It's 3 pm. I’ve been at the beach since 11 am, and the sun is scorching down at me as my tangled, salty hair flies into my face. But the only thing I can seem to think about is how hungry I am, and in these instances, I am always craving the same food: acai. It’s only a 10-minute walk from the beach I go to. Those 10 minutes feel like forever as I pass through 3 blocks. Each step towards my favorite store, Paradise Bowl, excites me. When I arrive, the cashier already knows what I want: a gaucho bowl. It is a scrumptious bowl full of acai with coconut shavings, sliced bananas and strawberries, blueberries, and granola on the verge of spilling over. The only meal I ever look for after a long workout or a nice day on the beach all day. The one food I associate with home. The place where my friends would share the joys and lows of our day with an acai bowl. A superfood like an acai bowl also has the benefits of being healthy. The creaminess of acai is powered by its antioxidants, fiber, and vitamin C. It is a perfect snack to fulfill my body with nutrients from the earth. After all, in my opinion, the best way to get my nutrients is through the food I consume. And for me, my chilled acai bowl is the best way for me to consume nutrients from my acai and even the toppings. What makes acai even more special is the toppings. I always get my toppings with greek yogurt filled with protein, bananas with potassium, coconut with healthy oils, fibers full of fiber, and berries loaded with more antioxidants. I mean what is a better combination of food that can satisfy my sweet tooth and boost my body with its necessary nutrients to make me stronger and fuel my energy to tackle my goals. However, superfoods go beyond consuming my favorite snack. Sometimes it goes out of my way to consume something I know is good for me. Since I will be entering college this quarter, I discovered at orientation that the best way to start my meals was with a salad. I filled my plate salad with raw lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, and kale before trying a new option on the menu. It’s all about balance and trying new things spontaneously but also staying rooted in the things that are good for me. I know that after having a meal filled with vitamins and nutrients, my body and brain will be prepared for my next step, even with indulging in junk food once in a while. Through college and the rest of my life, I hope to embrace this balance of spontaneity and scheduled life. I now know that on a day I need to be productive, I should wake up a little early to go for a morning run and enjoy some time. I discovered millions of recipes for yogurt bowls, chocolate protein balls, smoothies, and various sandwiches and burritos to fuel my brain for college. Incorporating superfoods into my diet can be easy as adding some vegetables to my pasta, which enhances the taste as well, or as nice as cooking myself a meal only of superfoods. But I plan to take steps and efforts to incorporate both my small and big efforts into my daily life. After all, the best part of food is enjoying it together with others and being fulfilled with what I had just eaten.

From my parents’ instruction to my health class, I have always been taught that health balances three things: physical, social, and mental. However, as a seventeen-year-old about to enter college, these three aspects of health will be thrown off proportions. In high school, I would run on the track team every afternoon from Monday-Thursday and conditioning on Saturdays. I would sprint away from all the stresses and tensions I compiled throughout the day. It was a way to keep myself physically and mentally healthy. During the three hours I was at practice; I was not focused on meeting up to the academic expectations of my parents, school, and peers. I was focused on improving my 100-meter sprint by even 0.01 seconds or pole vaulting an extra 6 inches higher. My team and I were in the moment to improve. However, after practice was done, I automatically switched to my academic goals. The same cycle would repeat over and over again. Wake up, go to school to learn and pass the time with friends, go to track, study, sleep, and the cycle repeats. Sure my mental, physical, and social health threshold were being met, but it became a checklist of tasks that I had to cross off to ensure I followed this health standard that I had been taught since a young age. However, in the next month, things will change. I will have to live independently, manage all my meals, and have a spontaneous schedule. I no longer will have to stick to the schedule that has been crafted from the expectations of college admissions and my parents looming over me. I loved all the memories of track and retrospectively appreciated all the hours I studied. I realized that this summer was a time for me to discover balance and spontaneity. After all, health is a balance between aspects of my life. I cannot always be scheduled; sometimes, I need days of spontaneity to motivate and excite me. This summer, I experimented with different ways to promote my healthy lifestyle. At the beginning of the summer, I would run and go to the gym right before dinner. I enjoyed the strength and power I gained from working out at prime time. For the past three weeks, I have been waking at 6 am, going for a run, and then enjoying my homemade coffee in my backyard. I found that this morning routine allowed me to calm down in the morning and develop the energy to work at my job and socialize with my friends. In addition, I grew my curiosity about cooking. During the school year, I stuck to the same breakfast: eggs and cold oatmeal. But I have been researching different recipes for breakfast, snacks, lunch, and dinner. Occasionally, the result may be terrible, but other times, I made a meal I knew I could enjoy forever. The small memories of strolling through my local community’s farmers market and stirring the pot alongside my mom made these moments to understand the true meaning of social and mental health. I ventured into new paths of cooking and sharing my recipe with my friends and families as we enjoyed talking at the dinner table on a warm summer evening. Failure and making time to try something new were something to learn from and bring forth more than anticipated. I realized that dedicating time to experiment allowed me to grow mentally, connect with my family and friends, and stay healthy physically.

Scrolling through my Netflix page, I indifferently pass through all the titles on my main page and go to the TV section. The first thing that caught my eye was “Love Triangle K-Dramas.” Up until the previous years, no one I knew ever heard of K-pop or K-dramas. Although I was grinning with pride for the appreciation for my culture, I realized that I myself never truly understood my culture beyond what was presented on Netflix or the media. However, this was not always the case. My early childhood memories were encompassed my spending all day with my grandmother, from picking vegetables in our backyard to make Kimchi and dancing along to 60s Korean folk music. But when my grandmother moved out, my first language was erased from our household. And it was not just the language. The aroma of containers of fresh Kimchi and the warm bowl of rice for every meal disappeared. I am fluent in Konglish, and I can understand Korean but can only carry basic conversations in it. But after years of sailing across this sea of waves of my American and Korean culture is where I found the beauty and gratefulness of each culture. The time with extended family on traditional Korean holidays brought me a deeper insight into the connection between my culture and me. The ability to truly live through the moments of passing around side dishes in giant family reunions is where I learned and slowly regained my Korean-speaking abilities. Through this past year and a half, I sat in my Grandma’s living room for many evenings as her caretaker after her surgeries. Even the seemingly small lecture on cooking from my Grandma and me teaching her TikTok dances, I created a harmonious relationship fostered through the small actions, time spent, and short conversations that could not have been gained from watching k-dramas or listening to k-pop. From this, I gained a more profound understanding of my connections and respected the beauty and nuances of each individual relationship I foster. And I pursued to connect my culture and create understandings of culture beyond my family. Throughout high school, not only did I research studying the precise combination for an efficient male contraceptive, I pushed myself beyond to research its relationship with its cultural influences in Asian countries. I will use my college years of fostering precious relationships concentrating in economics, specifically studying the intersection of public policy, medicine, and technology in my community. The community and connections in the campus will allow me to reach beyond the medical school to allow the most significant global health challenges to be faced from various insightful perspectives. Using my own experiences with my community and background growing up in an Asian family, I was able to reimagine the method my research should be presented and factors that are oftentimes overlooked. Studying economics and medicine will give me the education and opportunity to fulfill my purpose of connecting my academic research to empower my peers to build a healthy and unified community. Cultural connection has given me a deeper understanding of cultural sensitivity and nuances. I found the beauty in relishing myself in my unique culture and learning about other cultures and communities for perpetual growth of myself and becoming more diverse-minded. And through my studies at UCLA, I will continue to strive to grow through self-reflection and collaboration.

After her surgery, I received a Facetime from my Grandma. I immediately noticed her shivering. I thought to myself; the nurses had to know. I immediately asked my Grandma to call the nurses. When the nurse arrived, through Facetime, I had to ask her for a blanket and translator. However, she noted that there wasn’t a Korean translator. I was stunned. So my Grandma and I talked three times a day for two weeks that summer. She would confine in her difficulties eating the solid food that the hospital served her. After her stay, I imagine how many other cancer patients were faced with the same situation as she was. After my Grandma was discharged and came back to her house, I made a variety of soft, soothing recipes for my Grandma and changed the layout of my Grandma’s house to make it more accessible, and I stayed with her in her apartment and spent time together. She was happy and comfortable. I saw how even these small changes transformed her healing process, wanting me to learn more and gain experience in hospitality. I became the only high school member of the strategic planning and property committees at Beach Cities Health District for three local cities. I played a crucial role in providing business and health advice as a representative for youth in my community. Here I used design thinking to apply the skills and knowledge I acquired from my research, such as youth vaping and male contraceptives, to scientifically demonstrate the need for improvements to services, such as managing the funds of the surgery center, child development center, and associated living homes to target individualized patient and communication focused care. The process of considering the various perspectives of public policy and clinical research data to innovate effective solutions to healthcare problems in my community was difficult but rewarding. I reviewed lists of articles on the medical and psychological effects of loneliness and lack of communication in stays at health care centers. I researched the previous budget files to forge a successfully implemented solution strategically. And considering the various scientific research and communication with my community, I helped forward the successful movement for mental health counseling at school nurse offices and community centers. I discovered that wherever I go and the task I will have to accomplish, it is rooted in the communication and feedback of those around my community and me. Giving back is the power and strength to reflect and apply the skills and knowledge that I have accumulated directly back to the people and communities I cherish. Therefore, I am looking forward to researching to study the intricacies of integrating business, policy design, and hospitality in health care facilities. I hope to expand upon my studies in studying a business-focused application to hospitality to improve the hospital stay in the United States for non-English speakers, like my Grandma, and in other developing countries. And from an interdisciplinary background, I hope to collaborate with doctors and dieticians to improve geriatric care in hospitals and living centers. With extra financial aid, I am able to explore my academic interest, face my obstacles, persevere into becoming a well-rounded and thoughtful contributor to my future field of study, and serve my community with the skills I have acquired with a college education.

For most of my life, I associated hospitality with just the quality of a hotel or a restaurant for family weekend dinners. I witnessed the importance of business and hospitality in hospitals and care centers. After her surgery, I received a Facetime from my Grandma. I immediately noticed her shivering. I thought to myself; the nurses had to know. I immediately asked my Grandma to call the nurses. When the nurse arrived, through Facetime, I had to ask her for a blanket and translator. However, she noted that there wasn’t a Korean translator. I was stunned. So my Grandma and I talked three times a day for two weeks that summer. She would confine in her difficulties eating the solid food that the hospital served her. After her stay, I imagine how many other cancer patients were faced with the same situation as she was. After my Grandma was discharged and came back to her house, I made a variety of soft, soothing recipes for my Grandma and changed the layout of my Grandma’s house to make it more accessible, and I stayed with her in her apartment and spent time together. She was happy and comfortable. I saw how even these small changes transformed her healing process, wanting me to learn more and gain experience in hospitality. I became the only high school member of the strategic planning and property committees at Beach Cities Health District for three local cities. I played a crucial role in providing business and health advice as a representative for youth in my community. Here I used design thinking to apply the skills and knowledge I acquired from my research, such as youth vaping and male contraceptives, to scientifically demonstrate the need for improvements to services, such as managing the funds of the surgery center, child development center, and associated living homes to target individualized patient and communication focused care. The process of considering the various perspectives of public policy and clinical research data to innovate effective solutions to healthcare problems in my community was difficult but rewarding. I reviewed lists of articles on the medical and psychological effects of loneliness and lack of communication in stays at health care centers. I researched the previous budget files to forge a successfully implemented solution strategically. And considering the various scientific research and communication with my community, I helped forward the successful movement for mental health counseling at school nurse offices and community centers. I discovered that wherever I go and the task I will have to accomplish, it is rooted in the communication and feedback of those around my community and me. Giving back is the power and strength to reflect and apply the skills and knowledge that I have accumulated directly back to the people and communities I cherish. Therefore, I am looking forward to researching to study the intricacies of integrating business, policy design, and hospitality in health care facilities. I hope to expand upon my studies in studying a business-focused application to hospitality to improve the hospital stay in the United States for non-English speakers, like my Grandma, and in other developing countries. And from an interdisciplinary background, I hope to collaborate with doctors and dieticians to improve geriatric care in hospitals and living centers. With extra financial aid, I am able to explore my academic interest, face my obstacles, persevere into becoming a well-rounded and thoughtful contributor to my future field of study, and serve my community with the skills I have acquired with a college education. With the scholarship, without financial burdens, I will weave and forge the connections of science and health care hospitality in public policy to make profound impacts on it as a future emergency medicine doctor or surgeon. I plan to do so by studying economics and pre-medical studies. Not afraid to take risks, I will take design taking into every aspect of life to develop healthcare solutions by understanding and empathizing with my community. Community is not just my family, my neighbors, but everyone in the world who bring their unique insight and skill to impact society. I want to take a collaborative environment to create a crucial connection to mend the gaps in healthcare hospitality and outcomes to all demographic groups to enhance the physical and also emotional wellness of all, starting from my hometown community and the world that fostered me into the person today.

2xxxxxxxxxxxx1 that’s my mom’s credit card number. I had no intention of memorizing my mom’s credit card number but after staring at it for 10 seconds. The flow and the way numbers can be organized into a perfectly linear order that has one pleasing and calming answer in a perfect line. That is what I thought everything around me embodied. Only one answer. But I found that there just wasn’t one answer for me. Through my junior year, looking through my packed 7am-8pm schedule, I found myself confused by what I had especially been doing, the right answer for me. Particularly, the one part of my week stuck: mock trial. Unlike the previous years of spending hours after school rerunning through hundreds of lines of witness testimonies, sitting in front of a Zoom screen to run through the hours of case run-throughs sounded exhausting to the mathematically inclined me. However, I was the only person capable of somehow creating a new argument and statement from the beginning for four witnesses. Taking a step back, to look at my problem to solve and plan to write out my next steps of my argument. The logic of euclidean geometry theories paralleled my search for logic and reasoning behind crafting the frame of my cross-examination against the opposing counsel’s witnesses. I had to evaluate the missing sides of the arguments, experimenting and plugging in through trial and error, to discover the last step to take, to finish off my argument that the defendant is guilty. And like the millions of proofs I had found myself solving in multivariable calculus of finding a concise order of logic to prove a mathematical formula, I was also determining a logical order of my direct statements; creating an order to the sentences that would slowly open into what the argument was about about and to punch out clear obvious points, then to lead to a clear conclusion: guilty. After the hours of writing up millions of possible questions and rereading every witness testimony to inspect if I had missed any parts, I realized that my ability to intersect was able to guide me. Making and truly understanding the values that strong bridges can make between two opposite worlds in order to integrate for a greater purpose. It allows me to test my boundaries and go beyond my comfort zone and adapt to various situations. Mathematically, my life is like a permutation. Like the computation of infinite numbers yielding each a unique sequence, my life consists of individual steps I take; and for every step I make, I forge a new part and connection of an arrangement of my life. Breaking it down into chunks or chapters to cherish, make the most of that period, and learn from it so I can remember it to continue the sequence for the next chapter of my life. It was never the beauty of the singular perfect order that I was appeased in memorizing but the aesthetic of the uniqueness and connection of each order of numbers like the experiences and knowledge I will learn and will be faced with. So as I open the doors into a new chapter in my life, I am still continuously exploring and solving myself to mend the stiffness of a linear order of my life into one with my personal shape and dimensions. Taking a step back, to look at my problem to solve and plan to write out my next steps of my argument.

This past summer at the Lundquist Institute with Dr. Christina Wang, I had an amazing opportunity to study the combination of testosterone and nesterone as a transdermal gel for a future male contraceptive. The structure and interaction between these two organic compounds required my application of chemistry knowledge. I have always been passionate about the future of medicine and where it can take me. Through my research experience with Dr. Wang, I was able to, for the first time, take a deep dive into an aspect of medicine that was initially foreign to me. I forged my knowledge to take the initiative to learn about the future of how medicine impacts my community's lives. Working under Dr. Wang didn’t just open the doors to my newly grown fascination for research, but it also showed me the real applications of mathematical analysis in translational medicine and its impacts on social science. I saw the future of how my participation in male contraceptive research can provide gender equity amongst different populations, and I learned to analyze the various social stigmas and factors to release new drugs. These were aspects of medicine I had never thought about. Through my research, I had to study the development of a drug that made me realize how much the health disparities among communities can be traced back to environmental issues, which encompasses the equity and economics in sustainability. I hope to forge my experience from this summer to study and analyze the immense amount of data on populations to understand and open the door to the largest global health crisis. Health issues are not just as large scale but are seen depending on various regions around the world and even in the United States. For instance, we see how there are clear disparities in health and medical diagnoses depending on air quality, local pollutants, diet, and many more environmental factors. I plan to use the Rho Brooks Women in STEM scholarship to be a leader, reflecting medical research directly in public action. I will apply my medical and scientific background directly to my local community. With the scholarship, I am able to weave together my interests into one and identify and learn to make profound impacts out of it. I want to take a collaborative environment to create a crucial connection to mend the gaps in healthcare outcomes for all demographic groups to enhance the physical and also emotional wellness of all, starting from the hometown community that fostered me into the person today. There is great significance to the sustainability of our communities by providing equitable access to healthcare and tackling regional-based health problems to communities that drastically transform with the access to fair and quality health care.