I used to think giving back meant doing something extraordinary. Now I understand that service is often much quieter. Sometimes, it looks like sitting on the floor with a child who is struggling to communicate, celebrating a milestone that others might overlook, or reminding a parent who feels overwhelmed that they do not have to navigate everything alone. My commitment to serving children and families comes from understanding how deeply a child can be affected by circumstances they did not choose. Growing up, I saw firsthand how mental illness and addiction can affect an entire family. I was raised primarily by my mother, who carried responsibilities that should never have rested on one person's shoulders. Those experiences could have made me resentful. Instead, they gave me a question that continues to guide my life: Who can I become for a child who needs the kind of support I once needed? I have tried to answer that question through service and my work with children. During my undergraduate education, I completed fieldwork in developmental disabilities and worked with children and families through early intervention. I had the opportunity to support young children during critical stages of development while also learning from their caregivers. Today, I continue working directly with children through behavioral services. The progress is not always dramatic. Sometimes success is a child communicating a need instead of becoming frustrated, tolerating something that once overwhelmed them, or gaining a little more independence. Yet I have learned that small victories can completely change a family's day. Those children have also changed me. They have taught me that meaningful service is not about entering someone's life believing you will "save" them. It is about listening, showing up consistently, respecting their experiences, and helping them recognize strengths that were already there. I am now pursuing my graduate education in applied psychology at Northeastern University because I want to turn that commitment into a lifelong career serving children and families. My goal is to work in child mental health, particularly with young people affected by trauma, developmental differences, family mental illness, and barriers to quality care. In the future, I want my impact to extend beyond the individual children I serve. I hope to advocate for earlier intervention, accessible mental-health resources, and environments where children are understood before they are judged. I am especially passionate about reaching families who may struggle to access services because of finances, stigma, culture, or unequal availability of resources. Ultimately, I do not measure the difference I make by how many people know my name. I measure it in moments: a child feeling understood, a caregiver feeling supported, or a young person realizing that their circumstances do not determine their future. Priscilla Shireen Luke's legacy reminds me that a meaningful life is not only defined by what we accomplish for ourselves, but by what we leave behind in others. I hope to build a career—and a life—that leaves children feeling safer, families feeling less alone, and communities better equipped to care for those who need them most. I cannot change what I needed as a child. But through service, I can become part of the reason another child receives it.

Growing up, I learned early that sometimes the people who need the most support are the ones who become the strongest at giving it to others. I was raised by a single mother who carried responsibilities that were meant for two people. My father struggled with schizophrenia and alcoholism, and although he was physically present at different points in my childhood, emotionally, he was often absent. Eventually, he left our family entirely. For a long time, I watched my mother figure out how to keep us moving forward while carrying financial stress, parenting responsibilities, and challenges she never asked for. As a child, I did not fully understand what was happening. I only understood the feeling of wishing things were different. There were times when I wondered why my family could not look like the families around me. I grew up in a predominantly white community as a Puerto Rican and Dominican girl, and I became aware at a young age that my experiences were not always understood by the people around me. I also had an IEP in school, which sometimes made me feel as though people saw what I struggled with before they saw what I was capable of. For years, I internalized those experiences. Eventually, however, they became part of the reason I chose psychology. Today, I am a graduate student at Northeastern University pursuing my master's degree in Applied Psychology. Getting here means more to me than earning another degree. I graduated from UMass Amherst with a bachelor's degree in psychology and a minor in sociology after working hard to prove—to myself more than anyone—that the labels placed on me as a child did not determine how far I could go. My education has also come with financial sacrifices. There have been moments when paying for school has felt uncertain and when continuing my education meant searching for loans, scholarships, and solutions rather than having the security of knowing tuition was already covered. I understand why students from low-income families sometimes feel as though higher education was designed for everyone except them. When you are trying to build a different future, financial hardship does not disappear simply because you are ambitious. But neither does my ambition. My experiences have shaped the work I choose to do. I have worked with young children and families through early intervention and behavioral therapy, including supporting children with developmental and behavioral needs. In those moments, I often think about the child I once was—the child who needed adults to look beyond a behavior, diagnosis, family circumstance, or school record and ask, "What does this child need?" That question has become central to who I am. I am striving to become a counselor who works with children and families affected by mental illness, trauma, addiction, and circumstances they did not choose. I especially want to be there for children who are misunderstood because of their behavior, disability, culture, financial circumstances, or family environment. I know what it feels like to love someone struggling with serious mental illness and addiction. I also know that children living within those circumstances can carry emotions they do not yet have the words to explain. I want to help them find those words. My goal is not to erase where I came from. I want to use it. I want every difficult experience—the financial uncertainty, my father's absence, watching my mother sacrifice, feeling different in school, and questioning whether I belonged—to make me more compassionate toward the families I will someday serve. My mother spent much of my childhood fighting to give me opportunities she did not have. Now, I am working toward a career where I can turn those opportunities into service. The person I am becoming is someone my younger self would have felt safe talking to. And if I can become that person for even one child who feels unseen, then everything I had to overcome to get here will have meant something.

“Different Minds Change the World” My “Mad Genius” is a brain that refuses to sit quietly inside the lines. Surrounded by books, unfinished ideas, sticky notes, coffee, and a little chaos, she represents the kind of creativity that happens when curiosity is allowed to be messy. I chose a brain as the mascot because my study of psychology has taught me that no two minds experience the world exactly the same way. Some of the qualities people are taught to hide—thinking differently, asking too many questions, being intensely curious, or taking an unconventional path—can become their greatest strengths when given room to grow. The books beneath her connect creativity to my passion for psychology, mental health, community, and change. The scattered notes represent ideas that may begin imperfectly but can eventually change lives. At the center is a message I want to carry into my future work with children: different does not mean deficient. To me, a “Mad Genius” is someone brave enough to imagine what does not exist yet—and curious enough to create it.

I have spent years studying psychology, yet no professor ever taught me to ask one deceptively simple question when evaluating a girl's mental health: "When during your menstrual cycle does this happen?" That absence is exactly what draws me to PMDD and PME. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology and am now pursuing graduate education in Applied Psychology, with a particular interest in children and adolescents. I have studied depression, anxiety, trauma, developmental psychopathology, evidence-based intervention, and statistics. I have also worked directly with children and families through behavioral services and Early Intervention. Yet menstrual-cycle patterns have occupied remarkably little space in my training. That realization troubles me because the symptoms clinicians are trained to notice—depression, anxiety, irritability, difficulty concentrating, emotional dysregulation, and suicidal thoughts—can overlap with symptoms associated with PMDD or with conditions worsened by PME. If future mental-health professionals are not routinely taught to investigate cyclical patterns, we risk seeing the symptom while missing part of the story. I am particularly interested in what this means for adolescents. Adolescence is already a period of enormous biological, psychological, and social change. A teenager experiencing severe cyclical mood symptoms may not know that the timing matters. She may simply conclude, "Something is wrong with me." Her family may notice dramatic changes without understanding the pattern. A clinician may understandably focus on depression or anxiety without asking whether symptoms predictably intensify during a particular phase of the menstrual cycle. My goal is not to replace established mental-health assessment with menstrual-health screening. It is to make the latter a routine part of the former when clinically appropriate. One concrete way I hope to contribute is by advocating for and eventually helping develop adolescent-friendly screening and psychoeducation practices within mental-health settings. I envision a simple clinical workflow: when an adolescent presents with recurring mood symptoms, clinicians ask standardized questions about menstruation and symptom timing, provide an accessible method for prospective symptom tracking when indicated, and use that information to determine whether further assessment or interdisciplinary referral is warranted. Just as importantly, adolescents should understand why they are being asked. I want psychoeducation to replace shame with information. A teenager should be able to learn that tracking symptoms is not an adult dismissing her emotions as "just hormones." It is the opposite: it is taking her symptoms seriously enough to investigate their pattern. My psychology background also makes me interested in the research questions behind implementation. How often are menstrual-cycle questions included in adolescent mental-health intake? What prevents clinicians from asking them? Does targeted training increase appropriate recognition and referral? Could brief psychoeducation improve adolescents' ability to identify and communicate cyclical symptoms? Those are measurable questions, and answering them could help bridge research and routine practice. My career goal is to work with children and adolescents who feel misunderstood. I know from my own childhood experience with an IEP how powerful it is when adults make assumptions about a young person before fully understanding them. That history has made curiosity one of the values I want to carry into clinical practice. PMDD and PME demand that same curiosity. Sometimes advancing mental healthcare begins not with discovering a new treatment, but with teaching professionals to ask the question that allows a patient to finally be recognized. I want "When does this happen?" to become one of those questions.

My advantage over the other applicants is not that I have struggled more than they have. I do not know their stories, and I would never pretend my hardships are greater. My advantage is what I have learned to do with mine. I grew up in a family where mental illness and addiction were not concepts in a psychology textbook. They lived in my home. My father struggled with schizophrenia and alcoholism. For much of my childhood, he was physically present but emotionally absent, and when he eventually left our family when I was twenty, my mother and I became what, in many ways, we had already been for years: a team of two. My mother taught me how to keep moving when there is no backup plan. School taught me something different. I grew up with an IEP, and I remember what it felt like to wonder whether adults saw my potential or only the areas where I needed help. There is something powerful about being a child and realizing that other people have already formed expectations about what you can do. For a while, those expectations made me question myself. Eventually, they gave me something to challenge. I went on to earn my bachelor's degree in psychology with a 3.7 GPA and make the Dean's List every semester. Today, I am pursuing graduate education in Applied Psychology at Northeastern University. But my GPA is not what gives me an advantage either. My advantage is that when I encounter a struggling child, I do not immediately ask, "What is wrong with them?" I wonder what happened to them. I wonder what they need. I wonder what they are trying to communicate that the adults around them have not yet learned how to hear. Through Early Intervention and my work as a Behavioral Therapist/Behavior Technician, I have supported children and families navigating developmental and behavioral needs. Those experiences have shown me that some of the biggest victories in a child's life would look insignificant on paper. A new word. A successfully communicated need. A few minutes of something that once felt impossible. A parent finally seeing progress after months of uncertainty. Those moments have shaped the career I am building. I want to work with children whose mental health, developmental differences, trauma, or family circumstances make them vulnerable to being misunderstood. I want to bring evidence-based psychological support into schools and communities and become the adult who looks beyond a behavior, diagnosis, or IEP long enough to see the person underneath it. Getting there has not been financially easy. My mother and I do not have a large financial safety net waiting beneath me. Graduate school has required financial aid, loans, work, and difficult decisions. I have experienced the fear of educational expenses interfering with my ability to register for another semester. There is an uncomfortable irony in taking on significant debt to prepare for a career centered on helping others, but I continue because I know exactly what I am building toward. So why me? Not because I deserve an education more than another student. Choose me because I know what I will do with the opportunity. I will turn it into another semester of education, another child better understood, another family feeling less alone, and eventually a career spent giving children something I once needed myself: an adult who sees possibility in them before they know how to see it in themselves. My advantage is not my trauma. It is not my GPA, my résumé, or the obstacles I have overcome. It is that somewhere along the way, I learned how to turn the things that once made me feel powerless into a reason to make someone else feel powerful. That is the new path I am choosing. And I intend to leave it wider for the children who come after me.

When I was a little girl, I did not know the words schizophrenia, alcoholism, trauma, or developmental psychology. I only knew that sometimes my father was there, but somehow still felt absent. I knew that my mom carried more than one person should have to carry. I knew that having an IEP sometimes made me feel like adults saw what I struggled with before they saw what I was capable of. And I knew what it felt like to be a child experiencing emotions I did not yet have the vocabulary to explain. Years later, I finally found that vocabulary in psychology. That is why I chose to pursue this field. Psychology gave scientific names to experiences I had once understood only as feelings. I became fascinated by how a child's brain and environment interact, how trauma can influence development, how behavior can communicate an unmet need, and how the presence of even one supportive adult can change a child's trajectory. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology with a 3.7 GPA and made the Dean's List every semester. Today, I am continuing my education as a graduate student in Applied Psychology at Northeastern University. But some of my greatest lessons have happened outside a classroom. Through Early Intervention, I worked with infants and toddlers and their families during some of the most important years of development. As a Behavioral Therapist/Behavior Technician, I have supported children developing communication, behavioral, and everyday skills. These children have taught me that progress does not always arrive dramatically. Sometimes it is a new word. Sometimes it is a child communicating a need without becoming overwhelmed. Sometimes it is a parent realizing their child can do something they once feared might never happen. Those moments are why I keep going. My education has also required sacrifices. For much of my life, my family has been a team of two: my mom and me. My father's struggles with schizophrenia and alcoholism eventually led to him leaving our family when I was twenty. My mother has carried responsibilities that should have belonged to two parents, and I have watched her sacrifice so I could keep imagining a future beyond our circumstances. Graduate school has made that future feel both closer and more expensive. I have relied on financial aid and loans, and there have been moments when educational expenses affected my ability to register for another semester. Carrying growing debt while working toward a helping profession can feel overwhelming, but I refuse to allow the price of my education to become the reason I stop pursuing it. Receiving this scholarship would help me continue toward my goal of working with children whose developmental, emotional, or behavioral needs are too often misunderstood. I want to bring evidence-based mental health support into schools and communities and help children feel seen before they learn to define themselves by a diagnosis, an IEP, or someone else's expectations. Reading about Kayla Nicole Monk, I was struck by the fact that someone who endured so much physically still dreamed so boldly about what she could create. That is the legacy I want to carry forward. My circumstances have shaped me, but they will not define the boundaries of my future. I want to use science, education, and compassion to build something larger than myself. One day, I hope a child I work with realizes that the hardest parts of their story do not have to become the ending. I will know exactly what that realization feels like.

If Rebecca could not tell me with words what made her happy, I would not assume she had nothing to say. I would learn her language. I would notice which songs made her smile, which activities made her light up, what overwhelmed her, and who made her feel safe. Before deciding what I wanted to teach Rebecca, I would first let her teach me who she was. That is one of the most important lessons I have learned working with children with developmental and behavioral needs: communication is so much bigger than speech. As a Behavioral Therapist/Behavior Technician and through my Early Intervention experience with children from birth to age three, I have learned to look beyond behavior and ask what a child may be communicating. With a child like Rebecca, I would use visual supports, modeling, reinforcement, alternative communication, repetition, sensory-informed activities, and her individual interests. If singing "Happy Birthday" made Rebecca light up, I would not dismiss it as unrelated to education. I would ask, "How can I build learning around this joy?" Sometimes the doorway into learning is not a worksheet. Sometimes it is a song. I would also listen closely to her family. Professionals may understand interventions, but families understand their child in ways no textbook can replicate. They know the subtle expressions, routines, fears, comforts, and victories others may never notice. I believe effective support happens with families, not to them. That belief is personal because, for much of my life, my family has felt like a team of two: my mom and me. My father struggled with schizophrenia and alcoholism. Even before eventually leaving our family when I was twenty, he was often emotionally absent. My mother became the person who stayed. I watched her carry responsibilities meant for two parents while still convincing me that my future was worth fighting for. Today, I am fighting for that future—and for ours. After earning my bachelor's degree in psychology with a 3.7 GPA, I continued into graduate study in Applied Psychology. I also know personally what it feels like to have an IEP and to wonder whether adults see the paperwork before they see the child. Those experiences have strengthened my commitment to bringing my behavioral and mental-health background into Pre-K–12 special education, where I intend to support students with disabilities and their families. Reaching this point has come with significant financial pressure. Without another parent to fall back on financially, continuing my education has required financial aid and loans. I have experienced the frightening reality of educational expenses affecting my ability to register for another semester. Watching debt accumulate while trying to build a career devoted to helping children can be overwhelming. This scholarship would be more than money toward tuition. It would be breathing room. It would mean fewer dollars borrowed against the future I am working so hard to build. Most importantly, it would mean my mother and I would not have to carry quite as much of that future alone. Rebecca's story reminds me why this work matters. She was not simply non-verbal or a person with a rare syndrome. She was someone who loved roller coasters, dancing, kayaking, swimming, football, music, family, and connection. If I have the privilege of working with children like Rebecca, I never want their diagnosis to become the most interesting thing about them. I want to know the song that makes them smile. I want to learn their language. And I want to understand them well enough that the rest of the world can finally see how much was there all along.

I know what it feels like when adults read the paperwork before they read the child. Growing up with an IEP, I learned that a few words on a document could enter a room before I did. They could shape expectations about what I understood, what I could accomplish, and who adults believed I would become. I remember being young and absorbing those expectations before I was old enough to challenge them. When you are a child, adults' assumptions can become mirrors. If enough people look at you as though something is wrong, eventually you begin searching yourself for the defect. Years later, I earned a 3.7 GPA, made the Dean's List every semester, graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology, and continued into graduate study in Applied Psychology. But I do not tell that story because I believe academic achievement proved those adults wrong. I tell it because a child should never have to become exceptional to prove that they were worthy of being understood. That belief is at the center of the career I am building. Through my work in Early Intervention and behavioral services, I have met children whose abilities cannot be captured by a single score, diagnosis, behavior, or developmental milestone. I have watched a child struggle to communicate while simultaneously demonstrating remarkable persistence. I have seen behaviors that could easily be called "difficult" become understandable once someone stopped asking, How do we make this child behave? and started asking, What is this child trying to tell us? I want to bring that same curiosity to my future work with gifted children. Giftedness does not protect a child from loneliness, anxiety, trauma, developmental differences, or feeling profoundly misunderstood. A child can solve problems years beyond their age while still needing help regulating emotions that feel enormous. A child can possess extraordinary creativity while struggling socially. A child can be intellectually advanced and still desperately need permission to be a child. My goal is to become a counselor who refuses to make children choose between those parts of themselves. For gifted children, I want therapy to be a place where their intellectual needs are respected rather than treated as separate from their emotional lives. I want to use developmentally appropriate, evidence-based approaches while remaining curious about each child's individual strengths, interests, sensitivities, family, culture, and way of understanding the world. Rather than asking gifted children to shrink themselves to fit an environment, I want to help families and schools build environments where those children can belong without hiding what makes them different. Lieba Joran's story especially moves me because she seemed to understand something as a child that many adults spend their lives learning: difference is not an invitation for cruelty. When she defended another child, she did not need a psychology degree to recognize pain. She noticed. She cared. And she acted. That is the kind of professional I want to become. My graduate education can teach me theories, assessment, research, psychopathology, and evidence-based intervention. Those skills matter deeply to me. But I never want education to train the humanity out of helping. Years from now, a gifted child may sit across from me after being called too sensitive, too intense, too distracted, too different, or simply "too much." They may already have learned to hide pieces of themselves to make adults more comfortable. I want to be the person who notices what others have missed. I want to help that child understand that intelligence does not cancel emotional needs, difference does not diminish worth, and needing support does not erase strength. I once knew what it was like to wonder whether a label told the whole story of who I was. I want to spend my career making sure a child never mistakes someone else's limited understanding of them for the limit of who they can become.

Some of the most important things I have done for another person will never appear on a transcript. There was no grade for sitting beside a struggling child and refusing to give up when communication was difficult. There was no award for reassuring an overwhelmed caregiver. There was no certificate handed to me for learning to be patient with people whose struggles were invisible. But those are the moments that have shaped the person I want to become. I grew up understanding that people can be fighting battles you cannot see. My father struggled with schizophrenia and alcoholism. For much of my childhood, he was physically present but often emotionally unreachable. As a child, I did not understand mental illness or addiction. I only understood the confusion of loving someone who could not always be the person I needed. My mother, meanwhile, carried our family forward. Watching her taught me that selflessness is rarely glamorous. Sometimes it is getting up and doing what needs to be done when you are exhausted. Sometimes it is putting another person's needs beside your own and saying, "You still matter to me." Those lessons followed me into my work with children. During my Early Intervention experience, I worked with infants and toddlers and their families during an incredibly important period of development. Later, working in behavioral services, I supported children developing communication, behavioral, and everyday skills. These experiences taught me to redefine what "helping" someone means. Helping is not always fixing. Sometimes it is staying. It is remaining patient when a child is frustrated. It is celebrating a skill that took weeks to develop as enthusiastically as if they had just won a championship. It is listening to caregivers instead of assuming you know what their family needs. It is recognizing that behavior often communicates something a child does not yet have the words to say. That belief is also why I am pursuing graduate education in Applied Psychology. I want to become a counselor who works with children and families affected by trauma, mental illness, developmental differences, and circumstances beyond their control. I am especially passionate about children whose behavior causes adults to label them before anyone stops to ask what they have experienced. My perseverance comes from knowing that this path is not always easy. I have balanced school, work, financial pressures, and responsibilities while continuing my education because the goal is bigger than earning another degree. I am building the knowledge and skills to become the kind of adult I once needed. I used to think making a difference required doing something enormous. Working with children changed that. Sometimes changing someone's world means being the person who does not walk away when things become difficult. It means making a child feel successful after they have become accustomed to feeling behind. It means helping a parent see progress when they are overwhelmed by everything that still feels uncertain. Michael Rudometkin's legacy reminds me that a meaningful life is measured not only by what we accomplish for ourselves, but by what we give to other people along the way. If I am fortunate enough to build the career I dream about, my greatest accomplishment will not be the letters after my name. It will be the people who remember that, when they needed someone, I stayed.

**The first child I ever wanted to save was myself.** Not from one dramatic moment, but from the quiet experience of growing up surrounded by things I did not yet have the language to understand. My father lived with schizophrenia and alcoholism. He was physically present for much of my childhood, but his illnesses often made him feel emotionally unreachable. I learned early how confusing it can be for a child to love someone while also being hurt by the instability surrounding them. When my father eventually left our family when I was twenty, I was technically an adult. Yet the pain belonged to a much younger version of me—the little girl who had spent years wondering why love could not make someone stay, recover, or become the parent she needed. At school, I faced a different kind of misunderstanding. I had an IEP, and there were moments when needing additional support made me feel as though adults saw a limitation before they saw me. Those experiences could have taught me to hide the parts of myself that struggled. Instead, they made me curious. **Why do some children thrive despite adversity while others struggle? How does trauma alter development? Why is a child's behavior so often treated as the problem instead of a form of communication? And what allows one supportive adult to change the trajectory of a child's life?** Those questions led me to psychology. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology while studying sociology and developmental disabilities and human services, and I am now pursuing graduate education in Applied Psychology at Northeastern University. My education has allowed me to put scientific language behind experiences I once understood only emotionally. Concepts such as developmental psychopathology, trauma, risk and protective factors, and evidence-based intervention are more than material I study for an exam. They help me understand real children and families. My commitment extends beyond the classroom. Through Early Intervention and behavioral therapy, I have worked directly with young children and families, including children with developmental and behavioral needs. I have learned that impact is not always dramatic. Sometimes leadership looks like patiently helping a child communicate a need, supporting a caregiver who feels overwhelmed, celebrating progress others might overlook, or refusing to reduce a child to a diagnosis or behavior. Working while pursuing my education has also taught me what opportunity costs. Graduate school is an investment in my future, but it comes with real financial pressure. I continue because I know exactly what I want that education to become. I want to build a career supporting children affected by trauma, mental illness, developmental differences, and family instability, particularly children whose needs are too easily misunderstood or overlooked. I want to bring evidence-based mental health care into communities and families where accessing support can feel intimidating, unaffordable, or simply out of reach. Ultimately, I do not want my education to end with me. One day, I hope a child walks into my office carrying questions they do not yet know how to ask. Maybe they will believe their family's struggles are somehow their responsibility. Maybe they will have been called difficult when they were actually overwhelmed. Maybe they will simply need one adult to look beyond their behavior and see them. I cannot go back and give my younger self that person. But through STEM, service, and education, I can spend my life becoming that person for someone else.

The life of my dreams is not a life where nothing difficult ever happens. It is a life where the difficult things I have lived through become the reason someone else feels less alone. Growing up, I learned early that a parent can be physically present and still feel painfully far away. My father struggled with schizophrenia and alcoholism, and although he was part of my life for many years, his illnesses often made him emotionally unavailable. When he eventually left my family when I was twenty, I thought being older would somehow make it hurt less. It didn't. A part of me still felt like the little girl who wanted her father to be okay—and wanted someone to understand what it was like to love a parent you could not save. At the same time, I watched my mother carry responsibilities that should never have belonged to one person alone. She showed me what perseverance looked like long before I had a word for it. Those experiences shaped what I dream about today. I am pursuing graduate education in psychology because I want to build a career helping children and families navigate mental health challenges, trauma, developmental differences, and circumstances they did not choose. My dream is to become a counselor who notices the child whose behavior is labeled "difficult" and asks what that behavior might be communicating instead. That matters deeply to me because I also know what it feels like to be misunderstood in school. I had an IEP growing up, and there were moments when needing additional support made me feel defined by what I struggled with rather than recognized for what I could become. Today, I work with children and have had the privilege of seeing development from another side: celebrating progress that may seem small to others but can represent an enormous victory for a child and family. The life of my dreams means creating a space where children never have to earn the right to be understood. It means continuing my education even while working and managing the financial realities that come with graduate school. It means eventually sitting across from a child who believes no one understands their family, their emotions, or their needs and being able to say, through my actions, "I see you." I cannot rewrite my childhood, and I no longer want to. I want to use it. My dream is to transform the experiences that once made me feel powerless into the education, compassion, and skills that allow me to empower someone else. Success, to me, will not be measured only by the degrees hanging on my wall. It will be measured by the children who leave my office feeling a little safer, parents who leave feeling a little less alone, and families who begin to believe that their circumstances do not have to determine their future. That is the life of my dreams: becoming the person I once needed and spending my career making sure children know that being misunderstood today does not determine who they can become tomorrow.

Consent is not simply the absence of the word “no.” It is the presence of an informed “yes.” If someone intentionally manufactures the circumstances necessary to obtain that yes through a material deception about the sexual act or identity of the person involved, I believe lawmakers must be willing to ask a difficult question: What, exactly, did the survivor consent to? My education in psychology and sociology has taught me to look beyond behavior and examine power, manipulation, trauma, and the social systems that determine whose experiences are taken seriously. I have studied abnormal psychology, child maltreatment, forensic psychology, criminology, and family systems while working directly with children and families. These experiences have strengthened my commitment to a career centered on mental health and advocacy, particularly for people whose experiences are misunderstood or minimized. I would bring that perspective to advocacy surrounding rape by fraud and rape by deception. In my community, I would begin with education. Many people understand that consent obtained through physical force is invalid but may have never considered how deliberate deception can remove a person's ability to make an informed decision about sexual contact. I would advocate through survivor-centered education, partnerships with mental-health and sexual-assault organizations, and research that examines both the psychological consequences of these experiences and gaps in existing laws. Most importantly, I would advocate without requiring survivors to expose their trauma publicly in order for policymakers to recognize that a problem exists. If I were standing before a state legislative committee, my argument would be simple: **consent to one set of material circumstances cannot automatically become consent to a fundamentally different sexual act created through intentional deception.** We already recognize throughout society that meaningful consent requires relevant information. In healthcare, a patient cannot provide informed consent when the nature of a procedure is deliberately concealed. Yet when sexual autonomy is violated through certain forms of intentional deception, survivors can encounter laws that do not clearly recognize what happened to them. This is not an argument that every lie told before sex should become a felony. Criminal law must be carefully written. Legislation should distinguish ordinary dishonesty from intentional, material deception used specifically to obtain sexual access that the perpetrator knows would otherwise be refused. Clear definitions, an appropriate intent requirement, and due-process protections can guard against overly broad application while still creating a path to accountability. My psychology background also makes me concerned about what happens after the act. A legal system communicates whose experiences are legitimate. When a survivor experiences a profound violation of autonomy and discovers that the law has no language for it, that absence can compound feelings of isolation, shame, and disbelief. My future career will focus on helping people whose experiences are too often misunderstood. Advocacy is an extension of that goal. I want to contribute research, psychological knowledge, and survivor-centered perspectives to legislative conversations about consent. The question should not be whether a survivor physically participated. The question should be whether they were actually given the opportunity to choose the sexual act that occurred. When intentional, predatory deception eliminates that choice, our laws should be equipped to recognize the violation of autonomy that follows.

For me, nutrition and health are not simply about telling someone what they should eat. They are about understanding the person behind the choices they make. My background in psychology has taught me that health behaviors are shaped by stress, mental health, family circumstances, finances, culture, access to resources, and whether a person feels understood by the professionals caring for them. As I explore a future in hospital-based care and nursing, I want to bring that understanding with me. My education in psychology and my experience working with children and families have taught me how closely physical and emotional health are connected. I have worked with children in behavioral therapy and early intervention, where progress often depends on looking beyond a single behavior and understanding the environment surrounding the child. I believe nursing requires that same ability to see the whole person rather than only a diagnosis. This is one reason I am interested in expanding my career into hospital work and exploring nursing. My psychology background would allow me to approach patients with an understanding of behavior, development, communication, trauma, and mental health. A patient struggling to follow nutritional recommendations, for example, may not simply be “unmotivated.” They may be overwhelmed, experiencing depression or anxiety, struggling financially, unfamiliar with certain foods, or trying to change habits that have existed in their family for generations. Before encouraging change, I want to understand what is standing in the patient's way. As a nurse, I would encourage healthier eating through education that feels realistic rather than judgmental. I would begin by listening. Instead of handing every patient the same list of foods, I would ask about their routines, cultural preferences, budget, family responsibilities, and barriers to eating well. From there, I could help patients identify small, achievable changes, such as adding one nutritious food they enjoy, planning affordable meals, understanding food labels, or finding healthier versions of familiar meals. I would also make mental health part of conversations about wellness. Stress, grief, anxiety, depression, and trauma can influence appetite, motivation, sleep, and self-care. My psychology education has shown me that lasting behavioral change is more likely when people feel supported rather than ashamed. I want patients to leave an interaction with me feeling capable of improving their health, not embarrassed about where they started. Ultimately, I want my career to exist at the intersection of physical and psychological well-being. Whether I am helping a child, supporting a family, or caring for a patient in a hospital, I want to be the healthcare professional who asks not only, “What does this patient need?” but also, “What has made meeting that need difficult?” My psychology background has taught me to understand people. Nursing would give me another way to care for them. By combining those perspectives, I hope to help patients build healthier relationships with food, their bodies, and their overall health—one realistic and compassionate change at a time.

When I was a child, I did not always have the words to explain what I was feeling. I only knew that sometimes my emotions felt bigger than my ability to communicate them. When children cannot explain what is happening inside of them, adults may see a behavior instead of the hurt, fear, or confusion underneath it. I know what it feels like to be that child. It is one of the reasons I want to spend my career making sure other children feel seen. My education in psychology and my experiences working directly with children have taught me that healing does not always begin with a conversation. Sometimes, it begins with a crayon. A child may not be able to say, “I am scared that my family is changing,” but they may draw themselves standing far away from everyone else. They may not know how to describe anxiety, grief, or trauma, but they can choose colors, create characters, tell stories, and make something that communicates what words cannot. That is what draws me so deeply to art therapy and other creative approaches to child counseling. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology while studying sociology and developmental disabilities, and I am continuing my graduate education with the goal of building a career centered on children's mental health. Through early intervention and behavioral therapy, I have worked alongside children and families during moments that require patience, creativity, and compassion. These experiences have reinforced something I wish more adults understood: behavior is communication. My childhood experiences have also shaped the kind of clinician I hope to become. Growing up with an IEP sometimes made me feel as though the things I struggled with entered the room before I did. I remember what it was like to want an adult to look beyond a label and become curious about the child underneath it. Today, I have the opportunity to become that adult for someone else. My goal is to become a child therapist who creates spaces where children do not have to communicate their pain perfectly in order for it to matter. I want to incorporate creative, developmentally appropriate approaches that allow children to express themselves through art, play, storytelling, and other forms of communication. I especially hope to work with children who have experienced trauma, anxiety, developmental differences, or circumstances that have made them feel misunderstood. To me, a child's drawing is never “just a picture.” It can be a doorway into a world they have been trying desperately to explain. Receiving the Marsha Cortes Memorial Scholarship would help me continue my education and move closer to creating those doorways for children. More importantly, it would become part of a much larger story: a child who once struggled to find the words growing into a therapist who helps other children discover that they never needed perfect words to deserve to be heard. I cannot change every moment when I felt misunderstood growing up. But I can decide what I do with those moments. I choose to turn them into understanding.

There are moments that divide life into a “before” and an “after.” For my family, one of those moments was when my cousin developed sepsis. Before then, I understood illness mostly as something that could be treated: you became sick, went to the doctor, received medication, and eventually returned to normal. Sepsis shattered that assumption. Watching someone I loved become critically ill taught me how quickly an infection can become a fight for survival and how helpless a family can feel when the person they love is suddenly surrounded by medical uncertainty. My cousin survived, but survival did not mean that everything immediately returned to the way it had been before. I watched the experience affect him physically and emotionally, while also changing everyone who loved him. There was fear during his illness, but there was also fear afterward—the realization that something so serious could happen so quickly. I began to understand that a medical crisis does not happen to only one person. In many ways, an entire family experiences it. That lesson has stayed with me as I have built my own path. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I focused much of my education on children, development, mental health, and disability. I am now pursuing graduate education at Northeastern University with the goal of becoming a child counselor. Professionally, I have worked in early intervention and behavioral therapy, supporting children and families through developmental, behavioral, and emotional challenges. My cousin's experience with sepsis gave those career goals an additional meaning. It showed me that healing is not limited to what happens inside a hospital room. A person can survive a medical emergency while still carrying fear, anxiety, grief, or uncertainty long after discharge. Families can carry those emotions too. Children, especially, may not always have the language to explain what a frightening medical experience has done to them. I want my career to exist in that space between surviving and truly healing. As a future counselor, I hope to work with children and families navigating trauma, anxiety, disability, medical experiences, and other circumstances that can make a young person feel frightened or different. I want children to have an adult who does not dismiss their fear simply because the immediate crisis has passed. I also want parents and caregivers to know that supporting a child's emotional recovery is an important part of supporting their overall well-being. My cousin's sepsis experience is not my story to claim as my own survival story. But loving someone through it changed my story. It taught me how fragile life can be, how deeply one person's medical crisis can affect an entire family, and how important compassionate care is before, during, and after a crisis. The name “Begin Again” resonates with me because beginning again does not mean pretending something painful never happened. It means carrying what happened forward and allowing it to shape what you do next. For me, what comes next is becoming the counselor I once would have wanted my own family to have—someone who helps children and families discover that surviving a frightening chapter does not have to be the end of their story. Sometimes, it can become the beginning of what they choose to do with the life that follows.

For most of my life, I never considered myself a “math person.” I was drawn to psychology—to emotions, childhood development, trauma, and understanding why people become who they are. Math seemed like the opposite: numbers instead of stories. Graduate school changed that. While pursuing my graduate education in Applied Psychology at Northeastern University, statistics taught me that math is one of the most powerful ways we can turn human experiences into evidence. A correlation coefficient is not just a number. It can reveal a relationship between stress and well-being. A graph can expose a pattern that might otherwise be ignored. Data can determine whether an intervention that sounds promising is actually changing someone's life. That realization made math personal to me. My goal is to work in child mental health, especially with children whose behaviors, disabilities, or emotional struggles cause them to be misunderstood. Growing up with an IEP, I know what it feels like when adults notice a label before they notice the child behind it. Those experiences inspired me to study psychology and become the kind of professional I once needed. Unexpectedly, math has become part of that mission. As a behavioral therapist, I collect data to measure children's progress rather than relying on assumptions. In graduate school, statistics has taught me to analyze research, question conclusions, and evaluate whether treatments truly work. Numbers cannot tell a child's entire story, but they can make parts of that story visible. That is what I have grown to love about math. A child may not be able to explain that an intervention is helping, but their data can show progress. A community may know children lack adequate mental health resources, but statistics can demonstrate the disparity. Evidence gives us the power to turn observations into action. I may never love math simply because numbers exist. I love what numbers can do. Psychology gives me the compassion to understand a child's story. Math gives me the evidence to help change it. My education has taught me that I do not have to choose between being someone who cares about people and someone who values numbers. In my future career, I hope to use both to ensure that children are not only heard, but helped.

There are nights when my classroom is not a lecture hall. It is my laptop opened after a long day of work, with a recorded lecture playing while I take notes and prepare for another day of balancing the two things I cannot afford to choose between: earning a living and building the career I have worked so hard for. As a graduate student studying applied psychology at Northeastern University, continuing my education is incredibly important to me. But so is working. I do not have the luxury of putting my life on hold while I earn my degree. I need to work to support myself, and I also value the experience I gain working directly with children. Online learning has given me something that traditional education often cannot: the flexibility to pursue my future without abandoning the responsibilities of my present. I use Canvas, recorded lectures, virtual discussions, online academic databases, digital textbooks, SPSS, Excel, and other educational resources to learn wherever my schedule allows. Sometimes that means reviewing material after work. Other times, it means returning to a difficult lecture multiple times until the concept finally clicks. Instead of my education being limited to a specific classroom at a specific hour, technology allows learning to fit into the reality of my life. What makes these tools especially meaningful is that my online education follows me into my work. As a behavioral therapist, I work directly with children, collect behavioral data, implement individualized interventions, and collaborate with families. When I learn about emotional regulation, developmental psychopathology, autism, trauma-informed care, or evidence-based interventions online, I can sometimes apply that knowledge during my very next shift. A lecture about trauma-informed communication can change how I respond to a struggling child. Research about child development can remind me to look beyond a behavior and ask what that child may be communicating. My statistics courses have taught me to look at behavioral data more critically and recognize that behind every number is a real child whose progress matters. That connection is deeply personal to me. Growing up, I knew what it felt like to need additional educational and emotional support and to sometimes feel defined by those needs instead of understood as a whole person. Those experiences are part of why I chose psychology and why I want to become a counselor for children and families. I want children who feel misunderstood to encounter an adult willing to look deeper. Getting there, however, requires years of education, training, work, and financial sacrifice. Online learning makes that path more possible. It allows me to earn an income, gain meaningful professional experience, and continue progressing toward my graduate degree instead of being forced to choose one over another. To me, educational technology represents more than convenience. It represents access. Every time I open my laptop after work, I am doing more than completing another assignment. I am building a future in which I can make a living doing something meaningful, support myself, and become the kind of counselor I once needed. Online learning gives me the flexibility to keep working toward that future—even while I am working to afford it.

When I first heard Olivia Rodrigo’s “begged,” I did not hear a girlfriend singing to someone she loved. I heard a daughter talking to her father. The song captures something I have struggled to explain for most of my life: how painful it is to finally receive pieces of someone's love when you know you had to beg for them. Growing up with an absent father taught me that kind of longing before I was old enough to understand it. I watched other daughters have relationships with their fathers that seemed effortless. Their dads showed up. They called. They asked questions. They knew what was happening in their daughters’ lives. I could never understand why something so ordinary for other children felt like something I had to earn. So I begged in my own ways. Sometimes that meant wanting his attention. Other times it meant trying to be understanding when I was actually hurt. I convinced myself to accept whatever pieces of a relationship I could get because having something felt better than admitting how badly I wanted more. That is why “begged” affected me so deeply. Beneath the romantic relationship in the song, I heard the emotional experience of loving someone, remaining patient with them, and accepting what they are willing to give while quietly knowing it is not enough. For me, that person was my father. As a child, I did not understand that his absence was complicated by struggles that existed long before I could understand them. I only understood absence. Children rarely have the emotional vocabulary to separate a parent's struggles from their own worth. Instead of asking what prevented my father from being there, I wondered what was wrong with me that made him not want to be. Was I not interesting enough? Successful enough? Lovable enough? Growing older has meant confronting those questions and realizing I spent years asking the wrong ones. I should never have had to prove that I was worthy of being someone's daughter. That realization is part of why I chose psychology and why I am now pursuing graduate education with the goal of becoming a counselor for children and adolescents. I understand how experiences adults may consider complicated family circumstances can become deeply personal beliefs inside a child's mind. An absent parent can become “I am unwanted.” Inconsistency can become “people always leave.” A child begging for attention can begin believing love must be earned. I want to help children challenge those beliefs before they carry them into adulthood. “begged” reminded me of the little girl who wanted her father to choose her. But it also reminded me how far she has come. I cannot rewrite my relationship with my father, but I can decide what I do with what it taught me. I can turn absence into empathy. I can turn hurt into purpose. And I can become the counselor who helps another child understand something I wish someone had told me much earlier: Love that someone failed to give you is not proof that you were undeserving of it. I spent part of my childhood begging to feel chosen. Now, I am building a life in which I choose to show up for children who need someone to see them. Maybe that is why “begged” means so much to me. I do not only hear the person I used to be in that song. I hear the person I am becoming.

For me, service has never been about collecting volunteer hours or adding another accomplishment to my résumé. It has been about becoming the person I once needed. Growing up, I learned how deeply a child can be affected when the adults around them misunderstand what they are experiencing. I had an IEP, and there were moments when I felt defined by the support I needed rather than recognized for what I was capable of. At that age, I did not always have the words to explain how it felt to be different. As I grew older, however, I realized that those experiences could become more than painful memories. They could become my reason for making another child feel understood. While earning my bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I became involved in early intervention, working with infants, toddlers, and their families. Through developmental enrichment groups, home visits, assessments, and collaboration with caregivers, I learned to listen in ways that went beyond words. Some children could not yet explain what they needed, so I learned to pay attention to behavior, body language, emotions, and the small changes others might overlook. That experience taught me that service does not always look extraordinary. Sometimes it means sitting on the floor beside a child until they feel safe enough to participate. Sometimes it means changing an activity because a child is overwhelmed instead of expecting them to adapt to you. Sometimes it means listening to an exhausted caregiver and reminding them that the small step their child took today is still progress. After graduating, I continued serving children through behavioral therapy. I help children strengthen communication, independence, emotional regulation, and everyday skills while collaborating with their families. Data collection is part of my work, but I never see a child as numbers on a page. Behind every data point is a person. A small increase on a graph can represent a child communicating a need independently for the first time or accomplishing something their family has worked toward for months. These experiences have shaped the professional I want to become. I am continuing my graduate education in psychology with the goal of becoming a counselor for children and adolescents, particularly those facing mental health, developmental, behavioral, or trauma-related challenges. I want to be the counselor who looks beyond a behavior and asks what that behavior is communicating. I want families to encounter a professional who listens before making assumptions. Most importantly, I want children who feel different to understand that needing support never makes them less intelligent, capable, or deserving of opportunity. The greatest lesson my community has taught me is that impact does not always happen on a large stage. Sometimes it happens quietly, one child at a time. The children I serve may not remember every activity or intervention, but I hope they remember how they felt: safe enough to try, respected enough to struggle, and supported enough to keep going. I know what it feels like to be the child waiting for someone to look beyond a label. Now, I have the privilege of being the person who looks back at that child and sees possibility. That is the kind of service I intend to spend my life providing.

I am pursuing a career dedicated to helping children build healthier futures. The irony is that building that future for myself has required me to take on debt that could follow me for years. As a Puerto Rican and Dominican woman raised by a single mother, I grew up understanding that money represented more than what we could buy. It represented choices. I watched my mother stretch what she had, sacrifice what she wanted, and continue providing for me even when doing so was difficult. Her sacrifices gave me opportunities she did not have, and they also taught me never to treat those opportunities casually. That lesson follows me as I pursue graduate education at Northeastern University. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a 3.7 GPA and made the Dean's List every semester. Today, I am continuing my education because my goal is to become a counselor specializing in children and adolescents, particularly those who feel misunderstood or overlooked. I also work while pursuing my education. Through behavioral therapy and previous early-intervention experience, I have worked directly with children, including children with autism and developmental differences. Working while attending school is not always easy, but it allows me to gain experience in the field I love while contributing toward my expenses. Still, graduate school is expensive. I have had to rely on financial aid and student loans to continue my education. I recognize that borrowing money today means accepting a responsibility my future self will have to carry. That is why I am approaching my debt with a plan rather than simply hoping it disappears. First, I am aggressively pursuing scholarships and grants to reduce the amount I need to borrow. I treat scholarship applications almost like another job because every dollar I earn through scholarships is a dollar I do not have to repay with interest. I am also continuing to work while completing my degree and carefully evaluating employment opportunities based not only on salary, but also benefits such as tuition assistance, professional development, and potential student-loan repayment support. After graduation, I plan to prioritize consistent loan payments while avoiding lifestyle inflation as my income increases. Because I am pursuing a career in mental health, I will also investigate whether my future employment and loans qualify for federal or employer-based repayment or forgiveness programs rather than assuming that forgiveness will automatically be available. Most importantly, I am investing in a degree with a clear purpose. I am not borrowing money because I am uncertain about what comes next. I know what I am working toward. I want to sit across from a child who feels different, overwhelmed, or misunderstood and become one of the people who helps that child recognize that their circumstances do not determine their future. In many ways, that is the lesson my mother taught me. I watched her create possibilities even when resources were limited. Now I am doing the same. Receiving the Ruthie Brown Scholarship would mean $5,000 less standing between the life I am building and financial freedom. It would not simply help me pay for graduate school today; it would reduce what I carry into tomorrow. My goal is not to spend my adulthood paying for my education. My goal is to spend it using that education to change lives.

When I think about the people who shaped the woman I am becoming, I do not think of just one person. I think of generations. I come from a Puerto Rican and Dominican family, and my grandparents have always represented something much larger to me than family history. They represent sacrifice. Their generation made difficult decisions and endured challenges so the generations after them could have opportunities they did not. Growing up with their influence taught me that sometimes the greatest form of love is creating a life for someone else that you may never have had yourself. My upbringing was not traditional. I grew up in a single-mother household, and because of that, the support and presence of extended family carried tremendous meaning. Watching the adults in my life step into roles wherever they were needed taught me that family is not defined only by titles. Family is defined by who shows up. That lesson has followed me throughout my life. There were times growing up when I struggled to imagine the person I would eventually become. I had an IEP as a child and experienced moments when I felt defined by my differences rather than my potential. I also experienced mental-health challenges at a young age. At times, what I needed most was not someone to fix everything for me, but someone who believed there was more to me than what I was struggling with at that moment. The perseverance I witnessed within my family taught me to keep going. I eventually earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a 3.7 GPA, making the Dean's List every semester. Today, I am pursuing graduate education at Northeastern University and working toward a future in mental health. My upbringing has directly shaped that goal. I want to become a counselor specializing in children and adolescents, particularly those who feel misunderstood, different, or overlooked. Through my work in early intervention and behavioral therapy, I have already had the privilege of working with children with autism and developmental differences. Every child reminds me that having even one adult consistently believe in you can change how you begin to see yourself. My family gave me that foundation. As a Latina pursuing graduate education, I also understand that my accomplishments do not belong solely to me. I carry the sacrifices of the people who came before me into every classroom I enter. My grandparents' generation pursued opportunities. My mother fought to make those opportunities possible for me. Now, I have the responsibility to turn them into something meaningful. My goal is not simply to become successful. I want my success to become service. I want to use my education to support children and families who may not have adequate mental-health resources, advocate for young people who are too often labeled before they are understood, and show children from underrepresented backgrounds that their circumstances do not determine the limits of their futures. The people who helped raise and guide me taught me that changing someone's life does not always require having everything. Sometimes it begins with simply showing up. They showed up for me. My life's work will be about showing up for others.

For me, mental health has never existed only inside a textbook. Before I knew words like depression, schizophrenia, stigma, or intervention, I knew what it felt like to live with the consequences of mental illness. My father lived with schizophrenia and was largely absent throughout my childhood. At the same time, I began experiencing depression myself at a young age. My depression did not always look like the sadness people expected. Sometimes it looked like irritability, anger, frustration, or behavior adults found difficult. I remember what it felt like to have people respond to what they saw without asking what might be happening underneath it. Those experiences eventually became some of the most important reasons I chose psychology. As a student, mental health is important to me because I understand that academic performance never tells the complete story of what a student is carrying. A person can submit an assignment, earn a good grade, go to work, smile with friends, and still be struggling internally. I have learned that achievement and struggle can exist in the same person. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a 3.7 GPA and made the Dean's List every semester. Today, I am pursuing graduate education at Northeastern University. I am proud of those accomplishments, but I am equally proud of everything it took internally to reach them. My advocacy for mental health extends beyond simply talking about its importance. I have chosen to build my career around it. Through early intervention and behavioral therapy, I have worked directly with children, including children with autism and developmental differences. Every day, I have an opportunity to practice something I wish more adults had practiced when I was young: looking beyond behavior. When a child becomes frustrated, shuts down, struggles to communicate, or behaves in an unexpected way, I try to remember that behavior is communication. Instead of immediately asking, “How do we stop this behavior?” I believe we also need to ask, “What is this child trying to tell us?” I advocate through patience. I advocate by listening to families. I advocate by challenging stigma when mental-health struggles are treated as character flaws. Most importantly, I advocate by helping create spaces where children can be understood without being ashamed of needing support. My long-term goal is to become a counselor specializing in children and adolescents. I want to work especially with young people who feel misunderstood, different, or unable to put their emotions into words. I also hope to support families affected by mental illness because I understand that a diagnosis can affect far more than one individual. There was once a little girl who could not explain why she was angry, overwhelmed, or hurting. Today, that little girl is studying mental health so she can become the adult who notices. My experiences with mental health are not something I want to hide from my future profession. They are part of what will make me compassionate within it. I know what it means to need someone to look beyond what they can see. My goal is to spend my career doing exactly that for others.

## The Little Star Who Shined Sideways High above the clouds, past the airplanes and even past the moon, there was a village of stars. Every night, the stars had one very important job. “Up straight, shine bright!” called the Moon. And every star pointed its light toward Earth. Every star except Luna. Luna's light never went where she told it to go. When she tried to shine straight down, her light zipped sideways. **WHOOSH!** It bounced off the Moon. **BOING!** It spun around Saturn's rings. **WHEEEE!** And once, it accidentally made a comet sneeze. “ACHOO!” The other little stars giggled. “Why can't you shine normally?” one asked. “I don't know,” Luna whispered. So Luna practiced. She practiced before breakfast. She practiced after dinner. She even practiced when everyone else was sleeping. “Straight,” she told herself. “Just shine straight.” **WHOOSH!** Sideways. Again. **WHOOSH!** Sideways. Again. **WHOOSH!** Sideways. Finally, Luna stopped shining altogether. Maybe the sky would be prettier without her. That night, something unusual happened on Earth. A little girl named Mia was sitting beside her bedroom window. Mia had experienced a terrible day at school. She had gotten an answer wrong. She had become frustrated when everyone else finished an assignment before her. And when she tried to explain herself, the words became tangled. “I wish I could be like everybody else,” Mia whispered. High above Earth, Luna heard her. For the first time all night, Luna began to glow. “I know that feeling,” she said. Luna wanted desperately to send Mia a little light. “Straight,” Luna whispered. She squeezed her eyes shut. She tried as hard as she possibly could. **WHOOSH!** Sideways. “Oh no!” Her light missed Earth completely. It bounced from the Moon— to Mars— around Saturn— past a comet— and then something extraordinary happened. Each place Luna's light touched added something to it. The Moon added silver. Mars added red. Saturn added gold. The comet added sparkling blue. Luna's wandering beam finally curved back toward Earth. It slipped through Mia's bedroom window and painted her ceiling with colors. Mia gasped. It was the most beautiful light she had ever seen. “Mom!” she shouted. “Come look!” Her mother rushed into the room. “What is it?” Mia pointed upward. Across the ceiling danced silver, red, gold, and blue. “It didn't come straight through the window,” Mia said. “It bounced everywhere first.” Her mother smiled. “And look what happened because it took a different path.” Mia stared at the colors. For the first time that day, she smiled too. High above Earth, Luna stared in amazement. Her mistake had created something beautiful. The Moon floated beside her. “Luna,” he said gently, “who told you there was only one correct way to shine?” Luna thought about it. No one had. She had simply watched everyone else and decided their way must be the right way. “But my light goes everywhere,” Luna said. “Exactly,” said the Moon. “And because it does, it reaches places the other stars cannot.” The next evening, the stars lined up. “Up straight, shine bright!” One by one, beams of light traveled toward Earth. Then came Luna. She took her place. But this time, she did not squeeze her eyes shut. She did not whisper, *Straight.* She did not try to become like everyone else. Instead, Luna smiled. “Ready?” **WHOOSH!** Her light flew sideways. Around Saturn. Across Mars. Past the Moon. Through a sparkling cloud of stardust. And finally, down to Earth. Mia was waiting beside her window. “There you are,” she whispered. Night after night, Luna continued taking the long way. Sometimes her light turned purple. Sometimes it sparkled. Sometimes it made shapes across children's bedroom walls. And sometimes it simply reminded a child who had experienced a difficult day that different did not mean wrong. Soon, the other stars became curious. “Can we try shining sideways?” Luna laughed. “Of course!” Before long, the perfectly organized night sky became wonderfully unpredictable. Lights twisted. Lights danced. Lights zigzagged. Some traveled straight. Some traveled sideways. Some seemed to take forever to find their destination. But eventually, every light found somewhere it belonged. And whenever a child on Earth looked into the sky and wondered why they were not quite like everyone else, Luna shined a little brighter. Because Luna had finally discovered something important: **You do not have to shine like everyone else to light up the world.** Sometimes the path that makes you different is the very path that makes your light worth following. ## Why I Chose This Message I chose to write about self-acceptance because some of the most important messages children receive are not taught through direct instruction. They are learned through the stories children hear about people—or stars—who remind them of themselves. My professional and educational experiences have centered heavily on children. Through early intervention and behavioral therapy, I have worked with children with autism and developmental differences. I have seen how easily children can be compared to developmental expectations, peers, siblings, or ideas of what they are “supposed” to be doing. My own childhood also influences this story. Growing up with an IEP taught me what it feels like to recognize that you learn or experience the world differently from some of the people around you. Children are remarkably observant. They notice when they need additional help. They notice when classmates accomplish something more quickly. Most importantly, they notice how adults respond to those differences. That is why Luna doesn't magically learn how to shine straight at the end of the story. Her difference does not need to disappear for the story to have a happy ending. Instead, Luna changes the way she understands herself. That distinction reflects the message I hope to carry into my future career working with children: growth should not always mean turning a child into someone else. Sometimes growth means giving children the support they need to recognize the value that already exists within them. Storytelling can be especially powerful for young audiences because children can explore difficult emotions from a safe distance. A child may not yet be able to explain, “I feel inadequate because I process information differently from my peers.” But that same child can understand a little star wondering, “Why can't I shine like everyone else?” Stories give complicated emotions characters, colors, adventures, and language. They also build empathy. A child who identifies with Luna may feel understood, while a child who has never experienced Luna's struggle may begin to understand someone who has. That is why children's stories matter to me. A story may appear simple—a star, a child, and a beam of light traveling through space—but its message can stay with a child long after the final page. I hope *The Little Star Who Shined Sideways* leaves children with one idea they can carry with them: There are many ways to learn, grow, communicate, dream, and shine. Taking a different path does not mean you are lost. Sometimes it simply means you are discovering somewhere new.

What I want to build cannot be measured in bricks or held in my hands. I want to build a future where children feel safe enough to say, “I am struggling,” and know that someone will listen. That dream began with the child I once was. Growing up, I had an IEP and struggled with depression from a young age. My pain did not always look like sadness. Sometimes it looked like irritability, frustration, or behavior adults found difficult. There were times when I felt defined by my behavior before anyone stopped to ask what might be underneath it. Being misunderstood taught me something I have carried into adulthood: children communicate pain in many different ways, and what looks like a “problem child” may actually be a child who needs help. I decided to build my future around becoming the person I once needed. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and am now pursuing graduate education at Northeastern University. My education is helping me understand mental health through research, statistics, developmental psychology, psychopathology, and evidence-based intervention. However, some of my most important lessons have happened outside the classroom. Through early intervention and behavioral therapy, I have worked directly with children, including children with autism and developmental differences. I have learned to look beyond a behavior and ask what a child may be communicating. I have also learned that helping a child often means helping their family feel supported, informed, and heard. Ultimately, I want to become a counselor specializing in children and adolescents. But I want to build more than a career. I want to help build a mental-health system where a family's income, culture, race, disability, or circumstances do not determine whether their child receives compassionate care. I want to advocate for children whose behaviors are punished before their pain is understood and families who know something is wrong but do not know where to turn. Eventually, I hope to use both clinical practice and psychological research to improve how we recognize and respond to mental-health challenges in young people. My education is giving me the tools to build that future, one course, one research experience, and one child at a time. There was a time when being different made me question what I was capable of becoming. Today, those same experiences are the foundation beneath everything I am building. I cannot go back and become the adult my younger self needed. But I can become that adult for someone else's child. That is what I want to build—and that is why I am aiming higher.

When people picture a woman in STEM, they may imagine an engineer designing a machine, a biologist looking through a microscope, or a mathematician solving an equation. When I picture myself in STEM, I see a child sitting across from me who does not yet have the words to explain why they are hurting. I chose psychology because I believe science is most powerful when it helps us understand people. My interest in psychological science began with questions that were deeply personal. Growing up, I had an IEP and experienced depression at a young age. My struggles did not always present in ways adults easily recognized. Sometimes depression looked like irritability, frustration, or behavior that was easier to label than understand. I learned what it felt like to have people focus on what they could observe without understanding what was happening internally. Those experiences made me curious. Why can the same disorder look different from one child to another? Why are some behaviors interpreted as symptoms while others are treated as problems requiring discipline? How do trauma, culture, family environments, developmental disabilities, and access to resources affect children's mental health? Psychology gave me a scientific framework for questions I had carried since childhood. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I also studied sociology and developmental disabilities. Today, I am pursuing graduate education at Northeastern University and continuing to strengthen my understanding of research, statistics, psychopathology, and evidence-based intervention. My education has taught me that meaningful psychological care cannot rely solely on intuition. It requires data, research, critical thinking, and a willingness to continually question whether our methods are actually serving the populations they were designed to help. Outside of the classroom, I have worked directly with children through early intervention and behavioral therapy, including children with autism and developmental differences. Those experiences have allowed me to see the bridge between scientific research and human lives. Behind every data point is a child. Behind every diagnosis is a family hoping someone will understand. As a woman pursuing psychological science, I want to help strengthen that bridge. My long-term goal is to become a counselor specializing in children and adolescents while remaining grounded in research and evidence-based practice. I am particularly interested in childhood trauma, anxiety, developmental disabilities, and disparities in how children from different backgrounds are identified and treated. I also want young girls to see women not simply participating in science, but helping determine what science chooses to study. Representation matters because researchers and clinicians bring different experiences into the questions they ask. When women and people from historically underrepresented backgrounds participate in psychological science, we can challenge assumptions, identify overlooked problems, and develop interventions that better reflect the communities we serve. I once experienced science from the other side—as the child being assessed, labeled, and trying to be understood. Today, I am becoming the woman asking the questions. I want to use STEM to ask better ones. My goal is not simply to earn another degree or build a successful career. I want my education to contribute to a future where children are understood before they are judged, where differences are investigated with curiosity rather than stigma, and where psychological research becomes better because more women helped shape it. That is the kind of woman in STEM I intend to become.

There were moments growing up when I felt guilty simply for existing. I was raised by a single mother, and I watched her carry responsibilities that should have been shared between two parents. I saw the exhaustion behind her strength and the sacrifices hidden inside ordinary things—keeping a roof over our heads, making sure I had what I needed, and continuing to show up for me even when life gave her every reason to fall apart. As a child, I sometimes wondered whether her life would have been easier without me. I felt guilty that loving and providing for me required her to struggle. Growing older changed that guilt into gratitude. My mother is the strongest person I know. She never made me feel like a burden, even during the moments when I knew she was carrying more than she should have had to. She taught me that strength is not having an easy life; it is continuing to love, sacrifice, and hope when life is anything but easy. Her perseverance became mine. Today, I am pursuing graduate education at Northeastern University while working with children and building toward my goal of becoming a counselor. I want to serve children and families who feel overwhelmed, misunderstood, or alone—because I understand how deeply circumstances within a family can shape a child's life. My mother spent years sacrificing so I could have opportunities she never had. I cannot repay every sacrifice, but I can make them mean something. I once felt guilty for being another responsibility she had to carry. Now, every degree I earn and every person I eventually help will be proof that her sacrifices carried me somewhere.

Being a first-generation college student means learning how to build a future without having a blueprint for it. I grew up in a single-mother household as the daughter of a Puerto Rican and Dominican family. My grandparents came from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic seeking opportunities for the generations that would follow them. Higher education was not a path my family already knew how to navigate. There was no guide explaining financial aid, graduate school, career planning, or the countless unwritten rules of college. I had to learn them while walking the path myself. There were moments when that path felt especially uncertain. As a child, I had an IEP and often felt defined by what I struggled with rather than what I was capable of becoming. I also grew up experiencing the effects of mental illness within my family. My father lived with schizophrenia and was largely absent from my life, while my mother carried the responsibility of raising me. Those experiences could have convinced me that my circumstances determined my future. Instead, they made me determined to create one of my own. Education became the way I did that. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a 3.7 GPA while making the Dean's List every semester. Today, I am pursuing graduate education at Northeastern University, bringing my family into another unfamiliar territory: graduate school. But I do not want being first to end with me. My experiences inspired my dream of becoming a counselor who works with children, adolescents, and families. Through early intervention and behavioral therapy, I have already worked with children with autism and developmental differences. I have seen how powerful it is when a child has someone who recognizes their potential rather than reducing them to a diagnosis, behavior, or circumstance. I want to become that person for children who may feel misunderstood in the ways I once did. Being first-generation has taught me that success is not simply earning a degree. It is creating possibilities that did not exist before you. Every classroom I enter, every child I support, and every degree I pursue represents progress larger than myself. Graduate education, however, comes with significant financial responsibility. Receiving this scholarship would reduce my reliance on student loans and allow me to devote more of my energy to my education, research, and professional development instead of worrying about how I will finance the next step. My grandparents' generation pursued opportunity. My mother's generation sacrificed so I could reach it. I have the privilege and responsibility of turning those sacrifices into something lasting. I may be the first in my family to walk this educational path, but my greatest dream is to make sure I am not the last. I want my education to become more than a personal accomplishment. I want it to become a doorway—one that remains open for my family and for every child I eventually have the privilege of helping.

Growing up as a Puerto Rican and Dominican student, I learned early that who is represented in a room can influence which questions are asked, whose experiences are understood, and whose struggles are overlooked. That realization is one of the reasons I chose psychology. To me, STEM is not only about laboratories, equations, or technology. It is also about using scientific methods to understand people and solve problems that affect their lives. Psychology gives me the opportunity to combine science with something deeply important to me: improving the lives of children and families. My interest in this field is personal. Growing up, I had an IEP and experienced what it felt like to have adults make assumptions about me based on a label. I also struggled with my mental health at a young age. My distress did not always present as sadness; sometimes it appeared as irritability and frustration. Instead of adults always asking what might be happening underneath my behavior, I sometimes felt categorized before I felt understood. My identity added another layer to these experiences. I grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, a community where I was often surrounded by people who did not share my cultural background, while my family's roots in nearby Lawrence connected me to a predominantly Latino community. Moving between these environments made me aware of how culture, race, socioeconomic circumstances, education, and access can shape a child's experience. I wanted to understand why these differences exist, but more importantly, I wanted to learn how to change them. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I also studied sociology and developmental disabilities. I am now pursuing graduate education at Northeastern University. Outside the classroom, I have worked in early intervention and behavioral therapy with children, including children with autism and developmental differences. These experiences have shown me how research becomes meaningful when it reaches the people it was intended to help. As a Latina pursuing psychology, I hope to contribute to a STEM field that asks better and more inclusive questions. Psychological research has historically relied on theories, measures, and samples that do not always represent the diversity of the populations clinicians eventually serve. When cultural differences are overlooked, behaviors can be misunderstood and interventions may fail to meet a family's actual needs. I want my career to help bridge that gap. My goal is to become a child counselor while continuing to engage with psychological research and evidence-based practice. I am particularly interested in childhood trauma, anxiety, developmental disabilities, and the ways culture and environment influence children's mental health. I hope to advocate for research and interventions that include communities of color rather than treating them as an afterthought. I once experienced what it meant to feel different in educational and mental-health spaces. Now, I want to use science to ensure that difference is viewed as something worth understanding rather than something that needs to be corrected. Being a woman of color in STEM means bringing my experiences into spaces where they can help create better questions, better research, and ultimately better care. I do not simply want a seat at the table. I want to use that seat to help make sure the children and families who have historically been overlooked are finally represented in the science designed to serve them.

Growing up, mental illness was never an abstract concept in my family. Before I understood diagnoses, symptoms, or treatment, I understood absence. My father lived with schizophrenia and was largely absent throughout my childhood. For years, I struggled to understand how someone could be my parent yet feel like a stranger. His absence left questions that I was too young to answer and emotions that I did not always know how to express. As I grew older and learned more about mental health, particularly through my education in psychology, I began viewing my childhood differently. I realized that schizophrenia did not affect only my father. Mental illness can ripple through an entire family. It can influence relationships, stability, communication, and even how a child understands love. Learning this did not erase the impact of my father's absence, but it gave me something I had been missing for years: understanding. At the same time, I was navigating my own mental health. I experienced depression beginning in childhood, but my pain did not always look like sadness. It often appeared as irritability, frustration, and behavior that adults struggled to understand. Instead of recognizing that I was a child experiencing emotions I could not explain, I sometimes felt labeled as difficult or dramatic. Those experiences stayed with me because they taught me how easily a child's distress can be misunderstood when adults focus only on behavior rather than asking what is happening underneath it. Ultimately, mental illness shaped not only my family but also my purpose. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and am now continuing my graduate education at Northeastern University. My professional experiences have allowed me to work directly with children through early intervention and behavioral therapy. Working with children has reinforced something my childhood taught me: behavior communicates something, and every child deserves an adult willing to listen closely enough to understand what that something is. My goal is to become a counselor and dedicate my career to supporting children, adolescents, and families affected by mental health challenges. I am especially passionate about helping children who are struggling themselves or growing up with a parent or family member experiencing mental illness. I understand the confusion that can come from loving someone whose illness affects their ability to be present. I also understand what it feels like to struggle internally while the people around you misunderstand what they are seeing externally. For a long time, I viewed my family's experiences with mental illness primarily through what they had taken away. Today, I also recognize what those experiences have given me: empathy, curiosity, resilience, and a commitment to understanding people beyond their diagnoses or behaviors. I cannot change the experiences that shaped my childhood, but I can choose what I do with them. I am choosing to build a career in which children feel heard before they feel judged and families affected by mental illness feel less alone. What once created uncertainty in my own life has become the reason I am determined to create understanding in the lives of others.

For most of my childhood, schizophrenia was not a word I understood. I understood absence. My father lived with schizophrenia and was largely absent from my life. As a child, I did not understand why my relationship with him looked different from the relationships other children had with their fathers. I only knew what it felt like to wonder why someone who was supposed to be there was not. I experienced the confusion of loving someone I barely knew, the disappointment of expectations that could not always be met, and questions I was too young to answer. His schizophrenia did not affect only him. It affected my family and shaped how I viewed relationships, trust, stability, and myself. Children do not always have the language to understand serious mental illness. I could not say, “My father is struggling with schizophrenia.” Instead, I wondered, “Why isn't he here?” Over time, questions like that can become something more painful: “Why am I not enough for him to be here?” As I grew older, studying psychology gave me a new way to understand my childhood. I began learning about human behavior, development, psychopathology, and the complexity of mental illness. Education gave names and explanations to experiences that had once only felt confusing. Most importantly, I learned to understand schizophrenia as an illness rather than a choice, weakness, or reflection of someone's character. That knowledge did not erase the impact of my father's absence, but it changed how I carried it. I could have compassion for what he experienced while acknowledging what I experienced too. I learned that understanding someone's mental illness does not require denying the ways their illness may have affected the people who love them. That is what destigmatization means to me. Destigmatizing mental illness means recognizing the humanity of the person behind a diagnosis. My father deserved dignity, compassion, appropriate treatment, and the opportunity to be understood as more than schizophrenia. At the same time, I believe destigmatization must create space for families. Children, partners, parents, and siblings can love someone deeply while also struggling with how that person's mental illness affects their lives. Those experiences should not have to remain hidden out of guilt or fear of contributing to stigma. My childhood has made me especially passionate about children growing up around mental illness. Children often notice that something is wrong without understanding why. They may experience symptoms as rejection, anger, unpredictability, or abandonment. Without guidance, they can blame themselves for circumstances they were never responsible for. This is one of the strongest reasons I chose psychology and why I am now pursuing graduate education. My goal is to become a counselor working with children and families. I want to help young people experiencing mental health challenges themselves, but I also want to support those whose lives have been affected by a family member's mental illness. I understand how deeply another person's struggles can influence how a child views relationships, safety, trust, and their own worth. My education and professional experience working with children have strengthened that commitment. I have learned that behavior often communicates something deeper. A child who appears angry may be overwhelmed. A child who withdraws may be protecting themselves. A child who struggles to trust may have learned that relationships are unpredictable. Instead of simply asking, “What is wrong with this child?” I want to ask, “What has this child experienced, and what are they trying to communicate?” I wish someone had asked those questions for me. I cannot rewrite my childhood, and learning about schizophrenia cannot give me the relationship with my father that I missed. What education has given me is the ability to understand my experiences differently and use them purposefully. I can recognize that my father's illness was not his entire identity while also recognizing that its consequences were real for me. As a future counselor, I want families to know that complicated emotions are valid. You can love someone with mental illness and still feel hurt. You can understand that an illness is not someone's fault while acknowledging how it has affected you. You can have compassion for someone while establishing boundaries that protect your own well-being. These truths can exist together. Mental illness is still surrounded by stereotypes, fear, and silence. People can be reduced to their diagnoses, while their families may be afraid to discuss their experiences because they do not want to appear judgmental. I want my career to challenge both forms of silence. Compassion should include the person experiencing mental illness and the family learning how to navigate it. My father's schizophrenia shaped my life in ways I never would have chosen, but it also contributed to the purpose I have chosen for myself. Becoming a counselor will allow me to turn that understanding into service. I want to sit across from the child who believes a parent's absence is their fault and help them understand what I once could not. I want to help families replace shame with understanding and isolation with support. For me, destigmatization is not simply an academic interest. It is looking back at the little girl who could only understand her father's absence and giving her the language she never had. It is also looking toward my future clients and making sure they receive that language sooner. I cannot change my father's diagnosis or the relationship we were unable to have. But I can decide what I do with what it taught me. I choose to turn confusion into understanding, pain into purpose, and my education into a career dedicated to helping others feel heard, understood, and less alone.