If I want throwback songs, am I in the mood for “oldies and 80s” or “cosmic brownies,” the hits of 2008-2017? If I want study music, do I want “it’s midnight” or “2nd period in the library,” songs for my morning free period at school? They say you can tell a lot about a person from their taste in music, but I think that may apply only to the people who listen to one genre. I have 42 different Spotify playlists. 6 of those 42 are from each month of 2021. I get bored listening to the same songs, so in 2018, I started my monthly collections. Whether the songs come from my favorite artists or my dance studio, my monthly playlists are a unique mix of everything from rap to soft acoustic. At the end of the year, I combine my favorite songs from each month, so 3 of my 42 playlists are from 2018, 2019, and 2020. Listening to those playlists now, I see my deep emotional connection to music. These monthly and yearly playlists remind me how temporary everything is. Although my thoughts are occupied by today’s ideas and events, ultimately, I’ll look back on how stupid it was to waste my time with a temporary stressor instead of spending it with the people that mean the most to me. Perhaps everyone has an emotional connection to music, yet mine allowed me to separate my music library into my remaining 33 playlists. Last April, I sorted each song by genre, by the time of day I saw myself listening to it, and by how it made me feel. I couldn’t be happier with the result. I now have music for each month, each occasion, and each memory, and I don’t think I could go one day without opening Spotify. I treat music as an extension of my thoughts. I’m introverted, but I’m not necessarily shy; I’m always planning my response before I speak. The main problem with communication is that we don’t listen to understand others, we listen to reply to them. I take my time to listen to people in order to truly understand their perspective, whether it be within a political discussion or a personal conversation. Reflective, I find meaning in things—taking accountability for my actions or reading between song lyrics. Never satisfied, I try new things, and I switch up my background music like I switch my thoughts. With my 42 playlists, I always have something in my background to match my mindset—productive, stressed, motivated, isolated, you name it. Finding my connection to music gives me a greater purpose than existing as a student or dancer. My music taste shows that I’m a reflective and constantly evolving human being, open to new things and never satisfied with what doesn’t fulfill me. Music is my everything.

Since Kindergarten, I’ve agreed through the Girl Scout Law to “do my best to make the world a better place.” My troop has dwindled from around forty girls to ten over the last thirteen years, but my dedication to impact my community has remained. My leader has never forced anything on us, so if I wanted to make that impact, I would have to take initiative almost entirely independently. And I did. While touring Medical City Children’s Hospital in Dallas, I walked into their mock operation room that contained a small operating table and a felt board with body parts and name tags, only in English. The woman giving the tour told me that, in the room, they show kids how their upcoming surgeries work, but most of them leave more nervous than they enter. To relieve the kids’ fears, I needed to address their discomfort and exclusion. I thought that by giving the kids something that the doctors could use to show them their surgery, they would feel more comfortable. So, I found a template online to make small stuffed dolls and hospital gowns, and I taught myself to sew. Remembering that English felt board, I asked the woman at the hospital for demographics. Then, with help from translators, I printed new labels in Spanish and Polish, the most common among patients, and I made 50 dolls to look like the patients. After dropping off my year’s work at the hospital, I hope to continue inspiring younger girls as a leader in the future through an engineering career based on advocacy and activism. Giving back to my community means to influence the lives of those around me, as I have been influenced in the same way. Whether that be through my Girl Scout project or through other organizations that I have been a part of like Rainbow Days or Operation Kindness, I love to know that I improve others’ days and lives just by encountering them. Engaging in community service makes everyone involved more inclusive people, but I believe that the greatest importance of community service is the recognition of global issues. By taking charge to improve those issues on a small scale in our communities, we become more aware of their presence when we leave that community. Since completing my project, I have become more aware of the large systemic issues in our country. Next year and beyond, I hope to gain a more diverse perspectives, learning to work with everyone to solve those problems. I primarily want to address the issue of healthcare disparity in the United States with my career. Combining engineering and medicine is the best way to accomplish that goal, for I would be able to develop more efficient medical practices and more accessible products. Engineering and medicine give me an analytic lens through which to change the world, and I’m working on refining that lens currently. However, I need a more personal lens. In order to change people’s lives, I need to understand what communities need help. Through minoring in public health and studying political science in college, I’ll receive that perspective. Although I won’t be a politician in the future, I’ll have the tools to communicate with those in political power to implement the changes I want to make in the healthcare industry and beyond. With a career as a civil physicianeer, I will impact the underrepresented members of my community by providing them the care that they deserve as human beings.

I’ve gone to the infusion center 57 times since 2013 to treat my Crohn’s Disease. Since 2012, I’ve known that I have this disease, and I was good at hiding it. I linked the word “disease” to “weakness,” so Crohn’s became my biggest one. If I told people I had a disease, all eyes would be on me. I hated attention, so no one knew why I left school for a “doctor’s appointment” and never returned. I loved escaping to the infusion center, for no one knew it existed. In high school, however, my invisible escape became my inescapable enemy. I had become a perfectionist to hide my flaw, but chronic diseases are unfixable. At some point, I realized my friends weren’t falling for my “doctor’s appointment” excuse. I lied to myself, thinking they would hate my disease like I did, so I was blind to their caring for me as I dealt with something that they didn’t know existed. For too long, I hated Crohn’s for being the one thing I couldn’t fix without understanding that I could change my mindset. Appreciating it as my only constant, I found peace to tell my friends. I appreciate the infusion center once again for being my escape, 57 times and counting. Accepting my disease as a unique part of me allowed me to recognize my strength and diligence in all aspects of my life, and I know that with my stronger self-respect, I’ll continue to reach my goals in the future. One of those goals, is to improve the health care industry and provide better, more accessible care to underrepresented people. There is no reason for me to be healthier than someone else just because of my financial status; good health is a human right, not a privilege. In college, I plan to major in biomedical engineering on a pre-med track, the intersection of my interests in medicine, science, and math. Combining engineering and medicine is the best way to change both the world and the way that people live for the better. I recognize that there are people who are less fortunate than me, and with medicine alone, I would only be able to care for them. With engineering however, I would be able to create more efficient methods of practicing medicine, better and more accessible products, and actually put those new tools into practice myself. While engineering and medicine give me an analytic lens, I need a more personal lens. In order to change people’s lives, I need to understand what communities need help. Through minoring in public health and studying political science in college, I’ll receive that perspective. Although I won’t be a politician in the future, I’ll have the tools to communicate with those in political power to implement the changes I want to make in the healthcare industry and beyond. With a career as a civil physicianeer, I will impact the underrepresented members of my community by providing them the care that they deserve as human beings, and this scholarship will help me create that change.

Since Kindergarten, I’ve agreed through the Girl Scout Law to “do my best to make the world a better place.” I don’t remember much from my early scouting years, but I remember an older Girl Scout coming to one of our meetings to talk about her Gold Award Project. My troop leader emphasized to us, “She’s making the world a better place, and you can too!” Although I couldn’t tell you what she did for her project today, she inspired many of us to follow that line of the Girl Scout Law. My troop has dwindled from around forty girls to ten over the last thirteen years, but my dedication to impact my world has remained. My leader has kept us connected despite going to different schools, but she has never forced anything on us. If I wanted to pursue my Gold Award and impact my world like that Girl Scout, I would have to take initiative almost entirely independently. And I did. On a tour of Medical City Children’s Hospital in Dallas, I walked into their mock operation room. In the middle was a small operating table, and in the corner was a felt board with body parts and name tags, only in English. The woman giving the tour told me that, in the room, they show kids how their upcoming surgeries work, but most of them leave more nervous than they enter. To relieve the kids’ fears, I needed to address their discomfort and exclusion. I thought that by giving the kids something that the doctors could use to show them their surgery, they would feel more comfortable. I found a template to make small stuffed dolls and hospital gowns, and, soon, I taught myself to sew. Remembering that English felt board, I reached out to the woman at the hospital, asking for hospital demographics. Then, with help from translators, I printed new labels in Spanish and Polish, the most common languages among patients, and I made 50 dolls to look like the patients. This project taught me the importance both of recognizing problems and of taking initiative to solve them. The hospital was a microcosm of the world, revealing the major problem of exclusion on a small level. By acknowledging its presence there, I took a step toward improving it in the future alongside a group of diverse leaders. Since completing this project, I have become aware of larger systemic issues in our country, and I realized that I have more of a passion for activism than I thought. Next year and beyond, I hope to gain a more diverse perspectives, learning to work with my self-motivation and everyone to solve those problems. When I dropped off my year’s work at the hospital, I realized that I am now that Girl Scout who inspired me years ago to make the world a better place, and I hope to continue inspiring younger girls as a leader in the future through an engineering career based on advocacy and activism.

I was seven years old when we discovered that my three-year-old brother was allergic to dairy. Too busy pitying him for never being able to consume chocolate, I missed my parents’ lecture about the epi-pen. All I heard was that there would be one in my room to use if my brother needed it. Later, I examined the new tool and read the directions. Fascinated by the way it worked and recognizing that I would need to know how to use it in order to potentially save my brother’s life, I decided to use it on myself. After proudly running down the stairs to tell my parents that I could use the epi-pen, they immediately called the hospital in concern for me. I had no idea what I did wrong then, but to this day my siblings and I aren’t allowed to have epi-pens in our rooms. That event is the first time I remember taking medical action, and I don’t expect my last medical practice to be any time soon. Because I grew up surrounded by doctors, being a physician always seemed like a great career option. My dad is a radiologist, and I have had frequent medical visits myself. I received my first pair of glasses at age three, and I still have yearly eye check-ups. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease at age nine, which has come with a fair share of doctor’s appointments along the way. Two summers ago, I attended a two-week medical school intensive at Johns Hopkins University because I wanted to see if I liked practicing medicine or just the idea of it. On my last day, I had a solo interview with a patient, asking about their medical history and their problem. We received feedback later, which is when I decided that I needed to be a doctor. I learned the importance of empathy from physician to patient, realizing that I can individually change someone’s day and potentially their life with medicine. So, I decided I wanted to be a doctor, but I wanted more—I couldn’t just heal people for the rest of my life. Last year, I was introduced to biomedical engineering at an info session. The presenter claimed that biomedical engineers were the behind-the-scenes problem-solvers of the medical world. I saw that BME is the intersection of my strongest interests in science, math, and medicine, and I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. I want to change the way medicine is practiced in order to make the medical world more efficient. With an engineering brain, I like to test things out, including my own interests. Last summer, I reached out to professors at local universities to find a BME research position, but once I finally found a spot, it was cancelled. Nevertheless, I ended up as an intern at a prosthetics lab. I learned to create custom prosthetics and to communicate with patients until their new leg was exactly what they wanted. I was one of nine people in the lab, and I was the only girl. One day, a man came in who had been receiving prosthetics from the lab for over five years. He asked me why I was working there. I explained why I wanted to pursue biomedical engineering, but he repeated himself: “Why are you here? You have two working legs.” Many of the men in the lab have prosthetics themselves, so I don’t think he understood why I could possibly want to help him. I told him that there is no reason for anyone to have to suffer without the care, or in his case the limb, that they, as humans, deserve. I told him that I want to make good health more available to everyone. He told me that I was on track to change the world. I know that both engineering and medicine are the best ways to make real world change not only on a one-to-one basis as a physician but also on a global level in a team of engineers. Combining engineering and medicine is the best way to change both the world and the way that people live for the better. I recognize that there are people who are less fortunate than me, and with medicine alone, I would only be able to care for them. With engineering however, I would be able to create more efficient methods of practicing medicine, better and more accessible products, and actually put those new tools into practice myself. With a career as a physicianeer, I will create more efficient health care that will become more accessible to all people around the world.