When I think about pursuing higher education, I think about more than earning a degree. I think about entering a world that my family has worked hard to help me reach, even though they have not had the opportunity to experience it themselves. I was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to the United States as a child. Today, as a first-generation college student at Pomona College, I am studying economics and neuroscience while working toward a future in medicine and research. My journey has taught me that being the first in a family to pursue higher education means learning how to navigate unfamiliar systems while imagining possibilities that extend beyond your own experiences. One of my greatest hopes is that my education will create opportunities not only for me but also for my family and the communities I hope to serve. I want to become a physician specializing in neuro-oncology and contribute to research that improves the lives of patients with brain tumors. I am also interested in the economic and policy barriers that influence access to healthcare. Studying economics alongside neuroscience lets me explore both the science behind disease and the systems that shape people's access to treatment. I hope to use this combination to help make quality healthcare more accessible, particularly for underserved communities. However, pursuing this path also comes with uncertainty. College involves decisions about coursework, research opportunities, academic expectations, and long-term career planning. For students whose families have not navigated higher education, even knowing which questions to ask can be a learning process. I have had to become comfortable seeking information, communicating with professors and mentors, and figuring out how to make decisions without having a family roadmap to follow. There is also pressure to make the most of an opportunity that required so much effort to reach. When your education represents not only your own ambitions but also your family's hopes, setbacks can feel like more than academic disappointments. My research experiences have helped me understand why continuing through that uncertainty matters. At Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, I gained exposure to research involving liposarcoma and computational approaches to studying cancer. Later, at Massachusetts General Hospital, I worked with research examining quality of life among patients with brain tumors and their caregivers. Moving between these experiences helped me appreciate that scientific questions have consequences beyond the laboratory. Understanding how a disease develops matters, but so does understanding how patients experience illness and what support they need. These opportunities strengthened my interest in combining scientific research with patient care. My educational journey has also included health challenges that disrupted my college studies and required me to reconsider my plans. I had to confront the fact that hard work does not always prevent unexpected circumstances from changing a carefully planned path. Learning to advocate for myself, seek support, and identify the next steps I could take taught me that progress does not have to be linear to be meaningful. Being a first-generation student has made me more aware of how difficult unfamiliar systems can be to navigate. It has also taught me to seek resources, ask questions, and keep moving forward when I do not immediately have the answers. I hope to use my education to become a physician and researcher who advances medical knowledge while advocating for patients facing barriers to care. Ultimately, I want my degree to represent not only what I have accomplished, but also what I can contribute to others because my family helped make this opportunity possible.