I have never competed in national championships or international Olympiads, so my greatest achievement may seem to pale in comparison to others. However, becoming part of the top 5% of my class is my greatest achievement. While it may seem ordinary compared to others’ achievements, it means a lot to me because it taught me about myself and my future goals. How much can good grades teach a person about themselves? This is a question you may be asking, and the answer turns out to be a lot. Earning high grades and being in the top 5% of my class took a lot of hard work and dedication throughout all four years of high school. Looking back on how I struggled so many times and was still able to earn this achievement shows me that I am capable of persevering even whenever it feels really difficult. Knowing that I can persist not only helps me to push through everyday trials but also helps me to believe in myself more. I now know that with enough effort I can overcome many difficulties, and so I know that I can achieve things that I previously did not believe I could accomplish. So, while being in the top 5% of my class may not seem extremely impressive to others, it means a lot to me because it shows me that I am capable of overcoming different obstacles as long as I do not give up. Being in the top 5% of my class has not only helped me to believe in myself more but has also helped shape my future goals. Knowing that I can trust in myself to overcome obstacles as long as I try has allowed me to hope to achieve greater things than I had previously dreamed of. Before this achievement, I had just dreamed of basically being able to get an engineering degree and have a steady job. However, after earning this achievement and seeing that I am capable of persevering, I now envision being able to do things that will truly have an impact on the world and actually help people. This has been something that I have strived to do all my life and seeing that I have the potential to do it to a greater extent in my career is not only exciting but also motivates me to continue to do my best to persist through hurdles. Overall, my greatest achievement being that I am in the top 5% of my high school class may not seem all that impressive, but to me it means a lot. It means that I am capable of more than I previously thought and that I have the ability to persevere through obstacles. It also means that I can hope to achieve goals greater than what I originally dreamed of. So, being in the top 5% of my class has taught me a lot about myself, my capabilities, and has also helped me to hope to accomplish greater things in the future.

This may sound a little weird, but I enjoy learning. I especially love learning new concepts and being able to make new connections to different concepts that I had not made before. This “connects” with my passion for STEM, as it is more often with STEM related concepts that I am able to make these connections. My enjoyment of STEM leads me to desire to create a cybersecurity program that can protect individuals’ digital information, no matter their socioeconomic status. My parents have dealt with the issue of identity theft in the past, so I know firsthand how difficult it is to try to resolve the problem. Knowing that my family, along with others, are more at risk of identity theft and other digital crimes simply due to their inability to afford digital security has moved me to make it my life’s goal to create a digital security system that will be available to everyone. Being a first generation student naturally means that neither of my parents earned a bachelor’s degree. As shown by statistics and our real life experiences, this means that my family and I are a low-income family. Being low-income certainly is a driving force behind my educational and career aspirations, but so is being first-generation. While I love STEM, I do believe that a part of the reason I wish to pursue it is because I know that it can give me a steady career, meaning that I will be able to truly provide for a potential future family. This is extremely important to me because I know the struggles that my family and I have gone through, and I want to do everything that I can do to not put that burden on anyone else. My career goal of making the cybersecurity system not only will most likely be able to provide me with a steady job, but it is also a sure fire way of being able to reduce some of the burdens that people carry. Knowing the things that my parents have experienced has made me that much more empathetic to others’ plights, which truly encourages me to try to help. So, being a first-generation student from a low-income family has given me that much more drive in trying to pursue my educational and career goals. While I love what I am trying to pursue, having the hope that I just may be able to help others who are in the position that my parents have been in gives me so much more drive. I want to not only help others protect their digital information, but I also want to earn a degree and do this career in order to ensure that I can provide for myself and my family in the future. I truly believe that being a first-generation student has given me so much ambition in trying to pursue my academic and career aspirations and that coming from a low-income family has only fostered that ambition and made it grow that much larger.

Everyone deals with personal challenges in their lives, but that fact simply does not make it any easier to deal with your own. It can be really hard sometimes to make yourself be the bigger person and deal with the adversity, especially when it would be much easier to just walk away. One time I experienced such an adversity was when I participated in a STEM program last summer. This program had different classes and assignments concerning differing subjects, like robotics, coding, and much more. Some of these assignments we had to complete were meant to be done in groups. One of these groups gave me the challenge that I have referred to. I was one of two girls in this specific group while there were several more boys. Anytime I made a suggestion, the boys would ignore me. Sometimes, one of the boys would make a suggestion (that I had previously made), and that suggestion would immediately be put to use, even though it was ignored when I had made it! I had never experienced such blatant sexism before, and it made me very frustrated. I believe that everything we go through happens for a reason. For me, this means that all the challenges and adversities that we experience, while difficult, help us to become better people. This means that while my experience in this group was very frustrating, it helped me. The way I viewed it was that as a woman going into STEM, which is a male-dominated field, there will most likely be many similar encounters. This experience taught me the importance of pushing past any prejudice and doing my best to get the job done. Yes, it will be frustrating, but it will also be that much more rewarding! Having the ability to push past obstacles like the one I experienced will not only help me to be a better person, but will also help my teamwork skills as well as showing me that I have the capability of overcoming difficult situations. So, while I did not enjoy the actual experience, this trial taught me many important things that I need to know in order to be successful in my future career. Basically, the way I dealt with this experience was by reminding myself that this adversity is happening for a reason. I also tried to remind myself that I will most likely experience many similar situations. These reminders helped me to find the strength that I needed in order to successfully overcome this adversity and be able to better its lessons today.

This may sound odd, but I love learning. This love has driven me to want to pursue higher education, in which I am striving to earn a degree in engineering, specifically computer engineering complete with a focus in cybersecurity. What influenced me to do this is my parents’ struggles. Both my parents received an associates degree from either a trade school or a community college. Even though they received degrees, they wanted to pursue careers in fields they were not degreed in. So, they followed their passions and started a business. Yet, with starting a business comes many financial struggles and I’ve seen firsthand how not having a steady job has affected them along with my sister and I. Seeing this, I wanted to be able to prevent my future family from experiencing the same thing, since I know it can be very hard and stressful. This, along with my love of learning new things, has driven me to want to achieve the best that I can for myself and my family. My career goal is to develop a different, yet secure and robust cybersecurity system that would be available to everyone, especially for those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. While there are already plenty of robust cybersecurity systems that exist, the ones that offer better security are very hard to afford if you do not have the monetary means. There are a couple of things that have influenced me to want to pursue this goal. One is my personal experience. My family often struggled financially, so there have been times when my family was not protected digitally because we did not have the means to get simple protection like LifeLock. As a result, they had their identity stolen. Another thing that influenced me was that during a recent summer program, it was brought to my attention that generally people with a lower socioeconomic status are often more at risk digitally. For example, they will often spend money at stores that are cheaper, but not as digitally secure as others. Therefore, they are more likely to have their card details stolen while someone who is of a higher socioeconomic status can afford to shop at more expensive stores that have better security with transactions. This resonates with me because I know that my family and I are more likely to not be secured digitally because of our lack of socioeconomic means. This made me want to help protect others from experiencing the same situation and stress, especially since there is often nothing they can do about it. I’ve always hated seeing injustice in my life, and since this particular example is something that I can relate to, it has driven me to want to create change for the better.

One time when I was younger, I electrocuted myself. I was trying to help my dad by turning the lights out, but for some reason the cover was not on the light switch. I was very short, so I jumped up to reach the switch, but I missed and the next thing I knew was that the tip of my finger had turned black and the lights went out. While I have had minimal harrowing adventures during the rest of my life, one part of this experience has stayed constant: I want to help others. I have sought to help others all throughout my life, and I strive to continue to do so, especially through love, faith, and community service. As 1 Corinthians 13:4 and 1 Corinthians 13:7 say, love is patient, kind, and it always protects, hopes, and perseveres. In everything that I say, think, and do to all people that I meet, I try to exemplify these values. I do my best to always love others, and while it is impossible for me to be loving all of the time since I am human, being loving is a priority for me. I feel like being helpful is such a great, but easy way of being loving. Helping someone is basically putting their needs before your own, and that is being loving! So, as I continue to strive to always be loving, one way I intend to do this is simply by helping people, because it is helping me to do something I want that follows what we are called to be. God is love, and following God requires faith and trust. I believe that helping others helps me to better my faith and trust in God. I think this is so because by helping others, I open myself up to their plights. This helps me to understand better the different hardships that people experience. Being able to see these hardships and the way that God works through them is simply amazing. It helps me by allowing me to see God plainly working in our lives, which makes it so much easier to place all my faith and trust in Him. Growing my faith encourages me to be helpful out of a desire to be loving. So, while it may seem convoluted, helping people grows my faith, and in turn, my faith encourages me to help others. Community service not only is loving, but it also allows me to help others. I have dedicated a lot of time to volunteering at an animal shelter, where I saw horrible cruelties that cats and dogs may experience. Although these are just animals, seeing their pain moves me to try to help them. Also, seeing how these animals can go on and, as animals commonly do, change a person’s life, allows me to feel that I may have had a part in helping that person. I intend to continue to volunteer at an animal shelter in college, because not only does my heart yearn for it, but I feel like it may truly have an impact on someone, even indirectly. Therefore, I intend to continue to do community service in order to continue helping others and making a difference in their lives. Altogether, I love helping others. I strive to do it each and every day of my life, and I believe that helping people truly makes a difference in their lives. I think that by helping others I can impact people, which can then impact the whole world, and it would all be done through love, faith, and community service.

Sometimes, having mental health issues makes you feel like the world is ending. As someone who is diagnosed with anxiety among other things, I get this feeling quite often. It is really hard to deal with and it often feels like it is impossible to triumph over it. Yet, you have to continue on because the world still spins. This basically sums up my experience with mental health, it is hard, but I just have to deal with it. However, through the support of my parents and my personal experiences with mental health issues, I can safely say that these issues have influenced my goals, relationships, and understanding of the world. My experiences with mental health have definitely shaped my goals throughout the years. Before I really had any personal experiences with mental health, my goals consisted of normal things, like going to college and getting a job. While I continue to have these goals today, my mental health experiences have added other goals like not getting anxious in crowded spaces or not having to say things over and over in my mind until it “feels” right. One specific goal I have that I know has changed due to my mental health is being able to turn in an essay without getting overly stressed about it. I remember in middle school that I was able to write an essay and submit it in one class period, with no anxiety of my grade or anything like that. However, in high school I realized that I was not capable of doing this and rather I would get extremely anxious about essays, to the point where I had to turn it in the day it was due, because otherwise it simply was not good enough. This has led to the creation of a goal in my mind to be able to write and submit an essay without feeling so anxious about it. I believe that this is a prime example of how my mental health has shaped my goals; it has caused me to create and change goals that boil down to being able to overcome my mental health struggles. Experiences with mental health have affected my relationships over the years. The understanding I have of myself has only increased the more I have dealt with my mental health. I have been able to know better who I am as a person as well as the different intrinsics of my personality. This includes knowing better my own triggers, what makes me feel better, and other things that vary from person to person. Being able to understand myself better helps me to understand my loved ones better. Developing the knowledge of these little details about myself has helped me to know how to look for those same things in others. Being able to see these details in others helps me to understand the little things that go into making them who they are, which then helps me to better understand who they are as a person overall. So, I would say that my experiences with mental health have helped me to better know who I am, which helps me to better understand my friends and family, allowing me to grow closer to them and for our relationships to strengthen. My experiences with mental health have changed my understanding of the world. My experiences have namely taught me the importance of patience. “You never know what someone is going through” is a very common saying, but I truly try to take this message to heart, especially when I account for my own mental health struggles. I know that personally, I may be having a bad day and something very minor happens that becomes the last straw. I completely break down and I feel even worse because it was something minor that caused this reaction. I try to remember that multiple things led to this reaction, not just one. I strive to exercise this mindset in everything I do. Maybe the clerk at the store has a bad attitude or the person on the sidewalk is really rude. It can be frustrating trying to deal with these situations, but I try to remember that I have no idea what causes these actions, and while it could be nothing, it could also be that the person is having a really horrible day, leading them to act like that. I know that I would want someone to act with care if I had a big reaction to something minor, and so I try to do that for others by remembering that I “never know what someone is going through.” Altogether, my experiences with mental health have shaped my goals, relationships, and overall understanding of the world. My goals have changed by becoming more centered around overcoming my mental struggles. My relationships have improved because I am able to understand others better, since I understand myself better due to my mental health experiences. My understanding of the world has changed because my mental health struggles have taught me to always be patient as everyone is struggling with something. As difficult as it is to deal with all my mental health problems, I am glad that they have helped me to better understand myself, others, and the world around me.

I have never been very good at soccer. I played a bit in elementary school and then I did not touch the sport again until high school. Despite not being the best player on the field, I came to really love the sport and played it all four years of high school. Soccer not only taught me things like teamwork, communication, and trust, but also things like humility and perseverance. As with any team sport, soccer taught me a lot about teamwork. It taught me how to work with others, especially learning others' weaknesses and strengths and how to compliment them. This has affected my life by helping me learn how to best collaborate in any setting. Because I often have to work with others, knowing how to do so well is extremely important and thus this lesson has impacted me greatly. Soccer also taught me a great deal about communication. Being forced to effectively articulate my thoughts in the middle of a game has taught me how to efficiently communicate in all other aspects of life. Being able to convey my thoughts has helped me to avoid miscommunication issues with friends and family among other things. It has helped me to better relay my own thoughts and to better understand others’. Since communication is truly everywhere in life, learning how to do so effectively has greatly impacted my life by making everything easier to accomplish. Soccer has also taught me how to better trust others. In the middle of a game, you simply do not have the time to doubt someone. You are forced to trust in your teammates because if you do not then nothing will go right. Knowing how to have faith in someone is really important in life, but it can be hard to do. Learning how to trust from playing soccer has helped me to know how to have confidence in other aspects of life. Being able to trust somebody makes life that much easier, and so knowing this skill has tremendously impacted my life in a positive way. I have truly learned humility from playing soccer. Since I was never the best on the field, I had to quickly learn how to let go of my pride and be able to accept others’ criticisms. This has helped me to be more humble in my everyday life. Knowing how to be modest has enhanced my relationships and has helped me to be a better person. Because learning how to be humble has positively affected so many aspects of my life, I feel that this lesson from soccer has deeply and truly impacted me. Perseverance is also something that I learned from soccer. Soccer can be difficult, and choosing to continue to try my best over and over again has taught me the importance of perseverance. I learned that you cannot gain anything if you stop trying, and so I now know that not giving up is one of the most rewarding things you can do. This has impacted my life by giving me the strength I need in order to keep trying. This has helped me to accomplish things I did not know I could do. Learning perseverance has truly impacted my life because it has helped me to believe in myself and know to never give up. Altogether, soccer has taught me important lessons concerning teamwork, communication, trust, humility, and perseverance. These lessons have impacted my life in so many ways that are similar, yet different and I am truly thankful that soccer was able to teach me these lessons.

I wish I could say that I started participating in community service out of a love for my community or a drive to make a difference, but I really only began because it was a graduation requirement for my school. However, I came to immensely enjoy the work I was doing. I worked with dogs at a no-kill animal shelter, where most of the dogs had behavioral issues. Working with these dogs and the shelter staff not only taught me valuable skills that I will be able to use the rest of my life, but also that it is possible to create change. Sometimes it can feel like we are stuck going through the motions, but working at this shelter and seeing the behavioral improvement the dogs experienced showed me that change has every possibility to occur. This has driven me to want to create a cybersecurity program that is available to everyone no matter their socioeconomic status in order to protect their digital information. Working at the animal shelter showed me that change can happen, causing me to aspire to create change in my community by creating something that can help everyone in so many ways.

1) My motivation is to make the world a better place. If I could do anything, it would be to develop a robust cybersecurity system that would be available to everyone, especially those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. While there are already plenty of cybersecurity systems that exist, those that offer better security are inaccessible if you do not have the monetary means. My personal experience is one reason I want to do this. My family often struggled financially, so there have been times when my family had no digital protection and had their identity stolen. Another influence was a summer program that brought to my attention how people with a lower socioeconomic status are often more at risk digitally. For example, they will often shop at stores that are cheaper, but not as digitally secure as others. Therefore, they are more likely to have their card details stolen, while someone who is of a higher socioeconomic status can afford to shop at more expensive stores that have better security protocols. This resonates with me because I know that my family and I are likely to not be digitally secured because of our lack of socioeconomic means. This makes me want to protect others from experiencing the same situation and stress, especially since there is often nothing they can do. I’ve always hated seeing injustice in my life, and especially since this injustice is something that I can relate to, I am driven to want to create change for the better. 2) The most exciting thing about STEM to me is the innovation. I love how everything in STEM is constantly shifting and changing. Nothing ever remains the same and everyone is working together to discover the newest and biggest thing. I want to use this constant innovation in order to create something that can help and benefit everyone in the world. I feel like I can make a positive impact on the world through a job in information technology by creating a program that can protect people’s digital information. The threat of a person’s digital information being stolen or compromised is ever-increasing in this technological age. I feel as though it is extremely important to ensure that a person can feel comfortable and confident in their digital security. I think if I were to create something that could protect everyone digitally, it would seriously impact the world. While people with more socioeconomic status may have an easier time finding digital protection, those without that status may not even have the opportunity to have this protection. Ensuring that everyone can have digital protection ensures that everyone’s data is kept safe and secure. This not only protects peoples’ digital information, but also their livelihoods. Every person deserves to have their livelihoods and information protected, no matter their socioeconomic status. By creating something that could protect everyone’s digital information, no matter their financial means, I feel like I could in a way protect everyone, which would be sure to have a positive impact on many lives. 3) Last summer, I participated in a STEM program that had different courses oriented towards different aspects of STEM, like robotics, coding, and much more. Some of the "assignments" we had to complete were meant to be done in groups. One of these groups posed an obstacle: my suggestions not being considered. I was one of two girls in the group while there were several more boys. Anytime I made a suggestion, the boys would ignore me. Sometimes, one of the boys would make a suggestion that I had previously made, and that suggestion would immediately be put to use! I had never experienced such blatant sexism before, and it made me very frustrated. Once I calmed down, I saw the silver-lining in this experience. As a woman going into STEM, a male-dominated field, there will most likely be many similar encounters. This experience taught me the importance of pushing past any prejudice and doing my best to get the job done. Yes, it will be frustrating, but it will also be that much more rewarding! Having the ability to push past obstacles like the one I experienced will not only help me to be a better person, but will also help my teamwork skills as well as showing me that I have the capability of overcoming difficult situations. So, while I did not enjoy the actual experience, this trial taught me many important things that I need to know in order to be successful in my future career.