I am Dagmawet Zemedkun, a sophomore majoring in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. My hobbies are writing and problem-solving. To be honest, problem-solving is not just a hobby but a passion of mine. I often love seeing how something that can be thought of as a big and scary problem can be broken down into small steps which makes the whole problem seem like it was easy, to begin with. If I am not doing these two things, I am watching movies, daydreaming, or reading. Going through the years, I have found many different motivations to achieve something but there has been one constant motivation that has always been there and will remain my motivation forever. This motivation is my family, they have worked hard to help me become a better person as a whole and did their best in the past, and are doing their best now to guide me. I know that without them I would not be a fraction of the person that I am today but it is not just the gratitude that I have for them that is my motivation but the desire to give them everything that they never had. If I could do anything with my life, then it would be that. I come from a low-income family with many parents having to support three children and a grandchild, they have had to make a lot of sacrifices, and my wish is to one day give them everything they had to give up for us. STEM, where do I begin? I love how STEM is not just concrete but changes with discoveries, or how one can create new things, or how all of the acronyms in STEM are used in technology, and many more, but if I had to choose one thing that excites me about STEM, it would be how difficult it is and how it requires you to have depth knowledge about all the topics in the field you are studying in order to actually state that you have learned it and advance to the next topic. To explain what I mean by this, let's take the M part of STEM which stands for Mathematics. I have just learned Calculus this past semester and although it covers the previous math that has been taught, it needs to be approached using a different way of thinking. If someone does not know how to do arithmetic with fractions, factors, conjugates, and other processes, they will have a hard time with Calculus because they did not learn what they needed to have learned in previous sections of math which are needed when applying the new thinking process calculus requires of you. Although I cannot state explicitly the positive impact I could make with a job in information technology, as a Computer Science major, I know that through the use of software, many problems can be solved. I thrive on being a problem-solver and one of the biggest things about learning Computer Science that I love is how it is about conceptualizing the topic and finding ways of addressing it through the use of the software. By implementing working software, I would use what I know to help me navigate problems and put forth my best effort to solve such problems. The biggest challenge I had to overcome happened throughout this past semester. Starting my first semester as a sophomore, I had expected things to be more difficult than previous semesters and they were but it was more than I thought. All my friends had similar classes which were different from mine so even when I thought about asking for help, we were tackling different things even though we were taking the same course making it harder to ask for help. By my third week, I was completely burned out and I did not know where I was going. At the same time, I was feeling maybe Computer Science was not for me and that maybe I should change to another major. On the other hand, I have a side to me that likes challenges and was pushing me to just keep going one step at a time and I will get there. While I kept going and tried different methods, I learned that the biggest problem was not the course but how I approached all my classes. I was internalizing all of my struggles and not asking for as much help as I could have. After realizing this, I slowly started going for help and taking more meaningful breaks when I needed them instead of when I thought I needed them. I honestly thought I was not going to make it but I needed up passing all of my classes, and even though this was good, I am more appreciative of the side of me that kept me going.