When anyone asks me to envision my future, I say, “I am shooting for the stars.” Not the stars of the night sky I see today, but the stars I recall sitting under as a child. When I was young, my dad was a reporter who covered the aerospace industry. He told me about United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket he got to see launch and about other space missions he wrote about. It stirred my curiosity. I thought there must be stories behind every star. I imagined there were dragons on the dark side of the moon and hoped to meet them one day when I would be an astronaut. I remember a time sitting in the dirt under the stars playing with smooth river rocks. I saw vividly how broad the sky was and how many stars bathed the world in their mysterious light. It was a perfect moment of wonder about the skies above and the rocks at my feet. I recognized the significance of small things I could touch while remaining curious about the numerous secrets beyond each and every star. I was simultaneously content with nothing more than the earth at my fingertips and curious to know everything that every star in the sky could teach us. Growing older, I have lost sight of the dirt and the sky. My focus is on academics and other interests, like biking, skiing, physics, and friends. I have drifted away from daydreams, and I must think about how to balance all my activities with taking care of myself, doing my laundry, and paying for school, a car, and automobile insurance. There is no time to lay on the grass and dream. I am afraid I will continue to move away from the intrigues of my childhood toward other pursuits that are not as essential to my dream. I think studying space and the mysteries in the stars near my hometown will keep me grounded. Attending the aerospace engineering program at CU Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences will keep me reaching beyond what Earth has to offer while preparing me for a job that pays the bills. I will get to feed my lifelong desire to understand the way things work and make a difference by building something that helps people in our world. At the same time, I will try to grasp the same incalculable unknowns that called to me back when I was a kid. I will have to be resourceful. My family has had challenges and financial constraints beyond what most of my peers have experienced. Most significant is that for my entire life, our total family income has been less than or at about half of what a family like mine needs to make ends meet in affluent Boulder County, Colorado, where we live. An extra challenge we’ve faced is that my brother, who has disabilities and medical fragility, has extra needs that have impacted the entire family. Only one of my parents can work full time so that the other can care for my sibling. Social scientists say that families like mine have to pay a “disability tax,” which refers to the added burdens and expenses required to access services and participate in society. This is why I hope you will find me worthy of scholarship support. My objective is to never lose sight of the wonder in the world. The sky is not my limit. I am shooting for the stars.

When anyone asks me to envision my future, I say, “I am shooting for the stars.” Not the stars of the night sky I see today, but the stars I recall sitting under as a child. When I was young, my dad was a reporter who covered the aerospace industry. He told me about United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket he got to see launch and about other space missions he wrote about. It stirred my curiosity. I thought there must be stories behind every star. I imagined there were dragons on the dark side of the moon and hoped to meet them one day when I would be an astronaut. I remember a time sitting in the dirt under the stars playing with smooth river rocks. I saw vividly how broad the sky was and how many stars bathed the world in their mysterious light. It was a perfect moment of wonder about the skies above and the rocks at my feet. I recognized the significance of small things I could touch while remaining curious about the numerous secrets beyond each and every star. I was simultaneously content with nothing more than the earth at my fingertips and curious to know everything that every star in the sky could teach us. Growing older, I have lost sight of the dirt and the sky. My focus is on academics and other interests, like biking, skiing, physics, and friends. I have drifted away from daydreams, and I must think about how to balance all my activities with taking care of myself, doing my laundry, and paying for school, a car, and automobile insurance. There is no time to lay on the grass and dream. I am afraid I will continue to move away from the intrigues of my childhood toward other pursuits that are not as essential to my dream. I think studying space and the mysteries in the stars near my hometown will keep me grounded. Attending the aerospace engineering program at CU Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences will keep me reaching beyond what Earth has to offer while preparing me for a job that pays the bills. I will get to feed my lifelong desire to understand the way things work and make a difference by building something that helps people in our world. At the same time, I will try to grasp the same incalculable unknowns that called to me back when I was a kid. My high school education followed the IB diploma programe, an advanced curriculum that requires the students who want to earn the IB diploma as well as their standard high school diploma to take advanced classes in every subject in addition to writing a internal assessment (a research paper or experiment that varies by course) for each subject. The IB program also requires all students to write an independent research paper called the Extended Essay on a topic of the student’s choosing. Diploma candidates also take a theory of knowledge class on top of the rest of their high school courses. I took all the required classes while sticking with my electives (Engineering and Orchestra). This meant that I had no off periods for all of high school and even no lunch for a semester of junior and senior year. My highly rigorous course load has resulted in my academic prowess greatly increasing, and I hope that it will leave me well prepared for college. My objective is to never lose sight of the wonder in the world. The sky is not my limit. I am shooting for the stars.

When I think of paying it forward, I think of my Jewish community. Our community members take care of one another in many ways, and that makes us strong. Whenever my younger brother, Raphael, suffered a significant medical complication over the years, congregants from our synagogue (some, we didn’t even know) stopped by with prepared dinners, which usually included treats for me and my brother. The meals helped our family because there was so much extra my parents had to do to care for my sibling and catch up from their missed work. I’ve seen my mom return the favor by bringing food or running errands for other families when they were facing difficulties. It’s not a pay back to the specific people who’ve helped us; it’s paying it forward to the next person who’s in need. All my life, I’ve witnessed this practice of people taking care of what’s needed with no expectation of reciprocity or recognition. As a child, I learned Jewish values, traditions, and stories at Sunday school from volunteer teachers who gave their time to educate the next generation. They were truly paying it forward. There were also teenage helpers (madrichim) who worked alongside the adult teachers to help students pay attention and learn. The teens served as role models for us students, because they donated time out of their weekends to share the lessons they, themselves, had recently learned. They inspired me to become a madrich on Sunday mornings, too. The commonality of paying it forward had become thoroughly ingrained in me. Last February, my dad and I had painstakingly put together a hospital bed in a basement-level room of our home in preparation for my brother to use after a major orthopedic surgery. I stayed at a friend's house while my parents remained at Children’s Hospital with him as he began his recovery. After several days, I started getting frantic texts from my dad. He wasn’t sure when they’d be home, but he needed me to get myself there to meet him. My brother needed to be completely non-weight bearing and wouldn’t be able to get downstairs to his room as we’d expected. My dad realized we needed to move the hospital bed to the living room on the ground floor of our little tri-level house. It was my turn to pay it forward. Unbeknownst to my parents, I asked my friend’s mom to bring me home, where I disassembled the hospital bed, carried the parts upstairs, and put it back together. I made up the bed with my brother’s favorite soft, red blanket and tucked in his Hedwig-the-Owl stuffy. I made a colorful “welcome home” poster and hung it on the wall along with some balloons and heart decorations. I wasn’t there to see my parents' reaction when they got home late that evening, but they told me they were so exhausted, surprised, and relieved, they cried. Later, a Jewish community member dropped off dinner, and my mom shared that we needed a way to get my brother up and down the front steps. The woman must have made some calls because within 24 hours, a man from our synagogue showed up with power tools and wood to build a wheelchair ramp for my brother. I loved seeing such caring in action. I hope that freely giving and receiving acts of love and kindness (gemilut hasadim) continues to encourage others to keep the cycle going and to make a positive difference in people’s lives. In this way, we can fulfill our essential role in “tikkun olam,” the Jewish ethic of repairing the world.