The final bell was my favorite part of the school day, because it meant I could go work on my robot. By senior year, I was the president of my school’s Vex Robotics club, and I spent almost every afternoon, at least three hours, designing, building, and journaling in the robotics room. That year, our robot had a problem. It needed to reach higher to score more points, but our ring-scoring mechanism was also underpowered. We were only allowed eight motors, and we were already using seven. Then my teammates and I realized one motor could do both jobs if we could shift its power from one mechanism to the other, like shifting gears in a car. The solution was a power take-off (PTO), where an air-powered piston slides a gear in and out of place to redirect a motor’s power. I sketched it, then modeled it in CAD to make sure it would fit on the robot. Shortly after finishing the design, I was hospitalized. I had been diagnosed with severe aplastic anemia, a disease that stopped my bone marrow from producing blood, which meant even a common cold could be lethal. I wouldn’t be building my own design. I felt sad, and a little ashamed, as if I was letting my team down even though I couldn’t control what was happening to me. So I found a new way to contribute. I joined my team over FaceTime while they built. When the piston wouldn’t push the gear evenly, I asked them to hold the camera closer to the mechanism. From there I could see it was pushing the gear at a bad angle, and we had to switch around the piston’s positioning. After a few more adjustments, it worked. Combined with our documentation and planning, the PTO helped us win multiple design awards for the complexity and efficiency of our robot, and by the end of the season we were the most awarded robot in our school’s history. I used to think engineering meant building things with my own hands. Being in that hospital bed taught me it’s also about thinking, communicating, and trusting a team to carry your idea forward. It also changed how I saw engineering. For months, my life depended on IV pumps, ECG machines, and medications created by people I will never meet, who designed them carefully enough to keep me safe. I want to be that person for someone else. That’s why I’m studying biomedical engineering. I want to engineer solutions that help people, especially medical devices and prosthetics that reduce pain and improve mobility. The best moment of my robotics career wasn’t winning an award. It was watching a gear click into place on a screen, and knowing my idea had survived without me in the room.

During my treatment for severe aplastic anemia, even moving my body was a struggle. After chemotherapy, my muscles hurt so badly that any movement exhausted me, and I was mostly confined to my bed. I remember fighting just to sit down on the toilet. For the first time, I understood how much I had taken my independence for granted. I already knew I wanted to be an engineer, but lying in that hospital room I finally knew what I wanted to engineer for: giving people back what I had temporarily lost. I've been taking things apart and rebuilding them since I was a kid, and in middle school that became robotics. By high school I was captain of my team and president of the club. As captain, I learned that robots usually fail in the gaps between people. Freshman year, we would build without a real plan: one teammate was still building an old design with parts half the team needed for a new one. To stop this, I became the communication point between programming, building, and design, so each teammate could focus on what they did best and not get in the way of each other's progress. As president, I remembered how I had taught myself robotics with almost no guidance and wished I'd had a mentor. So I started weekly workshops on good design, programming, and how to properly use our tools. Our newer members went from winning 1-2 matches each competition to winning 4-6, and toward the end of the year they began earning awards for best design and best build quality. I also volunteered at middle school competitions, helping younger students learn to design well. Every workshop had the same goal: to help new members build on their own, without needing someone to do it for them. Because I was often one of very few Black students at robotics events, I worked very hard to be remembered as kind, approachable, and determined. Robotics showed me I love turning problems into working solutions with a team. The hospital showed me which problems matter most. Biomedical engineering lets me combine both by building devices that help people who have lost the ability to move regain their independence. Drexel is where I can start doing that. Co-op would let me alternate classes with full-time work on prosthetic devices and other medical tools, so I'm learning from professionals while I'm still a student. I'm also drawn to Professor Christopher Li's research on functional polymer nanoparticles for drug delivery, which could make future chemotherapy gentler on the body. I want to be at an institution where I could learn how researchers define a problem, test a solution, and know when it actually works. Paired with biomechanics courses, that experience would give me the foundation to take on problems like paralysis. I also plan to keep mentoring. At Drexel, I want to join the robotics club and the NSBE chapter to find other Black engineering students and mentors, grow the Black engineering community, and give students the support I once wished I'd had. Long term, I want to lead a team that builds technology giving someone the ability to do what I couldn't from that hospital bed, and to keep opening the door for the next student who wonders whether engineering has a place for them.

I was lying in a hospital bed, every muscle in my body aching, barely able to walk. It was my third week of chemotherapy, and the effects were finally overwhelming me. A month earlier, I had been diagnosed with severe aplastic anemia, a rare bone marrow disease that prevented my body from producing blood cells. My immune system was basically nonexistent, and even a minor illness could have been fatal. To survive I needed a bone marrow transplant, which required chemotherapy and radiation to prepare my body. At the time, I was in the middle of my senior year of high school, and suddenly all my plans had fallen apart. Instead of attending classes, seeing friends, and participating in my normal activities, I was stuck in a hospital bed fighting for my life. It was difficult not only physically, but mentally, as I struggled with the fear of falling behind in school, losing my independence, and having my future permanently altered. However, this experience forced me to confront adversity in a way I never had before. I realized that while I could not control my diagnosis, I could control how I responded to it. Rather than allowing my circumstances to define me and hold me down, I chose to adapt and keep moving forward. While recovering after my transplant, I completed the remainder of my senior year remotely and remained committed to my academics despite the challenges. I reorganized my schedule, worked closely with my teachers, and pushed myself to stay disciplined even when the physical and emotional toll of recovery made it difficult. More importantly, my illness changed my perspective on life. Facing a life-threatening condition made me realize how much time I had wasted out of fear. Fear of failure and embarrassment. But during my recovery I realized how insignificant failure was and that waiting for ideal circumstances was a lot worse than failing and learning, because life is limited. Lying in that bed, barely able to move my own body, I felt utterly powerless, and I never wanted anyone to feel that way. After leaving the hospital, I taught myself CAD design, 3D printing, and electronics. What began as a way to stay productive became a calling: I want to pursue engineering focused on prosthetics and medical devices, with the goal of helping people maintain physical autonomy–and ultimately contributing to solutions for paralysis and chronic illness. My advice to someone facing similar adversity would be this: focus on what you can control. There will always be circumstances in life that feel unfair or overwhelming, but your mindset and your response are entirely your own. Progress may not always look the way you expect, and sometimes simply continuing to move forward is an accomplishment in itself. Hardship can either break you or build you, and often the difference lies in choosing to keep going even if the path isn’t clear. When I think of my life now, I think of a tree. As I grow and change new branches sprout in the sunlight and bear fruit while others wither and fall away. But through it all I’m still one body, just at different stages of life through different seasons. And while it may be dark in some seasons of my life, I will always grow towards the light and trust that the sun will come.

I was lying in a hospital bed, every muscle in my body aching, barely able to walk. It was my third week of chemotherapy, and the effects were finally overwhelming me. A month earlier, I had been diagnosed with severe aplastic anemia, a rare bone marrow disease that prevented my body from producing blood cells. My immune system was essentially nonexistent, and even a minor illness could have been fatal. To survive, I needed a bone marrow transplant, which required chemotherapy and radiation to prepare my body. During these months of treatment and uncertainty, I was forced to slow down and reflect on my life in a way I never had before. I realized that I often had ideas and ambitions but avoided pursuing them out of fear. Fear of failing, wasting time, or embarrassing myself. Facing a life-threatening illness made that fear feel insignificant. I understood that the most meaningful change I could make in my life was to stop hesitating and start trying. I decided that from that point forward, I would pursue the things I cared about fully, regardless of the risk of failure, because every experience—success or setback—teaches something valuable. After my transplant, I completed the remainder of my senior year of high school remotely. Although this was initially discouraging, I used the extra time at home to pursue my interest in CAD design. I began by designing and 3D-printing practical household items, such as trash cans and door locks. My printer jammed and broke repeatedly, but instead of giving up, I learned how it worked, replaced parts, and repaired it myself. Each failure became a lesson in problem-solving and persistence. As my skills grew, I committed myself more seriously to engineering design. I studied daily for months to prepare for the Autodesk Fusion professional design certification, even though the exam is typically recommended after two years of experience and costs $200 per attempt. I knew the risk, but I chose to take it anyway, confident that even failure would help me improve. I passed the exam on my first attempt and now use the certification to do freelance design work. This experience reinforced my belief that progress comes from effort and resilience, not from waiting until conditions feel perfect. This scholarship would help me continue this path by reducing the financial burden of my education, allowing me to focus more fully on learning, research, and hands-on engineering projects. Access to advanced coursework, tools, and opportunities is critical for developing the skills needed to design impactful technology, particularly in the field of assistive and mobility devices. My time in the hospital left a lasting impression on me, especially the fear of losing control over my own body. Because of this, I plan to focus my engineering career on developing technologies that help people maintain mobility after injury, illness, or aging. I hope to pay this scholarship forward by designing affordable assistive devices, sharing designs openly when possible, and mentoring students who face physical or medical challenges similar to my own. Ultimately, I want to use engineering to restore independence and dignity to others. Going through a life-threatening illness taught me to reach beyond my perceived limits and pursue meaningful goals without fear. I only have one life, and I intend to use it to build, to help, and to make a difference.

During the Thanksgiving break of my senior year of high school, I began noticing red spots appearing across my body. At first, I thought nothing of it, but when the spots spread to my face and inside my mouth, I went to see a doctor. After a blood test, I was told I would receive the results later. The very next day, while my family was driving across states to visit relatives, I received a call from urgent care telling me to go to the nearest hospital immediately. My platelet count had dropped to one percent of the average person’s. Soon after, I was diagnosed with a rare bone marrow disease called aplastic anemia. My bone marrow had lost its ability to produce new blood cells, meaning my body could no longer properly fight infections or clot blood. Even a minor illness could become life-threatening. Because my case was severe, doctors determined that the only cure was a bone marrow transplant, which required chemotherapy and radiation to completely reset my immune system. This information arrived suddenly, while I was still trying to complete my senior year of high school. I was in and out of the hospital almost daily for transfusions and scans, yet I knew that my mindset would shape how I moved forward—not only in my recovery, but in my education and future. I made the decision to treat this illness as an obstacle to overcome rather than an endpoint. I spent a month as an inpatient at Brigham and Women’s Hospital undergoing chemotherapy and receiving a bone marrow transplant. During that time, I remained in close communication with my teachers to create a plan for keeping up with my coursework. I completed college applications from my hospital bed and continued contributing to my robotics team remotely. After I was discharged, my doctors advised that I finish the school year fully remote, as my immune system was too weak to safely return to school. Instead of falling behind, I adapted. I reorganized my daily routine at home to mirror a school schedule and met regularly with teachers and tutors online. Through consistency and discipline, I passed all five of my AP classes and graduated with a 4.3 GPA. Being separated from my usual extracurricular activities also pushed me to grow in new ways. I used my time in quarantine to develop more technical skills such as CAD design, 3D modeling, and 3D printing. Skills that continue to shape my academic interests today. Living through aplastic anemia taught me that perseverance is built through adaptability, perspective, and hope. While I could not control my diagnosis, I could control how I responded to it. By staying focused on my education, seeking support, and maintaining a positive mindset, I transformed a life-threatening disruption into a period of growth and self-discovery. This experience reshaped how I view challenges—not as barriers, but as opportunities to learn and improve. Having faced an obstacle that once threatened both my health and my education, I now move forward with confidence and optimism, believing that with the right mindset and determination, I can continue to achieve my goals no matter what challenges come my way.