Growing up in South Central Los Angeles allowed me to have firsthand access to various educational barriers that I would have to face alone. My parents had no idea what AP courses were or even what extracurriculars I should have done in high school to get into a good college. “Neuroscience,” “philosophy,” “STEM,” and other fields of study were not ever mentioned to me and my peers. I discovered these fields through my own portal consisting of curiosity and ambition, indulging in questions regarding physical reality. I can’t blame the people of my community which is made up of single parents who can barely speak English, let alone spell or write in our native language, Spanish. I keep pushing no matter how hot the water gets in South Central, and my main motivation to keep going is my mom. She is a fighter, a warrior, and with everything she has gone through, being beaten and burned for not selling enough tortillas as a young child in El Salvador, it’s truly inspired. My mother, a single mother who works multiple jobs to provide is what has kept me going, truly showing me the value of hard work, and she is ultimately my biggest fan who always is rooting for me. Not so long ago, I would tell my peers all about how I would get out of the heart of South Central, move to the suburbs, and just forget about my own neighborhood, my own background, and the community we had built. I quickly realized that I could not fit in with the suburban kids. It was an engineering program through USC, and I was over the moon excited to mingle with other young scientists, just to realize that they all looked down on me. I had different slang, had too heavy of an accent, and was too brown for them. I was heavily discouraged, but I turned to my peers. I quickly began to pick up momentum again, thinking of all the ways I could make my community safer and educated. I began to realize that I couldn’t escape my destiny. I was put in this community for a reason. I was meant to shed light on how underresourced South Central is and what we can do about it. Through Jose Prado, I aim to be someone who is a strong advocate for education. I am a firm believer that knowledge is the frontier for everything, and without it, humans wouldn’t be where we are today. Jose Prado’s mission and intent for promoting education is my motivation to keep going, because someone out there, people out there, still believe in me as much as I believe in myself. In my scholarship, I hope to provide low-income, first-generation minorities in South Central, Los Angeles who are studying STEM a chance at winning, because even though we are small in numbers, we are mighty! I have seen students in my old high school who would benefit from opportunities like these. I truly would love to honor my fellow scientists and engineers in South Central. Education, the next big thing, and the constant in everyone’s life, whether you’re fighting to be educated or go to school every day, education is a huge deal. Having an opportunity to become educated on different perspectives and situations is marvelous as it supplies the chance at becoming a well-rounded individual who fights for injustice. As a Latina, I can only advocate for education, as in my home countries of Mexico and El Salvador, I see today that my cousins really only have the chance to drop out.

Growing up in South Central Los Angeles allowed me to have firsthand access to various educational barriers that I would have to face alone. My parents had no idea what AP courses were or even what extracurriculars I should have done in high school to get into a good college. I was especially exposed to how under-resourced my community was when I was accepted to SHINE, an engineering program through USC on a merit and need-based scholarship. Already, I felt out of place the first day. I was the only person from my school to be accepted into the program, while others already knew each other because they were from the same school. The uncertainty about my place in the program piled on: they were all from fancy, well-resourced schools with fancy names and even fancier campuses I couldn’t even fathom. I could not help comparing myself with them, which made my imposter syndrome flare up like never before. Before I came onto that campus and met those privileged high school students, I was this confident woman. After the very first day, I felt like an undeserving failure. To make my experience even harder, the universe decided to pair me with a beyond-exceptional laboratory partner who had taken AP Biology and AP Calculus BC, courses not offered in my high school at the time. My imposter syndrome was not only present, it was raging. I felt unworthy and useless. Yet, I picked myself up and reminded myself why I took college courses on top of my full high school schedule. I reminded myself why I studied neuroscience for hours in my room rather than going to the high school dance. I knew I wanted this life for myself, to be this determined and unforgettable woman, to motivate others who were just like me, and to be this person people could go to for help. Immediately, I went to work, studying whatever material that was presented before me by my mentors. I would study independently during my lunch as cyclic voltammetry and I became good friends. I learned how to navigate through the biology and math of biomedical engineering alone. I do not let my socioeconomic circumstances give me a reason to become a high school dropout. I study every single day and apply myself to important and worthwhile endeavors, for example, tutoring a couple of peers or helping my mother with her English. I apply myself to become this confident and exceptional first-generation, low-income LGBTQ+ Latina every day. Being fearless and just taking the leap is what I aim to showcase in my community as I earn a Bachelor’s and then my Ph.D. I take a risky leap when I fight back and start up my own clubs in my school to combat the lack thereof. I fight back and take a risky leap when I tell the adults around me that I want a career. We, the people of South Central are put down and demeaned by those who don’t believe in us, showcased when they under-fund our schools and shoot at our people. My goal is to have those who grew up in the same dangerous neighborhood as me and who went to the same under-resourced schools to have a chance at going to college and having a career. I will prove the critics wrong by establishing myself as an educated Latina engineer from South Central.

The best thing about graduating was not the endless cords honoring my service to the school club environment I made or even the many and many flowers I received. Not even the shoutout from the valedictorian herself in her speech to me was my favorite part. I would want to relive the experience of seeing my countless club members walking across the stage, honoring the club I created for them they were a part of by just graduating. See, with the clubs that I opened, I aim to only serve the school community and my peers. I would stay up all night crafting lesson plans for all three of my clubs, then put them into place. As secretary of two other clubs, I contributed my support in a plethora of ways, yet, reaching out to the students directly is my way of giving back to my community. With a college education, well, let’s say I am excited to promote the clubs they have on campus at UCLA or even open up my own! I would adore to challenge different perspectives while also having mine challenged. I opened my clubs so students at my underprivileged high school could taste what their interests are like. Every lesson plan, challenge, and assignment was to help them grow and develop their interests. In my college of choice, UCLA, I aim to develop the skills of others and my own necessary to build a well-rounded person. It began when I couldn’t find any clubs at all in my school. At all. I opened up my first club during sophomore year, the Literature Club, with my best friend. Then, junior year, I opened the Computer Science Club, and in my senior year, I opened the Music Production Club. Throughout high school, I then saw the opening of the Latin Student Union and the Baking Club, so I contributed every effort I could and made it to secretary by senior year. With my education, I do not aim to uplift myself and my ego. Instead, I aim to uplift others and change their worlds of what they thought was black and white.

I am a low-income, first-generation Latina living in the heart of South Central, Los Angeles, studying computational neuroscience. Growing up in South Central Los Angeles allowed me to have firsthand access to various educational barriers that I would have to face alone. My parents had no idea what AP courses were or even what extracurriculars I should have done in high school to get into a good college. I was especially exposed to how under-resourced my community was when I was accepted to SHINE, an engineering program through USC on a merit and need-based scholarship. Already, I felt out of place the first day. I was the only person from my school to be accepted into the program, while others already knew each other because they were from the same school. The uncertainty about my place in the program piled on: they were all from fancy, well-resourced schools with fancy names and even fancier campuses I couldn’t even fathom. I could not help comparing myself with them, which made my imposter syndrome flare up like never before. Before I came onto that campus and met those privileged high school students, I was this confident woman. After the very first day, I felt like an undeserving failure. To make my experience even harder, the universe decided to pair me with a beyond-exceptional laboratory partner who had taken AP Biology and AP Calculus BC, courses not offered in my high school. My imposter syndrome was not only present, it was raging. I felt unworthy and useless. Yet, I picked myself up and reminded myself why I took college courses on top of my full high school schedule. I reminded myself why I studied neuroscience for hours in my room rather than going to the high school dance. I knew I wanted this life for myself, to be this determined and unforgettable woman, to motivate others who were just like me, and to be this person people could go to for help. Immediately, I went to work, studying whatever material that was presented before me by my mentors. I would study independently during my lunch as cyclic voltammetry and I became good friends. I learned how to navigate through the biology and math of biomedical engineering alone. I do not let my socioeconomic circumstances give me a reason to become a high school dropout. I study every single day and apply myself to important and worthwhile endeavors, for example, tutoring a couple of peers or helping my mother with her English. I apply myself to become this confident and exceptional first-generation, low-income LGBTQ+ Latina every day. Being fearless and just taking the leap is what I aim to showcase in my community as I earn a Bachelor’s and then my Ph.D. I take a risky leap when I fight back and start up my own clubs in my school to combat the lack thereof. I fight back and take a risky leap when I tell the adults around me that I want a career. We, the people of South Central are put down and demeaned by those who don’t believe in us, showcased when they under-fund our schools and shoot at our people. My goal is to have those who grew up in the same dangerous neighborhood as me and who went to the same under-resourced schools to have a chance at going to college and having a career. I will prove the critics wrong by establishing myself as an educated Latina from South Central.

I failed mathematics. Specifically, I failed AP Calculus AB. This didn’t make me hate mathematics, instead, it only fueled my love for Calculus even more. I love mathematics because it is like a puzzle waiting to be solved and there are so many endless possibilities in mathematics; just look at physics! Math is applied to everything you do in life, it is the language of logic. When one thinks they are using mathematical processes; deciding what to eat, thinking about your day, or planning out your week requires mathematical processes. The fact that our brain uses Calculus to control fast movements is amazing, this allows me to love mathematics on a neuroscientific level. Have I mentioned my love for computational neuroscience; it is the combination of neuroscience, mathematics, and computer science! This puzzle waiting to be solved is extremely intriguing to me as I have always loved puzzles. I have adored the complexity of Rubik’s Cubes, regular puzzles, and legos, so I was bound to fall in love with mathematics, specifically, my favorite subject, calculus. I don’t let my failures dictate my interests because, at the end of the day, this passion for mathematics that I hold came from failing. I love math more than ever and this is just a hurdle in my path to becoming a neural engineer. I am happy to say that I will be using mathematics in my career and future as I take on calculus again for the second time.

Neuroscience is a growing field that involves the studying of machine learning, AI, and more. Although it is very biological, in this modern day, it is becoming extremely computational. I intend to pursue this branch in neuroscience that involves neural modeling, which is made possible with technology. I have attended numerous programs for technology and courses, taking on the hardest STEM courses I can in today’s world for low-income high school students. This is all for the pursuit of knowledge and love for technology and mathematics and technology through pursuing neural modeling and computational neuroscience. I am more towards engineering, but technology is a big part of my world and will be vital in my career as I apply technology to procedures that would aid the human race. Not only do I intend to further the knowledge we have of the human brain, but I would apply these technologies to help those who have a disorder of the brain. By mapping out these disorders, we would be able to determine the best course of action for treating the disorder. Not only would I be helping out sickly patients, but I would be aiding our future leaders and empowering our youth at the same time. My mission begins where my childhood does, at a very young age. As a young lady, I would read so many books and articles on the internet when I was as young as myself, and play video games, being intrigued by the lines of coding and planning behind it but not knowing where to start without a proper computer. It was just me and a tablet that I shared with my brother, which he always used to make videos and take photos of everything. Nonetheless, I would read these articles, play these games, and read books that were written and coded by men and most of one certain ethnicity. Their last names didn’t match mine or the ones of my friends. This led me to notice this trend a lot growing up; the people in my favorite shows and books were not the same color as my parent nor did the writers of the shows share my name. Today, I use technology to empower my friends and family, my peers and young children I tutor, and older people that I volunteer with and help. I do this by simply leading by example, tutoring them in STEM subjects, and encouraging them to pursue careers in STEM, specifically, engineering and technology. This is because I want them to be the representation that is lacking in today's world. I use technology today by showing them this lack of representation but presenting to them ways we can fight back. I lead by example, taking on extracurriculars to reach my peers in unique ways. I am president of the Literature Club and Community Service Club at my school, where I advocate STEM outreach. I am additionally the library coordinator and the eleventh-grade vice president. These positions give me the authority to empower my peers to also advocate for their education. Additionally, as a part of my high school’s School Site Advisory Council, I advocate directly to my principal and other staff for my STEM-based electives and AP STEM courses. Not only this, but I have taken it a step further, I do research during my summer breaks to empower my friends and family, encouraging them to also pursue their own prowesses, helping them apply to their own programs, and such. With this research, I was able to present that the Biomedical Engineering Society’s yearly Conference where I represented LGBTQ+, low-income, first-generation Latinas. I don’t let anything slow me down, and although I have faced numerous challenges in my life, I don’t let these difficulties scratch my surface. I have bipolar disorder, and even with the anxieties I have been diagnosed with, I advocate for these challenges with technology, excelling despite my mental disorders. I take on so many internships and educational preparation programs to empower myself and others, especially through Girls Who Code because I aim to promote this resource to my peers. In the future, I see myself opening yet another club, a Girls Who Code Club for other women like myself who want to be in the world of technology. I advocate today through the development of websites, projects, internships, conferences I attend, and more. The area of technology I wish to pursue is not only computational neuroscience but advocacy, education, and much more. The problem I hope to solve with my future education and career in tech is not only disorders of the brain, but the lack of representation of people of color, LGBTQ+, low-income, first-generation persons in today’s world of STEM, specifically, technology.

Hearing about how hard my parents, especially my mother, had to work to simply survive in her home country of El Salvador, I am especially grateful to be where I am today. Yet, there are always days when I resent not my mother, but her circumstances. She wasn’t allowed to pursue her school work because, in El Salvador, you have to pay to go to school. She was told to either work or get out. She worked until she had enough and illegally immigrated to the United States for a better life. Even in America, she was abused, exploited, and mistreated for more variables she couldn’t control. Not only was she uneducated and had zero job experience in the eyes of employers and the government, but her thick accent and choppy English did not aid in her finding a job or doing well in America’s high school. Hearing about her struggles encourages me to continue my schoolwork because when I graduated middle school with high honors, it was like she graduated middle school with high honors. When I graduate high school as valedictorian, it is like she is graduating with me with the highest honor as well. I have my own passions and goals, but the way she encourages me to go to school because she was never given that support is heartwarming, and even in my low-income neighborhood and high school, I feel privileged to have my mother and my stepfather’s support. My circumstances like to weigh me down a lot, and I noticed that as a Latina in South Central, Los Angeles, not many of us are expected to continue to a four-year university and much less pursue a higher education overall. I never had the support of teachers, especially STEM teachers, peers, etc. None of my schools had science fairs or libraries with books in STEM fields. Although my mother is supportive, she has no idea what I talk about regarding my passions ninety percent of the time because she had no idea what computational neuroscience or neurophilosophy was until I talked about it to her for the first time in middle school. I had to reach out to the world, to the internet, and to local libraries and bookstores by myself and venture off into the world of STEM alone. I never had the support of a STEM teacher when I was young, even when I showed them my passion, I was put down or questioned. These experiences from myself and my mother often get to me, but I use it all as motivation to continue to take over the world myself and make this reality a distant one for future Latina scientists and engineers like me. I have taken on the liberty to tutor those around me in STEM subjects, introduce clubs that my school didn’t have, and tutor even younger children in STEM. I don’t want anybody to experience what I have, but they deserve to hear about my perspective and motivation, to make these unfair shortcomings by society public, and to make a change happen. I believe that if I am able to overcome all of my restrictions, I can encourage others around me to do so. I don’t want to be another statistic and have my children be first-generation students. The future generation deserves to have parents who are happy where they are and be able to provide them with all of the resources they need and deserve. It seems like a big dream, but I am getting closer to accomplishing it every single day.

I have many names and treasure each and every one of them; even names that I have been called to put me down, I find any way I can to empower myself with them and remove the negative power these slurs and insults have. Being part of an underrepresented minority, specifically, being a lesbian Latina, I hold that name near and dear to my heart. My ethnicity has always been something that used to embarrass me, and it’s still something I struggle with, but today, I use it to represent a key part of myself, which is my resilience. My name is Dulce Pamela Hernandez. To me, my name showcases my ethnicity on a piece of paper, when it is announced out loud, and when I introduce myself. I believe this is important as not only is my ethnicity a huge part of who I am in today’s world but also, my name represents the hardships I have gone through and experience today due to being a minority. Dulce Pamela is ‘Sweet Pamela’ in English, which my mother chose because she recalled a peer everyone admired in her high school with the name of Dulce and chose Pamela because she had never met anyone with that name. My last name, Hernandez, is very common among my fellow Latinos, and I see it in other Salvadorians and Mexicans, but also with Guatemalans, Hondurans, and more. My biological father’s last name is Hernandez, but my mother’s last name is Martinez; this circumstance is shown in my name and when you look at my mother’s name, which is extremely important to me as it represents a dark time in me my mother’s life. I don’t believe in resentment, only empowerment, and how we should grow accustomed to using hardships and mistreatment to prevail in the face of future failure; using every single bad and good experience as a chance to grow and learn. I see my name as a representation of my ethnicity, the racism that comes with being Latina, the misogyny that comes with being a woman, a hurtful time for myself and my mother, and so much more. I was never surrounded by people who looked like me or grew up like me, in a low-income neighborhood, that still strived in their academics. Every time I would open a book, I would read a white writer or philosopher’s thoughts and theories and see many white people’s research in journals on psychiatry and neuroscience. I had never read a scientist’s work that had the last name of Hernandez, Martinez, Ramirez, Rosiles, Garcia, and more. Nobody on shows lived like me, and if they did, they were represented as violent, disrespectful, and uneducated, like everybody else in my neighborhood, yet, this representation only showed a part of my neighborhood, because they would never show the hardships experienced in low-income areas and the discrimination we face in the media, news, and so on. They only see my community as a threat, never as people who need help, the same resources and treatment as those in the suburbs, in big schools, and who live comfortably. In the future, I see myself as a researcher, writing papers, yet, also encouraging others, as I do today in high school, I try to motivate my peers to pursue education as an opportunity to express their interests and create a societal impact. Specifically, I would like to be the Latina in STEM and neuroscience for other young Latina scientists and engineers, like young Dulce Pamela Hernandez, who never had that representation in her life.

Neuroscience is a field I saw myself in since the beginning of my educational career. It all began with rather philosophical questions I kept to myself, all the way before middle school, mainly focused on epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, and more. These questions in my mind burst into deep google searches well into middle school. Following this itch to learn, I adopted a heavy book-reading lifestyle, familiarizing myself with important philosophical works and philosophers from past to present. The work I was reading led me to discover research essays that weren’t behind a paywall, the existence of research journals, and organizations that supported the type of research I was reading every day. Middle school presented me with the basics of chemistry, biology, and physics, all of which I could recognize from the papers I skimmed, mainly focusing on the abstracts and figures because I could not really understand the entire process as a young pre-teen. Quickly, experimental psychology and psychiatry sprouted from the theoretical material I read on philosophy of mind and nature of mind, recognizing my prominent interest in this specific field of philosophy, I continued to seek out research papers and presentations on these subjects. Following this interest in the nature of mind and concrete science, I discovered neurophilosophical works, shortly after, neuroscience in high school. Neuroscience contained everything I knew I loved; from implications in psychiatry to the incorporation of philosophy, seen in neurophilosophy, and to then amazing neuroscientists and neural engineers along with their research that I could not ever get enough of. Even with my passion for neuroscience and ambition to learn, my circumstances make it extremely difficult to say these goals and interests out loud, more so to act on them, especially to fellow peers and my own teachers who I am surrounded by every day. I don’t have access to any labs in my small high school, nor STEM AP classes or programs that would emphasize my love of science and math in the classroom. I have yet to meet a fellow Latina scientist or really anybody who grew up in the same neighborhood with the same socioeconomic standing as I who is successful in research at all. I have always seen myself in the future writing papers and doing lab work, being a part of a team who understood neuroscience, and simply pursuing research to represent fellow low-income Latina scientists. Having more women in STEM, especially BIPOC, would advance science and humanity with more hands on deck and change the lack of diversity in science and life.

Neuroscience has always been a field in STEM that has grabbed my attention; the excitement of discovering a piece of the large puzzle that is, the brain, pulls me into research. Science was introduced to me in middle school, yet, my love for math and science was emphasized in high school, where I take college-level classes in STEM. As a young student interested in discovery, I often found myself with rather philosophical questions, especially within metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, and more. I began reading theories on these topics before and during middle school, familiarizing myself with prominent philosophers and philosophical works. To me, neuroscience is a combination of my love for philosophy and science as nobody truly understands the brain and has answers to the theories on neurophilosophy. This curiosity pulled me into science at a very young age. Seeking an outlet for this in my academic prowess as a young STEM student, I continuously do my own research, ask my teachers and professors questions, and explore research and engineering-based programs to challenge my interests and grow. Throughout my academic career, I have seen numerous problems in how my education is being treated. Residing in South-central, Los Angeles, I’ve noticed a common trend. Many friends have no idea how they will prepare for college and find their interests, all before graduating high school. Most of my peers are unprepared, as I have seen many who don’t know what SATs and ACTs are, what colleges expect, and more. Rare interactions with students from different socioeconomic settings differ in attitude and preparation from my peers. I believe these different perspectives are because of the extracurriculars, classes, and other activities these privileged schools have that we don’t have access to. I acknowledge how I could be given these tools for success if I were to transfer to these high schools, yet, I don’t believe that I should have to commute almost an hour every day to school for a good education, along with a supportive community, because this should be offered at every single school. If I were to transfer and leave my peers, I would be failing them and myself, by practically encouraging the lack of support and resources that low-income schools and low-income areas have, like mine. This is a primary argument of mine as to why I believe diversity is important in the workplace. Growing up in a low-income neighborhood and going to under-funded schools, I never saw people anywhere, even in the books I read, that looked or grew up like me. I don’t know of any queer Latina philosophers or scientists, currently. I have come to understand that this is a contributing factor to why many peers get discouraged from caring about their academics. I have had many adults tell me why the schools in my area have little funding, and therefore, can not offer AP classes others have, hire more teachers, have a bigger campus and more. Throughout my high school career so far, I have aimed to be the encouragement and support my peers lack. I often seek students to read more and to find what they enjoy studying, starting a literature club in my high school because, according to test scores, is the subject peers score highest in the most, and opening and managing the library in my small high school. I always encourage those around me to take on challenging classes and to never settle for a failing grade. I hope to see the future soon as diverse, inclusive, and equal, but it all begins from the inside.