I watch the student I am tutoring scrunch her face as she tries to solve the math problem, her puzzled face blaringly enlarged on my screen. Did she not understand the content? Sweat danced at the sides of my forehead .Find a way out of the bubble. Life is full of challenges. Now that may be a pessimistic viewpoint and somewhat of a hackneyed phrase, but it is the truth. We are stuck in airtight bubbles that slowly suffocate us until we find a way out. When the pandemic hit, our country turned to chaos. Once school started back up, due to the lack of engagement in virtual classes, many students, myself included, saw a decline in our grades. Most parents immediately remedied that issue and hired personal tutors, but what about the students whose parents just lost their jobs? What about the students who lost a parent due to COVID-19 and only have one parent’s paycheck to support the entire family's necessities? There was no way these families could afford another expense, like a personal tutor, on top of their monthly bills that they were already struggling to pay. At that moment I realized I had only two options. I could either scream into the void about how unfair life is and call it a day or I could take a deep breath and try to put together this small piece of the complex puzzle that we call life. The decision was evident, and I reached out to several peers to collaborate on a roadmap to start a potential free tutoring organization. Having tunnel vision, I spent countless hours after midnight under the dim desk lamp in my room teaching myself the basics of HTML, to build a website for the organization. At last, I launched The Gift of Learning, an organization dedicated to providing free virtual tutoring for students who can not afford paid personal tutors. To ensure having qualified tutors, I conducted Tutor Bootcamps to prepare the tutors for their sessions. However, no matter how much planning is put into an organization, it is bound to have a hiccup somewhere along the road. After the launch, there was a sudden peak of students and not enough tutors to suffice. I immediately cleared up my schedule and volunteered myself as a replacement tutor. Additionally, I soon realized that I was spending too much time manually matching students to tutors, crucial time that could be better invested in another component of managing the organization. My programming mindset immediately jumped to the occasion and realized that any methodical and repeating task can be replaced by automation, so I wrote a Java program to efficiently match the students to the tutors. Though life stills often seem like an endless Monday, one bad day filled with problems after another, it is up to me what I make of it. I could either think of it as a setback, or I can see it as an opportunity to find a solution. My mind returns to the issue at hand and I focus on the perplexed look painted on my student’s face. My student depends on me, and I cannot fail her. I won’t let the bubble suffocate me. I count to five, and then I calmly re-explain the topic. As with the hundreds of other problems I’ve faced, I remember that every problem has a solution, and I can find it. With resiliency and determination, I can find a way out of my bubble.

I watch the student I am tutoring scrunch her face as she tries to solve the math problem, her puzzled face blaringly enlarged on my screen. Did she not understand the content? Sweat danced at the sides of my forehead and I used the sleeve of my shirt to wipe it away. Find a way out of the bubble. Life is full of challenges. Now that may be a pessimistic viewpoint and somewhat of a hackneyed phrase, but it is the truth. We are stuck in airtight bubbles that slowly suffocate us until we find a way out. When the pandemic hit, our country turned to chaos. Once school started back up, due to the lack of engagement in virtual classes, many students, myself included, saw a decline in our grades. Most parents immediately remedied that issue and hired personal tutors, but what about the students whose parents just lost their jobs? What about the students who lost a parent due to Covid-19 and only have one parent’s paycheck to support the entire family's necessities? There was no way these families could afford another expense, like a personal tutor, on top of their monthly bills that they were already struggling to pay. At that moment I realized I had only two options. I could either scream into the void about how unfair life is and call it a day or I could take a deep breath and try to put together this small piece of the complex puzzle that we call life. The decision was evident, and I reached out to several peers to collaborate on a roadmap to start a potential free tutoring organization. Having tunnel vision, I spent countless hours after midnight under the dim desk lamp in my room teaching myself the basics of HTML, to build a website for the organization. At last, I launched The Gift of Learning, an organization dedicated to providing free virtual tutoring for students who can not afford paid personal tutors. By meticulously researching and collaborating with various experts of educational organizations, I compiled an abundance of resources and teaching material for the tutors to use to help their students. Additionally, to ensure having qualified tutors, I conducted Tutor Bootcamps to prepare the tutors for their sessions. However, no matter how much planning is put into an organization, it is bound to have a hiccup somewhere along the road. After the launch, there was a sudden peak of students and not enough tutors to suffice. I immediately cleared up my schedule and volunteered myself as a replacement tutor, seeing as I was the founder of the organization and I had to take full responsibility for any mishaps within it. Additionally, I soon realized that I was spending too much time manually matching students to tutors, crucial time that could be better invested in another component of managing the organization. My programming mindset immediately jumped to the occasion and realized that any methodical and repeating task can be replaced by automation, so I wrote a Java program to efficiently match the students to the tutors. Though life stills often seem like an endless Monday, one bad day filled with problems after another, it is up to me what I make of it. I could either think of it as a setback, or I can see it as an opportunity to find a solution. My mind returns to the issue at hand and I focus on the perplexed look painted on my student’s face. My student depends on me, and I cannot fail her. I won’t let the bubble suffocate me. I count to five, and then I calmly re-explain the topic. As with the hundreds of other problems I’ve faced, I remember that every problem has a solution, and I can find it. With patience and determination, I can find a way out of my bubble.

Electric kettles: a quick way to make tea in the UK, but a necessity in India, my birthplace. While it is a country rich in culture, India has one underlying problem, water contamination, which causes thousands of deaths yearly. While we are fortunate to have easily accessible drinking water in the West, it is not the same case in India. During my trips back to India, I vividly remember my cousins having to boil and re-boil water on the stove, sometimes suffering mild burns from the proximity to flames, just to drink a cup of water. 70% of India’s surface water is contaminated, and only a small fraction of it is treated before it is pumped to millions of Indian households. With the help of electric kettles, Indian children and adults can safely boil and drink their water. However, it is just a small victory, as millions of Indians do not have access and can’t afford electric kettles. The engineering world is constantly developing. There are always new problems and better solutions arising, which draw me towards this field. Although there are many efforts underway on detecting if the water is safe or not, there aren’t as many resources available in the more rural areas of India that work efficiently to decontaminate water. I am fascinated by how the University of Virginia is resilient during these unprecedented times and is using autosampler robots to collect water and determine if it contains a strain of the COVID-19 virus as part of their ongoing research projects. Seeing this, I know that without a doubt, with the guidance of the engineering professors at the University of Virginia, I will be able to develop an apparatus to combat water contamination that will be more cost-efficient and accessible than an electric kettle.

With a country that is many times referred to as a melting pot of ethnicities, which can often feel like a misnomer, it far too often shines a negative light on the minority individuals living in it. Growing up as an Indian in America presents challenges of being ridiculed for your thick accent, being looked down upon for your skin color, and being scared of sticking out. Growing up as an Indian in America is growing up disadvantaged before you can even speak. The melanin in my skin is a banner that is wrapped all over me and screams I am an “alien” to this country before I even introduce myself. I am surrounded by numerous generalized stereotypes and made fun of by individuals who have grown up with American culture. However, they aren’t to blame. They live in a little bubble, their only connection to other cultures being movies, books, and the media. Unfortunately, these outlets are even worse. They are filled with assumptions that all Indians have arranged marriages and only eat curry. Just because my culture wasn’t the dominant culture in the United States, I began thinking that it was primitive and something worth being ashamed of. I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood, and my greatest fear was for my peers to think that my family’s customs were weird and irregular. Thus, the mission: Become a Perfect American and blend in began. From there, the answer to, “Where are you from,” went from India to Northern Virginia. I soon went from looking forward to being greeted by the aroma of my mother’s cooking after school, to daily Starbucks runs with friends. The need to blend in consumed my identity, resulting in the million-dollar question: who was I? Who knew it was possible to have an identity crisis at the raw age of 12 years old? Somewhere along the journey of completely assimilating into the American culture, I realized that pretending was gut-wrenching. Thankfully, I came to that realization before I completely dyed my hair blonde, in an attempt to look more like the girls in my high school. The truth was, trying to blend in with the American culture just wasn’t me. By trying to go along with the American norm and laughing with my friends when that new Indian girl brings Indian food, instead of boxed mac and cheese, I was only giving substance to the stigma surrounding Indian culture. Why should I hide a culture that is full of life, color, mouth watering food, and various diverse festivities; a culture that believes in unity in diversity, religious tolerance, and universal acceptance? Being different doesn't make me weird; it makes me unique. However, I am still a proud American. I am all for dressing up and lighting fireworks for Diwali and then stuffing myself on Thanksgiving a couple weeks later. I am all about curling up on the sofa on Friday night to binge-watch throwback Bollywood movies and then finishing the Percy Jackson series the next day. These things define me, and I can’t sacrifice either of my cultures if I want to be true to myself. My two cultures have shaped the way I occupy space in this world. I still don’t have the answer to the million-dollar question, but I am now proud to embrace my unique culture and accept who I am.

I watch the student I am tutoring scrunch her face as she tries to solve the math problem, her puzzled face blaringly enlarged on my screen. Did she not understand the content? Sweat danced at the sides of my forehead and I used the sleeve of my shirt to wipe it away. Find a way out of the bubble. Life is full of challenges. Now that may be a pessimistic viewpoint and somewhat of a hackneyed phrase, but it is the truth. We are stuck in airtight bubbles that slowly suffocate us until we find a way out. When the pandemic hit, our country turned to chaos. Once school started back up, due to the lack of engagement in virtual classes, many students, myself included, saw a decline in our grades. Most parents immediately remedied that issue and hired personal tutors, but what about the students whose parents just lost their jobs? What about the students who lost a parent due to Covid-19 and only have one parent’s paycheck to support the entire family's necessities? There was no way these families could afford another expense, like a personal tutor, on top of their monthly bills that they were already struggling to pay. At that moment I realized I had only two options. I could either scream into the void about how unfair life is and call it a day or I could take a deep breath and try to put together this small piece of the complex puzzle that we call life. The decision was evident, and I reached out to several peers to collaborate on a roadmap to start a potential free tutoring organization. Having tunnel vision, I spent countless hours after midnight under the dim desk lamp in my room teaching myself the basics of HTML, to build a website for the organization. At last, I launched The Gift of Learning, an organization dedicated to providing free virtual tutoring for students who can not afford paid personal tutors. By meticulously researching and collaborating with various experts of educational organizations, I compiled an abundance of resources and teaching material for the tutors to use to help their students. Additionally, to ensure having qualified tutors, I conducted Tutor Bootcamps to prepare the tutors for their sessions. However, no matter how much planning is put into an organization, it is bound to have a hiccup somewhere along the road. After the launch, there was a sudden peak of students and not enough tutors to suffice. I immediately cleared up my schedule and volunteered myself as a replacement tutor, seeing as I was the founder of the organization and I had to take full responsibility for any mishaps within it. Additionally, I soon realized that I was spending too much time manually matching students to tutors, crucial time that could be better invested in another component of managing the organization. My programming mindset immediately jumped to the occasion and realized that any methodical and repeating task can be replaced by automation, so I wrote a Java program to efficiently match the students to the tutors. Though life stills often seem like an endless Monday, one bad day filled with problems after another, it is up to me what I make of it. I could either think of it as a setback, or I can see it as an opportunity to find a solution. My mind returns to the issue at hand and I focus on the perplexed look painted on my student’s face. My student depends on me, and I cannot fail her. I won’t let the bubble suffocate me. I count to five, and then I calmly re-explain the topic. As with the hundreds of other problems I’ve faced, I remember that every problem has a solution, and I can find it. With patience and determination, I can find a way out of my bubble.

Electric kettles: a quick way to make tea in the UK, but a necessity in India, my birthplace. While it is a country rich in culture, India has one underlying problem, water contamination, which causes thousands of deaths yearly. While we are fortunate to have easily accessible drinking water in the West, it is not the same case in India. During my trips back to India, I vividly remember my cousins having to boil and re-boil water on the stove, sometimes suffering mild burns from the proximity to flames, just to drink a cup of water. 70% of India’s surface water is contaminated, and only a small fraction of it is treated before it is pumped to millions of Indian households. With the help of electric kettles, Indian children and adults can safely boil and drink their water. However, it is just a small victory, as millions of Indians do not have access and can’t afford electric kettles. The engineering world is constantly developing. There are always new problems and better solutions arising, which draw me towards this field. Although there are many efforts underway on detecting if the water is safe or not, there aren’t as many resources available in the more rural areas of India that work efficiently to decontaminate water. I am fascinated by how the University of Virginia is resilient during these unprecedented times and is using autosampler robots to collect water and determine if it contains a strain of the COVID-19 virus as part of their ongoing research projects. Seeing this, I know that without a doubt, with the guidance of the engineering professors at the University of Virginia, I will be able to develop an apparatus to combat water contamination that will be more cost-efficient and accessible than an electric kettle.