My grandfather returned from Vietnam with steady hands and unmatched surgical skill. As the lead surgeon in a MASH unit, he had saved countless lives under impossible conditions. Yet when he came back to the United States, doors were slammed in his face. In the segregated South, hospitals and practices refused to hire him despite his experience. Instead of letting rejection define him, he opened his own emergency surgery practice in Albuquerque, where he treated everyone who walked through his doors. For him, medicine was about humanity, dignity, and the courage to serve people who had been overlooked. That legacy of empathy is what I carry into my own journey. I chose to study Applied Mathematics and Biology because I believe in the power of numbers and science not only to solve problems, but also to give voice to those who are too often unheard. To me, math is not just symbols on a page, it is a language that reveals patterns in health disparities, environmental inequities, and the overlooked details of human well-being. Biology brings those patterns to life, connecting equations to lived experience. Together, these disciplines feel like a bridge: between precision and compassion, between research and representation, between my grandfather’s scalpel and my own future tools of discovery. I am especially aware of what it means to step into a field where representation is shrinking. In the late 1990s, 8.5% of mathematics degrees were earned by Black students. Today, that number has fallen to around 4%. It is a sobering statistic, one that echoes my grandfather’s story of exclusion in another form. When the odds narrow, those who enter are tasked not only with pursuing their own ambitions but also with expanding the path for others. I see my studies as more than personal achievement, they are a way to hold the door open, to make the next student feel less alone when they walk into a classroom or a lab. I have already seen the difference that visibility can make. As co-founder of Laps for Philly - a student-led initiative that funds free swim lessons for students in underserved communities - I helped create opportunities for children to learn how to swim, a skill often inaccessible in minority communities. Many of the kids had never met a competitive swimmer who looked like them. Standing on the pool deck, I realized that representation is itself a form of mentorship. That same principle guides how I want to move through mathematics and medicine. My presence, my work, and my story can signal possibility to the students who will follow. Medicine and mathematics can feel sterile, reduced to data points or procedures, unless we remember the people behind them. I want to be the kind of physician who carries equations and empathy side by side, the kind who designs models to predict pediatric mobility outcomes but also kneels to listen to a child’s fears. The kind who uses research not just to publish, but to challenge disparities and widen access to care. In many ways, I see myself walking in my grandfather’s footsteps, though along a different path. He built a practice when doors were closed. I want to build pipelines when pathways seem invisible. He showed me that the most enduring legacies are not measured by accolades, but by the lives touched and the communities strengthened. If I can blend the rigor of mathematics with the compassion he lived by, then I will not only honor his story, I will create one that inspires others to begin writing their own.

At first glance, swimming looks like repetition. Stroke after stroke, lap after lap, time shaved off a clock that governs everything. Yet what is unseen is the constant strain, the hours of training that leave muscles heavy and minds clouded. For me, the sport has never been only physical. It has been an exercise in balance, resilience, and learning how to care for myself when the pressure to perform pressed hardest. That lesson began most clearly my sophomore year, when a dislocated knee pulled me from the water for half a season. Suddenly, the sound of splashing lanes and shouted times was replaced with the quiet counting of repetitions in physical therapy. Progress was no longer measured by seconds on a scoreboard but by whether I could bend my leg a little farther, stand a little longer without pain. What once felt like a loss became its own kind of education. I discovered that wellness is not defined by constant motion but by learning how to listen, how to notice, and how to honor what my body and mind truly needed. When I eventually returned to the pool, I carried that mindfulness with me. It taught me to notice how anxiety gathered in my chest before competitions and how small, deliberate breaths steadied me. It helped me as a senior when I stepped into the role of captain. Leadership did not mean being louder than doubt or pretending I never struggled. It meant paying attention, to teammates who needed encouragement, to the team’s energy on the pool deck, and most importantly, to my own emotional state. By being mindful of myself, I could be more present for others. There was a time when I thought achievement was only about the big moments, the record broken, the place earned, the championship meet. But that injury taught me that the small moments make the big ones worthwhile. Stretching carefully after a long practice. A reassuring word to a teammate before their race. Allowing myself gratitude in the middle of exhaustion. Each of these quiet acts built a foundation of resilience far stronger than any stopwatch could measure. Now, as I prepare for college, I hold close the same lesson: strength requires mindfulness. The discipline of swimming taught me to push forward, but my dislocated knee taught me to pause, reflect, and find intention in every step. That balance between drive and stillness will guide me not only in the classroom and the pool but in the challenges of life beyond them. Swimming taught me repetition, but healing taught me meaning. What once felt like the end of a season became the beginning of a deeper practice, of noticing, of gratitude, of caring for myself so I can care for others. That practice is what steadies me now, reminding me that peace in the small moments is what makes the big ones truly worth it.

My grandfather’s stories began the same way. He would lean back in his chair, eyes distant, and speak of nights in the Vietnam War when he served as the lead surgeon in a MASH unit. There were quick decisions, human hands, and an unyielding will to preserve life. My grandmother, in contrast, built her legacy with brushstrokes and an open door, her home always ready to welcome neighbors and strangers. One world was defined by urgency, the other by patience, yet both revealed that human connection is the heart of lasting impact. Their influence shapes how I see my future in medicine. I am drawn to pediatrics because children carry both vulnerability and possibility. The care they receive early in life can shape their futures. I want to treat the illness and see the child beyond it, listening as closely to their fears as to their symptoms. STEM is not only a set of technical skills, but also a language for understanding the human condition. Medicine is both science and art, guided by empathy, cultural understanding, and communication. My interest in biomedical engineering reflects this belief. Designing medical innovations is about ensuring that they serve the people who need them most. The humanities remind us that every data point represents a person’s story. My commitment to volunteering extends this perspective. Teaching children to swim has shown me how skills open doors to freedom, safety, and joy. I have seen hesitant children transform into confident swimmers, carrying that assurance beyond the pool. As a physician, I want my work to reach beyond hospital walls. I envision collaborating with schools, community organizations, and advocacy groups to address the systemic factors that influence children’s health. My hope is to combine clinical expertise with public health initiatives that integrate environment, community, and education into well-being. I also want to carry forward my grandparents’ quiet leadership. My grandfather never called his work heroic, though it often was. My grandmother never described her home as a refuge, though it became one. Real impact grows in the consistency of showing up, in the steady voice that others can depend on. The world I hope to help build is one where medical care is a relationship, where children see physicians as allies, and where science honors the humanity it serves. My career aspirations are rooted in listening deeply, acting with integrity, and leaving things better than I found them. In the end, my grandparents’ legacies guide me. Medicine will be my instrument, service my rhythm, and the people I meet the melody. Like them, I hope my work will hum quietly in the background of others’ lives, steady and enduring.

It began in a studio layered with sunlight and oil paint. My grandmother, a painter with gentle hands and a wide heart, taught me to see people not just as they are, but as they might become. Across the country, my grandfather, once a lead surgeon in a MASH unit during the Vietnam War, carved out a very different path: precise, clinical, life-saving. The warmth of her canvas and the sterility of his scalpel should have clashed. Instead, they formed the roots of my curiosity. How could one preserve the body while the other preserved the soul? From that curiosity, a path began to take shape. I did not yet have the language to name it biomedical engineering, but I had the desire to create things that heal. In elementary school, I was the child who asked too many questions, sketched prosthetics in the margins of my math worksheets, and created pulley systems out of string and rulers. I was drawn to the science of the body, but equally to the emotion of the people within it. Later, in high school, that instinct transformed into action. I spent my afternoons teaching swim lessons to children whose only experience with water was fear. They taught me how innovation begins with listening. Some needed a different teaching style, others a different pace, but all of them revealed a universal truth: that dignity often begins with access. Watching them gain confidence as they floated for the first time or made it across the pool unassisted was a kind of quiet, everyday miracle. It mirrored what I imagined medical innovation should feel like, not spectacle, but transformation. In the preschool classroom where I worked, the questions were different, but no less urgent. I learned to communicate in ways that had nothing to do with vocabulary. Children tugged on my sleeve, pointed to sky-colored shapes, whispered their observations. In their world, every moment was a discovery. And in their discoveries, I found resolve. I want to help design technologies that serve children like them, technologies that allow them to move freely, to play fully, to learn without limits. Each experience has narrowed the lens of my ambition without dimming its light. I am drawn to the intersection of medicine, design, and public service. I plan to pursue pediatric biomedical engineering research in college, working toward medical school with a focus on restoring mobility for children facing neurological or musculoskeletal disorders. Beyond the lab, I hope to volunteer with elementary students who have special needs, not just to test assistive devices, but to understand their perspectives and ensure they are represented with dignity and care. The journey here has not been seamless. My mother’s small business suffered devastating losses during the pandemic, a time when our family leaned not on resources, but resilience. With two older siblings already in college and a mountain of debt reshaping our future, there were nights I studied by lamp light after helping with dinner and budgeting conversations that felt too adult for someone my age. Yet, I never felt burdened. I felt sharpened. This responsibility strengthened my sense of purpose, not only to achieve, but to serve. The field I pursue is not only a response to what excites me intellectually, but to what moves me morally. I am determined to join those working at the forefront of biomedical innovation, not for acclaim, but to ensure that children are never defined by what they lack. If my grandmother painted possibility and my grandfather sutured lives back together, then I hope to do both, infuse my work with precision and humanity.

The first time I saw a pair of scrubs, they were folded neatly beside the kitchen sink. My grandfather had just returned from a long shift, but he never said much about the surgeries he performed. Instead, he washed dishes beside my grandmother, who moved through the house like a quiet current of joy. She was the kind of person who made people feel known without asking a single question. Compassion was her language. She was the light in everyone’s day, welcoming, intuitive, endlessly warm. He had been the lead surgeon in a MASH unit during the Vietnam War and later opened his own emergency practice in New Mexico. There was something unspoken in the way he carried himself, a calm urgency that lingered like a memory. They never framed their work as extraordinary. Yet together, they shaped the very definition of care. From them I inherited an understanding that healing is both science and presence, both expertise and empathy. That belief became real to me in the water and in the classroom. While volunteering to teach swim lessons and working in a preschool, I began to understand care as quiet observation. I watched children cling to the pool wall or hum softly during storytime, each revealing something unspoken. I learned to pay attention, the rhythm of a kick, the shift in a child’s gaze. Like my grandfather who noticed what patients could not name, and my grandmother whose warmth lingered long after she left the room, I began to see care not as a task, but as a guiding principle, one that would shape the rigor of my academic path and the purpose behind every innovation I pursue. Their dynamic, her brushstrokes, his sutures, shaped how I now move through STEM. I study art history not as a break from science, but as a way of refining it. When I analyze anatomical drawings from the Renaissance or explore how architecture communicates care, I am learning to approach design with intention and empathy. The balance my grandparents lived out in their kitchen has become the framework for my work. In biomedical engineering, I want to build with the same precision he carried into operating rooms and the same grace she offered to every guest who stepped through her door. Art history has given me a vocabulary for understanding how people experience the spaces and tools around them. It has taught me to create for the whole person, not just the condition. I chose biomedical engineering because I want to build tools that recognize the complexity of childhood. I want to help children with mobility challenges move through the world with greater confidence and comfort. I want to create devices that feel intuitive and kind. That reflect not just innovation, but understanding. I want to bring the steadiness of my grandfather’s hands into my designs and the compassion of my grandmother’s spirit into every decision. For me, medicine begins long before a diagnosis. It begins with patience. With listening. With showing up. In college, I want to study how technology intersects with care, how mobility connects to dignity, and how design can honor the people it serves. I hope to spend my life working at that intersection. Building what others need, not just what is possible. I think often of that kitchen, the quiet routine of two people devoted to something greater than themselves. They were never trying to inspire. They were simply paying attention. That is what I hope to do. That is what I am learning to become.

We grow older. We shed phases, pick up new ones, stumble through uncertainty, and adapt—sometimes gracefully, often not. Our routines shift, our values evolve, and the version of ourselves we knew a year ago feels almost foreign. Life is not still. It bends and stretches, slows and accelerates. And although we rarely stop to think about it, this rhythm—the ebb and flow of our experiences—has a mathematical parallel. Calculus is not just a subject in a textbook. It is the study of change, and change is the foundation of both science and life. I have spent the last three years studying calculus, progressing from basic derivatives to multivariable systems and the modeling of real-world phenomena. Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing it as abstract theory and began to recognize it as a tool to understand the world more deeply. It is not just about computing limits or sketching curves. It is about measuring the movement of things that matter—how quickly a wound heals, how stress distributes across a growing child’s bones, how the heart adapts under pressure. In the field of biomedical engineering, the body is the most complex and dynamic system we can study. Every movement—every heartbeat, joint rotation, or neural signal—represents change. And every change has a rate. Understanding that rate is essential to diagnosis, innovation, and treatment. Calculus allows us to ask questions that static measurements cannot answer. How fast is a tumor growing? How does a child’s gait evolve during recovery? Where is a medical device putting too much pressure, and how can we correct it? Calculus plays a central role across all STEM fields because it enables the analysis and prediction of systems that are constantly evolving. In physics, it models planetary motion and electromagnetic fields. In chemistry, it tracks reaction rates and energy transfers. In environmental science, it helps evaluate climate models and ecosystem dynamics. In computer science, it supports algorithms for graphics, simulations, and optimization. Civil engineers use it to analyze forces in bridges and skyscrapers; electrical engineers use it to interpret signal flow in circuits. Across disciplines, calculus is the common thread that ties raw data to meaningful insight and converts observation into action. What makes calculus uniquely powerful is its ability to break down the infinite into the manageable. It captures the behavior of systems at a single point in time and then zooms out to reveal overarching trends. It bridges the gap between theory and application, allowing scientists and engineers to model uncertainty, optimize performance, and make real-time decisions with precision. In a world where the problems we face—whether medical, technological, or environmental—are increasingly complex and interdependent, the ability to understand and apply calculus is more than a skill. It is a necessity. To dismiss calculus as “just math” is to miss its central truth: it is the language through which STEM professionals speak to change. It is how they interpret motion, anticipate risk, design progress, and uncover truths not immediately visible. It is not only foundational—it is transformative. Without calculus, we would not be able to measure, build, or heal with the accuracy and insight modern science demands. It is not only significant in STEM fields—it is inseparable from them.