My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

Growing up, I always felt as though aspects of my identity were competing against one another. When I would visit my family in Pakistan, all the kids would laugh at my “American accent.” Yet at school in New York, they would say that my accent was “so weird.” My classmates would point out that I say random words like “flour” differently and they would make me repeat these words over and over again until I understood just how different I was. I found that I was too American to be Pakistani and I was too Pakistani to be American, forcing me to live in isolation. However, this was until I went to a Women of Color meeting my second week of high school. I was in awe of the fact that rather than focusing on how every face, accent, and story differed from one another– we were told that we all belonged in that space together. This is because, instead of dividing our community into neat little boxes, WOC acknowledged the collective experience of being a woman of color. “Interdependency between women” is at the heart of WOC, providing “a freedom which allows the I to be,” as Audre Lorde once said. Instead of looking around the room in fear that I was too different from everyone else, I could just breathe. I could just be. Because of how WOC transformed my idea of community, I worked to become the co-president of WOC at the end of ninth grade. Ever since, I have strived to show others– especially underclassmen– how women of color are more powerful together rather than apart. WOC empowers the self by reminding us that we do not need to look the same in order to belong. WOC teaches us that is enough to just be. After high school, as I move on to become a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, and as I become an adult in the workforce, I will always hold the lessons I have learned from being a Pakistani American and the leader of the Woman of Color Affinity Group. I will always, in all communities that I am a part of, fight for the inclusion of people of color- especially female Muslims such as myself. I will always ensure that I help form a safe and strong community for my other fellow women of color wherever I end up going in life.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

Growing up, I always felt as though aspects of my identity were competing against one another. When I would visit my family in Pakistan, all the kids would laugh at my “American accent.” Yet at school in New York, they would say that my accent was “so weird.” My classmates would point out that I say random words like “flour” differently and they would make me repeat these words over and over again until I understood just how different I was. I found that I was too American to be Pakistani and I was too Pakistani to be American, forcing me to live in isolation. However, this was until I went to a Women of Color meeting my second week of high school. I was in awe of the fact that rather than focusing on how every face, accent, and story differed from one another– we were told that we all belonged in that space together. This is because, instead of dividing our community into neat little boxes, WOC acknowledged the collective experience of being a woman of color. “Interdependency between women” is at the heart of WOC, providing “a freedom which allows the I to be,” as Audre Lorde once said. Instead of looking around the room in fear that I was too different from everyone else, I could just breathe. I could just be. Because of how WOC transformed my idea of community, I worked to become the co-president of WOC at the end of ninth grade. Ever since, I have strived to show others– especially underclassmen– how women of color are more powerful together rather than apart. WOC empowers the self by reminding us that we do not need to look the same in order to belong. WOC teaches us that is enough to just be. After high school, I will hopefully move on to become a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania if I receive enough aid and scholarships and there, I will always hold the lessons I have learned from being a Pakistani American and the leader of the Woman of Color Affinity Group. I will always, in all communities that I am a part of, fight for the inclusion of people of color- especially female Muslims such as myself. I will always ensure that I help form a safe and strong community for my other fellow women of color wherever I end up going in life.

Growing up, I always felt as though aspects of my identity were competing against one another. When I would visit my family in Pakistan, all the kids would laugh at my “American accent.” Yet at school in New York, they would say that my accent was “so weird.” My classmates would point out that I say random words like “flour” differently and they would make me repeat these words over and over again until I understood just how different I was. I found that I was too American to be Pakistani and I was too Pakistani to be American, forcing me to live in isolation. However, this was until I went to a Women of Color meeting my second week of high school. I was in awe of the fact that rather than focusing on how every face, accent, and story differed from one another– we were told that we all belonged in that space together. This is because, instead of dividing our community into neat little boxes, WOC acknowledged the collective experience of being a woman of color. “Interdependency between women” is at the heart of WOC, providing “a freedom which allows the I to be,” as Audre Lorde once said. Instead of looking around the room in fear that I was too different from everyone else, I could just breathe. I could just be. Because of how WOC transformed my idea of community, I worked to become the co-president of WOC at the end of ninth grade. Ever since, I have strived to show others– especially underclassmen– how women of color are more powerful together rather than apart. WOC empowers the self by reminding us that we do not need to look the same in order to belong. WOC teaches us that is enough to just be. After high school, as I move on to become a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, and as I become an adult in the workforce, I will always hold the lessons I have learned from being a Pakistani American and the leader of the Woman of Color Affinity Group. I will always, in all communities that I am a part of, fight for the inclusion of people of color- especially female Muslims such as myself. I will always ensure that I help form a safe and strong community for my other fellow women of color wherever I end up going in life.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. If I receive enough aid and scholarships, I will study healthcare at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. If I receive enough aid and scholarships, I will study healthcare at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

Growing up, I always felt as though aspects of my identity were competing against one another. When I would visit my family in Pakistan, all the kids would laugh at my “American accent.” Yet at school in New York, they would say that my accent was “so weird.” My classmates would point out that I say random words like “flour” differently and they would make me repeat these words over and over again until I understood just how different I was. I found that I was too American to be Pakistani and I was too Pakistani to be American, forcing me to live in isolation. However, this was until I went to a Women of Color meeting my second week of high school. I was in awe of the fact that rather than focusing on how every face, accent, and story differed from one another– we were told that we all belonged in that space together. This is because, instead of dividing our community into neat little boxes, WOC acknowledged the collective experience of being a woman of color. “Interdependency between women” is at the heart of WOC, providing “a freedom which allows the I to be,” as Audre Lorde once said. Instead of looking around the room in fear that I was too different from everyone else, I could just breathe. I could just be. Because of how WOC transformed my idea of community, I worked to become the co-president of WOC at the end of ninth grade. Ever since, I have strived to show others– especially underclassmen– how women of color are more powerful together rather than apart. WOC empowers the self by reminding us that we do not need to look the same in order to belong. WOC teaches us that is enough to just be. After high school, as I move on to become a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, and as I become an adult in the workforce, I will always hold the lessons I have learned from being a Pakistani American and the leader of the Woman of Color Affinity Group. I will always, in all communities that I am a part of, fight for the inclusion of people of color- especially female Muslims such as myself. I will always ensure that I help form a safe and strong community for my other fellow women of color wherever I end up going in life.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

My life was put on pause when struggling with an eating disorder my sophomore year of high school. I isolated myself from my friends who were concerned about my weight, I hid from the cafeteria, and I could not dance because I had to go to the doctors’ office everyday after school. However, when I came to Trinity each morning, it seemed as though I had to just continue on– despite the fact that there was, and still is, a national emergency in adolescent mental health. When my school would rarely address the matter, they would simply say that they understand many of my classmates and I grapple with mental health issues. And that was it. I felt as though my school was telling me, “we understand that you have an eating disorder, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.” Because of this, I felt alone when navigating my own mental health issues and as if I was a defective member of our community. Though this was until one day in biology class. When teaching us about proteins in the cellular membrane, my teacher gave my class the example of serotonin receptors and talked about how SSRIs disrupt how serotonin would typically pass through these receptors for people with depression. This brief moment led me to spend hours at home researching the neuroscience behind eating disorders. My research helped me understand that it was not my fault that I struggled with mental health issues. I could not just wake up one day and decide to “eat more,” as everyone would tell me, because the neurobiology of my brain had actually changed. Because studying the neuroscience behind eating disorders helped destigmatize what I was going through, I realized that I could make a difference to teens across New York. Instead of adding on to the narrative about how pervasive mental health issues are, I wanted to create a mental health resource that actually explained the neuroscience behind common mental health conditions to help destigmatize them for my peers. I then reached out to a Trinity alum, Alissa Mayers, who directs the Public Programs office at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute. Together, we created Neuroscience Explained which simplifies the science behind mental health issues into engaging, short comic strips. We are currently working on partnering with the NY Department of Education, the New York Public Library, and numerous Manhattan Independent schools to display the comic strips in places that many students in New York would be able to interact with and benefit from. At the University of Pennsylvania next year, I plan to study healthcare in order to expand my work in mental health. At UPenn, I will learn how to develop innovations that directly support people. While Neuroscience Explained aims to help destigmatize mental health issues, UPenn's healthcare program will ensure that it does. As the great writer Toni Morrison once said, I do not just want to “touch” people but “move” them, and being a part of the UPenn community will allow me to do this and develop the field of healthcare and mental health myself.

Growing up, I always felt as though aspects of my identity were competing against one another. When I would visit my family in Pakistan, all the kids would laugh at my “American accent.” Yet at school in New York, they would say that my accent was “so weird.” My classmates would point out that I say random words like “flour” differently and they would make me repeat these words over and over again until I understood just how different I was. I found that I was too American to be Pakistani and I was too Pakistani to be American, forcing me to live in isolation. However, this was until I went to a Women of Color meeting my second week of high school. I was in awe of the fact that rather than focusing on how every face, accent, and story differed from one another– we were told that we all belonged in that space together. This is because, instead of dividing our community into neat little boxes, WOC acknowledged the collective experience of being a woman of color. “Interdependency between women” is at the heart of WOC, providing “a freedom which allows the I to be,” as Audre Lorde once said. Instead of looking around the room in fear that I was too different from everyone else, I could just breathe. I could just be. Because of how WOC transformed my idea of community, I worked to become the co-president of WOC at the end of ninth grade. Ever since, I have strived to show others– especially underclassmen– how women of color are more powerful together rather than apart. WOC empowers the self by reminding us that we do not need to look the same in order to belong. WOC teaches us that is enough to just be. After high school, as I move on to become a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, and as I become an adult in the workforce, I will always hold the lessons I have learned from being a Pakistani American and the leader of the Woman of Color Affinity Group. I will always, in all communities that I am a part of, fight for the inclusion of people of color- especially female Muslims such as myself. I will always ensure that I help form a safe and strong community for my other fellow women of color wherever I end up going in life.