It was the biggest day of my life, and I couldn't even speak or smile. On this day, I was making a deal with fate...as a one year old. Doljabi is a Korean tradition celebrated on a baby's first birthday, where a series of items is placed before the baby to grab. Because the items are placed a few feet away, the baby must crawl without assistance to a single item and claim it for the ceremony to be over. A pencil is associated with intelligence, a piece of thread for longevity, a golf ball for athleticism, etc. I dragged my chubby kneecaps along the carpet, making my way towards the pencil, taking my first steps in my pursuit of education. I held it firmly, as my fate had been decided. My mother sat beside me applauding my choice. Throughout my seventeen years of life, she has never failed to express her support. In contrast, she did not receive the freedom to pursue her passions or the support of her parents. She was raised as an only child, always being told what to do and believe. However, she strived to maximize her efforts, stating that "value can be extracted from anything, as long as you challenge yourself." I examined an old photograph, astonished that my mother was barely five feet tall. She taught herself how to compete in golf against girls who were able to afford private lessons, possess country club memberships, and never experience the heartbreaking effect of racial biases. Inspired by her refusal to acknowledge physical and racial limitations, I bit my tongue as my volleyball coach would joke, "you're tall for an Asian, but can you jump?" I trained daily at the local gym to match the vertical reach of my six-foot teammates. Sore and sweating from box jumps, I pushed myself to become the shortest hitter on the team. With each exercise, I strived for consistent form. As months progressed, I reached a vertical that was an inch short from that of the tallest player. Outside the gym, I enrolled in classes such as AP Computer Science without having previously typed a single line of code. On the first day of school, I walked into a classroom full of boys. Remembering that my mother was the only woman on the high school men's golf team and one of few Asian LPGA players in the nation, I did not feel lonely. Gender, physicality, and race did not define my mother, nor was I going to let them define me. Further emboldened by the freedom to make choices, I conducted projects with high-schoolers, meeting them through STEM community forums. After interacting with teammates spanning multiple time zones, I co-founded a podcast called Teens Talk Tech where we discuss the science and ethics of emerging technologies and advocate for the popularization of STEM programs in public education systems. I shared anecdotes of gender-solitude and the Odyssey's of Jennifer Doudna and Sara Blakely. In some ways, life is like a doljabi carpet. We move from one end to another. In my ceremony, I chose the pencil. In my mother's, she chose the paintbrush. But in other ways, life is not like doljabi. We both continue to make choices and no ceremony, gender, physicality, or circumstance can define us. I celebrate every achievement with my mother, as her strategies of consistency and grit have been engraved into my experiences. Thanks to her, a pencil did not decide my fate. I am excited to pick up more items as I make my way towards the other end of the carpet.