The three loves theory. The idea is that we only love three people in our lifetime. While not science-based, it is one of the theories I deeply believe in. Your first love, the childish puppy love that teaches you the great feeling of falling in love. I have always seen math as more than a subject: it's how I bonded with my dad. Exploring all kinds of concepts together, from addition through counting cubes to making 3D shapes to demonstrate how rotations around axes worked. The time spent with my dad gave me unique perspectives and problem-solving abilities at a young age. He would find ways to explain math in a fun way and always told me that no matter what was taught in school, there would always be another way to solve a problem. Time spent with my dad was my first love; it showed me how applicable math can be in my day-to-day life. Your second love is the love that feels so intense and shifts your worldview. I wanted to use my unique perspective to show younger students that math is fun and to teach them that there are countless ways to solve a problem. To do this, I began volunteering with Healthy Cities Tutoring, where I met with students one-on-one and helped them understand confusing concepts. After teaching a few students, I realized they all had different learning styles. I started using resources like playing cards, colored paper, and building blocks to break down complex concepts. My time at Healthy Cities Tutoring was my second love, showing me how much I enjoyed teaching and seeing the spark in student’s eyes. Your third love is the unexpected one that comes out of nowhere but feels right. On the first day of junior year, as I walked into my engineering class and looked around, I was shocked to see only four other girls, all a year older than me. I felt intimidated and thought about dropping the class altogether. After much thought, I decided to stay and tried to form a community within the class for myself. As the year progressed, I integrated my thought process into projects, giving me a different angle from which to approach problems. I grew confident in my abilities and found my place despite only having four other girls with me. Nearing the end of the school year, we began one of our final projects. Our goal was to create a bridge and presentation best suited for a specific scenario, and the best would continue to the showcase. My group and I worked tirelessly, came into class for extra time to calculate dimensions, meticulously put together our bridge, and spent nights rehearsing our speeches. Ultimately, we qualified to go to the showcase and won first. Engineering was never a pathway I thought I would pursue, but it became a topic that consumed my brain, becoming a dream of mine to pursue. My “love life” with STEM has shaped me into a creative problem-solver with a strong commitment to the field and to teaching and inspiring others. I never truly felt like I had a woman that I looked up to in the STEM field, and it has driven me to want to educate and inspire others, especially young women who have faced the same uncertainties as me when it comes to being a woman in the field. I’ve been lucky enough to have taken a class that has allowed me to visualize and experience how I can improve the field of engineering and encourage others to find a passion in STEM.

Ever since I was little, my dad and I have shared a passion for math. We explored all kinds of concepts together, starting with addition through counting cubes all the way to making 3D shapes to demonstrate how rotations around axes worked. This allowed me to develop unique perspectives and problem-solving abilities at a young age and develop them as I grew older. He would find ways to explain math in an accessible and fun way and always told me that no matter what was taught in school, there would always be another way to solve a problem. Patterns in math have always been the thing that fascinates me the most, and the more I explored math, the more fascinated I became. I wanted to use this skill to show younger students that math can be fun and to help them learn that there are multiple ways to solve the same problem. To do this, I began volunteering with Healthy Cities Tutoring at nearby elementary and middle schools, where I met with students one-on-one and helped them understand concepts they had been struggling with. After teaching a few students, I realized that they all had different learning styles. As a result, I started using varied resources like playing cards, colored paper, and building blocks to break down difficult concepts. This helped make the concepts easier for them to comprehend while keeping them engaged. Tutoring has been a way for me to share my love for math with others and hopefully spark the same love for math that I have grown up with while still giving back to my community. I have also attended summer camps like the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) to learn about different areas of math, such as probability and game theory. Through these programs, I was able to learn new topics and meet others who shared the same level of interest in math. I have always seen math as more than a subject; it's how I bonded with my dad and many of my peers, and it is a source of curiosity and passion. My journey with math has taught me the importance of creativity and problem-solving and shown me how rewarding teaching others is.