks to math and logic that I finally became free to think about what is true or not and I can prove without a need for a teacher to show me how to prove it. This brings us to the last point: if you find that your logic is correct and not one else's, don't feel ashamed if someone tries to shun you for using a method different from theirs.

Stephen Hawking was a British physicist who made significant contributions. He's special because he managed to make so many contributions over his long life despite his ALS and the fact that his ALS will significantly decrease his life expectancy and lifespan, but he didn't. I'm pursuing a STEM Major and a disability, so I praise him for his unrelenting effort; I'll do the same for him.

["Whoever you are, wherever you are, you only have to know one thing: you can learn anything."] This quote is from the YouTube video "You Can Learn Anything" from Khan Academy, specifically from the time-mark at 01:18 to the time-mark at 01:24. It was important because while I was in elementary school, I was average in every subject. At first, it was just because I wanted to get A's, but after seeing the applications of mathematics through a textbook, I saw it as so much more. As a result, I practiced and learned the concept of researching without knowing that word. After I found the formula for the area of an equilateral triangle and I talked about it, my classmates thought that's wrong because it's not taught. I felt discouraged, but I didn't let that stop me from researching. I continued doing this throughout my school years, even in my high school years. As I grew, I trusted research so much that I no longer trusted my classmates nor teachers. It gave me so much knowledge that I knew that I went beyond the average high school student. Now, I'm a community college student. Looking back, I'm sure that I can understand any topic no matter the complexity as I also knew how to apply critical thinking, allowing me to think for myself. Looking back at what I did and comparing that to the quote, it is still relevant to me today.

As legacy is the inherited impact of one's achievements, especially after one's death, it means a bonus for me. To have such a gift can impact me profoundly. As a result, I would know and do a lot more than what that person did. Although my father attended a university, I'm not a legacy student because that university is not in the United States, but this doesn't mean that I can't make my legacy. If I were to make my legacy, it helps someone else. For example, the small legacy that I had in my years between 5th Grade and the end of my high school senior year was helping people comprehending subjects, particularly math and science. That left a great impression on most students because everyone who has struggled and was about to give up now received the best help possible, and that help was from me. Here's how I made that legacy in my K-12 years. In elementary school, I was struggling in many subjects, including math. But as I was going through a math textbook, I found that mathematics has beauty as it was related to engineering and physics. As such, I started to be more and more curious, which started my research. I looked for the area of a general triangle and then an equilateral triangle on Google. When I found the formula for an equilateral triangle, it was significantly different, so I decided to talk about it to my class. After talking about it to my 5th Grade math class, all my classmates ridiculed me for that. But as it turns out, they thought it was incorrect not because it's flawed, but because it's not taught in my class. Nevertheless, that didn't stop me from researching a lot. I continued doing this, from discovering the quadratic formula after doing a Google search about the appearance of the quadratic formula in the Peppa Pig episode titled "Daddy Pig's Office" to tackling more complex problems in high school. I even managed to pass IM10 (Integrated Math 10) a semester early after passing a test that my IM10 teacher gave me! That's when I asked more questions and researched more about mathematics and science. The scientific application of linguistics helped me understand Spanish and other languages better than my classmates. When my Spanish 3 teacher Mrs. Dressler saw my contribution to her class, she was very proud. But not all of it was just mathematics. Science was another reason I had an interest in mathematics, and when I had a microscope since I was in 8th Grade, I brought that to my science teacher Mrs. Gorak, and she loved it! She didn't have any biological samples, but she agreed to look at the edge of bubbles. Now, I'm a community college student in my 2nd year of studies. As I look back, I am glad that what I did left a hugely positive impression in my past schools, and I hope to continue doing this for years to come. A huge thanks to British physicist Stephen Hawking and American mathematician Andrew Gleason for inspiring my passion.