Although "brutal" helped express my pain from teenage misery, and "traitor" expressed the sorrow of my broken heart, it is Olivia Rodrigo's "hope ur ok" that shows me the true reflection of the person I am trying to become. It is the only one among her songs which focuses outside of her self-centered music and asks us about what we leave behind for other people. Listening to "hope ur ok," I feel like looking into my future self, wondering whether I made it through all of my difficult journey. The sentence that hits closest to home is this: "I hope you know how proud I am you were created / With the courage to unlearn all of their hatred." Coming of age I was given a mold of religion and family that did not match the contours of my soul and who it adored. Learning to unlearn everything I was taught about the religions that felt like prisons to me, learning to disassemble all the family dynamics that were based on the notion of conditional love, has not been a revolution. No, it has been a slow and painstaking process of excavation. While my friends were having fun living out the freedoms of their youth, I was within myself learning to break down belief systems and build myself anew. This is what the quiet means for my life. It is the quiet of someone looking back on someone they are no longer in contact with but whom left an indelible impression on them. I always ask myself whether I am going to become that person to someone else. I have stopped myself from pursuing relationships, I have given up my nightlife and weekends just so I could work double as hard as my peers in order to make sure that this would not become my upper limit. But this is all silent labor. No crowds that cheer, but someone choosing discipline instead of distractions, someone who forgives their relatives with no apology. However, I ask myself the question through Olivia’s song: “I hope you’re okay.” I am making myself live well, walk with the burden on my legs. I am hoping that this quiet resilience is making a difference somewhere, that one person saw me pick myself up after being beaten down by my own history and thought, “If they can make it, maybe I can too.” I may never get any form of confirmation; I don't expect anyone to make a song about me. However, I have come to realize that the impact is not in being remembered. I view it as the integrity of the walk itself. I am doing everything I can so that the next generation in my family will not need to learn so many lessons on forgetting hate. But the methods of…if they do. I am walking strong so that I can finally take rest later on in my life. Olivia is singing to someone who she no longer talks to, but the appreciation she feels for their perseverance is evident. I want to be worthy of that appreciation, but not from her. From my future self who will look back in ten years' time. I want to tell that former self that "We did it". "We unlearned it". "We chose better. To believe in more". Even if everyone else fails to see the struggle, I know that simply by not giving up, I am making my mark on this world. I am trying hard. Working hard. Quietly. And I am doing what I have set out to do.

In high school, my volunteering experience was marked by tasks others gave me: collect trash, set up science fair, judge robotic competition. I enjoyed showing up, but I realized I was a comfortable follower executing someone else's close-to-heart cause. Dissatisfied, I missed something personal. An opening came with YouthRoots, a nonprofit treating youth as genuine co-architects of change. With a handful of fellow students, we were handed a blank paper, a chance to plan our own heartfelt cause. Getting to know each other, we learned we were all affected by mental health. Curious of this scale, we crafted a survey to learn community needs. I remember the sting of emailing every teacher I could, and only one responding back. Although feeling doubtful, we pushed forward with the 120 responses we gathered. As we reviewed, one overwhelming theme was supplemented: mental health. Specifically, the devastating gap between recognizing a struggle and knowing how to handle it. That discovery became our mission. To raise funds to advocate proactive ways to support mental wellbeing. To fund this, we pitched to local businesses, enduring wave after wave of ghosted emails. Many teammates never got the chance to present given so many donors vanished after initial reach-outs. But through YouthRoots' network, I secured a seat before a room of adult shareholders. The weight of those survey respondents pressed on me. Standing there was terrifying, but also electrifying. I had to ditch my nerves and remember the sessions of our practice; to articulate the urgent why behind the what, anticipate tough questions, and weave our respondents' stories into a compelling call for investment. After eight weeks of hustle, we raised $1,200. Our work wasn't done. Vetting organizations carefully, we scrutinized financial records, realizing our modest sum needed a partner who valued intentionality over scale. We landed with Project Helping, a local Denver nonprofit who planned to invest our funds directly into mental wellness kits and other volunteerism. They were the perfect donation. This process evolved my understanding of service. I entered with the idealistic assumption that a worthy cause naturally attracts support. The cold reality of empty inboxes dispelled that naivety. I learned that silence is rarely malice but more often, the busy skepticism of those who have seen many student ambitions fizzle. Impactful change requires not just a compelling story, but the thick skin to keep knocking. These lessons carry me to my later and current acts of service. At GRIPTAPE, I mentored students and helped edit videos of their narratives; applying the patience and adaptability garnered when our survey responses felt insufficient. At school in Boston, I’m picking a weed infected patch of grass to landscape, inspiring others to later join and get this local church in tip top shape, leading the way YouthRoots taught me. In both, I carried forward the hard-earned knowledge that leadership is more than just getting people to show up, but staying committed when others walk away. Service-based leadership matters because it takes our empathy and tests it against silence and doubt, and forges it into the persistence needed to deliver. Students Today Leaders Forever understands this. Their mission mirrors what I experienced when I planned, pitched, and delivered that project. I am not a leader because I stand above. I am a leader because I stand with. I’m ready to plan, act, and serve. YouthRoots taught me to stop asking what I could do and just start. That shift from helper to planner, is the quiet revolution I carry today. And it is the leadership I will continue to grow, for my community and for myself.

Being a Black student in the field of engineering, I have come to realize that many communities, especially Black communities, are often not given the opportunity to benefit from the opportunities that exist within the field of STEM. This experience has changed my approach to learning. Engineering is not just a field that seeks to create systems or equations; it is a field that seeks to create solutions to better the lives of people. One experience that changed my approach to learning was my experience with Engineering Without Borders. In this experience, my team was given the opportunity to partner with a school community in Kenya to help them deal with the issue of water access. The school had a borehole that provided water for the people in the school community, but access to clean drinking water was still a challenge. In my experience with the team, I contributed to the research that was done to create a filtration system that would help provide clean drinking water for the people in the school community, which was over 160 people. In addition to that, I have been working on engaging my own community in STEM education. Through my internship at GripTape, I mentored young students in self-directed learning challenges. I helped facilitate conversations that encouraged young students to explore their passions, ask tough questions, and consider how they learn. I did not simply answer their questions but instead used Socratic questioning to help them learn on their own. Seeing young students gain confidence in their ability to learn how to think critically reminded me that being a leader is not just about being at the front but about creating an environment that allows others to succeed. In addition to that, I have been working on personal engineering projects that help me connect STEM with education and sustainability. I created a mobile irrigation terrarium system that uses a microcontroller, soil sensors, a relay module, and a water pump. While I was designing it, I saw it as an engineering challenge. However, it quickly turned into something more. I saw that I could use it as an educational tool. I hope to create terrariums that can be donated to schools. This will help young students learn about ecosystems, sustainability, and electronics. These experiences have helped me shape my view that STEM education is something that is accessible, interesting, and relevant to real-world problems. I believe that by pursuing an engineering degree, I will be able to further develop my understanding of electronics, the environment, and sustainable design in ways that help me further develop technologies that contribute to both environmental sustainability and STEM education. In terms of my plans for the future, I hope that I will be able to further extend the opportunities that I have created with my irrigation terrariums and STEM kits to schools that might not necessarily have access to the same level of STEM resources. For me, engineering is not just about innovation; it is about creating opportunities. I hope that by continuing my education in engineering, I will continue to create opportunities for students to see themselves as part of the future of STEM.

While my interest in pursuing a career in electrical engineering was not born out of a definitive moment or realization, I think it is safe to say that curiosity about how unknown systems influence our world around us is what drives my interest in this field. I see electricity run through our walls, observe how sensors pick up data without our conscious knowledge, and recognize how electronics can convert our ideas into devices that do not simply exist, but instead serve a purpose. In the midst of a very recent period of goalful suspension in my academic track, I took a semi-gap year to reflect on the direction in which I had been moving. Achievement meant pleasing others, rather than setting my own course, for much of my life. In this period of semi-gap year, I have come to learn an essential fact about what it is that I want to do with my life, to make the daily life of others better, particularly in terms of sustainable tech. Such is the power of this knowledge that I began designing a mobile irrigation terrarium system. What began as an engineering problem began to grow into a vision of terrarium donation and kits for schools, allowing children to learn about ecosystems, sustainability, and engineering with their own hands. Representation is something that matters greatly to me. I am queer, black, and am aware of what it is like to be a minority and not always see myself reflected in a space. I wish to be an engineer who not only inspires others into the field but makes them feel welcomed, not intimidated by it. The challenges I've gone through in my life, therefore, have been numerous, whether I'm referring to challenges that originated from within or without. Coming of age in a society that operates with a great deal of traditional expectations, I found that knowledge of self was, at times, a radical act. Coming to accept that I was worthy, while also being compassionate towards my caretakers, was a process that took a great deal of emotional maturity, one that I've learned over the course of my life. Perhaps the most difficult concept I've had to learn to untangle was that my self-worth wasn't predicated upon my ability to perform. For example, in facilitating youth discussions, I've found that growth is most common where understanding is least. What drives me, in the end, is that electrical engineering is a discipline of possibility. I aspire to contribute to technologies that foster sustainable communities, increase access to educational opportunities, and facilitate future innovators in seeing themselves within STEM. I've learned from adversity, if nothing else, that resilience does not solely lie with the state of enduring hardship but transforming it into purpose. I want to engineer solutions that, like the current through a circuit, will create the connections strong enough to carry others forward.

Service is the practice of thoughtful curiosity, the art of listening to a need and acting on it. It is a cycle that I have learned not through great acts of service but through the small acts of tuning in to the unspoken need in a community, to the potential in a student's question, and to my own inner voice that guides my hands from idea to action. My passion resides at the nexus of engineering and empowerment. Presently, my personal project of a mobile irrigation terrarium is evolving into an instrument of accessible STEM education. Realizing that numerous educational institutions are unable to provide hands-on scientific education, I am working towards making it into DIY kits for donation. This is more than an exercise in sustainability and basic technology; it is an invitation. For an uninitiated student, holding a sensor they constructed, observing a plant flourish in an environment they coded, makes it profoundly personal. My aim is not merely to show them technology in action, but to spark the builder within them, to show them that innovation is not an event beyond their reach, but an action within their grasp. This conviction of agency through guidance was further reinforced during my internship at Griptape, wherein I mentored youths through self-directed learning. At Griptape, being of service was more about holding space, as opposed to filling it. In facilitating Socratic discussions, I have come to understand that true mentorship is less about providing answers and more about asking the right questions. It’s all about creating an environment wherein youths feel free to grapple with uncertainty, define their goals, and trust their innate sense of curiosity as a guiding force. It’s a principle of mine that true leadership walks alongside, and doesn’t dictate. Looking ahead, I am challenged to engage with societal engineering in order to address inequities in society. I hope to be involved in projects related to climate resilience and environmental justice, where issues such as heat and resource availability are most pressing for communities that are already marginalized. My goal is to make sure that the best and brightest of technology are guided by the voices of those whom they are intended to serve. I will take the lessons of my terrarium projects and mentoring with me: that every technological solution must be accompanied by education that brings greater dignity. The legacy of Priscilla Shireen Luke—a service built on a foundation of hope and care—echoes with the resonance of this vision. I am not inspired by what can be built, but by whom it can build up. Through the application of my skills toward the construction of access, the use of my voice to elevate others, and the expenditure of my efforts toward walking with others, I seek to craft a world not only more sustainable and equitable, but more humane.

The story of Evan T. Wissing represents a touching reminder of the ephemeral balance between the past, present, and the future. Although I did not personally know Evan, the tale of a man seeking a new beginning and a new life only to have the opportunity cruelly taken from him serves as a fervor reminder of a reality I have come to understand, and too, appreciate. The past does not define the future; education forges the tools in building a great one. My life has been characterized by the constant pursuit of transcending the reality of a weighing financial stability, the struggle of housing and looming threat of eviction. For much of my adolescence, “home” was a fickle concept. We moved through a series of rentals and town homes, each necessitated by rising costs and belie landlords. The constant undercurrent of anxiety, of wondering if this month we would make ends meet, send my siblings to schools they deserve a chance at, or if we would be packing our bags because of a layoff. It taught me lessons in resiliency that I never wanted to learn. I saw my parents work tirelessly, and pack their aspirations into focusing solely on providing a roof over our heads. My own dreams about college felt like a luxury, a distant concern that was secondary to our situation. The fight to rise above all of this instability became my mission. I understood that I could not change our situation in an instant, but I could control my reaction to it. I poured myself into my studies. Each good grade, each learned concept, was like building a footing of concrete for a future foundation that would not be shaken. I took on a job not only to help out at home but to learn about the monetary systems that had ensnared my family. I began to read up on tenants’ rights, affordable housing policies, and development. Our personal struggle became my intellectual one. However, rising above this situation is a process, and it means filling out financial aid forms with meticulous care, knowing that it is the difference between a textbook, a utility bill, and expensive city housing. It means pursuing a degree in electrical engineering, with the direct goal of using my access to technical innovation to create a sense of security and stability within my community. My ambition is built out of the fear of what it means to spend a night worried about what if, and it is channeled into what it means to create a sense of safety and reassurance with the energy-efficient homes and cost-effective technology that engineering can provide. For me, engineering is a means of logic and creation to address the systemic vulnerabilities that defined my existence. Evan Wissing’s story is a solemn reminder of what can be lost when second chances are taken from us. His desire for education was in search of a second chance at a new beginning. Education is something I see in the same light. It’s a means to change the world and ennoble myself at the same time. The security which I am working to provide is not just for myself, but it is the beginning of a promise to provide the security to finally allow my family and others to chase after their potential.This scholarship would be more than a monetary award. It would be a statement that our struggle to overcome our past circumstances is a journey worth supporting.

One summer afternoon, I watched our garden bed wilt under the heat and felt an odd shame, wondering what it said about us to the world. As a student passionate about engineering and sustainability, I’m working on a passion project first envisioned in my backyard: an irrigation system designed to help my parents care for our garden bed. It’s the little details in our garden landscape that reflect my family's love to the world, and I felt moved with a sense of duty, imagining my contribution to that. That small idea has since grown into something larger: customizable, kid-friendly, DIY irrigation terrariums for classrooms. My goal is to introduce students to STEM through hands-on design and environmental awareness. To bring it to life, I taught myself how to program microcontrollers, connect circuits, and troubleshoot electronics. I’ve spent hours researching how to make my prototype both functional and educational. Though some work still needs to be made, I’m proud of where it’s at. By working on this project, I learned about the faults of current electronic designs when it comes to sustainability. In particular, the energy dissipation. Physics elucidates there’s a loss of energy within circuits when powering devices. The current designs were modeled with the intent to only minimize that loss, not eliminate or even repurposed it completely. For it, the very sustainable goal is undermined as energy is wasted, more resources are required to compensate for it, and thus, the environmental impact increases. We need smarter designs that incorporate mechanisms to catch lost energy and redirect it into something useful. Pursuing college is allowing me to gain the knowledge to make this invention the best that it can be and find those design reinventions. I’m currently studying electrical engineering, working to get into the electronics industry. I want to create the electric hardware that better suits environmental sustainability initiatives. Electricity gave us an alternate energy source that pioneered renewable energies such as solar panels, dams, and windmills, but there’s so much more we can do with conserving energy with their very design. My passion project is only the first step towards that goal. To help fund my education, I secured a summer job as a lead video storyteller for a nonprofit. I get to run the social media pages for an initiative fueling like-minded, ambitious teens. I am also applying for additional scholarships and financial aid. This scholarship would ease the city’s dorm housing and textbook costs, allowing me to focus more on coursework and less on financial strain. Most importantly, it would give me more time to refine my irrigation kits rather than working a job. This support would let me grow what began in my backyard into something that waters curiosity far beyond it.

To me, being a purposeful, responsible, and productive member of any community, means to live with intent and seeing the promise when you do. It is to realize your unique experiences can fan outwards and make the places you're in bright. I carry this perspective as I work toward becoming an electrical engineer, building electronics for sustainability and better biomedical devices. Purposefulness begins with believing in the promise of your values. My career choice is rooted in the idea that technology should uplift. It is my driving value. I’m working on a passion project —an irrigation terrarium— designed in response to the lack of sustainable awareness. Environmental consciousness is often overlooked, leaving youth unaware that their daily choices shape the planet’s future. Once finished designing these terrariums, I want to donate them in DIY-form kits in hopes it can raise that mindfulness. The overreliance on disposable components in biomedical devices is a problem too. But one waiting for tinkering, someone to see its promise. Further in my career, I want to redesign these devices to be more modular, to have reusable parts so it can serve patients with more longevity. The promise is what gives these current and future goals their purpose. Not only the promise of watering a plant, but of minds of curious youth, effective healthcare, and the possibility of a future we’re still building. The way I see responsibility and productivity isn't all that different. With my time on a nonprofit’s youth board and mentoring students pursuing their own passion projects, I learned that responsibility means owning the fact I have weight in what my community carries forward. When a younger participant asked me how she could tell if her idea was “good enough,” I could’ve easily told her to just go for it. A well-meaning but misguided cliche we hear too much of. One that overlooks learning. Some ideas need time to develop and mature. Jumping in too fast can mean missing important steps in bettering the idea. And you can’t really "just go for it” when you’re feeling discouraged. A habit that could tank all her future ideas. This required me to challenge her with more difficult questions than those on my facilitation notesheet, encouraging deeper reflection. Maybe more work than the requirements of my title, but seeing this group of teenagers promise I knew they needed additional care. Productivity is the technical extension of that care. I don't consider productivity to be a simple check-off of an item list and timing yourself while you do so. It's more about building the momentum towards something worth making. When working on my irrigation terrarium, I spent hours debugging circuits that just wouldn't respond. Most of that time went to really trying to learn why, instead of finding a quick fix so easily accessible online. Maybe not the most productive, but it wasn't time wasted. It was invested. Each hour drew me closer to mastering the skill of persistence in problem-solving. A skill that will make wonders as an electrical engineer. Similarly, when mentoring students, my efficiency translated to crafting more reflective questions, assisting in creating tools they'd still use long after our sessions were over. That kind of work requires long, consistent focus, not speed. Productivity isn't just what gets done, but how what gets done serves others. Being purposeful, responsible, and productive is to know that your own existence is a thread in a larger tapestry. You don't just exist with a community; you contribute to forming one. And when you live and move with promise, you make space for others to thrive, too.

In Chapter 2 of “Real Insights” by John Graff, Graff goes over seven integral reasons why new real estate agents fail so early on in their careers. Interestingly enough, many of the determinants he explains are universal facts in making something out of yourself in whatever career field you have found purpose in. Two of his justifications stand out to me. The first is the importance of checking your expectations, especially when we enter a career we grew to like in our minds. Graff elucidates “unrealistic expectations” occur when you don't. In essence, don’t let your envisioned dreams cloud the reality of the demands in your chosen field of work. At first read, this might seem like an obvious point. But the trap is subtle. When choosing a path, many of us imagine the idealized version of what that career could be, romanticizing the outcomes but glossing over the effort. You make it out to be something illuminating but forget that you built that image yourself, and reality might not match. I fall victim to this all the time. I imagine creating the next breakthrough environmental sensor or biomedical innovation. But the fantasy skips over the hundreds of hours in circuit debugging, failed prototypes, bureaucratic collaborations, and meticulous documentations. That gap between vision and labor will be jarring if I’m not honest with myself beforehand. It may disillusion me enough that it leads me towards a different career altogether. Graff also talks about the danger of “Not Putting in Full-Time Effort,” especially in the beginning. This, too, I get. I sometimes look at the step I’m on—whether it’s a class, simple task, or small project—as something that doesn’t yet require my full investment. I think, “This doesn’t require my full efforts. Maybe if the task was bigger.” But that mindset is exactly what Graff warns against. I’ve come to realize that effort is not something you “save” for later; it’s something you build today. That doesn’t just affect your results but will also shape your habits. I’ve learned that if I don’t take my current commitments seriously, I’ll be unprepared for bigger responsibilities to come. And there’s nothing wrong with going above and beyond. I want to go into the electronics industry. I see myself designing devices that make a difference in environmental sustainability and biomedical technology. This reading reminds me that to make a real impact, I need to start treating every stage of my journey with the same seriousness I’d give my dream job. Whether it’s a school project or a summer internship, I need to apply full-time energy even for those part-time duties. I’m learning to see each opportunity—big or small—as a place to show up fully, push my limits, and grow. That level of commitment is what will prepare me for success. After all, that is what separates those who do make it versus those who don’t, or as Graff sees them, those who “quit before their first anniversary.”