I want to be an astronaut! My name is Tatyana, I am pursuing aerospace engineering because I am fascinated by the hardest environments humans can enter, from deep water to space. But my purpose is not simply to build advanced technology. It is to help create systems, teams, and opportunities that make people safer, more capable, and more hopeful. I want my work to improve lives in three connected ways: protecting people in extreme environments, strengthening communities through mentorship, and encouraging others to believe that meaningful futures are accessible to them. My research has already shown me why human-centered engineering matters. I study how environmental stressors such as low visibility, motion, and reduced dexterity affect emergency spacesuit egress. In an emergency, a technically perfect system is only useful if a human being can operate it under pressure. That idea has shaped the engineer I want to become. I hope to contribute to spacecraft systems, astronaut tools, and safety procedures that account for real human limitations, including fear, fatigue, communication barriers, and the split-second decisions people must make when the stakes are highest. I have also pursued training in skydiving, scuba diving, aviation survival, underwater egress, and other extreme environments because I believe engineers should understand the people they design for. These experiences taught me that courage is rarely individual. Every skydive depends on instructors, riggers, pilots, and fellow jumpers. Every dive depends on trust, communication, and a buddy who is prepared to help. Every survival exercise reinforces that calm leadership can protect an entire group. I want to carry those lessons into aerospace: designing carefully, communicating clearly, and never forgetting that someone’s life may depend on the details. My impact will also come through service and community-building. As President of SHARK, the Scuba Diving and Marine Conservation Club, I help create opportunities for students to connect with the ocean, conservation, safety, and one another. Environmental protection matters to me because people cannot thrive without healthy communities and healthy ecosystems. I want to continue using my leadership to connect students from different backgrounds, encourage service, and make conservation feel personal rather than distant. Mentorship is equally important to me. For six years, I have helped judge and mentor students applying for Space Camp opportunities. I lead space-focused workshops, visit schools, and encourage young people who may not yet believe they belong in STEM. One of my male mentees earned a full scholarship to Advanced Space Academy, and seeing him receive that opportunity reminded me why this work matters. Sometimes the most important thing you can give someone is not money or advice. It is the belief that their future can be bigger than the world they currently know. At Embry-Riddle, I continue this work as a research mentor, writing tutor, and student leader. I have learned that many students do not lack intelligence or potential. They lack access to guidance, encouragement, and someone willing to say, “You belong here.” I want to be that person for others, especially for students who feel overlooked, uncertain, or financially limited. My goal is to make a positive impact through both engineering and service. I want to design systems that protect people, mentor students who may one day solve problems I cannot yet imagine, and build communities where curiosity, compassion, and responsibility matter as much as achievement. The world does not change through one person acting alone. It changes when people use their skills to make others safer, stronger, and more hopeful. That is the legacy I intend to build.

The aircraft cabin inverted before I could take another breath. Strapped into a seat as cold water flooded around me, I had to remember the sequence: locate the exit, release the restraint, orient myself, and move. In that moment, education was not abstract. It was the difference between panic and preparation. It gave me the knowledge to act when fear was loudest. That lesson has stayed with me beyond aviation survival training. Education matters to me because it has taken a dream that once felt impossibly distant and turned it into responsibility. It has taught me how to turn curiosity into capability, capability into discipline, and discipline into service. I am pursuing aerospace engineering because I want to help build systems that allow people to explore places where one mistake can cost everything. I plan to continue through graduate study because the questions I care about - how humans perform, survive, and trust technology in extreme environments, demand depth. I grew up watching my parents stretch every resource they had. They worked hard, but there was no financial safety net or inherited roadmap for college. Education was the one thing I believed could change my life’s direction. It was not simply a path to a job… it was a way to build independence, expertise, and options my family had never been able to take for granted. To stay enrolled, I have raised more than $130,000, worked multiple jobs, and treated every scholarship, research position, and course as an opportunity that must be honored through effort. At Delta Air Lines TechOps, education has given me a grounded understanding of responsibility. Aerospace is not only equations, hardware, or reports. It is a promise between people. The work behind a part review, audit, or engineering change reaches technicians, crews, passengers, and everyone who trusts a system to perform. I have learned that good engineering is careful, ethical, and deeply human. My research made that truth personal. I study how stressors such as low visibility, wave motion, and reduced dexterity affect emergency spacesuit egress. I have trained in hypoxia, high-G environments, underwater escape simulators, sea survival, skydiving, and scuba diving. These experiences have taught me that critical environments do not reward ego. They reward preparation, communication, and trust. The education behind every procedure matters because, in the hardest moments, people depend on one another to stay calm, capable, and alive. The legacy I hope to leave is not being the first woman from my roots to reach space. I want to make sure I am not the last. I want young people who have never seen someone with their background in aerospace to recognize that they belong in laboratories, cockpits, mission control rooms. I want them to understand that lack of money, connections, or a familiar roadmap does not determine the size of their future. For six years, I have judged and mentored students applying for Space Camp opportunities, led space-focused workshops, and visited schools. One of my male mentees earned a full scholarship to Advanced Space Academy. I was proud not because it was my achievement, but because he had been given a new horizon. At Embry-Riddle, I continue that work as a research mentor, writing tutor, and student leader. My legacy will be a ladder: education turned into knowledge I share, doors I hold open, and confidence I help build in others. One day, I hope to contribute to human spaceflight as an engineer and astronaut. But the accomplishment that will matter most is knowing that someone else sees my path and decides her own impossible dream is worth pursuing.

Strapped into a seat in a ditching helicopter, upside underwater in total darkness, I took my last breath before escape. When I found my way out, I carried one lesson: I can survive hard things. My name is Tatyana Ivanova, and I am an international aerospace engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University specializing in rocket propulsion. I am not of Nigerian or African descent, but I am a first-generation student from Bulgaria, working toward becoming the first Bulgarian woman in space. I have trained in high-G, anti-G, zero-G, hypoxia, and underwater survival environments. I skydive, scuba dive, conduct aerospace research, and study systems where mistakes can cost lives. But my story began far from astronaut training, in a cold, moldy apartment in Bulgaria with old textbooks, a small desk, and parents who gave me everything while having almost nothing. My father worked construction through snowy winters with no sick days and no safety net. My parents could not give me tutors, connections, or an easy academic path, but they taught me discipline and the importance of never giving up. Education became the one thing I could control. Coming to the United States taught me that immigration is not one challenge, but a thousand small ones stacked together. I had to translate language, culture, paperwork, financial systems, classroom expectations, and professional environments. I thought acceptance to college meant the hardest part was over. I did not realize that staying enrolled would become its own fight. I have faced tuition holds, visa stress, housing uncertainty, job loss, and moments with no co-signer, no backup plan, and no family nearby. So I learned to build my own safety net. I wrote proposals, filmed videos, cold-emailed companies and mentors, applied for scholarships, and told my story even when it felt uncomfortable. Over time, I raised more than $120,000 to continue my education. I worked multiple jobs while taking demanding engineering courses, made the Dean’s List, continued research, and kept showing up even when I was exhausted. That taught me opportunity is not only luck. It is learning how to ask, organize, lead, and keep moving when the answer is no. Since arriving in the U.S., I have learned that my story is not only mine. I have mentored international students afraid to speak in class, helped create research resources, led student organizations, and spoken to younger students about STEM. Through undergraduate research related to human performance and spaceflight safety, I learned that engineering is not just about equations; it is about protecting life. Through Delta Air Lines, I saw how aerospace quality decisions affect real aircraft and passengers. Being Bulgarian is not something I hide to fit in. It is the foundation of my resilience. It taught me to adapt quickly, listen carefully, and work without waiting for perfect conditions. Living in the United States taught me to advocate for myself, ask better questions, and create access for others instead of simply chasing it for myself. My goal is to work in human spaceflight, propulsion, testing, and extreme-environment systems, especially tools that help astronauts survive planetary missions. This scholarship would reduce the financial pressure of being an international student without a safety net, allowing me to keep balancing school, work, research, and leadership without constantly choosing between opportunity and affordability. Last year, being named a finalist reminded me that my story had value. This year, I am applying again with more experience, more maturity, and a deeper sense of purpose. Immigration did not hold me back. It taught me how to move forward. And I am still climbing, because no dream is too high.

I used to think becoming an astronaut was about becoming exceptional as an individual. Stronger, smarter, braver, more prepared. But the deeper I have gone into extreme-environment training, the more I have learned that no one survives the hardest places alone. Spaceflight is not built on individual courage. It is built on trust. That lesson has followed me through skydiving, scuba diving, aviation survival training, and aerospace research. A skydive begins long before the airplane door opens. It begins on the ground, with gear checks, emergency procedures, eye contact, and the quiet understanding that everyone is responsible for more than themselves. When we board the plane, we are tightly hugging each other, making sure that the parachute of the person in front of us is packed right. In freefall, there is no time for ego. You trust your training, but you also trust the people who helped you prepare. You trust the instructor who corrected your body position, the rigger who packed the reserve, the pilot flying the jump run, and the other skydivers sharing the sky with you. The moment may look solitary from the outside, but it is held together by a chain of human connection. Underwater, that trust becomes even more literal. When visibility drops, when current shifts, or when something feels wrong at depth, your buddy is not just company. They are part of your survival system. In aviation survival training, I learned this in one of the most intense ways possible - strapped into a helicopter seat as water rushed in, forced to stay calm, orient myself, and escape. In that environment, panic spreads quickly, but so does composure and all I knew back then was to trust the safety divers and my buddy when I ran out of air at 100ft depth back in 2024. Sometimes staying calm enough that someone else can breathe makes you a hero. These experiences have shaped my long-term goals because I want to work in human spaceflight, where trust is not symbolic. It is operational. Astronauts depend on engineers they may never meet. They depend on technicians, trainers, divers, doctors, mission controllers, and crewmates. A single mission is the art of interpersonal dynamics and the work of thousands of relationships aligned toward one goal. My dream is to become the first Bulgarian woman in space, but I know that if I ever reach orbit, it will not be because I got there alone. It will be because of every person who taught me, believed in me, corrected me, challenged me, and trusted me with responsibility. That is why I am drawn to astronaut tools, microgravity operations, and human-centered spacecraft systems. I do not want to design technology only because it is advanced. I want to design systems that people can trust when they are tired, isolated, underwater, in vacuum, or under pressure. My work in aerospace engineering has taught me that the best technical solutions are not just mathematically correct. They are built with an understanding of the human being who must use them when the stakes are highest. Relationships also shape the impact I want to have beyond engineering. As a mentor, tutor, and student leader, I have seen how much a person can change when they feel supported instead of judged. Many students do not lack intelligence. They lack someone who makes them believe they belong. I know that feeling because I came from Bulgaria, from a place where aerospace often felt impossibly far away. I had to fight to get into rooms where few people shared my background, language, or story. Because of that, I want my future to open doors for others, not just prove that I made it through one. To me, human connection is not only romance, friendship, or family. It is the trust between crewmates before a dangerous task. It is the calm voice in someone’s ear when they are scared. It is the engineer who designs carefully because another person’s life may depend on their work. It is the mentor who tells a younger student, “You got this,” and means it. My purpose is to help humans survive and thrive in extreme environments, from the ocean to orbit. But the heart of that purpose is connection. Space may be the most distant place humans can go, yet reaching it requires the deepest form of trust. My goal is not only to fly higher, it is to help others fly higher than me!

I have always wanted to understand how the world works. Long before I knew terms like propulsion, fluid dynamics, or systems engineering, I was drawn to the questions behind them: Why do things fly? How do humans survive in extreme environments? What allows an idea to become a machine that can carry people safely through the sky or beyond it? Science gave me a language for that curiosity. It turned wonder into something I could study, test, and build upon. My interest in science became real when I was fifteen and attended Space Camp Türkiye. Until then, space had felt like something distant and untouchable, beautiful but far away. Seeing a Saturn V model up close and training in astronaut-like environments changed that. For the first time, science was no longer just a subject in a book. It became a path. I realized that physics, mathematics, and engineering were not abstract challenges to survive in school - they were the tools that made exploration possible. Today, I am an undergraduate Aerospace Engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, concentrating in Rocket Propulsion. What excites me most about science is that it demands both imagination and discipline. It asks you to dream boldly, but then prove every idea with data, precision, and persistence. Over time, that is exactly what I learned to love. Through research, lab work, and technical problem-solving, I found a field that matches both my curiosity and my character. In the Microgravity Lab, I have contributed to student research and experimental work that challenged me to think critically, troubleshoot under pressure, and communicate clearly. During my co-op with Delta Air Lines TechOps, I also saw how scientific thinking translates directly into real-world responsibility. Watching aircraft systems come alive during testing reminded me that science is not just about discovery. It is about safety, trust, and designing systems people can rely on. My long-term career goal is to work at the intersection of spacecraft systems, astronaut tools, and human-centered design for extreme environments. I plan to pursue a Ph.D. and contribute to missions involving EVA development, planetary surface exploration, or microgravity operations. I want to help design systems that are reliable, intuitive, and safe because in aerospace, lives depend on whether your science is sound. Beyond technical work, I also hope to remain deeply involved in mentorship and outreach. As a peer mentor and writing tutor, I have already seen how powerful it is to help another student find confidence in STEM. I want my career to combine scientific contribution with service to others. Receiving this scholarship would directly influence my educational journey because financial need has been one of the greatest challenges I have faced in pursuing my degree. I have worked multiple on-campus jobs, balanced a full engineering course load, taken on leadership roles, and raised significant support through scholarships, sponsorships, and fundraising just to remain enrolled. I also cover essential living expenses while trying to stay fully focused on academics, research, and professional development. That constant financial pressure takes time and energy away from the very scientific work I have fought so hard to pursue. This scholarship would do more than help pay for school. It would give me breathing room to focus more fully on my coursework, research, and long-term goals instead of devoting so much time to survival. It would help me continue my education with stability and move one step closer to becoming the scientist and engineer I have worked for years to become... this scholarship would help ensure I can keep following it! No dream is too high!

One of the most precious stories in my family was not told by a soldier, but by my grandmother. She would smile and cry before she even got to the best part. Then she would describe the day my uncle came home and stood outside her door singing, “It’s a long way home.” He did not knock right away. He sang first, almost like he wanted her to feel him before she saw him. My grandmother always told that story with tears in her eyes and laughter in her voice. To anyone else, it might have sounded like a small moment. To me, it became something much bigger. It showed me that military service is not only about uniforms, discipline, and sacrifice. It is also about love, longing, and the deep human need to return to the people who wait for you. That story has stayed with me because military service has shaped my family in more than one way. Both my father and my uncle served, and through them I learned that strength often looks quieter than people imagine. It is not always loud or dramatic. Sometimes it is the calm way someone carries responsibility. Sometimes it is the habit of showing up, no matter how tired they are. Sometimes it is a song at the front door after time away. My father taught me those lessons not through speeches, but through example. He carried himself with discipline, patience, and a sense of duty that influenced how I see the world. Growing up, I understood that commitment was not something you spoke about casually, it was something you lived. You kept your word. You protected your family. You did what needed to be done even when no one was watching. Because of him, I learned that character is built in ordinary moments long before it is tested in difficult ones. But it was my grandmother’s story about my uncle that gave military service its emotional meaning for me. It made me think about the families who wait, worry, and keep hope alive. It taught me that behind every person who serves is a home filled with people counting the days until they return. That image of my uncle standing outside the door, singing before he stepped inside, has stayed with me because it captured something beautiful - even after service, hardship, and distance, he still came home with warmth in his heart. What I have learned from the military members in my family is that true strength includes tenderness. I used to think resilience meant being hard, but they showed me it can also mean being steady, dependable, and deeply loving. Service is not only about sacrifice for a country. It is also about sacrifice for the people you love, and about carrying responsibility with dignity. When I think of my father and uncle, I think of discipline, loyalty, and quiet courage. But most of all, I think of that song at the door. “It’s a long way home” is more than a lyric in my family memory. It is a reminder that no matter how far duty takes someone, what matters most is the heart that brings them back.

The first time I truly understood why I wanted to become an engineer, I was upside down in a submerged helicopter simulator, strapped into a seat in cold, dark water, learning how to stay calm when everything around me felt out of control. In that moment, I understood that survival depends on design. Preparation matters. Precision matters. The people who build reliable systems matter. That experience did not scare me away from aerospace, it pulled me closer. I want to become the kind of engineer whose work helps others endure extreme environments safely, whether in the air, underwater, or one day in space. I, myself, dream of becoming an astronaut one day and it is everything I have been working towards for the past 8 years. My passion for this degree is rooted in both wonder and responsibility. I study Aerospace Engineering with a concentration in Rocket Propulsion because I am fascinated by what makes flight possible - propulsion, structures, materials, and the invisible decisions behind every successful launch or landing. At Embry-Riddle, that passion has become tangible. I have worked on propulsion-related research, contributed to student experiments, and now complete a co-op with Delta Air Lines TechOps, where I work hands-on with aircraft systems. During an Airbus A350 systems check, I watched data I had prepared come alive in the cockpit displays and realized that engineering is not abstract theory. It is trust, translated into systems. It is human lives resting on whether you did your job well. My upbringing shaped who I am long before college did. I grew up in a modest household watching my father work in construction and my mother earn her degree while raising me. From them, I learned that building is an act of love and that education is often the strongest path forward. We did not come from comfort or excess. We came from effort. I learned early that if I wanted a bigger future, I would have to build it myself. At fifteen, during Space Camp Türkiye, that future finally took shape. Standing near a Saturn V model and later training in astronaut-like environments, I realized aerospace was not just an interest. It was the first dream that felt larger than fear. Life kept testing whether I meant it. When financial hardship threatened my education, I adapted instead of quitting. I changed course, worked multiple on-campus jobs, and raised over $120,000 through scholarships, sponsorships, and fundraising to stay enrolled. I learned that passion is not just excitement, it is endurance. It is waking up tired and choosing the goal again. It is showing up to class, research, work, and leadership responsibilities even when the pressure feels overwhelming. Those experiences also taught me that strength means more than surviving. It means lifting others while you climb. As a peer mentor, writing tutor, and student leader, I have helped other students find confidence in their own voices and abilities. I have learned that technical brilliance alone is not enough. The best engineers are also communicators, mentors, and problem-solvers under pressure. I am passionate about pursuing this degree because engineering gives me the power to transform hardship into purpose. My upbringing taught me grit. My life experiences taught me resilience. Aerospace engineering gives those lessons direction. I want to design systems for extreme environments, contribute to safer flight and exploration, and prove that no dream is too far away for someone willing to build toward it piece by piece.

I do not want a second chance because I failed. I want one because life changed the rules in the middle of my race, and I refused to stop running. When I came to Embry-Riddle, I planned to study Aeronautical Science and begin flight training immediately. I had worked toward that dream for years. Then reality hit: as an international student, the cost of flight hours on top of tuition was simply too high. Later, my family’s financial plan collapsed as well, and I was forced to make a difficult choice: let adversity define my future, or change my path without giving up on my purpose. I chose the second option. That is why I want to make a change in my life. I do not want to live in constant survival mode, always one payment, one deadline, or one emergency away from losing everything I have worked for. I want the opportunity to keep building a life defined not by financial hardship, but by growth, impact, and service. I want to become the engineer, mentor, and leader I know I can be. So far, I have done everything in my power to move closer to that goal. When flying became financially impossible, I changed majors to Aerospace Engineering so I could stay close to aviation through design, systems, and innovation. I took on multiple jobs, stepped into leadership positions, and fought for my education with persistence. To date, I have helped secure more than $120,000 through scholarships, sponsorships, fundraising, and outreach. I also continue building my future through hands-on industry experience as a co-op with Delta Air Lines TechOps. What makes this journey especially meaningful to me is that when I started, I did not have the kind of mentor I needed. I had ambition, but I often had to navigate major decisions, setbacks, and opportunities alone. That experience shaped me. It taught me not only how important guidance is, but how deeply it matters to have someone believe in you before the results exist. Because of that, I made it a priority to become that person for someone else. Today, I mentor students and younger aspiring space leaders, helping them navigate opportunities that once felt impossible to me. One of the most meaningful examples is a student I mentored for five months, sharing my experience, advice, and encouragement throughout the process. Recently, that mentee won a full-tuition scholarship to Space Camp USA. Watching that happen reminded me that perseverance does not end with personal success. Its greatest value is in being passed on. This scholarship would help me in a practical and immediate way by easing the financial pressure that constantly competes with my coursework, leadership, and professional growth. More than that, it would give me room to keep building a future where I can continue turning hardship into opportunity. If I receive this scholarship, I will pay it forward the same way I already have... by mentoring others, especially students who feel overlooked, financially limited, or uncertain about their future. I know what it feels like to need a second chance. I also know how powerful it is when someone helps you see that your circumstances do not have to be your ending. A second chance can change one life, but when passed forward, it can change many. That is the kind of change I want to make.

The first thing my parents taught me about love was that it wears work boots. I grew up in a blended family where love was not expressed through comfort or ease, but through sacrifice. My father worked construction, laying bricks even in freezing winter weather, on the kind of days when schools shut down and everyone else stayed inside. My mother earned her bachelor’s degree while raising me as a baby, refusing to let motherhood end her ambitions. They were not people with endless resources, free time, or financial security. They were people who kept going. Watching them taught me that strength is not something you say you have. It is something you prove when life gives you every reason to stop. That shaped the way I move through the world. I was not raised to expect doors to open for me. I was raised to knock, push, and if necessary, build my own. When I found the path I wanted in aerospace, I also realized how expensive that dream was. My family did not have the money to simply make it happen. So I did what my parents had modeled my whole life: I worked. I fought for opportunities. I raised my first-year tuition in less than ten days, and over time I have raised more than $120,000 through fundraising, outreach, sponsorship efforts, and scholarships to keep my education alive. I have worked multiple campus jobs while carrying a demanding engineering course load, because giving up was never the example I was given. But what matters most to me is not just surviving difficulty. It is turning difficulty into purpose. I want to become an astronaut. Not because it sounds impressive, but because I am drawn to the kind of work that demands discipline, courage, and service beyond yourself. I have pushed myself toward that goal through training that takes me out of my comfort zone - skydiving, scuba diving, underwater emergency skills, zero-gravity and high-G experiences, and spacesuit-related environments. I do these things because I want to be useful in extreme conditions. I want to be the kind of person who stays calm when things go wrong, solves problems under pressure, and helps protect others in places where every decision matters. My talents are technical, but the future I want is deeply human. I want to use engineering and astronaut training to contribute to systems that keep people safe in flight and space operations. I want to help design tools, procedures, and missions that expand what humanity can do while protecting the people brave enough to do it. At the same time, I want my life to reach people here on Earth. Through mentoring, leadership, and service, I want to keep encouraging younger students, especially girls, to believe that they belong in the places they have been told are too hard, too technical, or too far out of reach. My parents gave me more than support. They gave me an example of relentless love, quiet sacrifice, and earned resilience. Everything I am building stands on that foundation. I want to honor it by going as far as I can, and by making sure that wherever I rise, I lift others with me.

At seventeen, I stood in a government hall facing the President of Bulgaria and several national ministers, speaking about space, education, and why young women deserved a future beyond the limits they were handed. Not long after, I stepped onto a TEDx stage in front of 1,600 people and shared my story publicly for the first time. I looked confident. Fearless, even. But the truth is, the bravest moments of my life did not happen under bright lights or applause. They happened when no one was watching, and when fear nearly convinced me to quit. Today, I am an undergraduate aerospace engineering student pursuing my lifelong goal of becoming an astronaut, while advocating for women in STEM across classrooms, conferences, and international platforms. But my path has not been uninterrupted or easy. One of the most defining tests of my resilience came through a skydiving accident that nearly ended both my training and my life. During a landing, I was carried dangerously off course and came down near an active runway as a plane was accelerating for takeoff. I remember the sound of the engines, the chaos, and the sudden realization I had lost control. I was rushed to the hospital with serious injuries. When the physical pain subsided, a deeper challenge remained - fear. Fear of returning. Fear of trusting myself again. Fear that one moment could erase years of preparation. Skydiving was not a thrill-seeking hobby for me. It was intentional training for a future in extreme environments - part of preparing my body and mind for the realities of aerospace and astronautics. Lying in a hospital bed, I had to decide whether continuing meant courage or recklessness. That distinction forced me to grow. The first step I took was honest recovery. I followed medical guidance, paused training, and acknowledged the trauma instead of burying it under pride. The second step was understanding. I worked closely with instructors to analyze the incident in detail - environmental conditions, technical factors, human decisions. Fear became something I could study, not something that owned me. The hardest step was returning. The first time I went back to the drop zone, my hands shook. Every instinct told me to walk away. But bravery, I learned, is not the absence of fear - it is choosing not to let fear decide your future. I rebuilt confidence through disciplined retraining, stricter safety margins, and gradual exposure. Each jump afterward was intentional. Measured. Earned. That experience reshaped how I face adversity everywhere else. When academic pressure feels crushing, when financial uncertainty threatens my education, or when I walk into rooms where women are still underrepresented, I rely on the same principles: assess honestly, prepare thoroughly, and take the next step forward anyway. I advocate for women in STEM not because I am fearless, but because I understand how courage is built - slowly, deliberately, and through action. I am now an engineering intern for DELTA airlines working alongside 50-year-old men and being the only girl on the team! Audra Dominguez’s legacy honors this kind of bravery. Not the kind that seeks attention, but the kind that persists after the crisis fades. I carry that spirit with me as I continue pursuing a demanding career that requires technical excellence, mental resilience, and the willingness to keep going after setbacks. I am not brave because I stood on stages or faced presidents. I am brave because when fear tried to ground me, physically and mentally, I chose to keep moving forward. And I will continue making that choice, again and again, as I reach for the stars.

I grew up watching Sabrina Carpenter at the same time I was growing into myself. What began as admiration slowly turned into something deeper - permission. Permission to change, to outgrow expectations, and to take up space without apology. I first met her through Girl Meets World, as Maya Hart - the girl who said what everyone else was afraid to say. Maya wasn’t polished or perfect. She was complicated, emotional, sharp, and fiercely loyal. Watching her, I realized that young women didn’t have to be quiet, agreeable, or neatly contained to be worthy of love and respect. That realization mattered to me more than I understood at the time. As the years passed, Sabrina didn’t stay frozen in that role. Instead, she did something that takes real courage in the public eye: she evolved. She stepped away from the comfort of Disney and rebuilt herself as a musician and artist on her own terms. That transition wasn’t smooth or guaranteed, but she committed to it anyway. Watching her claim creative control over her music and image showed me that reinvention is not a betrayal of who you were - it’s an act of self-trust. Her music reflects that evolution. Songs like "Please, Please, Please" and "Espresso" are playful and confident, but beneath the surface they carry something deeper: self-awareness. There’s humor, honesty, and a refusal to minimize herself for approval. As someone pursuing an intense academic and professional path, I’ve often felt pressure to be smaller, quieter, or more “acceptable” to succeed. Sabrina’s work reminds me that ambition doesn’t require self-erasure. You can be serious and expressive. Focused and creative. Strong and human. What also resonates with me is how she balances confidence with vulnerability. She allows herself to be bold without pretending that growth comes without discomfort. Through her art and public presence, she acknowledges uncertainty and criticism yet continues forward with intention. That honesty has helped me reframe how I view struggle in my own life. Instead of seeing obstacles as signs that I am failing, I’ve learned to see them as proof that I am stretching beyond what once felt safe. In moments when I’ve felt overwhelmed or out of place, her journey has reminded me that confidence is not something you wake up with one day - it’s something you practice. It’s choosing yourself repeatedly, even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed. That mindset has pushed me to take risks I once would have avoided and to trust my ability to grow into challenges rather than shy away from them. Being a fan of Sabrina Carpenter means more than streaming her songs or watching her performances. It means learning from how she moves through the world: with resilience, humor, and unapologetic honesty. She has shown me that success is not about fitting into a mold, but about having the courage to break it and keep going anyway. Her career continues to inspire me to dream bigger, take risks, and trust that growth, even when uncomfortable, is worth it. And that is a lesson I will carry with me far beyond music.

When I was a child, I spent my summers in the countryside at my grandparents’ home, watching small Cessna agricultural planes fly low over endless fields of wheat. I remember standing still as they passed overhead, the sound of the engine cutting through the quiet, the aircraft skimming the land with precision and confidence. I did not have the language for it then, but even at that age, I understood that aviation was not just about flying. It was about trust. Someone had to build those aircraft, maintain them, and train the people who flew them so precisely above the ground. That sense of responsibility stayed with me long after the planes disappeared beyond the fields. Today, I am an Aerospace Engineering student at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, specializing in propulsion and flight systems, and I am pursuing a career in aviation because it demands accountability at the highest level. Aviation is unforgiving. Every decision, calculation, and procedure carries weight, and lives depend on getting it right. I want to contribute to the systems that make flight safe, reliable, and worthy of the trust people place in it every day. As a co-op with Delta Air Lines TechOps, I have worked in environments where safety is not a slogan but a daily practice. Supporting quality engineering efforts tied to audits, process improvements, and engineering change requests showed me how reliability is built long before an aircraft ever leaves the ground. Sitting in a cockpit during systems checks and watching engineering data translate into real time aircraft behavior strengthened my respect for the professionals whose work ensures safe flight without recognition or applause. Beyond engineering, I have completed aviation survival and egress training modeled on military standards. I have trained in underwater escape, disorientation scenarios, and emergency response procedures where preparation must override instinct. These experiences taught me that aviation safety extends far beyond normal operations. The moments that matter most are the ones no one plans to face, and professionals must be ready for them. That mindset shapes how I approach engineering, leadership, and responsibility. Hector L Villarreal’s legacy resonates deeply with me because it reflects aviation as a skill earned through training, service, and dedication. His life shows how aviation can expand horizons and shape families through travel, exposure, and shared experiences. I see aviation not just as an industry, but as a force that connects people and opens minds, just as those small aircraft once connected my childhood curiosity to a lifelong purpose. Leadership and impact are central to my vision for aviation. I mentor students through research and academic support roles and speak to younger students about aviation and STEM, focusing on making the path clear and achievable. I want more first generation and underrepresented students to see aviation not as an unreachable dream, but as a disciplined profession built on preparation and commitment. Receiving the Hector L Villarreal Memorial Scholarship would reduce the financial pressure that limits access to growth opportunities in aviation. It would allow me to devote more time to technical development, professional preparation, and service. Most importantly, it would help me continue building a career rooted in safety, responsibility, and respect for the lives aviation touches. I feel called to aviation because it has been part of my life long before I understood what it meant. From wheat fields and low flying planes to hangars, cockpits, and survival training, aviation has shaped who I am. Carrying that responsibility forward is not just my goal. It has become my purpose, dream and biggest passion.

Strapped into a training helicopter, upside down in total darkness, I took one last breath and waited for the next decision to matter. In that moment, I understood what legacy really is: the habits you build under pressure and the people you lift when the pressure doesn’t let up. Legacy isn’t a slogan in my family; it’s work. I grew up watching my father lay bricks in subzero weather and my mother earn her degree while raising a newborn. Their message was never “dream big.” It was “show up anyway.” Education wasn’t a reward - it was a ladder, and no one climbed it for you. That upbringing shaped my path in life: I learned to treat long goals like engineering problems - break them down, build systems, test, iterate, repeat. That’s how I’ve approached aerospace engineering. I’m specializing in rocket propulsion because I want to build what carries humanity farther, systems that perform when failure isn’t an option. I lead CubeSat-based research testing space systems in simulated microgravity, and I’m involved in human-performance work that ties directly to astronaut safety - how people move, think, and survive in extreme environments. My training through programs like IIAS and Project PoSSUM reinforced what my upbringing already taught me that capability is earned, and readiness is built in uncomfortable conditions. But legacy, to me, is not just personal achievement. It’s what you turn your achievement into. That’s why mentorship is central to my mission. I visit middle and high schools around the world to speak about aerospace, programming, and astronautics - especially to students who assume this world isn’t meant for them. I bring tangible examples, break down what the path actually looks like, and tell them the part most people skip: that confidence usually arrives after action, not before it. I also mentor students in research settings, helping them with papers, abstracts, and the intimidating first steps of getting involved in labs. I want the next student to spend less time wondering if they belong and more time building. Looking ahead, my aspirations for higher education include graduate study and research focused on human-centered space systems - tools and interfaces that support astronauts during EVA, training simulations that reflect real risk, and designs that keep crews safer and more effective. I’m especially motivated by the idea that space exploration should be something society invests in with intention: not only for discovery, but for the technologies that come back down to Earth such as recycling systems, energy efficiency, sustainable habitats, and medical monitoring that can benefit communities that need innovation the most. I want to advocate for ambitious, responsible exploration and contribute to missions and partnerships that expand what’s possible, including work connected to ESA’s future efforts in human spaceflight and exploration. I also plan to break a cycle that too many students inherit: the cycle of financial strain shrinking ambition. I’ve balanced a full engineering course load with multiple jobs, research leadership, and constant scholarship applications. I’ve fundraised to stay in school, not for extras, but for tuition, housing, and the basic costs of continuing. This scholarship would relieve immediate pressure, covering academic expenses, so I can devote more time to research, outreach, and professional development. Dr. Samuel Attoh built his legacy through education that multiplied beyond him. I want to honor that by building a life where my work doesn’t stop at my own launch. If I reach orbit someday, the legacy I care about most will be the people who started moving because I showed them a path, and stayed long enough to help them climb it.

My parents never taught me how to apply for college, compare financial aid packages, or navigate academic systems, because they never had the chance to experience them themselves. My father worked construction through freezing winters. My mother earned her high school diploma while holding me as a newborn, then spent years working to keep our family afloat. Education was never something handed down in my family; it was something fought for. Watching that taught me early that if I wanted a different life, I would have to learn how to create it on my own. When I decided to pursue aerospace engineering, there was no one at home who could explain what that path looked like. I taught myself English, researched universities late at night, and applied for opportunities I barely believed I deserved. Leaving my home country to study in the United States meant stepping into unfamiliar systems - immigration rules, academic expectations, financial barriers... without guidance or a safety net. Being first-generation meant every mistake was expensive, and every success was self-taught. The challenges were concrete. As an international, first-generation student, I am ineligible for U.S. federal aid or loans. To remain enrolled, I raised over $120,000 through scholarships, crowdfunding, sponsorships, and multiple campus jobs while carrying a full aerospace engineering course load. I cold-emailed hundreds of companies, wrote proposals late at night, managed donor obligations, and tracked every dollar. I learned how to advocate for myself in rooms where I was often the youngest, the only woman, or the only one without family support. I worked through exhaustion, chronic illness, and long periods without seeing my family, because quitting would have meant losing everything I had built. Being first-generation also shaped my drive. I don’t take opportunity lightly because I know how fragile it can be. I study aerospace engineering because I want to work in environments where precision matters and failure is not an option. I am drawn to quantitative problem-solving, systems thinking, and engineering challenges that demand discipline and accountability. Beyond academics, I mentor other first-generation and international students, helping them navigate the same systems I had to learn alone. I believe representation matters - not as an idea, but as proof that someone without connections or guidance can still succeed at the highest levels. My dreams are ambitious, but they are grounded. I want to be an example for students who feel out of place in technical fields, especially those who are first in their families to pursue higher education. I want my family to see that the sacrifices they made led somewhere real. This scholarship would provide more than financial support - it would provide stability. It would allow me to focus fully on my education and long-term goals without constantly choosing between survival and growth. It would affirm that first-generation students are not defined by what they lack, but by what they build. I am the first in my family to walk this path. I intend to make it count.

At 6:00 a.m., I woke up, checked my blood pressure, swallowed thyroid medication for Hashimoto’s disease, and biked to campus before sunrise. By noon, I was deep in propulsion lectures. By evening, I was tutoring or working another on-campus job. On weekends, instead of resting, I jumped out of airplanes or descended a hundred feet underwater. I did not do this for adrenaline. I did it because survival, both physical and mental, had become my training. I came to the United States alone from Bulgaria to study aerospace engineering, a field that does not exist at home in the way it does here. Like Maggie, I immigrated without a support system, driven by the belief that knowledge is worth discomfort. Maggie built her life through discipline, courage, and intellectual fearlessness. That same mindset carried me across an ocean with two suitcases, a student visa, and no guarantee I could afford to stay. The hardest part was not arriving. It was remaining. As an international student, I am ineligible for U.S. federal aid or loans, and my visa strictly limits employment. For my first two years, I raised over $120,000 through crowdfunding, sponsorships, scholarships, and campus jobs while carrying one of the most demanding engineering course loads. Every semester required precise planning: tuition deadlines, rent, insurance, groceries, and the constant risk of losing legal status if anything slipped. I cold-emailed hundreds of companies, wrote proposals at night, filmed outreach videos between exams, managed donor obligations, and tracked every dollar - treating my education like a mission I had to engineer myself. I learned to advocate for myself relentlessly, turning rejection into strategy and uncertainty into structure, until persistence became a skill as technical as engineering itself. For long stretches, I could not go home. Years passed without seeing my family because flights were unaffordable and my legal status fragile. I learned how to endure loneliness quietly, because quitting was not an option. At the same time, my body worked against me. Hashimoto’s autoimmune disease meant chronic fatigue, brain fog, and unpredictable energy levels. I studied propulsion equations exhausted, led research meetings on little sleep, and trained my body carefully instead of recklessly. Managing illness without lowering my standards taught me discipline more honestly than any textbook. I chose extreme environments deliberately. I became a licensed skydiver, learning how to remain calm when the door opens at altitude and fear offers no solutions. I trained as a scuba diver, completing deep dives, emergency air-sharing drills, and low-visibility navigation. In one training dive, my buddy ran out of air at depth. I stabilized him, shared my regulator, controlled our ascent, and surfaced safely. These experiences mirror how I approach engineering: assess, adapt, act. Maggie was never afraid of physical or intellectual challenge. She climbed, debated, and mastered what she pursued. I recognize that same refusal to retreat. Whether troubleshooting rocket models, leading research, or managing survival training, I stay composed when conditions deteriorate. That steadiness was built, not inherited. What I respect most about Maggie is that she never minimized herself in male-dominated spaces. I honor that legacy by mentoring younger students, especially international women, helping them navigate research, visas, and scholarships. I speak openly about what it actually costs to stay in STEM - not just talent, but endurance. This scholarship honors women who moved countries, faced isolation, and kept going anyway. That is my story. I am not here because circumstances favored me. I am here because, like Maggie, I learned how to endure pressure without losing direction. Supporting me does not just remember her life, it extends it.

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.” -Epictetus, Enchiridion I In this opening passage of the Enchiridion, Epictetus is not offering a simple distinction between what we can and cannot influence; he is redefining freedom itself. His underlying meaning is that a fulfilled life depends not on controlling outcomes, but on relocating ambition and responsibility inward - toward judgment, desire, and choice, thereby making inner discipline the only stable form of power. At first glance, Epictetus’s division appears almost obvious. Of course some things are within our control and others are not. Yet the starkness of the distinction is intentional. By opening his handbook with such a blunt claim, Epictetus forces the reader to confront a habitual confusion: the tendency to treat external results as personal possessions. His philosophy begins by dismantling that assumption. What is at stake in this passage is not calmness, but sovereignty - where the self is located and what it truly owns. The most revealing choice in the passage is Epictetus’s definition of what is “in our control.” Rather than naming physical abilities, social influence, or effort, he lists internal faculties: “opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion.” These are not outcomes but orientations of the mind. By grouping them together, Epictetus implies that control does not lie in what happens, but in how one interprets, values, and responds to what happens. The underlying meaning is that freedom is cognitive before it is circumstantial. A person who governs desire and judgment cannot be enslaved by events, while someone who depends on outcomes for peace is vulnerable to every disruption. The inclusion of “opinion” at the start of the list is especially significant. Opinion is the lens through which reality is perceived. Two individuals can experience the same event - failure, criticism, loss... yet suffer entirely different consequences depending on how they judge it. By asserting that opinion is within our control, Epictetus assigns moral weight to interpretation. Suffering, in his framework, is often not imposed but constructed. This is not to deny hardship, but to insist that meaning is always an act of participation. The progression from “opinion” to “pursuit” and “desire” reveals a deeper logic. Opinion shapes desire; desire directs pursuit; pursuit culminates in action. Epictetus is outlining a chain of responsibility. If one claims control only at the level of action but ignores the desires that motivate it, control is already lost. The passage therefore suggests that ethical living requires attention to the earliest stages of intention. Discipline is not reactive; it is preventative. Epictetus then compresses his list into a summary phrase: “in a word, whatever are our own actions.” This clarification eliminates ambiguity. Control is not partial or probabilistic; it is categorical. Either something originates in the will, or it does not. By drawing this boundary, Epictetus rejects the common tendency to blur responsibility - taking credit for success while blaming circumstances for failure. His underlying meaning is uncompromising: we are responsible only for what we choose, but we are fully responsible for that. The second half of the passage mirrors the first, listing what is not in our control: “body, property, reputation, command.” These are the very things most people organize their lives around. Health, wealth, status, authority - Epictetus deliberately names the pillars of conventional ambition. By placing them outside the sphere of control, he does not dismiss their importance; he denies their ownership. One may care for the body, pursue reputation, or hold command, but none of these can be guaranteed. To treat them as possessions is to invite anxiety. “Reputation” is particularly revealing. Reputation exists entirely in the minds of others, yet it exerts immense influence over behavior. By declaring it uncontrollable, Epictetus exposes the fragility of self-worth built on external validation. His philosophy implies that a person who depends on reputation has surrendered authorship of their peace to public opinion. True autonomy, then, requires indifference not to others, but to their judgments as determinants of value. The inclusion of “command” carries a similar critique. Power over others appears, superficially, to be the highest form of control. Epictetus inverts this assumption. Authority can be revoked, challenged, or undermined. Even rulers are dependent on loyalty, circumstance, and chance. By contrast, self-command is inviolable. The underlying meaning is that domination is a poor substitute for mastery, and that ambition directed outward often conceals inner helplessness. The repeated phrase “in a word” at the end of both lists reinforces the passage’s moral clarity. Epictetus is not offering nuance or compromise; he is offering a principle. Life is divided not into success and failure, but into what belongs to us and what does not. Peace comes not from expanding control, but from respecting its limits. The passage’s severity is intentional: ambiguity allows self-deception, while clarity demands responsibility. This distinction has profound implications for how one approaches learning and personal development. In an academic context, grades, recognition, and future outcomes are not fully controllable. What is controllable is effort, intellectual honesty, curiosity, and perseverance. Epictetus’s framework shifts ambition away from results and toward process. Success becomes a byproduct rather than a demand, allowing sustained engagement without desperation. Close reading itself exemplifies this philosophy. To read closely is to focus on what is within one’s control: attention, interpretation, and judgment. A surface reading chases conclusions; a close reading examines foundations. Epictetus’s passage rewards this approach because its power lies not in what it promises, but in what it removes - the illusion that life can be mastered externally. By attending to language and structure, the reader experiences the very discipline Epictetus advocates. Ultimately, the underlying meaning of this passage is neither pessimistic nor passive. It is a recalibration of agency. Epictetus does not ask us to abandon ambition, but to aim it correctly. When desire is disciplined, action becomes intentional; when opinion is governed, adversity loses its sting. The freedom he describes is not freedom from struggle, but freedom from enslavement to what cannot be held. In a world that encourages constant comparison, performance, and control over appearances, Epictetus offers a radical alternative: build a life whose center cannot be taken from you. By confining responsibility to the will, he expands dignity to everyone, regardless of circumstance. And through close reading, this ancient passage reveals its enduring truth: the most powerful form of control is knowing exactly where control ends and choosing excellence anyway.

When I was fourteen in Dobrich, Bulgaria, I stood in a space-shuttle simulator with my forehead pressed to the glass and one thought looping in my head: No dream is too high. I didn’t just want to watch launches on YouTube. I wanted to build the systems that make them possible and one day earn my seat as an astronaut the hard way through research, training, and real contribution. That dream is why I “full sent” my life across an ocean to study aerospace in the United States, even when the chance of success felt like 1%. I’ve learned that sometimes the only way forward is exactly that: full send or go home. I’m an international undergraduate Aerospace Engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a Quality Engineering Co-Op at Delta Air Lines. Working in aviation has taught me that engineering is not only equations - it’s trust, safety, and accountability. I get to see how flight-critical decisions are made in the real world, how a small design choice can protect thousands of people at 35,000 feet. I want to take that standard of excellence into propulsion and space systems research, particularly Mars-relevant technologies like lightweight solar reflector swarms and thermal/propulsion solutions that make long-duration missions more practical. My goal is to continue into a Ph.D. and pursue astronaut selection not as a tourist, but as someone who has already proved herself in the lab and the field. But the most important part of this scholarship question is home. How does any of this help Bulgaria? First, I’m already building a pipeline for Bulgarian students into space and STEM. As a Space Ambassador and youth mentor with The Atlantic Club of Bulgaria, I work directly with teenagers who are curious about space but don’t know where to start. I help them choose STEM tracks, build real portfolios, and apply to international opportunities. I don’t sugarcoat my story when I speak to them. I show them what aerospace looks like in real life - the late-night MATLAB debugging, the retaken exams, the scholarship rejections, and the wins. When I give talks in schools or youth forums, including TEDx-style events, I tell them the truth I wish I’d heard earlier: you don’t need to come from a “space country” to do space work. You need discipline, community, and the courage to keep going when it’s hard. Second, I’m using my international experience to raise the ceiling of what Bulgarian girls believe is possible. I’ve spoken to classrooms in Bulgaria and in the U.S., and I stay connected to students globally through virtual talks. I want a girl in Dobrich or anywhere in Bulgaria to hear my accent, see my path, and think, “She looks like me. That means I can do it too.” Representation is not a slogan to me; it’s a lever that changes choices. Third, I plan to bring research infrastructure back, not just motivation. With the training I’m gaining in U.S. aviation and space-systems research, I want to help create collaborations between Bulgarian universities, European partners, and U.S. labs so Bulgarian students can join real projects without leaving home. Long-term, I hope to support Bulgaria’s deeper integration into ESA-level work and to contribute to homegrown aerospace programs that keep talent in the country instead of exporting it. I came here to learn at the highest level. I’m bringing it back - through research, mentorship, and fearless visibility... so the next dreamers don’t have to wonder if they belong in the future. They’ll already be building it. Thank you for the consideration!

The first time I walked into a hangar as the only girl in the room, I felt two things at once: small, and absolutely on fire. Everyone else looked so certain they belonged there. I wasn’t. I was an immigrant from Bulgaria with an accent, a stubborn dream, and no interest in waiting for permission. So I did what women in male-dominated rooms learn to do early. I took up space anyway. I’m an undergraduate aerospace engineering student at Embry-Riddle and a Quality Engineering Co-Op at Delta Air Lines. On paper, I review flight-critical audits, engineering change requests, and manufacturing plans. In reality, I help protect the people inside the airplanes I’ve loved since childhood. That work taught me something I carry everywhere: engineering is trust. It is a promise that what we build will hold under 9G forces, when real lives are involved. That mindset is the foundation of everything I want to do next. My dream is to become an astronaut one day - not a tourist on a short ride, but someone who earns her seat through the hard path such as skydiving, diving, hypoxia, research, engineering, and serious training. I’m already on that route. I seek out the harsh classes and the projects that don’t work on the first try. I’ve spent long nights debugging simulations, retaking material I refused to let defeat me, and choosing growth over comfort again and again. I want to work in propulsion and space systems, and continue into a Ph.D. focused on Mars-relevant technologies, like lightweight solar reflector swarms and thermal/propulsion solutions that make long-duration missions practical. I want to build hardware that pushes exploration forward because it is reliable, scalable, and truly useful for the next era of spaceflight. But my ambition has never been only about me. I have lived what it feels like to be underestimated - to be talked over in labs, to be treated like the “exception,” to feel the pressure to be perfect just to be taken seriously. What helped me push through was mentorship from women who had my back and from men who chose to open doors instead of guarding them. That support changed my life, and now I treat it like a responsibility to pass on. So I speak. I give motivational talks to students worldwide - in the U.S., Bulgaria, Spain and virtually. I’ve done TEDx talks and school visits where I tell girls honestly what I wish I had heard earlier: you don’t need to look like the stereotype of an engineer, or come from the “right” country, or be fearless. You just need to decide your dream is worth the work, and then keep showing up. At Embry-Riddle I mentor first-year students, especially young women who feel behind before they even start. I run women-forward study sessions in the “weed-out” courses, and I share my real process - the messy drafts, the failed runs, the retakes, the scholarships I didn’t win - because belonging isn’t something you’re granted. It’s something you claim. This scholarship is about uplifting others. That is exactly the chain reaction I want my life to create. I’m building toward space through research, discipline, and impact. And I will keep pulling more women into that future with me - until walking into a hangar as a woman doesn’t feel like an exception, but like home. One day, when I am wearing a flight patch and climbing into a capsule, I want a girl watching from a classroom in Dobrich, Atlanta, or anywhere else to think exactly, “She looks like me. I can do that too.”

Some days, I think about how close I came to giving up. The nights when I sat at my desk after work, staring at tuition bills and praying, “God, if I’m meant to do this, please make a way.” Somehow, He always did. Every semester has been a battle to stay enrolled, but every time I doubted, something reminded me why I belong here. Embry-Riddle isn’t just where I study engineering - it’s where I’ve grown into the person God has been shaping me to be. My name is Tatyana Ivanova, and I’m pursuing aerospace engineering because I believe faith and science can work together to make the world better. I’ve always loved understanding how things work - how lift holds an airplane up or how systems fit together in perfect balance. But for me, engineering isn’t just about machines…it’s about purpose. I want to use what I learn to help people, protect the planet God created, and inspire others to chase their callings, no matter how impossible they seem. Faith is what keeps me steady. College has tested me in every way imaginable - financially, mentally, and physically. There were weeks when I worked multiple jobs and came home too tired to do homework, when I skipped meals to stretch my budget, and when I asked God if I was strong enough to keep going. I still remember opening my Bible to Philippians 4:13 - “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It didn’t make my problems vanish, but it gave me peace, and that peace helped me push forward. That strength is what I try to pass on to others. I spend a lot of my free time mentoring younger students - especially girls in STEM who don’t believe they’re smart enough or strong enough to make it. I know how it feels to doubt yourself, so I make sure they know they’re not alone. Sometimes we talk about school, sometimes about faith, and sometimes about life. I tell them that failure doesn’t mean God’s plan has ended, it often means He’s redirecting it. Seeing them find confidence reminds me why I’m here. Outside of campus, I stay involved in my church and volunteer whenever possible. Whether it’s youth nights, community food drives, or helping organize events, serving others has become the most natural way for me to live out my faith. I’ve learned that worship doesn’t always happen behind a microphone or on a Sunday morning. Sometimes it’s cleaning up after a long day, comforting someone who feels unseen, or giving your time when you have little to spare. That’s what Christ’s love looks like in action. Embry-Riddle has been the place where all these pieces - faith, perseverance, and purpose, came together for me. It’s where I learned that excellence is an act of gratitude, that resilience can be ministry, and that my education isn’t just for me, it’s for the people I’ll serve. Receiving this scholarship would lift an enormous weight off my shoulders. It would let me focus completely on growing as both an engineer and a person of faith - on deepening my skills, leading more outreach work, and continuing to mentor students who remind me of where I once stood. I don’t take a single opportunity for granted, I want to spend my life giving back - to build, to teach, and to serve in a way that reflects the God who carried me through every challenge. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that faith doesn’t just move mountains - it builds futures! Thank you for the consideration!

The first time I sat behind a drum kit, every head in the room turned. It wasn’t because I played perfectly - it was because no one expected a ten-year-old girl to strike that first thunderous note. The drums became my rebellion, my rhythm, and my proof that girls belong wherever passion leads them. Years later, that same determination drives me in another male-dominated world: aerospace engineering, where I now spend my days as the only woman in a cooperative education program working on aircraft that connect the planet. I chose STEAM because it lets me merge logic with imagination. I’m an Aerospace Engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, specializing in propulsion and manufacturing systems. To me, science and creativity aren’t opposites, they’re teammates. When I model airflow or design a component, I hear the same rhythm I once felt playing drums: precision, timing, and flow. Engineering challenges my intellect, but creativity keeps it human. Kayla Nicole Monk’s story reminds me that innovation can save lives. The surgeries that sustained her were miracles of science and compassion, proof of what happens when technology serves humanity. Her dream of creating change through invention mirrors mine. I want to design systems that make flight and exploration safer and more sustainable, and to show others, especially young women, that courage and curiosity can build entire worlds. At Delta Air Lines, I often find myself the youngest person in the hangar, sometimes the only woman, surrounded by seasoned technicians with decades of experience. I listen, learn, and earn their respect by solving problems with the same diligence my father showed building homes back in Bulgaria. Standing beneath the wing of an Airbus A350, I see how manufacturing transforms ideas into reliability. Every calibrated wrench and checked torque value echoes the precision that keeps millions safe above the clouds. Outside the hangar, I serve as President of the Scuba Diving and Marine Conservation Club and Vice President of the Skydiving Club, leading more than seventy students through activities where safety and teamwork mean everything. These roles have taught me that leadership in STEAM isn’t about titles, it’s about empathy, preparation, and giving others confidence when risk feels overwhelming. One day, I hope to take these lessons even further - to space. My ultimate goal is to become an astronaut, another field where women remain the minority. I want to bring the precision of engineering, the creativity of art, and the resilience of every woman who’s been told “you don’t belong” into the most challenging environment of all. And next year, I plan to publish a book for young girls who dream as I once did, girls who play loud instruments, build rockets, code robots, or dive oceans. I want to tell them that curiosity is their greatest tool and that they never have to shrink to fit someone else’s expectations. This scholarship would help me continue that mission, funding my studies and giving me time to focus on outreach and writing. More than financial help, it would represent belief: belief that passion and kindness can coexist with science, that imagination belongs in the lab as much as it does on a stage. Kayla wanted to change the world through innovation. I carry that same spark through STEAM - using knowledge, creativity, and perseverance to build not just machines, but hope. Whether it’s the rhythm of a drum, the hum of an engine, or the silence of orbit, I’ll keep proving that women can do more than reach for the stars - we can build them.

My father’s hands have carried entire buildings. I grew up watching him come home from construction sites with concrete dust on his sleeves and calluses across his palms - hands that could lift steel, measure foundations by instinct, and turn blueprints into skylines. I didn’t understand it at first, but he wasn’t just building walls; he was building trust, safety, and permanence. He taught me that real progress is made by people who construct things that last. That lesson is why I chose engineering. I wanted to understand not just how things are built, but why they hold together. Today, I’m an Aerospace Engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, specializing in manufacturing systems and propulsion structures. While aerospace may sound distant from construction, at its core it’s the same philosophy: designing strong, reliable systems that must perform under extreme conditions. My father builds upward; I build outward - toward precision, efficiency, and sustainability. I currently work as a Co-op Engineer at Delta Air Lines Technical Operations in Atlanta - the busiest airport in the world - where I assist with manufacturing and maintenance processes for commercial aircraft. In the hangar, surrounded by welders, machinists, and engineers, I see the same craftsmanship I grew up admiring on job sites. Every panel, rivet, and torque measurement represents teamwork, process discipline, and respect for detail. Whether assembling turbine components or reviewing quality assurance documentation, I’m constantly reminded that manufacturing is a form of construction - only the structures we build have to fly. Through this experience, I’ve developed a deep respect for the people and processes behind production. Manufacturing is the bridge between design and reality; it’s where theory becomes something you can touch. The same way my father laid foundations with rebar and concrete, I work with composite materials, fasteners, and inspection protocols to ensure strength and longevity. In both worlds, success depends on accuracy, accountability, and care. My coursework at Embry-Riddle reinforces these principles through applied mechanics, materials science, and systems engineering. I’ve learned to model stress paths, design joints, and analyze fatigue - concepts that mirror the structural calculations used in bridges, towers, and factories. The further I advance, the more I see how manufacturing and construction are interconnected disciplines. They both rely on process optimization, teamwork, and safety culture. They both depend on people who are willing to take responsibility for what they build. Looking forward, I hope to contribute to the advancement of sustainable manufacturing and construction technologies - lightweight materials, modular fabrication, and circular production systems that reduce waste while improving performance. I want to help design and manage manufacturing processes that push efficiency without sacrificing reliability. My long-term goal is to lead engineering teams that develop next-generation manufacturing methods for complex structures, whether those are aircraft frames, turbines, or infrastructure components. This scholarship would directly support that path. It would allow me to focus more deeply on advanced manufacturing coursework and professional certifications that strengthen my foundation in production engineering. Every opportunity I earn brings me one step closer to building systems that are not only functional but transformative. When I look at my father’s hands, I see the origin of everything I value - endurance, precision, pride in good work. His construction sites built the world I grew up in. My manufacturing work builds the one we’ll live in tomorrow. Different materials, different scales - but the same purpose: to create something that stands, performs, and endures. And someday, when I see a finished structure, whether on the ground or in motion, I’ll know I honored where I came from: by continuing to build.

The first time I jumped alone, the world went silent. At 13,000 feet above Florida, I let go of the airplane and watched it disappear into the blue. The wind roared past my helmet, my altimeter spun, and for a brief moment I felt something no simulator, classroom, or dream had ever captured - complete freedom. It was my first solo skydive, and as I stabilized in freefall, I realized this was as close as I’d ever come to flying with my own body. From that day forward, I knew I would dedicate my life to aviation. Today, I am an aerospace engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the Harvard of the Skies. I’m currently completing a co-operative education with Delta Air Lines TechOps in Atlanta, working hands-on with aircraft systems at the busiest airport in the US. Every morning, I badge through the gate surrounded by the smell of jet fuel and the thunder of departing flights every 60s, reminded that this is the same dream I once chased in freefall, only now, I’m helping keep those airplanes safely in the sky. At Delta, I’ve had the extraordinary chance to test and observe the very systems I help maintain. During an Airbus A350 systems check, I sat in the cockpit watching the data I’d helped prepare come alive on the displays. Feeling the aircraft vibrate as the engines spooled up, I understood that engineering is its own kind of flight - built on trust, teamwork, and precision. I’ve learned that behind every successful takeoff is an invisible network of people who care deeply about doing things right. When I first arrived at Embry-Riddle, my plan was to major in Aeronautical Science and start flight training immediately. But as an international student, I couldn’t afford the cost of flight hours on top of tuition. So I made a strategic decision: to study Aerospace Engineering instead. It gave me the chance to stay close to aircraft, understand them from the inside out, and gain the technical foundation I’ll need once I begin flight school. Every class in aerodynamics, propulsion, and materials science brings me closer to the day I’ll earn my wings. My goal is to save from my engineering work and start flight training in Daytona Beach, just a few steps from my university’s runway. Whenever I can, I backseat student flights - VFR, IFR, even multi-engine, watching pilots at every stage of training. I study every radio call, checklist, and control input, learning how decision-making and discipline unfold in real time. Those cockpit hours remind me that being a great pilot means never losing the curiosity of an engineer… or the wonder of a kid looking out an airplane window. Outside the hangar, I served as a President of the Skydiving Club, I managed over seventy members through environments where one mistake can mean the difference between danger and safety. These role has taught me to lead with calm focus, to communicate clearly under pressure, and to trust the people beside me, lessons I’ll carry into every cockpit. Craig Huffman’s legacy represents everything I strive for: skill, mentorship, and the courage to lift others higher. Like him, I want to be more than a pilot - I want to be someone who leads with humility and passion, who helps others discover their own wings. Aviation has shaped every version of me - the student, the engineer, the dreamer. From the moment I fell through that endless sky to the hangars of Atlanta, I’ve never stopped chasing the same horizon. And one day soon, you’ll meet me in the cockpit!

It’s midnight in the parking lot, and I’m sitting in my car with a calculus textbook on my lap, smelling like French fries. Olivia Rodrigo’s voice is blasting through the speakers: “I got class tomorrow, I got work tonight.” I laugh, because it feels like she wrote it just for me. That one line sums up my teenage years better than any diary entry ever could. High school wasn’t football games and carefree weekends - it was sprinting from AP classes to closing shifts, trying to keep my grades alive while keeping the lights on at home. It was chugging coffee at 2 a.m., promising myself that one day, all this exhaustion would mean something. That lyric isn’t just about school and work, it’s about the impossible balancing act of being young. You’re expected to dream big but stay realistic, be independent but still “just a kid.” For me, it meant showing up to class with equations swirling in my head and grease on my shoes, pretending like I wasn’t exhausted. But honestly? That chaos taught me more than calm ever could. Adolescence, at least mine, has been messy. Not the Instagram-filter kind of messy - the raw, unfiltered kind where you cry in the bathroom after a test, then wipe your face and head straight to a shift that lasts until midnight. It’s heavy, but it’s also where I learned resilience. I figured out how to keep moving when everything in me wanted to stop, how to turn small, stubborn steps into forward motion. What Rodrigo gets right is the honesty. No romanticizing, no sugarcoating - just the blunt reality of being stretched too thin but refusing to quit. That lyric gave me permission to see my own struggle not as weakness, but as proof that I was building something. Because if I could survive “class tomorrow, work tonight,” then maybe I could survive aerospace engineering problem sets, lab deadlines, and, eventually, the kind of pressure that comes with chasing dreams that reach for the stars. The truth is, adolescence isn’t graceful. It’s showing up tired, scared, and unsure, and still moving anyway. That’s what Rodrigo captures in a single line. And that’s what I carry with me now: the knowledge that even when the schedule is impossible and the odds are stacked against me, I can still keep going. Class tomorrow. Work tonight. Dream forever. That’s been my teenage experience - and it’s why I’m ready for whatever comes next.

Upside down in a ditching helicopter, water flooding the cabin, and no air to breathe - I held on through silence and fear until training carried me out alive. That moment taught me a truth I live by: I can do hard things. My name is Tatyana Ivanova, and my long-term goal is to become the first Bulgarian woman in space. I am pursuing a degree in Aerospace Engineering with a concentration in Rocket Propulsion at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. After graduation, I plan to go directly into a Ph.D. program and I am still deciding whether that would be in aerodynamics and propulsion or planetary sciences. Then, I’d like to work as a diver engineer at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab - the underwater training ground where astronauts prepare for missions. There, I want to design tools and systems for planetary exploration, where failure is not an option and lives depend on precision. My ultimate destination is space itself, not only to explore, but to return with solutions that improve life on Earth. This dream is not built on fantasy, it is built on values that have carried me through every obstacle. The first is resilience. Higher education is expensive, and I’ve had to fight for the chance to pursue it. Over the past few years, I raised more than $120,000 through crowdfunding, outreach, and sponsorships. I worked every campus job available, literally - tutoring, mentoring, leading workshops while managing one of the most demanding engineering programs. Each challenge forced me to innovate, to persist, and to find creative solutions when the easy path wasn’t there. Resilience taught me that the harder the climb, the stronger the view from the top. The second is generosity. My education is not just for me - I carry others with me. As President of one of the biggest clubs at ERAU - the scuba diving and marine conservation club, I mentor dozens of students, lead trips, safety trainings, and conservation projects that remove invasive species and protect fragile ecosystems. I also visit schools to speak with students, especially girls, about careers in aerospace. Every time a young student tells me, “I didn’t know someone like me could do this,” I am reminded that leadership is about lifting others, not just advancing yourself. The third is ambition with empathy. I lead research in our university’s Microgravity Lab, developing CubeSat-based systems to test space technologies in orbit. My current project explores solar reflectors for Mars exploration and potential terraforming. I love building systems that move from theory to hardware, but what drives me is impact - creating technologies that can serve humanity and open doors for future explorers. Resilience, generosity, ambition, and empathy define not only my career goals but also who I am becoming. They remind me that engineering is not only about equations or machines, it is about people, survival, and the future we choose to build. Winning this scholarship would allow me to focus more fully on my education and research, free from the constant stress of financial uncertainty. It would give me the chance to dedicate more time to designing systems that astronauts will depend on, mentoring younger students, and advancing technologies that may one day power missions beyond Earth. I may not have started on equal footing, but I have never lacked vision. From a small town in Bulgaria, to leading aerospace research in Florida, every obstacle has become another step on the ladder I promised myself I would climb. And I am climbing still - with grit, with gratitude, and with my eyes firmly set on the stars.

On Love Island, trust is everything - and nothing creates better drama than breaking it in secret. “Love Island” has always thrived on challenges that spark jealousy, test loyalty, and create unforgettable drama. As a long-time fan, I know the best moments come when Islanders are thrown off balance and forced to adapt. That’s why my challenge idea, The Secret Switch-Up, would be a perfect addition to the show. It is built around secrecy, missions, and suspense, guaranteed to make Islanders squirm, laugh, and maybe even question their connections. The premise is simple but powerful: every Islander is secretly paired with someone new for twenty-four hours. They are given a set of missions to complete with this new “partner,” but they must do it all while pretending nothing unusual is happening. To the rest of the villa, it looks like a normal day. To the audience, it’s a hilarious and tense game of sneaky alliances. The real fun begins when Islanders try to hide their missions without arousing suspicion from their original couples. The rules would keep the challenge both structured and entertaining. Each Islander draws a random card that assigns them to their secret partner. Together, they are given three escalating missions. These missions might include complimenting their secret partner in front of their original couple, sharing a snack or inside joke without being caught, or exchanging a small item to wear until the reveal. The missions are just risky enough to create tension, but silly enough to make fans laugh at the creative excuses Islanders come up with. One twist makes the game even juicier: Islanders are not allowed to directly lie if someone asks them whether they are hiding something. They have to dodge, deflect, or act casual, but a flat denial would break the rules. That small restriction makes every conversation more dramatic. At the end of the day, the villa gathers around the firepit for the big reveal. Each Islander confesses who their secret partner was and describes how they completed their missions. The couple with the most successful missions wins a luxury reward such as a private dinner, spa evening, or exclusive date outside the villa. But the true reward for viewers is the priceless reactions: original partners realizing they’ve been tricked, Islanders laughing as their secret stunts are revealed, and maybe a few sparks of unexpected chemistry between new pairs. This challenge works because it embodies everything that makes “Love Island” addictive. It stirs jealousy when someone notices unusual behavior, it gives viewers comedy when missions get awkward, and it ends with the dramatic firepit reveal that fans live for. It also creates real consequences for villa dynamics. Sometimes Islanders might discover a surprising connection with someone new. Other times, it proves that original couples are strong enough to survive a little chaos. Either way, it deepens the storylines and keeps fans invested. The “wow” factor comes from the suspense. Throughout the day, the audience gets to watch secret pairs struggle to complete missions under the noses of their partners. By the time the reveal happens, fans are rooting either for their success or for them to get caught. That combination of tension and comedy is exactly what makes for viral moments and social media buzz. In the end, The Secret Switch-Up is a challenge that mixes strategy, romance, and chaos in the perfect Love Island style. It would give Islanders a chance to show creativity, test their loyalty, and spark drama, while giving fans the unforgettable moments that make the show such a cultural phenomenon.

I want to be an astronaut, but my story begins in a Florida spring. At Troy Springs, I learned what silence sounds like. Not the empty kind, but the kind filled with life. Sunlight cut through the water, fish shimmered in quick bursts, and I floated weightless, part of something bigger. I was just a kid, but I understood one thing instantly: this world is alive, and it needs us to care for it. That was the first time I felt truly connected to the Earth. Since then, water has been my teacher. In Jupiter and West Palm Beach, I’ve seen the ocean at its brightest - reefs alive with color, sea turtles drifting past, schools of fish swirling like galaxies. But I’ve also seen the other side: corals drained of color, fishing line wrapped tight around fragile fans, plastics moving with the current like ghosts. Diving taught me awe, but it also taught me urgency. The planet’s beauty is staggering, but it is not guaranteed. Sustainability is the line between thriving ecosystems and empty seas. That belief shapes my entire path. I study Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with a concentration in rocket propulsion. At first glance, rockets and reefs don’t belong in the same story. But to me, they are inseparable. Both demand survival in extreme environments. Both require trust, precision, and respect for fragile systems. The same satellites that map distant stars also track coral bleaching from orbit. The same life-support systems that sustain astronauts in space inspire sustainable systems here on Earth. My relationship with the planet is the compass that directs every choice I make in education: if it doesn’t contribute to exploration and preservation, it’s not enough. That’s also why I lead. As President of the Scuba Diving and Marine Conservation Club, I work with more than seventy divers to clean reefs, remove invasive species, and share conservation lessons with the campus and community. Leadership for me isn’t about holding a title; it’s about building momentum. I’ve watched a diver surface from a cleanup dive holding a tangled net and realize, in that moment, their role in protecting the ocean. Those sparks of responsibility multiply, and that’s how impact begins. If money were no hindrance, I would build an installation called “Blue Planet, Fragile Planet.” It would begin in a Florida spring, with walls of light and sound recreating the clarity and stillness of Troy Springs. The next space would immerse visitors in a reef under stress - bleached corals, rising temperatures, the creeping impact of pollution. The final room would open into the view astronauts see: Earth glowing blue against the black of space, breathtaking and vulnerable. But the exhibit wouldn’t end with awe - it would end with action. Visitors could join workshops, commit to conservation projects, and learn simple sustainable practices that ripple outward into real change. The purpose would be to transform connection into responsibility, and responsibility into collective action. My first dive gave me awe. My ocean dives gave me urgency. My leadership gave me community. And my education gives me the tools. Together, they form my vision: to explore boldly, protect fiercely, and live sustainably so that future generations inherit a planet as alive as the one that first held me in Troy Springs. Because whether underwater or among the stars, the truth is the same: we only get one planet, and its future depends on what we do now.

I have never believed that dreams are only for the dreamer. I am an aerospace engineering student, but my dreams have always reached far beyond the walls of a classroom or the blueprints of a spacecraft. For me, aerospace is more than science and numbers, it is about pushing boundaries, breaking through the limits that society often places on women, and showing the next generation that they can rise as high as they dare to imagine. I didn’t arrive here by following a straight or easy path. I’ve crossed borders - literally and figuratively - on my way to becoming the woman I am today. I remember the 20-hour trip I made across countries, not for a vacation, but to volunteer. That journey taught me that service often means stepping far outside of your comfort zone, sometimes into places where you are tired, unsure, or even scared. But the look on the faces of the young girls I worked with - the way their posture straightened when I told them I was studying aerospace, made every mile worth it. I have faced challenges that tested my resilience in ways I could never have predicted. Some of those moments are etched into my memory permanently, and some I carry on my skin, like the Acropolis tattoo next to my heart, a constant reminder that I can withstand storms and still stand tall. I know what it is to feel small in the face of hardship, but I also know how to fight for my place in the world. That fight is what I pass on to the young women I mentor. Volunteering has been at the heart of my journey. Whether I am mentoring girls in STEM projects, helping them build their first rockets out of scratch or program their first code, or simply listening to their stories, I approach it with the same intention: to let them see themselves in spaces they might have been told were not for them. I remember being their age, wondering if the path I wanted was “too ambitious” for a girl like me. Now, I am living proof that it isn’t, and I make sure they know it, too. The youngest girl I mentored was Kalina, a 6-year old prodigy with a big brave dream. Her mom told me that Wednesday afternoon was her favorite day of the week, because I meet with her... My dreams are not just about designing spacecraft or advancing technology. They are about using the platform I build in aerospace to create opportunities for others, to fund scholarships once I grow old and wiser, and to open doors that once seemed sealed shut. I want to lead programs that give young women not just skills, but the confidence to lead, innovate, and persist. I want them to know that ambition is not arrogance, and that their worth is not up for debate. The This Woman’s Worth Scholarship embodies the very mission I have lived by - unapologetic growth, the celebration of womanhood, and the commitment to lift as we climb. Supporting me means supporting every young woman who will see my journey and think, “If she can do it, so can I.” I am worth my dreams because I have fought for them, nurtured them, and shared them. They are not mine alone - they belong to the girls I’ve mentored, the students I’ve encouraged, and the future leaders I have yet to meet. And as I continue to chase them, I will make sure I’m not running alone.

When I think of sepsis, I think of an airplane seat and a friend who didn’t know she was about to almost die. She had just moved to a new country - big boxes, taped-up suitcases, a long transatlantic flight she thought would just be uncomfortable. She’d already spent a month in the hospital. Infection, antibiotics, monitors, and that disinfectant smell that stays on your clothes. Nobody said sepsis out loud to me then, but I know now that’s what nearly took her away. Somewhere over the ocean, she passed out. Her parents thought she was just tired. She couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t walk to the bathroom. Her skin looked wrong. The plane had an emergency landing with her half-conscious and rushed her straight to another hospital in a city she’d never seen. It was almost too late. She survived. But that night changed something in me. For weeks, I kept replaying it: how thin the line is between “she’s okay” and “she’s not coming back.” I’d stay up late reading about what happened - how infections that look small can spread so fast they shut down a body on an airplane. I couldn’t believe how little I knew until it was almost too late for her. I’m an aerospace engineering student now. Some people think that’s far from healthcare, but it’s not. When you’ve watched someone almost vanish inside a plane, you never look at any system the same way again. Every bolt, every wire, every line of code matters. You learn to question things twice. I do that now - in my research, in my designs, in my everyday life. When COVID shut my campus down, I packed up too. I paid my own rent. I paid for my classes. I learned to stretch groceries and help my family when they needed it, even if that meant skipping lunch for a week so my sister could have something better. I don’t talk about that at school, but it’s under every late-night study session. If something breaks, I fix it. If something ends, I begin again. That’s my drive. That’s what sepsis taught me, too - that life stops when you least expect it, and you can’t waste the time you’re given. It pushed me to work harder. To care more. To keep showing up when I’m tired. My friend still deals with the effects today. She gets exhausted easily, but she pushes through school anyway. Watching her fight her way back taught me that survival doesn’t end in a hospital bed, it’s a daily choice to keep moving forward when your body wants to quit. That’s what I carry with me. I want to help build systems that don’t fail when people need them most. Maybe that means designing air ambulances that carry patients safely across oceans. Or satellites that keep people connected when every second counts. Either way, I know what it means to watch life almost disappear in the air, and I know what it takes to hold that life steady. Thank you for reading my story. For me, begin again isn’t just a name - it’s what I do, quietly and persistently, for the people I love, and for the world I want to help hold together.

I hate soup. Not the taste - the sound. When I was a kid, my dad ordered me to get over it. He’d say it at breakfast when the cereal crunch made me want to scream, or at dinner when someone’s chewing felt louder than my thoughts. So, I learned to eat alone. In high school, I’d leave class to cry in the bathroom if someone tapped their pencil too long. I’d skip lunch when the cafeteria got too loud with smacking and gum popping. Nobody really got it, they all thought I was dramatic, or rude, or just “sensitive.” So, I believed it too. It took me until college to say the word out loud: misophonia. The first time I told a professor, I was shaking. I asked to sit by the door so I could step out if someone’s pen clicking made me forget how to breathe. He just nodded and said, “Okay, that’s fine.” It was the first time I didn’t feel like I had to apologize for how my brain works. Now, I’m an aerospace engineering student. I build rockets on paper and test tubes in the lab, but my real challenge is the tiny, everyday battle: tapping, slurping, sniffing. Earplugs in every pocket. Extra batteries for my noise-cancelling headphones. I know exactly where the quietest library cubicle is at 2:00 pm. I never planned to be someone who “raises awareness.” But freshman year I posted a late-night rant on my story about misophonia - how it feels like broken glass behind my eyes. I woke up to messages from classmates saying, “Wait. I thought I was the only one.” That same week, I put up a sticky note in the library: “3rd floor cubicles are quieter. Bring headphones. - Someone with misophonia.” A month later, someone wrote under it: “Thank you.” I still have a picture of that note - it’s tiny, but it reminded me that the smallest things help. Since then, I’ve spoken at student panels and gave a TED-style talk on hidden struggles students carry - not just misophonia, but all the invisible things that shape us. It felt terrifying to stand up there and admit something I used to hide. But it felt honest, too. Last semester I started drafting a simple PDF guide for other students with misophonia - the one I wish I’d had: how to email your professor, what headphones block the worst frequencies, how to explain it to your roommate. I’m working with the disability office to see if we can add real language about misophonia to our accessibility page. Most people don’t think it’s a big deal - “So you don’t like chewing sounds, big whoop.” But they don’t know what it’s like to plan your entire day around dodging normal life. They don’t know how heavy a pencil tap can feel when you’re trying to build your future. This scholarship would help me keep going - one less side job, one more hour to finish my degree, one more push to make sure no one else sits alone, thinking they’re just “too sensitive.” I can’t make the world quieter. But maybe I can make it kinder. That’s enough for now.

I was fifteen when I met my first rocket. It rose like a spine into the sky - the Saturn V replica at the entrance of Space Camp Türkiye. I didn’t know yet how each stage fired, or how many equations it took to leave Earth. But I knew it was pointing somewhere I needed to go. That rocket didn’t just launch astronauts - it launched the dream I have been waking up with every day for the past seven years. I entered the camp as a shy curious girl and left with a lifelong mission. Go to Space. My name is Tatyana Ivanova. I’m a junior in Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, specializing in rocket propulsion. I come from a small town in Bulgaria, where my mom earned her degree with me in her arms, and my dad laid bricks through subzero winters. Education, in my family, has always been a way out. But for me, it became the only way up. That moment at Space Camp flipped a switch. Since then, I’ve pursued every opportunity to understand the physics, math, and engineering that make spaceflight possible. I lead CubeSat-based experiments in the Microgravity Lab at ERAU, developing hardware that simulates and validates technology for solar energy redirection using reflectors. I’ve designed thermal systems, modeled astronaut operations, and trained in high-risk conditions - including hypoxia, underwater capsule escapes, and zero gravity - all to better understand how humans survive and operate in space. But my contribution to science goes beyond lab data. I believe the future of space exploration depends not only on what we build, but who we build it for. That’s why I work equally hard outside the lab - speaking to middle and high school students, mentoring fellow international students, and using every outreach opportunity to open doors that once felt locked to me. I show young women and underrepresented students what aerospace really looks like: how it’s built, who builds it, and how much space there is for them in it. I plan to contribute to science by building systems that make human spaceflight safer, smarter, and more inclusive. My long-term goal is to design extravehicular activity (EVA) tools and astronaut interfaces that combine engineering precision with human usability. That means tools astronauts can rely on - because lives will depend on them. I want to work at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab, where EVA systems are tested underwater, and later pursue a Ph.D. in Aerodynamics and Propulsion since it is well known, humankind needs reliable rockets to go back to the Moon and beyond. To me, space is not just a frontier - it’s a proving ground. And I want to help shape the science that allows us to go further and come back stronger. The William Griggs Memorial Scholarship honors a man who helped send humans to the Moon -and encouraged his daughters to pursue science. His legacy speaks to me. A replica of the rocket he worked on was the reason I first looked up. Now, I look forward. I don’t just want to fly or be a tourist. I have taken the challenging, complex, tough road to the stars through diving, skydiving, aviation survival, high-g training and countless hours in the classroom and the lab. I want to contribute to the science that makes spaceflight possible, and to the community that makes it worth reaching for. I want to build what launches us, protect who goes, and teach the next generation to keep going. Because no gravity can stop someone who sees the sky as home.

The Words I Never Said, the Poem That Heard Them I wasn’t even supposed to be in that thrift store. It was raining. I had just finished crying in the parking lot of a grocery store after remembering a voicemail I deleted last year. I didn’t want to go home. Something in me didn’t want to be anywhere. So I walked into this dusty little place that smelled like attic wood and old laundry detergent, mostly because I didn’t want anyone to notice my puffy eyes. I wandered toward the back where the shelves were uneven, and the books leaned like they were tired. That’s where I found her - Sappho. A name I vaguely remembered from school. The cover was faded. The pages were loose. I opened the book and landed on a page that held only four lines: “Honestly, I want to die. She left me weeping, and with many tears said this: ‘How terribly we’ve suffered, Sappho. I leave you against my will.’” It was like I had been punched in the stomach. Because I had lost someone too. Someone I loved. And I hadn’t called her that day. Something told me to, and I didn’t. I was tired, or distracted, or afraid of what I might hear in her voice. And now she’s gone. That guilt doesn’t scream. It just sits in my throat and tightens when I laugh too hard. I didn’t expect to find anything in a thrift store that could name that feeling. But here it was, written 2,600 years ago by a woman who clearly knew how it felt to have someone leave and take all the air with them. Sappho’s “Fragment 94” is not just a record of heartbreak, it is a deep expression of the way love and guilt can intertwine when someone leaves before you’re ready. Through close reading of this passage, I found not only a reflection of my grief, but a mirror of the unspeakable guilt I carry. Close reading allowed me to enter into the silences of this ancient text, where I found the possibility of forgiveness and the quiet truth that love doesn’t end, even when presence does. The first line - “Honestly, I want to die” - doesn’t feel poetic. It feels honest. Brutally, plainly, frighteningly honest. It’s the kind of sentence you only say when no one else is listening. And yet, Sappho wrote it down. She gave it to the world. That act alone, naming that depth of pain, allowed me to do the same. But it’s the second and third lines where the texture of the poem hurts even more: “She left me weeping, and with many tears said this: ‘How terribly we’ve suffered, Sappho. I leave you against my will.’” That’s where my understanding shifted. The woman leaving isn’t cruel. She’s not trying to escape. She’s suffering too. She’s leaving even though she doesn’t want to. That line - “I leave you against my will” - is where the guilt I carried cracked a little. I had been holding on to the idea that maybe she left because I didn’t try hard enough. That maybe if I had called, or showed up, or done more, she would still be here. But what if she didn’t want to leave either? What if her leaving wasn’t a decision, but a collapse? Close reading gave me the courage to sit with that thought, not just breeze past it, but circle it, stare at it, breathe through it. That’s what close reading does. It invites you to not just consume the text, but to enter it. To read not just the words, but the spaces around them. The pain underneath them. The possibilities between them. I began reading the piece every night before bed. I would whisper the lines to myself like a spell. I didn’t always cry. Sometimes I just listened. I circled the word weeping. I underlined suffered. I wrote the word guilt in the margin. The more I read, the more I realized that Sappho wasn’t just writing about sadness, she was writing about shared sadness. About a goodbye that neither person wanted. About love that still existed even when the relationship couldn’t. That was revolutionary for me. Because guilt makes you feel alone. It makes you believe that the person is gone because of you. But this poem, this fragment, offered another possibility: that sometimes people leave against their will. That sometimes love still sits on both sides of the loss. I’ve learned that ancient texts aren’t powerful just because they’re old. They’re powerful because they’re honest. Sappho could have dressed up her pain with myth or metaphor. But she didn’t. She said things plainly. She let the silence do the rest. And close reading helped me see that silence not as emptiness, but as invitation. Invitation to see myself. Invitation to see her. Invitation to forgive. There’s a reason we’re asked to slow down and read deeply. When we only skim, we miss what’s trying to speak to us. We miss what’s buried under the language. Close reading isn’t just a classroom skill, it’s a life skill. It’s how we learn to truly hear someone. It’s how we find what was almost said. This skill of listening - to poems, to people, to memories, has changed how I live. I now approach conversations with more care. I ask myself: What’s being said behind the words? I reread messages I used to ignore. I hold onto the voicemails I almost deleted. I listen for the meaning someone may not have had the strength to say aloud. That’s what Sappho did. She gave voice to the things we usually keep hidden. And because I read her closely, she helped me say them too. Close reading helped me understand that my grief isn’t just sadness, it’s the echo of love that has nowhere else to go. And guilt? Guilt is often grief’s shadow. But shadows disappear in the light. And close reading brought light to me. In the months since I found that book, I’ve changed in quiet ways. I write more. Not perfect poems, just raw ones. Lines like: “I didn’t call, and for a while, all I heard was silence. But now I write into the ringing.” or “If she had told me goodbye, I would’ve tried to stop her. But now I carry her in every hello.” I write not to explain, but to remember. And remembering, I find peace. I now understand that literature, especially ancient literature, is not about outdated wisdom. It’s about eternal truths. We still love the way Sappho did. We still break the way she did. And if we’re willing to look closely enough, we can still heal the way she did, too. Close reading is not glamorous. It’s slow. It’s quiet. It’s intimate. But it is powerful. It gives us access to the full weight of what someone was trying to say, and most importantly - what they couldn’t. It helped me forgive someone I never got to say goodbye to. It helped me forgive myself for not answering the phone. It reminded me that love can live in fragments. That silence can be the loudest noise in the room. That a torn page from a thrift store can hold all the words I never said - and help me finally hear them.

Strapped into a seat in a ditching helicopter, upside-down underwater in total darkness, I took my last breath before escape. That moment taught me something: I can survive hard things. Not just in the classroom, but in life. I’m Tatyana Ivanova, an international aerospace engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, specializing in rocket propulsion. I’m not of Nigerian or African descent, but I am a first-generation student from Bulgaria, working toward becoming the first Bulgarian woman in space. I’ve trained in high-G, anti-G, zero-G, and hypoxia environments. I skydive, scuba dive, and lead CubeSat-based research to test space systems in simulated microgravity. My story didn’t begin with astronaut training, it began with a desk in a cold moldy apartment, a stack of Bulgarian old textbooks, and a family who gave me everything while having nothing. My father works in construction, laying bricks through snowy winters with no sick days and no safety net. I still remember him leaving for work before sunrise. Neither him or my mom had the resources to give me an academic head start, but they taught me the value of work, and the importance of never giving up on yourself. Education became my only way forward, the one thing I could control when everything else felt uncertain. Life as an immigrant student in the U.S. has been a constant series of translations - of language, culture, paperwork, systems. When I got accepted into college, I thought the hardest part was over. I didn’t realize that staying enrolled would become its own fight. I’ve spent nights on the phone with embassies, lost housing and a job. I’ve been blocked from registering for classes because of a tuition hold with no backup plan, no co-signer, and no clear path forward. So I built one. I launched an outreach campaign - wrote proposals, filmed videos, cold-emailed companies and mentors day and night. Over time, I raised over $120,000 to pay for college. I worked multiple jobs at once while maintaining a full-time academic load with the most complex, challenging and demanding coursework. I made the Dean’s List. I continued leading my research teams. And through it all, I stayed focused on the reason I came here in the first place: to turn knowledge into tools that protect human life in space, and back here on Earth. Since arriving in the U.S., I’ve learned that opportunity isn’t just about luck or timing - it’s about knowing how to ask, how to organize, how to lead. I’ve mentored international students who were afraid to speak in class. I’ve created research templates and survival guides. I’ve spoken in classrooms to show kids that someone who started with nothing can still make it in STEM. These aren’t extras - they’re part of my very mission. Being from Bulgaria is part of my story, not something I hide to fit in. It taught me to adapt fast, solve problems, and listen more than I speak. Living in the U.S. taught me to step up, ask better questions, and build things that last. The combination has made me into someone who doesn’t give up when things fall apart. Trust me, things go the wrong way quite often… My goal is to work at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab, designing tools that help astronauts survive planetary missions. But beyond that, I want to inspire others to never give up - and teach them how to climb, even when the ground disappears beneath them. Immigration didn’t hold me back. It taught me how to move forward. And I’m still climbing because NO DREAM IS TOO HIGH!

Strapped inside a ditching helicopter, upside-down in total darkness, no air, water flooding the cabin - I took my last breath. The quietest silence. A moment of survival. That’s when I knew I could do hard things in life. I’m Tatyana Ivanova, a junior in Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, specializing in rocket propulsion. I’ve trained in anti-G, zero-G, high-G and hypoxia environments. I skydive, scuba dive, and lead CubeSat-based research to test space systems in simulated microgravity. My goal is to design astronaut tools for planetary extravehicular activity and become the first Bulgarian woman in space. What motivates me is the intersection of human survival and engineering precision. I’m drawn to systems that operate where there’s no margin for error, where life depends on tools working exactly as designed. I want to build those tools, lead those missions, and ensure that the next generation of explorers is safer and better prepared than the last. To get there, I plan to earn a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, complete all relevant astronaut training certifications, and become a certified Divemaster. I will push to the limits - academically, physically, and mentally - to support real missions and train in the same environments astronauts rely on. If I could do anything, I’d go to space - not just to explore the unknown, but to bring back what we learn and use it to improve life on Earth. Space challenges us to solve problems in the most extreme conditions, and those solutions - recycling systems, energy efficiency, sustainable habitats, can help people here who need them most. I want to be part of that effort. I don’t just want to reach orbit, I want to make sure what we do up there has a real impact down here. What excites me about STEM is that it teaches you how to solve problems in places where failure isn’t an option. Literally. It pushes you to think clearly under pressure, and to build systems that don’t just work - they last. Whether I’m testing CubeSat payloads, coding thermal simulations, or troubleshooting experiments in our Microgravity Lab, I’m always focused on what moves the mission forward. As mentioned, I also train in extreme environments, diving and skydiving, where gear, sensors, and human-machine interaction matter just as much as the person wearing them. These experiences help me think about how to design better systems for astronaut training and survival. Information technology ties it all together. I’ve used it to analyze sensor data, model behavior under stress, and build communication between teams and tools. I want to keep working on the software side of space systems - interfaces that support astronauts during missions outside of the spacecraft, early-warning systems, training simulations that actually reflect real risk. But I also believe in sharing what I learn. I’ve created guides, mentored other students, and used online platforms to fundraise and support space education. I visit local schools and speak to middle and high school students, especially girls, immigrants, and first-gen college students, about careers in aerospace, programming, and space systems. I show them real tools, share stories from training, and break down what it actually looks like to work in STEM. I want them to see that this path is not just possible - but worth chasing. I also mentor international students through our university and help them navigate research, internships, and scholarships, the same way others once helped me. I use every outreach opportunity to connect technology with purpose, and to remind students that whether it’s coding, electronics, or space hardware, someone like them belongs there. For me, STEM is about motion, direction, and purpose - and making sure no one’s left behind. In space, things can go wrong fast… So, astronauts train for every scenario. I’ve talked about building systems that predict failure, warn early, and give you time to act. But during my second year, everything went wrong for me and there was no warning. It started with a phone call. A tragedy in the family led to my breaking point. But I didn’t break. I was already balancing an intense engineering program, research leadership, and tutoring. Now, I faced no longer having housing, a tuition block, and the possibility of losing my education entirely. Loans weren’t an option. I had no co-signer, no financial aid, and no time to waste. So I acted. I launched a full-scale outreach campaign - writing proposals, filming videos, cold-emailing sponsors. I raised over $120,000 in donations and support. I stayed enrolled. I kept my jobs. I even made the Dean’s List. That experience rewired my approach to challenge. I no longer wait for the “right” moment or conditions- I engineer momentum. I lead research with more urgency. I plan with more empathy. And I know that when survival is on the line, creativity and determination matter more than comfort. My greatest challenge wasn’t just financial. It was proving to others and myself that I could keep going when the foundation fell out beneath me. I did. And I’m still climbing…