I don't know who I am, beyond my GPA, my life, my coursework, and my family. As complex as I may be, through struggle, I am the product of profound grief and pain, I am someone who deeply feels for others, my friendships, my family, my relationships, all of them have shaped who I am, and as I fall through what feels like an endless spiral, I try my best to succeed, in order to get where I truly want. I am the product of a poverty-stricken family household. I am the product of relentless effort. I am the product of unforgiving reality. I am just a normal person who has to become exceptional because the situation demanded more of me. The weight that I carry, and the expectations I have to exceed, are what define me as a person. These experiences, this grief and pain, and the need to become something more, are what drive my passion to the absolute limit. I am someone who pushes myself to my absolute limit as a person, and these difficulties are what create who I am currently; my emotional complexity, my thoughts, and all of my efforts are what make me strive even harder, and that's who I am, who I wish to be. I wish to be someone who can go through any hardship but remain vigilant and strong. I am just myself, and there is nothing that could break me.

During my youth, money was always discussed on where it should be located, whether it'd be food, schooling, or clothes, and in my household, money had always felt more like a luxury. My parents — who were immigrants — had come to America to provide us with better opportunities, and have had no experience with financial budgeting, financial advising, etc. My father told me stories of how they grew up, they had grown up poor in their homeland, with nothing more than hand-made straw houses made with wood, metal, and dirt from cheap products that they could barely afford. In such a financially unstable environment, they had no choice but to sacrifice everything they had to move away to try to provide for us. Despite the hardships, they had endured and had worked nonstop, sacrificing not only their health but also their future, in hopes we would succeed in their place. Growing up in poverty in a household of 11 had made me realize how much financial help we required in order to get out of where we were and this was truly significant. Reality had already taught me how hard we needed to work in order to just survive, and I had quickly learned that in a household with money this tight and no financial knowledge carried real consequences. As I watched my family struggle with late bills, debt, and the stress that came from financial uncertainty shaped my understanding of how critical financial education truly was to me. I matured too young, and with all these financial struggles, I had looked deeper into our situation and had realized that my parents — who were working nearly 70 hours a week — were barely making it through bills and were struggling to put food on the table. Taking initiative, I had asked my teachers for help in elementary school to help me bring food home so the rest of my family could eat, in hopes that it would lessen the financial burden my parents had held for so long. So when I got my first job at 16, I started paying bills in order to decrease the burden my parents had tried hiding from us for so long, and started saving money in order to increase my funds for future education, so I could take and hold the financial burden in my parents' place. Seeing my parents struggle was both eye-opening and motivating, so I started doing my own research on how to budget in order to lessen this burden. As I prepare for an engineering degree, I am committed to financially planning out my future, but also utilizing what I learn as I strive towards my degree to help my community and my family with good financial decisions. Engineering will give me the technical foundation to build accessible tools and resources that uplift communities like mine. I truly wish to work with underrepresented communities in hopes of lessening the burden on those who try their best but are still stuck in unnecessary cycles of financial debt. I want to use what I have learned in my past to teach the community about financial education and break the cycle of continuous sacrifices due to the lack of knowledge and tools.

Growing up, we lived in extreme poverty, which only made our pursuit in education more difficult because my parents were also immigrants and couldn't speak English very well. My parents had considered college for us, and we wanted to keep up with their expectations of success through education, so we worked hard in school. Due to their high expectations, although we weren't geniuses who were successful, we tried. We tried to become the people that they wanted us to be, and we continued to try to overcome the hardships of life. This caused my heart to shatter when I failed a class I was completely unprepared for. It had felt like it was a class that was beyond my reach. I had no one in my family academically to help me since my parents had never gone to college, nor even graduated from high school. This situation hurt even more and put more pressure on me, considering that it felt like I didn't have the option to fail in my situation. During these times, I've learned to continue to pursue things that I want without giving up, even if they seemed out of reach to me. What I learned from this was that instead of fixating on the final end product, I broke down my goal into different concepts and focused on mastering one of those concepts at a time. These small wins rebuilt me as a person and my confidence, and I learned so much better. I found out I had learned better and worked better in a public setting with a friend or two, such as at the library or in a cafe, so whenever I had free time, I would go to the library to study what I needed to. The presence of my friends had inspired me to work even harder. I felt like I could overcome anything as long as I had people who cared about me by my side, and people who were willing to grow with me. However, the obstacles of life aren't so easy to pass; I had worked 25+ hours a week to support my family financially, which left me with only time to study late at night and 4-5 hours of sleep each night, and in the past, my confidence was shattered after failing a class. However, to deal with this, I had developed a crucial skill of time management, which had helped me throughout my journey of education. With this, I had finally learned that my talent didn't rely on my intelligence, but on my will to not give up my future for a hindrance in my journey.