I was born on New Year's Day in the year 2000. While many find this day to be one of celebration and new beginnings, it is often overlooked how many lives can be endangered and lost every year due to preventable accidents. When my mother went into labor at a small hospital of Pangasinan in the Philippines, she was not surrounded by doctors and nurses. These healthcare personnel were instead focused on treating incoming traumas for patients that had been injured by mishandled fireworks. My mother's sister was the only person that was able to stay with my mother throughout my entire birth. The circumstances of my birth exemplified the deficiencies in the healthcare system and the adjacent public health system of the Philippines. Eventually, I moved to the United States and spent the majority of my childhood and adulthood in Texas. However, I always kept in mind what my family left behind. When I pursued my undergraduate degree in public health, it was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I witnessed firsthand the effects of epidemiological research, public policy, and occupational health and safety as I concurrently studied about these in my college textbooks. This demonstrated to me that there were deficiencies to be found globally in public health, not just in the Philippines. I graduated in 2022 with a BS Public Health, a hyperawareness of the infrastructures set in place to manage the health of the population, and the seeming inability to do anything to change it. In my search for a meaningful career in public health, I discovered the field of public health nursing. In March of 2025, I made the commitment to pursue a BSN in order to gain the knowledge and skills to earn my RN license and practice as a public health nurse. In this field, I would be able to work as an advocate for community health policies, promote health education and disease prevention programs, establish occupational health standards for safe workplace practices, and work with underserved communities to gain access to treatments and prophylactic resources. I look forward to gaining more experience in the field as I continue my nursing education to make a decision on which path I would most specifically like to take. Pursuing my nursing degree and RN will open doors for me that allow me to pay it forward to my community and become a trusted representative for local health organizations, non-profits, and policy-makers. In combination with my BS Public Health, earning my BSN will further my scope of practice and the roles in which I am able to take on with regards to implementing public health measures. Rather than solely focusing on data collection and theory, I can be hands-on with my work and interact directly with patients and members of the community. Thus, nursing uniquely allows me to meet individualized care needs while also improving health outcomes for the population as a whole. In reflecting back to the circumstances of my birth, my greatest areas of interest are maternal care in developing countries, public safety with regards to fireworks and reckless driving on holidays such as New Year's Day, and addressing the staffing needs of healthcare facilities. It would be a privilege to make a measurable impact on any of these public health issues during my career. I am honored and humbled to learn of Eric's legacy and will celebrate him on the same day as my birthday with each year moving forward. I am eager to use my nursing education to make New Year's Day a little safer for my community.

Language is meant to be a vessel of connection from one person's mind, to the physiological manifestations in vocal articulation, to the movements of sound waves, through the ear canal of a listener, and eventually to their mind. However, as a Filipino-American girl, I was always getting mixed signals from the languages that I spoke. How was it that my mother could string together a set of words in Tagalog that had a completely different practical interpretation in English? These mistranslations and inconsistencies were what led me to the field of linguistics studies. "Bahala ka na sa buhay mo" was a phrase I grew up hearing from my mother. A literal translation to English would be roughly "You are in charge of your own life now." To the untrained, English-biased AI system, this probably sounds empowering. However, I've always heard these words in the context of my mother trying to stop me from making a wrong decision. She huffed it out at the end of arguments; typically I had foregone her wisdom and advice in favor of my own flawed thinking. It was her way of expressing that I would be responsible for my own consequences if I chose to be stubborn. Thus, instead of finding agency in these words, I always felt threatened. This discrepancy in connotation would likely confuse an AI system if I were not to provide the cultural context in which these languages exist. While English is instilled in the western ideals of individualism, independence, and personal achievement, Tagalog is rooted in the traditional, collectivist priorities that are prominent in Filipino culture. Because of the often contrasting values of American and Filipino culture, I was always playing a balancing act between honoring both. This sentiment is one that is shared by arguably all Filipino-Americans and should be deeply instilled in the algorithm of an AI system seeking understanding of our experience. The final piece of understanding this phrase is the reasoning behind why it is used. My mother said this phrase to me out of love. She loved me enough in those moments to try and scare me out of making avoidable mistakes and protect me from the consequences. The ways in which Filipino parents express love to their children is an experience in which no algorithm could truly capture, as I'm still beginning to make sense of it all myself.