The waiting room chairs I don’t remember. I do remember the abandoned pomegranate on the front desk, the box of tissues I stole without remorse, and Guy’s Grocery Games playing on a monitor beside a set of double doors leading to the rest of the hospital. I spent lots of my life in hospitals, mostly in waiting rooms. I was too young while my dad was battling cancer to actually go inside the ward- couldn’t risk bringing in my premature germs. Presbyterian St. Luke’s had a large waiting room with massive windows. It was a pleasant foyer, and I remember sitting in deep chairs with firm moss colored cushions. I could, and did, sit there for hours, just watching the light change. At a shoebox-sized hospital in suburban California, a scaffolded entrance opened into a waiting room with one porthole window on the door. Time was marked by a switch in television programs. Four chairs surrounded a black table with a vase of flowers- fake. The double doors shrouded the facility; when I visited, the hallway smelled like sewage and blood. Maybe not ideal for healing. I had been visiting my family for Thanksgiving, hoping for a much needed break from the rigorous demands of school, but certain that it was not what I would get. My dad’s room was small, windowless, and shared with an older man who moaned relentlessly. My sister had wanted to take him to the Stanford hospital, but this one was closert to my grandma’s house. It was desolate, seeing my dad so unwell here. Nonetheless, I raved all about life. I loved school, I was getting a lot of recognition for my work. I was thinking about cutting my hair. Halloween was really weird. I stared at the division curtain for a lot of my visit, hearing the occasional groan of the roommate. Isn’t it nice, privacy? When my twenty minutes were up, I sat in the waiting room a bit longer. I don’t remember what I did then, but when he coded the first time and the tiny room became a whirlwind of hysteria, I remember just leaving. The stars were out, dust kicked up from the road. I wound through the tin house neighborhood- there was an open garage, people inside drinking beer under neon lights. When I got back to the waiting room, I found myself in the midst of a hopeless calm, we were laying on a thin sheet of ice over a deep lake. I visited my dad for the last time in that windowless room. His roommate, for the first time, had stopped his wailing. Hospitals very quickly mutated from a place of assurance to a place of mistrust, fear. The next time I went to a pharmacy, the linoleum tiles, the chirping of an unanswered phone pulled me back into that hospital, I quietly cried in the wireframe chairs. The emotional toll of my dad’s death made me seriously consider dropping out of architecture; something that I loved and flourished in, something my dad was really proud of. But I persevered: My dad lived his last several months without a window; making it through school means that I can ensure others do not. Architecture empowers me to give other people what I wish I could have had: the necessary space to experience sickness, death, life, fear, love, and hope. The influence that waiting rooms had on me only came to light when my dad died, but I know those experiences culminated in a passion for designing spaces for wellness, for healing, for everyone.

Winter had never been a good time at my school. A tight-knit community of students and teachers, when something shook our school's web, everyone felt it. Come January junior year, the web was shaken with such ferocity that it threatened to snap entirely. Mac was the principal's son. He came when his mother secured the job in my seventh grade year, his ninth. Despite his repute as the principal's son, he had about him a sense of individuality, humility, and kindness that could not be ignored. Nor did he want it to be. Mac quickly wove himself into this web, becoming a central thread. He befriended anyone and everyone with whom he conversed, teacher and student alike. He joined a number of clubs, many of which he would come to lead. Between my sophomore and junior year, Mac and I embarked on an extracurricular trip abroad. Throughout this trip, we, who had had a few classes together and been in the same clubs, got much closer. We shared meals and secrets; I saw a side of him that I felt oh-so privileged to know: the side of Mac that was not perfect. I saw a portion of him that, I presumed, he kept reserved for his closest friends. I was ecstatic, being real friends with this amiable and handsome freshly-minted college student. When we got home, the travel group remained close. I saw Mac a few more times, texted him more. He imparted unto me his responsibility to assist an older woman with taking care of her cats before he left for college- ever the giving type, he jumped at opportunities to help those in need. Being in his proximity for much of the summer, I started emulating his behaviors. Confidence, wit, sociability, supportiveness- everything a young student admired. Once the school year started and he went off to college, I put these efforts to work. I relinquished fears of rejection and marched into junior year a changed person. And truly, I had changed. I initiated meaningful new friendships, took on leadership roles in clubs, spoke more maturely with teachers, and was as eleemosynary as possible. For the first time, I felt a sense of self. Beyond that, I was content with the way things were going. I had long struggled depression, but my new behavior, borrowed from Mac, was changing things for the better. I was hopeful. It was a new feeling. In January of 2019, I got a phone call during the listless activities I partook in preceding a family dinner, as I did every mundane Sunday. But this call was far from mundane. It was from a school friend, Sky, who I seldom texted, much less called. I picked up to an unusually tremulous voice. He asked me if I was alone- I was. Then he delivered that fateful news. 'Mac killed himself' A pause. 'Are you shitting me?' I could think of nothing else to say. 'Um... no' This wasn't funny. Sky was known for his sardonic and sometimes offensive humor, but this was too far. Repeatedly, I refuted it, there was no way. Mac was the first person to talk you off a ledge, the last person to jump off of it. His mother naturally took a leave of absence from her position as principal. At the same time, teacher strikes were taking place in the city. For a full week, school was at a standstill, the student body was trying to cope with the death of a dear friend, and our devoted teachers couldn't be there to mourn with us. My mental health took a turn for the worse as my newfound world was uprooted and the boy who built my new identity left the earth for good. My grades avalanched downward- I saw no purpose in doing anything for my future. Surely if the convivial Mac could not manage past 18, I was just as hopeless. As I spiraled downward, my partying antics exponentiated. I sought to drown out all of the bad feelings with no regard for how it would impact me or my relationships. That inebriated mean streak persisted until well past the end of my senior year. I was a shell of a person, living up to the definition of my bipolar depression. When the end of my senior year was taken from me, too, by the pitiless pandemic, I felt wholly bereft of further endurance. I hadn't gotten into my dream schools, so I was dedicated now to a school with decent financial aid but worlds away from my aspirations, I had no ability to maintain the one good thing of the preceding two years- my social life- and I was charged with the responsibility of keeping my immunocompromised father safe amid the world's ailments. Cue the most self-destructive, careless behavior I never care to know again. There was a small voice in my head, growing more diminutive by the day, that told me I must take care of myself. On the rare occasion that I listened, I would write down my goals and meditate on them. Manifest them. Whenever that proved fruitless, I lost more precious hope. Then one day, on the drive back from a weekend in the mountains, I'd just regained cellphone service when an email from the Pratt Institute popped up on my screen. My number one choice in school, where I was waitlisted- my heart threatened to leave my body. And I was in. The despondence of the previous months, years, promised to melt away with the sweet assurance that things could indeed get better. My family was thrilled for me- despite our family's hefty student debt, my parents resolved to send me there. While I still have trepidation about what my schooling may cost my parents in the long-term, I more often live my life confident that things can, and will, get better. I regained the hope Mac imbued me with, but it is now my own. I now hope persistently, with perserverence.

In my sophomore year of high school, I had the astronomically good fortune of being able to travel to Israel and the West Bank at virtually no expense. Having attended an international middle/high school, travel had constantly been on my mind, but the expenses far outreached my family's means. Not wanting to take the occasion for granted, I spent the months leading up to the trip filling myself with knowledge about the history and culture of the places I was to visit. When I arrived, it was even more impressive than I had even imagined. I felt, for the first time, a true sense of inspiration. The spaces that I visited, some older than entire civilizations, were imbued with a sense of meaning and emotion that cannot merely be put into words. This feeling is something I had never imagined, much less encountered, back in my banal life in Denver. It was there, half-way across the world, that I discovered a desire to build spaces deserving of complete and utter awe. I could not have known it then, but this travel experience would ultimately launch me to where I am now- in art school, seeking a degree in interior design. While interior design is my professional goal, fine arts is my passion. My prerogative is taking a fine arts approach to interiors- everything I create will be a fine arts composition in itself, eliciting particular feelings from the viewer. Though New York, where I am studying, is a global champion in interior design, I would be woefully lacking in insight if I were to be constrained by the schools of thought roaming this city. My university offers a few semester programs for interior design students, including one to Copenhagen, one to Ecole Boulle in Paris, and one to Bali. Each is centered around different aspects of interior design- Copenhagen has a focus on interior architecture and environments built for peopling, Ecole Boulle for furniture making, and the Bali program being concerned with sustainable materiality. I can only go on one of these exchanges, but there is boundless insight that could come from any of the options. I am concerned with the serenity and 'magic' of being in a well-designed space. With an international perspective, not only would I be able to accumulate knowledge to construct such spaces, but I would also be able to establish connections that would help me further my creative breadth and professional potential. From these prospective travels in college and beyond, I will gain inspiration and experience around every corner. Given the opportunity, I will not be wasteful of the ceaseless wonders of the international community. In exploring every niche of whichever country I may visit, I will be taking note of historical as well as contemporary spaces and artworks. Beyond the value of international travel to my professional and artistic life, I believe there is assured personal growth that would take root as well. As a long-time scholar of a second language (Japanese), I have a talent and thirst for picking up new languages. A long-term goal of mine is gaining fluency in several languages, including Spanish, French, and Arabic- though I am open to whichever language presents itself to me in the course of life- and travel would doubtlessly set me on the path to achieving this goal. Furthermore, it would greatly improve my interpersonal relationship building skills. By being exposed to new people of vastly different identities from my own, I am certain I will become a more well-rounded, compassionate person. These are qualities I seek in earnest. Finally, I believe travel experiences in college will strengthen my skills as a planner. Between budgeting, navigating my way through foreign cityscapes, being a full-time student, and pursuing profession-related opportunities, I will have a hefty amount of factors to consider on a day-to-day basis. Due to my zeal when it comes to travel, academics, and art, I am confident that I will be a responsible exchange student capable of doing all that is necessary to accomplish my long-term goals. The value in traveling cannot be expressed in the constraints of 750 words. It may indeed not be able to be done justice in any number of words. The only way to fully understand the value of travel is by experiencing it. Already in my life, global connections have given me trajectory, for which I am endlessly thankful. With this scholarship, I aspire only to further this enrichment and use it to enrich others' lives.