“We all deserve a quality education at a fraction of the price,” a quote that I have been saying for the past two years. This mindset is what made me start my scholarship page and become a mentor for hundreds of students nationally and internationally. I knew that I wanted to go to college to be a mechanical engineer and contribute to the oil and gas industry, but the part I didn’t know was how to afford the price of my education. On my first day of senior year, I would log into my computer and search for different scholarship opportunities no matter what the scholarship was worth. The first rejection email was like a light slap on the back. “This is just one rejection email; I think I have way more acceptance emails ahead of me.” Then the next email came, and several after that. The day to pay for my tuition was coming up and I have yet to earn a scholarship. Then, after some research I found the Black American Engineering Scholarship and put the most effort into applying. In June of 2024, I finally got my first “congratulations, we are pleased to announce...” email. Reading that email was like a weight lifted off my shoulders and motivated me to continue my goal of graduating debt free. Earning a scholarship is not only about the financial support, but also a sign that others believe in you and the path that you’re on, which is especially important for a first-generation student to feel since there is no one to rely on for educational important in the family. This mentality has kept me on track and has allowed me to earn more financial support for my education. However, I knew that there were others who were wondering how to tackle the affordability of a quality education. I wanted other students to feel that weight and financial stress taken off their plates. I went through my first year of college telling other engineering majors about different scholarship opportunities I think they should apply to which led me to think if I can influence others to apply to opportunities on my campus, what’s stopping me throughout the country. That is when the account DarOpensDoors was created. Over the creation of this page, I have helped several with scholarship questions ranging from how to start the process to reviewing their essays before hitting the submit button. DarOpensDoors is more than just a social media account, it is a gateway to giving out tips to graduating with little to no debt, it shows that the goal of securing scholarships for your education is possible and realistic. This is an honor that I am greatly proud of because I am not only helping others around the country, but I am also reaching different students around the world and providing them with the knowledge to graduate with little to no debt. This is an honor bigger than any money for me since I am giving back to the community since it is my purpose to positively influence the community, no matter how big the impact is. I am honored to have helped several students who are underrepresented in their majors, first generation students like myself, students who are low income, or on their own to fund their college education, and I will continue to do that even after I graduate with my engineering degree because everyone truly does deserve a quality education at the fraction of the price.

Growing up, I have always felt different when it came to what career I wanted to pursue after college. In elementary school, adults would ask what I would like to be when I grow up and I never knew the answer. I never gave them the typical answers of a teacher, nurse, doctor, or astronaut. I have always had a love for LEGOs, which allowed me to have creative freedom. Even though I could not just build LEGOs for a hobby, I did know that I wanted an occupation that was heavily involved in technology and designing. I started to take my STEAM interest seriously when I reached middle school and started joining organizations that align with my goals of getting a career in STEAM. I stuck with STEAM being an interest of mine, until I reached high school and figured that this was not only a hobby for me, but it was a calling that I was meant for this career. Throughout my high school career, technology has been an interest that I wanted to pursue for my profession. Given the opportunity to participate in the two-year engineering program, I decided to take the chance and take the class. It was a beautiful experience, and it confirmed that I wanted to pursue engineering for my career. No one in my family has ever thought about STEM as their major, let alone going to a four-year university. I did not grow up with anyone telling me that I could do something involving technology, especially engineering. I had to find what I loved on my own, and stick with it through the good, bad, and the failures. Enduring every challenge that I have come across has shown me that the subject of engineering is not only something I love, but also my passion in life. This scholarship can have a tremendous impact with the financial aspect of college. This scholarship will also help with my dream of wanting to start a non-profit for young minorities who want to learn about STEAM, but their community does not provide the resources. I want to make an impact on my community, and I want to see the young black generation achieve the careers in STEAM that they want to pursue. This scholarship would be more than financial support for college, it would be the start of something that is bigger than myself. I would be grateful and honored to earn this scholarship and start something of my own.

Growing up, I have always felt different when it came to what career I wanted to pursue after college. In elementary school, adults would ask what I would like to be when I grow up and I never knew the answer. I never gave them the typical answers of a teacher, nurse, doctor, or astronaut. However, I did know that I wanted an occupation that was heavily involved in technology and designing. I started to take my STEM interest seriously when I reached middle school and started joining organizations that align with my goals of getting a career in STEM. I stuck with STEM being an interest of mine, until I reached high school and figured that this was not only a hobby for me, but it was a calling that I was meant for this career. Throughout my high school career, technology has been an interest that I wanted to pursue for my profession. Given the opportunity to participate in the two-year engineering program Using technology throughout high school grew my love for wanting to use it for my profession. I plan to engage in the technology industry to design and build new projects that will be beneficial to use in the real world. I was able to use CAD for the first time in 2021, and ever since I got the license, I was using SolidWorks nearly every day to design new concepts. SolidWorks helped me with knowing the measurements of my builds and having tools to modify it in any way that I wanted to. Being able to design whatever I could put my mind to was interesting to me, and I realized that I wanted to do that for my career. I want to use technology to develop, build, and progress our world. Engineering relies a lot on technology especially when trying to design protypes. In my engineering career I want to use technology to have a positive impact, no matter how big or small. I want my usage of technology to have an impact on the younger generations to follow, and to be a role model for them and want to pursue a career involving technology as well. As someone who will be the first to go to a four-year university, and as an African American I want to be the first in my family to work in the technology field. I did not grow up with anyone telling me that I could do something involving technology, especially engineering. I had to find what I loved on my own, and stick with it through the good, bad, and the failures. Enduring every challenge that I have come across has shown me that the subject of engineering is not only something I love, but also my passion in life. I want younger black students to see that it is possible for them to branch out and pursue something that is not the “normal” job careers such as a teacher, doctor, nurse, or anything of those sorts.

I will say that the journey of getting to where I am today was difficult. I have no father figure, I live with my grandparents, and my mom is diagnosed with Lupus, so we are living off her social security benefits. The journey of having a sick parent has been a hard one. There were times where I would get frustrated, and I would cry at night if my mom went to the hospital wondering when or if she would come back. My mom is the only active parent in my life, and I did not want to lose my best friend so soon. My mindset was changed however, from fear of losing my mom young to being grateful that I have memories with my mom to look back on. Even though this was and still is a hard journey for me especially since I am away from home for college, I am still grateful for the things my mom and I got to do before I left home. My mom being sick has motivated me to further my education, pursue my dreams of being an engineer, and I want to donate money for research on a cure for Lupus. My mom has shaped me into the person I am today, and I cannot thank her enough for everything she has done. I am getting my degree in honor of her since she was not able to go to a four-year university. I am continuing to be a leader and participate in community service to help others like I have helped her out. Overall, this journey has helped me find my identity, drive, passion, and these are things that I am going to keep working on even after college and I get into my dream career. I have always had a love for creating and education, but I thought that it would be impossible for me to go to college because of my financial income. With this scholarship though, I will be able to cover the cost of some of my education, and it would allow me to put more focus towards my classes rather than worrying about the cost. I would like to transfer to the amazing intuition, Howard University, but if I do not get enough money to attend, I will have to withdraw from enrollment. Growing up I have always been interested in having creative freedom and being able to do whatever comes to my mind. This has been proved with the hobbies I have taken over the years, such as Legos and music. I am interested in becoming a mechanical engineer because I would like my inventions to have a positive impact on my community and eventually the world. Mechanical engineering has become more than just a career to me, it has become my passion, and I want others to find their passion in STEM as well. With my degree, I am determined to give back to the community with STEM. One thing I would like to change in my community is the lack of STEM learning for our youth or people who are not interested in the traditional job choices. I want to change this so elementary to middle school kids get a sense of STEM and see if that is a career path that they would want to pursue in college. I will say that my community does not have the funding for younger kids to learn about STEM, but I believe that learning about it is important. I believe that learning about science, technology, engineering, and math is important because I did not know about the subject heavily until I was involved in an engineering program in my sophomore year of high school. STEM has become a passion of mine, and my engineering teacher became a mentor for me even after I graduated from the engineering program. I want to provide the same resources that I was given to younger kids, so they can hopefully find a love in STEM as well. I plan to get my bachelors and master's in mechanical engineering and build wealth in my career. Eventually, I would like to open a non-profit and provide funding for my community to open STEM camps with robots, 3D printing, coding, computer aided design, and many more components revolving STEM. I would like to be a mentor to the kids that enroll in the camps. I want STEM to not only be educational, but I want it to be fun as well. I want them to experience and learn the components of STEM with fun experiments and team bonding. Team bonding can also build connections and leadership skills essential for when the kids start moving into higher education. I want to help my community by not only building STEM camps, but I want to build leaders in the process. Being able to be a mentor and to produce a leader once camps sessions conclude is my end goal. I want to ensure that at least one kid takes the lessons that I am teaching to heart and build any skills that I have taught to mold themselves into the leader that they want to be. The meaningful contribution I would make to society are kids who want to carry on the legacy and teach others about the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math. I want kids, especially minorities, to pursue these career paths and be role models to the kids that come after them. I want to see more minorities dominate STEM myself included, so I want to provide the resources and in return I see the kids that I have mentored pursue STEM based careers. I will provide the funding if they would like to return the favor and build STEM camps in less fortunate areas where it would benefit children to learn about STEM. I hope that with this contribution that it will make a positive impact on society and that my dream will never die.

The leadership characteristics that I embraced as an individual were confidence, resilience, selflessness, communication, and a strong work ethic. I plan to continue to nurture these qualities by embedding them into my everyday life to mold not only my future but make an impact on society. Strong leadership and communication empowered me to speak up about particular concerns that my peers raised and brought them to light of the teachers and other staff members. You must communicate if you want to be a great leader. Resilience is a trait that I had to learn about throughout my leadership roles. There were times in student council, for example, where the concerns I had were falling onto deaf ears. Instead of beating myself up over it, I kept pressing my concerns until someone eventually listened and we were able to provide more for our student body. Resilience is not giving up on something you believe, but also finding a different solution if the first one does not work out. Selflessness is a trait that I adopted from learning to care for my mother. My mom was diagnosed with Lupus when I was three years old. I had to step up and instead of my mom caring for me, I had to learn how to care for my mom. It was difficult in the beginning because I started caring for her when I began Kindergarten. It was trivial things at first like running her bath water or getting her something to drink from the kitchen because her legs locked up. Over time though, it grew to more complex things as I got older. Caring for my mom at an early age has allowed me to mature and realize that I want to help others throughout my life. Selflessness is a trait that all leaders must have to ensure that they are serving others before serving themselves. Focus and a strong work ethic go hand in hand for being a leader. You must have focus to get the work ethic you want to be a good leader for whatever you are involved in. For example, I had to develop focus and work ethnic for the club that I was Vice President in, Interact. Every week I had to develop new projects for our members to do whether that was around school or in the community. Having this responsibility allowed me to develop on my drive and work ethnic by pushing me to make sure that I am doing my job for my club. Every trait that I have mentioned, I do them in my life to ensure they are growing. I want to earn my degree and an engineer within the next ten years. I also want to continue to be a leader in college with community service projects and within my major of mechanical engineering. I am pursuing my major because engineering is my passion, and it allows me to be a part of something that is bigger than myself. Leadership is about growth and how you can continue to develop even after participating in leadership roles. Leadership as a whole has impacted my high school career by allowing me to not only serve myself but serve my community and to become a better person in the process. I want to continue to serve my community and society after graduation by any means necessary, I will continue to grow these qualities within myself in order to make a positive impact in society. Society needs strong leaders and that is what I inspire to be for myself and for the younger generations that follows.

My mom is someone that I have looked up to since I was little. She was a superhero in my eyes. My mom is my best friend, but with that came a challenge. My mom was diagnosed with Lupus in 2009, and that changed our lives emotionally and financially. I had to step up and instead of my mom caring for me, I had to learn how to care for my mom. It was difficult in the beginning because I started caring for her when I began Kindergarten. It was trivial things at first like running her bath water or getting her something to drink from the kitchen because her legs locked up. Over time though, it grew to more complex things as I got older. Caring for my mom at an early age has allowed me to mature and realize that I want to help others throughout my life, regardless of their health. That is where doing community service comes into play. She is the reason I got into doing community service in middle school because I knew I wanted to make an impact in my community. Community service has become something that I value just as much as my education, and I want to continue doing it in college and beyond. My mom has taught me to be a selfless individual and to always try to lend a helping hand whenever the opportunity arose. She has shaped me into the person and growing leader that I am today. The journey of having a sick parent has been a hard one. There were times where I would get frustrated, and I would cry at night if my mom went to the hospital wondering when or if she would come back. My mom is the only active parent in my life, and I did not want to lose my best friend so soon. My mindset was changed however, from fear of losing my mom young to being grateful that I have memories with my mom to look back on. Even though this was and still is a hard journey for me especially since I am away from home for college, I am still grateful for the things my mom and I got to do before I left home. My mom being sick has motivated me to further my education, pursue my dreams of being an engineer, and I want to donate money for research on a cure for Lupus. My mom has shaped me into the person I am today, and I cannot thank her enough for everything she has done. I am getting my degree in honor of her since she was not able to go to a four-year university. I am continuing to be a leader and participate in community service to help others like I have helped her out. Overall, this journey has helped me find my identity, drive, passion, and these are things that I am going to keep working on even after college and I get into my dream career.