Being a first-generation student means living simultaneously in two different worlds. One world is the concrete driveway where my dad taught me to wire aftermarket car stereos, and the empty school hallways my mom cleaned from 1 to 9 p.m. every evening. The other world is filled with linear algebra, nodal analysis, and university financial aid forms that no one in my house had ever learned to navigate. I became the bridge between those two realities, carrying the weight of my parents' physical sacrifices while learning to believe in a destination nobody in my immediate family had personally reached. My greatest challenge wasn't mastering electrical engineering's complex mathematics; it was surviving the logistics and doubt of higher education. During my first year at community college, I worked full-time and seriously considered leaving school. After an eight-hour retail shift, a paycheck felt immediate, whereas a degree felt abstract and uncertain. I was ready to settle for the familiar until a friend pushed me to take an introductory engineering course. Hearing a professor describe the hands-on, gritty engineering behind Los Angeles's sewer infrastructure showed me that engineering wasn't just theoretical math—it was a tool for building the real world. That realization became my compass. Now, beginning my B.S. in Electrical Engineering at California State University, Long Beach, I know exactly what I want to build and whom I want to serve. I want to design affordable automation and control systems that assist with the heavy, repetitive cleaning and hauling my mother and other custodial workers perform every day. I want engineering to protect workers too often expected to absorb the physical cost of essential labor, not merely maximize corporate efficiency. My mother traded her physical comfort to give me a future; my drive is to build technology that protects people like her. But I am not waiting for a degree to start giving back. Because I didn't have a roadmap, I now help provide one for others. As a MESA student ambassador, I made personal check-in calls to incoming STEM students, connecting them with counselors, internships, and transfer deadlines so they did not have to navigate college alone. This future comes with a steep financial reality. To avoid an unsustainable commute, I live on campus, leaving a $9,000 housing balance for the fall semester after covering my tuition with a subsidized loan. I work 20 to 25 hours a week at Target to cover daily essentials, but balancing upper-division engineering coursework with retail shifts stretches my time thin. This $5,000 scholarship would cover more than half my fall housing balance, allowing me to reduce retail hours and redirect that energy into engineering labs and STEM outreach. Being the first in my family to reach this point means creating a path that did not exist for me—and using where it leads to protect the hardworking people who made it possible.

Long before I understood control systems, I understood the physical and personal cost of demanding work. Growing up, our family schedule revolved around shifts. While my father taught me the basics of circuits and automotive wiring in our driveway, my mother worked midday to night as a school custodian. She spent long, exhausting shifts cleaning classrooms and maintaining the school. Because she worked from 1 to 9 p.m., on school days my brothers and I often saw her only during morning drop-offs. Her quiet burden was not just physical fatigue, but the ache of missing our evenings together—worrying from afar whether we had eaten dinner, finished our homework, or stayed on the right path. She traded precious time with her children so we could have the chance to attend college. Her sacrifices define the engineer I am becoming. Having just moved into Los Alamitos Hall to begin my B.S. in Electrical Engineering at California State University, Long Beach, I plan to focus my studies on control systems and mechatronics. I want automation to do more than increase industrial efficiency; I want it to protect the people who keep our institutions running from the physical toll of their work. I want to design affordable automation that assists with the heavy, repetitive cleaning and hauling my mother and other custodial workers perform every day. Advances in engineering should benefit the workers who are too often expected to absorb the physical cost of essential labor. My commitment to service didn't start with a degree. As a MESA student ambassador during community college, I actively supported incoming STEM students who were navigating higher education for the first time. I guided them to academic resources, helped them work through early engineering coursework, and organized events to build peer networks. I regularly made personal check-in calls to ensure they were meeting with counselors, applying for internships, and submitting their transfer applications on time. Having navigated community college while working full-time, I wanted other students to know they did not have to navigate the process alone. Carrying this mission forward requires managing a steep financial reality. To avoid an unsustainable Monday-through-Friday commute, I live on campus, which leaves a $9,000 balance for the fall semester after covering my tuition with a subsidized loan. Working 20 to 25 hours a week at Target helps cover daily essentials, but balancing upper-division engineering courses with retail shifts stretches my time thin. A $2,500 scholarship would cover more than a quarter of my immediate housing costs, allowing me to reduce my retail hours and redirect that time toward engineering labs and STEM outreach. My mother sacrificed countless hours with her family to give me the opportunity to reach a university. Through electrical engineering, I intend to honor what she gave our family by building technology that protects the health and dignity of workers like her, ensuring their labor is supported, valued, and made safer.

My parents did not hand me a trust fund; they handed me a voltage meter. As the son of Hispanic immigrants, my earliest laboratory was our concrete driveway. While my parents worked exhausting, laborious hours to build a stable life for our family in the United States, my father would spend his precious free time teaching my brothers and me the fundamentals of electrical current, tracing vehicle wiring harnesses, and diagnosing broken remote-controlled cars. He taught me that while our financial resources were scarce, our resourcefulness was limitless. That driveway was where my American Dream took shape: to become an electrical engineer specializing in mechatronics and automotive robotics. Being a first-generation, college-bound student from an immigrant family is a profound privilege, but it carries an immense, unspoken weight. Every grade, every late-night study session, and every collegiate project feels like a repayment for the blood, sweat, and tears my parents sacrificed to give me this opportunity. To honor their hard work and fund my education, I have spent the last two years balancing rigorous STEM coursework with a demanding part-time job at Target, stocking shelves and fulfilling online orders. There have been countless nights when the physical exhaustion of manual retail work made my circuit analysis equations blur together. Yet, I pushed through, driven by the knowledge that my education is the key to breaking our family’s cycle of financial struggle. I plan to make a positive impact on the world by bridging the gap between advanced technology and accessibility, eventually designing the physical, automated hardware systems of the future. But my impact will not wait until I have a degree. I know exactly how isolating it feels to be a first-generation student navigating the complex, often intimidating world of STEM. That is why I stepped up to serve as an Associated Student Government Senator and a MESA Student Ambassador. I actively advocate for marginalized and immigrant students, organizing collaborative events like "The Paper Pillar Challenge" to ensure my peers have the supportive community they need to thrive, rather than just survive. Right now, I am standing at the most critical, high-stakes juncture of my life. This fall, I am transferring to California State University, Long Beach to begin my upper-division electrical engineering coursework. The reality is terrifyingly urgent: advanced mechatronics and robotics courses demand absolute, undivided focus. There is a severe scarcity of time, and I simply cannot afford to let the heavy financial burden of university tuition force me to increase my retail working hours at the expense of my education. If I am forced to choose between paying for tuition and dedicating the necessary hours to my lab work, the dream my parents sacrificed everything for is at risk. Securing this scholarship is an immediate, vital intervention. It is the exact catalyst I need today to ensure I can step onto the university campus this fall fully committed to my studies. By investing in my education, you are not just funding a student; you are validating the tireless sacrifices of an immigrant family and empowering a future engineer dedicated to pulling others up with him.