For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. Computer science is a perfect fit. However, in high school, I was often discouraged in my pursuit of STEM subjects due to gender bias by both my teachers and guidance counselors. Upon reviewing my course selections one year, my counselor literally said, “That’s too hard, wouldn’t you rather take dance or home ec?” NO! Knowing my true heart and that STEM was where I belonged, I pushed back and was able to get the education I desired. Google Translate has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. As a teenager, I started wondering what this tool could really become. Could it someday truly learn to understand languages like a human, instead of relying on dictionary definitions? My interests were piqued. I realized that this involved computer science, so I investigated programming and machine learning to see if these topics interested me. The more I learned, the more I knew that computer science was definitely for me. Once in college, I realized I could combine all of my academic interests in computer science, math, and language into one trajectory. I have truly loved all of my classes in computer science so far and have added a Linguistics minor. While researching my career options I landed on Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics. I am truly fascinated by these topics. My favorite class so far has been “Languages and Computers” Where we discussed NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. We looked at the linguistics and the code, as we analyze topics from the computer science perspective (such as Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm). I have chosen two “threads” or specialties in my degree: Intelligence and People. Through the people thread, we focus on how people and computers interact with each other and how people think about and comprehend computers. It's a really interesting challenge to deal with the people-focused side of computing since it deals with a lot of unknowns and unpredictable variables. But putting people first when developing technology is of utmost importance. My dream job is to develop people-focused software in the area of NLP and computational linguistics. I feel that I am an excellent candidate for receiving this scholarship because I too am a bright person who also has a quick wit and is willing to lend an ear at any time to anyone. I am always present with people and ensure that they know they have my full attention – THEY are the priority. In addition, I too have struggled in working towards my degree. I have dealt with obstacles such as gender bias and found difficulty in affording my degree. I can sincerely use this scholarship. I feel that I can represent Chris’ legacy well if I receive the honor of this scholarship. Just reading Chris’ short story inspires me to be a better person and to help those around me with my talents and compassion.

For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. However, in high school, I was often discouraged in my pursuit of math and science due to gender bias by both my teachers and guidance counselors. Upon reviewing my course selections one year, my counselor literally said, “That’s too hard, wouldn’t you rather take dance or home ec?” NO! Knowing my true heart and that STEM was where I belonged, I pushed back and was able to get the education I desired. Google Translate has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. As a teenager, I started wondering what this tool could really become. Could it someday truly learn to understand languages like a human, instead of relying on dictionary definitions? My interests were piqued. I realized that this involved computer science, so I investigated programming and machine learning to see if these topics interested me. The more I learned, the more I knew that computer science was definitely for me. Once in college, I realized I could combine all of my academic interests in computer science, math, and language into one trajectory. I have truly loved all of my classes in computer science so far and have added a Linguistics minor. While researching my career options I landed on Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics. I am truly fascinated by these topics. My favorite class so far has been “Languages and Computers” Where we discussed NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. We looked at the linguistics and the code, as we analyze topics from the computer science perspective (such as Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm). I have chosen two “threads” or specialties in my degree: Intelligence and People. Through the people thread, we focus on how people and computers interact with each other and how people think about and comprehend computers. It's a really interesting challenge to deal with the people-focused side of computing since it deals with a lot of unknowns and unpredictable variables. But putting people first when developing technology is of utmost importance. My dream job is to develop people-focused software in the area of NLP and computational linguistics. I feel that I am an excellent candidate for receiving this scholarship because I too am a bright person who also has a quick wit and is willing to lend an ear at any time to anyone. I am always present with people and ensure that they know they have my full attention – THEY are the priority. In addition, I too have struggled in working towards my degree. I have dealt with obstacles such as gender bias and found difficulty in affording my degree. I can sincerely use this scholarship. I feel that I can represent Chris’ legacy well if I receive the honor of this scholarship. Just reading Chris’ short story inspires me to be a better person and to help those around me with my talents and compassion.

1. Looking into the carrier, I see a squirming, squeaking mass of fur, tails, and noses. They do not come with instructions, but I am their lifeline. In the past five years, I have fostered over 50 neonatal kittens. I was taught the basics – bottle feeding, keeping them warm, and pottying. However, without their mother to teach them, walking, playing, eating, and using the litterbox are difficult to learn. This lack of instruction is counteracted by their endless curiosity, as they learn through experimentation. They don’t give up when they fall down with a crash after failing to scale a gate. From their endless curiosity to their resilience and dogged independence, I see myself in these kittens every day. I like it when I am not given instructions. I enjoy testing my limits by experimenting with my own knowledge and abilities and discovering new techniques to solve problems. During an academic summer programming camp, where learning how to learn took on a whole different meaning. My teacher’s style did not match my learning style and, while frustrating at first, it created the perfect environment for me to explore and experiment with different approaches. When the TA noticed that I had finished quickly, she encouraged me to enhance my program, giving me one example line of code and let me figure out the rest for myself. After many trials and errors, I successfully created the most colorful, psychedelic, and chaotic interface in the whole class! Although the product was far from perfect, I learned more about coding and logic than if I had been shown the exact method. I would love to be the best computer science kitten foster and role model for young women in STEM to ever exist! 2. For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. I knew that I loved math and decided to major in computer science in college. It was not until more recently that I realized I could combine my academic interests. When I decided to major in computer science, I was excited about my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. During my freshman year at Georgia Tech, I discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. My favorite class in college so far has been a course called “Languages and Computers”, where we discussed NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. We looked at the linguistics and the code, as we analyze topics from the computer science perspective (such as Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm). The unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. I would like to pull together computer science, linguistics, language, and brain studies with my desire to help orphaned kittens and rescue organizations. The more I investigate, the more ideas I will develop to bring my love of computer science and animals together such as creating software to help track feral colonies to aid in population control as well as the health of the colonies and to create better software for shelters to utilize. Both computer science and working with rescue organizations will be a part of my future, even if they are not always tied together. 3. Being a woman in STEM can be a tough road. Often, young women need to persevere in situations in which young men would never find themselves. We must use our mental and emotional strength, patience, and positive attitude to persist through challenges, setbacks, and failures without giving up. I’d have to say that finding my inner power and overcoming gender bias has been my biggest challenge. Gender bias has been a stumbling block for me throughout my education. But I have not let it stop me from pursuing my dreams of working in computational linguistics. In eighth grade, while picking my freshman-year courses for high school, I wanted to take two math courses. This is not a typical path but one I was capable of and very interested in. I told my math teacher. She commented “Oh, you shouldn’t do that Kelly. It will be too hard for you. You are not up to that.” She then turned to the two boys and suggested they do that very thing! The boys looked stunned having just heard my conversation with the teacher. Both the boys and I knew that I had better grades and was a more conscientious and focused student. My teacher was biased against girls in STEAM. This shook my confidence a bit, but I persevered and went forward with my plan. Several years later, I signed up to take both AP Physics along with AP Calculus BC. My guidance counselor said to me “That’s too hard, wouldn’t you rather take dance or home ec?” NO! I love STEAM! Again, my confidence was thrown a bit, but I kept my focus and strength intact. I ignored her biased remarks and with the support of my parents, I took the classes. I excelled in them and graduated as the top girl in my class (3/500). The path I took then, led me to my current college career where I am studying a still very male-dominated field of computer science. I hope to be a role model for younger girls interested in STEM and help them as they, unfortunately, will likely also face gender bias as they work toward their dreams.

Looking into the carrier, I see a squirming, squeaking mass of fur, tails, and noses. They do not come with instructions, but I am their lifeline. In the past five years, I have fostered over 50 neonatal kittens. I was taught the basics – bottle feeding, keeping them warm, and pottying. However, without their mother to teach them, walking, playing, eating, and using the litterbox are difficult to learn. This lack of instruction is counteracted by their endless curiosity, as they learn through experimentation. They don’t give up when they fall down with a crash after failing to scale a gate. From their endless curiosity to their resilience and dogged independence, I see myself in these kittens every day. I like it when I am not given instructions. I enjoy testing my limits by experimenting with my own knowledge and abilities and discovering new techniques to solve problems. During an academic summer programming camp, where learning how to learn took on a whole different meaning. My teacher’s style did not match my learning style and, while frustrating at first, it created the perfect environment for me to explore and experiment with different approaches. When the TA noticed that I had finished quickly, she encouraged me to enhance my program, giving me one example line of code and let me figure out the rest for myself. After many trials and errors, I successfully created the most colorful, psychedelic, and chaotic interface in the whole class! Although the product was far from perfect, I learned more about coding and logic than if I had been shown the exact method. For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. I knew that I loved math and decided to major in computer science in college. It was not until more recently that I realized I could combine my academic interests. When I decided to major in computer science, I was excited for my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. During freshman year at Georgia Tech, I discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. My favorite class in college so far has been a course called “Languages and Computers”, where we discussed NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. We looked at the linguistics and the code, as we analyze topics from the computer science perspective (such as Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm). The unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. I would like to pull together computer science, linguistics, language, and brain studies with my desire to help orphaned kittens and rescue organizations. The more I investigate, the more ideas I will develop to bring my love of computer science and animals together such as creating software to help track feral colonies to aid in population control as well as the health of the colonies and to create better software for shelters to utilize. Both computer science and working with rescue organizations will be a part of my future, even if they are not always tied together.

“No…. [gulp] No no no no no no no! What?! That can’t be! [sobbing] I just talked to her yesterday. She can’t…. I can’t…. I just….” Even as I write this essay now, two years later, I am in tears. My friend, Imani, was found in the wee hours of the morning in her car by her mother. She had taken her own life. I was in shock. This wasn’t the first time that I knew a victim of suicide, but it was the first dear friend of mine. Sadly, my high school has the nickname ‘suicide high.’ It is just a neighborhood public school. It is not a magnet or an expensive private college prep school. But I do live in a town where parents push their kids to be the very best at everything and the school system does not support mental health. There are typically one or two suicides of high school students every year. The school does not acknowledge them. They try to pretend like it never happened and continue on with school as normal. When Imani died, we were told we were not allowed to discuss it in class or with our teachers. This was so terribly wrong. I am fortunate that my mother, a sufferer of depression herself, has always been open about the local suicides and supported mental health. She has kept me informed. She is there for any questions I have, discussions I desire, offers of professional help, a shoulder to cry on and is content to simply sit with me in the quiet if that is what I need. She has reminded me since I was very young, that even if I cannot talk to her or my dad, there are many people in my life who I can reach out to – teachers, church, friends’ parents, grandparents, etc. Many kids don’t have this kind of support from their families. In high school, I was involved with our chapter of Our Minds Matter (OMM). I started and was president of our Psychology club. We looked at many different aspects of psychology and mental health. The more education we could provide and the more open we were able to be about mental health, the better our community would be. We often ran events with OMM to help spread the word and break the stigma of mental health needs. I have worked closely with my church’s winter relief shelter. At this shelter, homeless people are given food, support, and temporary housing during the cold months. My job is to serve meals. After serving, I would fix myself a plate and mingle with the guests. Through these conversations, I have learned that often homelessness is caused by untreated, undiagnosed mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or addiction. These people are often unwilling or unable to get the help they need. The shelter provides guidance and helps to break the stigma. All people should be able to get the help they need without having to worry about judgment or repercussions. I continue to participate in community outreach that helps to destigmatize mental illness so people can feel empowered to seek the help they need. With my skills in computer science, I’d like to develop a tool to analyze the brain. Eventually, I hope that my work can help diagnose all people, regardless of their socio-economic status, and assist in getting them the help they need. May there never be another who feels so hopeless and lost as sweet Imani. Sleep well my friend.

“No…. [gulp] No no no no no no no! What?! That can’t be! [sobbing] I just talked to her yesterday. She can’t…. I can’t…. I just….” Even as I write this essay now, two years later, I am in tears. My friend, Imani, was found in the wee hours of the morning in her car by her mother. She had taken her own life. I was in shock. This wasn’t the first time that I knew a victim of suicide, but it was the first dear friend of mine. Sadly, my high school has the nickname ‘suicide high.’ It is just a neighborhood public school. It is not a magnet or an expensive private college prep school. But I do live in a town where parents push their kids to be the very best at everything and the school system does not support mental health. There are typically one or two suicides of high school students every year. The school does not acknowledge them. They try to pretend like it never happened and continue on with school as normal. When Imani died, we were told we were not allowed to discuss it in class or with our teachers. This was so terribly wrong. I am fortunate that my mother, a sufferer of depression herself, has always been open about the local suicides and supported mental health. She has kept me informed. She is there for any questions I have, discussions I desire, offers of professional help, a shoulder to cry on and is content to simply sit with me in the quiet if that is what I need. She has reminded me since I was very young, that even if I cannot talk to her or my dad, there are many people in my life who I can reach out to – teachers, church, friends’ parents, grandparents, etc. Many kids don’t have this kind of support from their families. In high school, I was involved with our chapter of Our Minds Matter (OMM). I started and was president of our Psychology club. We looked at many different aspects of psychology and mental health. The more education we could provide and the more open we were able to be about mental health, the better our community would be. We often ran events with OMM to help spread the word and break the stigma of mental health needs. I have worked closely with my church’s winter relief shelter. At this shelter, homeless people are given food, support, and temporary housing during the cold months. My job is to serve meals. After serving, I would fix myself a plate and mingle with the guests. Through these conversations, I have learned that often homelessness is caused by untreated, undiagnosed mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or addiction. These people are often unwilling or unable to get the help they need. The shelter provides guidance and helps to break the stigma. All people should be able to get the help they need without having to worry about judgment or repercussions. I continue to participate in community outreach that helps to destigmatize mental illness so people can feel empowered to seek the help they need. With my skills in computer science, I’d like to develop a tool to analyze the brain. Eventually, I hope that my work can help diagnose all people, regardless of their socio-economic status, and assist in getting them the help they need. May there never be another who feels so hopeless and lost as sweet Imani. Sleep well my friend.

Being a woman in STEM can be a tough road. Often, young women need to persevere in situations in which young men would never find themselves. We must use our mental and emotional strength, patience, and positive attitude to persist through challenges, setbacks, and failures without giving up. Gender bias has been a stumbling block for me throughout my education. But I have not let it stop me from pursuing my dreams of working in computational linguistics. In eighth grade, while picking my freshman-year courses for high school, I wanted to take two math courses. This is not a typical path but one I was capable of and very interested in. I told my math teacher. She commented “Oh, you shouldn’t do that Kelly. It will be too hard for you. You are not up to that.” She then turned to the two boys and suggested they do that very thing! The boys looked stunned having just heard my conversation with the teacher. Both the boys and I knew that I had better grades and was a more conscientious and focused student. My teacher was biased against girls in STEAM. This shook my confidence a bit, but I persevered and went forward with my plan. Several years later, I signed up to take both AP Physics along with AP Calculus BC. My guidance counselor said to me “That’s too hard, wouldn’t you rather take dance or home ec?” NO! I love STEAM! Again, my confidence was thrown a bit, but I kept my focus and strength intact. I ignored her biased remarks and with the support of my parents, I took the classes. I excelled in them and graduated as the top girl in my class (3/500). The path I took then, led me to my current college career where I am studying a still very male-dominated field of computer science. For many years I knew I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages, thus in college, I decided to major in (the still very male-dominated) computer science. It was not until more recently that I realized I could combine all of my academic interests into one career goal. I was enjoying my major and was excited about my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. Luckily, during my first year at Georgia Tech, I quickly discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love with the coursework. I declared the minor after just two months of college, and it has been one of the best decisions I have made. Since then, I have researched my career and future options. I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day. In addition to the CS and Linguistics courses I have taken, I am working in Georgia Tech’s Natural Language Processing Lab, where we are currently working on a project to improve text simplification models to be more accurate and truthful in their summarization. This has been a fantastic opportunity, and I am sure I will learn a lot in the years to come. My education is something no one can take away from me. I am excited about my future in computational linguistics and am loving the education and experiences as I go.

I am a confident, perseverant, and joyous woman working in the forefront of computational linguists, who is an active role model for young women and girls in STEM, and yet still finds time to enjoy all the wonders of life, traveling, and volunteering with my local animal shelter and fostering kittens.

For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. I knew that I loved math and decided to major in computer science in college. It was not until more recently that I realized I could combine all of my academic interests into one career goal. When I got into programming and decided to major in computer science, I was excited for my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. Luckily, during my first year at Georgia Tech, I quickly discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love with the coursework. I declared the minor after about two months of college, and it has been one of the best decisions I have made here at Tech. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. My favorite class in college so far has been a course called “Languages and Computers”, where we discuss NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. In this course, we look at the linguistics but also the code, as we analyze a variety of relevant topics from the computer science perspective (such as the Naive Bayes Classifier, Peter Norvig’s Spell Checker, and Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm), as well as use at tools like nltk and SpaCy. However, the unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as, for example, why we take out stop words when processing a query, or how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. In addition to the CS and Linguistics courses I have taken, I have recently started a position at Georgia Tech’s Natural Language Processing Lab, where we are currently working on a project to improve text simplification models to be more accurate and truthful in their summarization. I am excited for this opportunity, and I am sure I will learn a lot in the years to come. Overall, I’m interested in NLP because it is the perfect combination of all of the things I am interested in - computer science, linguistics, and foreign language. I am excited for the chance to get involved in a similar field or to branch out and discover new interests as I continue in my college education and career.

Living sustainably is a crucial aspect of protecting our planet and preserving it for future generations. It is essential that we all make choices that reduce our carbon footprint which will help to mitigate climate change, preserve biodiversity, and ensure that our precious natural resources are used efficiently. Reducing our carbon footprint is a matter of personal responsibility. Every person needs to find ways in their own lives to make small changes that, when put together with everyone else's small changes, will add up to big changes. Below are some of the changes I have made in my everyday life: Living in the city of Atlanta I walk to just about everything. I don’t even have access to a car at school. At home, I love riding my bike to the farmer’s market. It is a highlight of my week during the summer. When I cannot walk or bike, I use public transportation. Typically, I utilize campus and city buses, and the metro. I am very conscientious to turn off the lights and electronics when I am not using them or going out. Being at a tech school, there are always computers humming everywhere. I remind my friends to turn off all their electronics too. Even though I am living in a dorm, I have my own thermostat control. I bundle up in sweaters in the winter so I can keep it set lower and, in the summer, I try not to use my AC unless it’s really, really needed. I always bring my own bags when I go shopping. I buy products created by companies dedicated to healthy and sustainable living whenever possible. I even started using laundry detergent sheets this past fall. They are much better for the environment since there is no extra water or packaging needed. The best part is that they are so simple to use! I am thrilled to no longer be lugging heavy detergent to the laundry room – win/win! I buy only the food I plan to use thus reducing my food waste. In my college cafeterias, I see many of my friends taking so much food from the all-you-can-eat locations and just throwing it away. I am careful not to do this myself and urge my friends and classmates to make better choices. I am also striving to eat a more plant-based diet. Animal agriculture is responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing the amount of meat and dairy I eat will also reduce my carbon footprint. And keeping my reusable water bottle in my backpack all the time helps me resist purchasing bottles of water from the vending machines. I enjoy shopping at thrift and secondhand stores so that I can reuse great items instead of buying them brand new. Our campus even has its thrift store so we can all continue to hand down our no-longer-needed items to incoming students. Once I leave college and own my own home or apartment, I plan to plant a garden, support local sustainable building projects, wind farms, and solar farms with monetary donations and install solar panels on my home. Making these seemingly small changes in my daily life has not been difficult and they all feel normal now. I continue to look for other ways I can reduce my footprint as well as encourage my friends to do the same. If everyone can make small changes, they will really add up. We only have one planet and I’d like to keep it a healthy one.

Being a woman in STEM can be a tough road. Often, young women need to persevere in situations where young men would never be placed. We must use our mental and emotional strength, patience, and positive attitude to persist through challenges, setbacks, and failures without giving up. Gender bias has been a stumbling block for me throughout my education. But I have not let it stop me from pursuing my dreams of working in computational linguistics. In eighth grade, while picking my freshman-year courses for high school, I wanted to take two math courses. This is not a typical path but one I knew I was capable of and very interested in. I told my math teacher. She commented “Oh, you shouldn’t do that Kelly. It will be too hard for you. You are not up to that.” In the same breath, she turned to two boys in my class and suggested they do that very thing! The boys looked stunned having just heard the entire conversation my teacher had just had with me. Both the boys and I knew that I had better grades and was a more conscientious and focused student. But my teacher was biased against girls in STEM which I found very odd for a female math teacher. This shook my confidence a bit, but I persevered and went forward with my plan. A few years later, I signed up to take both AP Physics 1 and 2 along with AP Calculus AB/BC my junior year. My guidance counselor said to me “That’s too hard, wouldn’t you rather take dance?”. NO! I love STEM! Again, my confidence was thrown a bit, but I kept my focus and strength intact. I ignored her biased remarks and with the support of my parents, I took the STEM classes. I excelled in all of them and graduated as the top girl in my class (3/500). The path I took then, led me to my current college career where I am studying a very male-dominated field of computer science, minoring in linguistics at one of the top universities in the country with a plan of working in computational linguistics when I graduate. Women need to be confident to pursue a field that is male-dominated. Women need to persevere when others try to discourage them. It’s unfortunate, but true. I have become more confident and able to stay focused and ignore such biased comments as time goes on. I know that, unfortunately, I will be confronted with gender bias throughout my career. But I will continue to study and explore STEM, even when others try to imply it's 'not a girl thing.' One of my goals in the future is to be a role model and mentor to younger girls to show them that WE CAN and THEY CAN. I will support them to keep going even when others try to discourage them. Perseverance comes in many forms and is needed in many situations. The two I described were just a couple of times when I needed to draw on my strength and perseverance. I have learned that I AM capable. I AM strong enough and if I want something, no setback, failure, discouragement, or challenge can stand in my way. It may take me longer or force me to back up and realign my path a bit, but I can and I will continue forward. I am a woman in STEM and I will persevere.

I have played soccer for as long as I can remember. I played from the age of three through seventeen. In high school, I transitioned from local intra-club play to representing my club in the county league. Playing every fall was a consistency in my life, teaching me at a young age how to work with both friends and others. More importantly, playing soccer taught me how to oppose and compete with respect, being aggressive, focused, and determined on the field, but kind and courteous off the field. When I was younger, I was confused by the end-of-game high-fiving tradition. Why would you congratulate the other team for losing, or show your appreciation that they beat you? As I got older, I came to understand and enjoy the act of appreciating my peers who challenged me to become better, while maintaining respect for me and my team and upholding good sportsmanship. This type of competition only grows exponentially throughout life. In school, classes have become progressively more challenging. However, I am proud that I have never succumbed to the pressure to cheat, one-up, or sabotage my classmates to get ahead. I contribute this largely to all I learned during my years playing soccer – unsportsmanlike conduct rarely wins. When it does, that is worse than losing honestly. In the same way, grades, college acceptances, job offers, and everything else are so much better when they are earned honestly and fairly. In eighth grade, I became a soccer referee. I took a class, passed a test, and suddenly I was a ref. Although I was only looking for some fun this experience became much more meaningful than I ever expected. Working as a referee gave me an opportunity to do something out of my comfort zone, while still working to serve my community. Having played soccer recreationally for so long, I had accrued a significant amount of experience and knowledge about the game. I found that through refereeing, I was able to put my knowledge about soccer to good use, while also developing my leadership skills. Refereeing has been great in helping me gain confidence while I lead, as I have had to learn how to assert myself and be confident in my decisions and those of my fellow referees, while remaining calm in the face of angry parents (and occasionally very angry coaches). As a referee, I was not only a mediator and a judge but also a teacher. This position gave me the opportunity to teach the children I refereed about the game as I corrected them and demonstrated proper techniques for throw-ins, goal kicks, and corner kicks, and enforced safety guidelines. Sportsmanship, however, has been the most important thing to teach, especially when the players are so young. Although playing fairly, treating others with respect, and following rules are taught as sportsmanship in the context of the game, these qualities can be applied to life as well. I taught players the proper way to treat their peers, both on and off the field. I know that, like me, children who learn the value of sportsmanship – respect for others and oneself, cooperation, and the ability to gracefully handle conflict, among many others – will carry these lessons throughout their whole lives. As I move forward, I am confident I will live my life in the most sportsmanlike way and continue growing in my leadership roles.

When I was in middle school, I became extremely interested in reading classic literature. I immediately latched onto dystopian novels such as 1984, by George Orwell, and Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. I loved the deep, philosophical nature of books like these, raising questions of morality that make you think for weeks. In tenth grade, I found myself drawn to one novel in particular – A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. Although the novel has prominent themes of psychology and the inherent nature of evil that made me question my own ideas about humanity, the aspect of this novel that influenced me the most was the unusual linguistics used throughout. If anything jumps out at you when you first pick up this book, it is certainly Burgess’ unusual choice of words – at least 20% of the book was written in Nadsat, a made-up language that the author invented as a sort of “teen slang”. The Nadsat words were mostly based on Russian, English, or gibberish, and I would have trouble pronouncing many of them. This fact, however, did not deter me from my fascination with the language or the book, as I took delight in the strange ways that Burgess contorted and played with languages to create his own. Even though there are over 200 words in the Nadsat glossary, many of which were based on a language I had no experience with, I found that by the time I was halfway through the novel, I barely needed the glossary at all. The words, once I learned their meanings the first time, just made sense. When I finished, I was surprised to realize that the aspect of the book that I anticipated being frustrating and cumbersome had actually become my favorite part. This prompted me to look inward at my own interests and skills, to investigate this interest in languages more deeply. I started to take a deeper interest in the Spanish classes I was taking at the time, and I quickly realized that language is inherently logical by nature, with correct and incorrect ways to construct words and sentences based on pre-established patterns and rules. Spanish, particularly, is like this. However, languages can also be incredibly creative and expressive. The words in a sentence can be arranged in many ways, punctuation can change, and tone can shift ever so slightly to alter the meaning of the ideas communicated. Although I had been reading for most of my life and had appreciated these details in literature before, something about the use of completely made-up words and phrases grabbed my attention. Though writers have the freedom to use language creatively, it is still important to follow some rules if they want to effectively convey their message. When I started to investigate computer science shortly afterward, I quickly recognized that it would be perfect for me. The logic and mathematics of coding coupled with the creativity and expressiveness of language makes computer science the perfect way for me to channel my problem-solving abilities. Without the influence of this novel, A Clockwork Orange, and its crazy use of the languages in Burgess’ brain, I would not hold this interest in linguistics, nor would I be following the path toward computer science today.

Referees are Leaders Too I have played soccer for as long as I can remember. I played from the age of three through seventeen. In high school, I transitioned from local intra-club play to representing my club in the county league. Playing every fall was a consistency in my life, teaching me at a young age how to work with both friends and others. More importantly, playing soccer taught me how to oppose and compete with respect, being aggressive, focused, and determined on the field, but kind and courteous off the field. When I was younger, I was confused by the end-of-game high-fiving tradition. Why would you congratulate the other team for losing, or show your appreciation that they beat you? As I got older, I came to understand and enjoy the act of appreciating my peers who challenged me to become better, while maintaining respect for me and my team and upholding good sportsmanship. This type of competition only grows exponentially throughout life. In school, classes have become progressively more challenging. However, I am proud that I have never succumbed to the pressure to cheat, one-up, or sabotage my classmates to get ahead. I contribute this largely to all I learned during my years playing soccer – unsportsmanlike conduct rarely wins. When it does, that is worse than losing honestly. In the same way, grades, college acceptances, job offers, and everything else are so much better when they are earned honestly and fairly. In eighth grade, I became a soccer referee. I took a class, passed a test, and suddenly I was a ref. Although I was only looking for some fun this experience became much more meaningful than I ever expected. Working as a referee gave me an opportunity to do something out of my comfort zone, while still working to serve my community. Having played soccer recreationally for so long, I had accrued a significant amount of experience and knowledge about the game. I found that through refereeing, I was able to put my knowledge about soccer to good use, while also developing my leadership skills. Refereeing has been great in helping me gain confidence while I lead, as I have had to learn how to assert myself and be confident in my decisions and those of my fellow referees, while remaining calm in the face of angry parents (and occasionally very angry coaches). As a referee, I was not only a mediator and a judge but also a teacher. This position gave me the opportunity to teach the children I refereed about the game as I corrected them and demonstrated proper techniques for throw-ins, goal kicks, and corner kicks, and enforced safety guidelines. Sportsmanship, however, has been the most important thing to teach, especially when the players are so young. Although playing fairly, treating others with respect, and following rules are taught as sportsmanship in the context of the game, these qualities can be applied to life as well. I taught players the proper way to treat their peers, both on and off the field. I know that, like me, children who learn the value of sportsmanship – respect for others and oneself, cooperation, and the ability to gracefully handle conflict, among many others – will carry these lessons throughout their whole lives. As I move forward, I am confident I will live my life in the most sportsmanlike way and continue growing in my leadership roles.

Whether it helped raise you, feed you, or teach you something new, a community benefits everyone, so we should all strive to give something back. Every year, I volunteer at a local homeless shelter. My duty is to serve food to the guests, but it’s important not to neglect the duty we have to help each other emotionally too. Something as simple as sharing a meal can really make a difference, as homeless people are often seen as “lesser than” due to their misfortune. Conversing with complete strangers can be uncomfortable for me as an introvert, but it’s helped me grow as a person. In that sense, we help each other out: I offer a keen ear to whatever they'd like to talk about, and they give me a little glimpse of their world and challenge me to be more open to others. Through conversations, I have learned that homelessness is often caused by untreated, undiagnosed mental illness. This shocking fact has increased my interest in the brain. For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. I decided to major in computer science in college. I was excited for my future, but felt something was missing – my passion for linguistics and languages. During freshman year I discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am fascinated with the field of Natural Language Processing, and I hope to work in this field one day. My favorite class so far has been “Languages and Computers.” We discussed NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. We looked at the linguistics and the code, as we analyze topics from the computer science perspective (such as Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm). The unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. I would like to pull together computer science, linguistics, language and brain studies with my desire to help people with mental illness struggles, such as the ones I meet every year at the homeless shelter. I am investigating ways to do this. Perhaps I can develop a tool to analyze the linguistic as well as mental health areas of the brain. Eventually, I hope that my work can help diagnose all people regardless of their socio-economic status and get them the help they need. I feel that I can represent Chris’ legacy well if I receive the honor of this scholarship. As a smart woman in computer science, who also has a quick wit and is willing to lend an ear at any time I feel a little akin to Chris. Just reading his short story here inspires me to be a better person and to help those around me with my talents and compassion.

No Instructions? Looking into the carrier, I see a squirming, squeaking mass of fur, tails, and noses. They do not come with instructions, but I am their lifeline. In the past five years, I have fostered over 50 neonatal kittens. I was taught the basics – bottle feeding, keeping them warm, and pottying. However, without their mother to teach them, walking, playing, eating, and using the litter box are difficult to learn. This lack of instruction is counteracted by their endless curiosity, as they learn through experimentation. They don’t give up when they fall down with a crash after failing to scale a gate. From their endless curiosity to their resilience and dogged independence, I see myself in these kittens every day. I like when I am not given instructions. I enjoy testing my limits by experimenting with my own knowledge and abilities and discovering new techniques to solve problems. My physics teacher assigned a lab allowing us to learn for ourselves, much like kittens do. Instead of providing procedures introducing us to the topic, we simply received one prompt: calculate the water flow rate out of the plastic bottle. In the world of physics unknowns, I was now the orphaned kitten, abruptly stolen from the comfort of my rubrics and thrown headfirst into the world of science with only my intuition as my guide. I decided to approach the problem like a kitten would, testing the limits of both the lab and myself through experimentation and exploration. Armed with only measuring tools and previous knowledge, my team experimented with calculations, formulas, and measurements. I found it incredibly freeing to be creative and problem-solve naturally instead of mindlessly following provided procedures. I did not have to wonder why I was using certain formulas, measuring certain values, or analyzing certain data points - I knew because I had decided to do it myself. This curiosity likely stems from my Montessori preschool and elementary education where the emphasis was on hands-on, self-guided learning. There, I “learned how to learn”, actively exploring presented information in depth of my own accord, and it is something I still enjoy doing today. Several years ago, I attended an academic summer programming camp, where learning how to learn took on a whole different meaning. My teacher’s style did not match my learning style and, while frustrating at first, it created the perfect environment for me to explore and experiment with different approaches. When the TA noticed that I had finished quickly, she encouraged me to enhance my program, giving me one example line of code and let me figure out the rest for myself. After many trials and errors, I successfully created the most colorful, psychedelic, and chaotic interface in the whole class! Although the product was far from perfect, I learned more about coding and logic than if I had been shown the exact method. Fostering kittens is rewarding for many reasons, but for me, it’s more than just being able to see adorable faces every day. Getting to help these creatures grow and mature from helpless newborns into inquisitive, creative, and intelligent beings gives me hope for my own future. I’d like to take my enthusiasm for problem-solving and focus it on real-world problems through computer science. I hope to incorporate my interest in psychology into my career in computer science by creating programs and algorithms to aid in the study of the brain, human development, psychology, and mental health with intuitive, user-friendly interfaces. If kittens can grow and learn so much without instructions in life, is there any limit to what I can accomplish?

No Instructions? Looking into the carrier, I see a squirming, squeaking mass of fur, tails, and noses. They do not come with instructions, but I am their lifeline. In the past five years, I have fostered over 50 neonatal kittens. I was taught the basics – bottle feeding, keeping them warm, and pottying. However, without their mother to teach them, walking, playing, eating, and using the litter box are difficult to learn. This lack of instruction is counteracted by their endless curiosity, as they learn through experimentation. They don’t give up when they fall down with a crash after failing to scale a gate. From their endless curiosity to their resilience and dogged independence, I see myself in these kittens every day. I like when I am not given instructions. I enjoy testing my limits by experimenting with my own knowledge and abilities and discovering new techniques to solve problems. My physics teacher assigned a lab giving us an opportunity to learn for ourselves, much like kittens do. Instead of providing procedures introducing us to the topic, we simply received one prompt: calculate the water flow rate out of the plastic bottle. In the world of physics unknowns, I was now the orphaned kitten, abruptly stolen from the comfort of my rubrics and thrown headfirst into the world of science with only my intuition as my guide. I decided to approach the problem like a kitten would, testing the limits of both the lab and myself through experimentation and exploration. Armed with only measuring tools and previous knowledge, my team experimented with calculations, formulas, and measurements. I found it incredibly freeing to be creative and problem-solve naturally instead of mindlessly following provided procedures. I did not have to wonder why I was using certain formulas, measuring certain values, or analyzing certain data points - I knew because I had decided to do it myself. This curiosity likely stems from my Montessori preschool and elementary education where the emphasis was on hands-on, self-guided learning. There, I “learned how to learn”, actively exploring presented information in depth of my own accord, and it is something I still enjoy doing today. Several years ago, I attended an academic summer programming camp, where learning how to learn took on a whole different meaning. My teacher’s style did not match my learning style and, while frustrating at first, it created the perfect environment for me to explore and experiment with different approaches. When the TA noticed that I had finished quickly, she encouraged me to enhance my program, giving me one example line of code and let me figure out the rest for myself. After many trials and errors, I successfully created the most colorful, psychedelic, and chaotic interface in the whole class! Although the product was far from perfect, I learned more about coding and logic than if I had been shown the exact method. Fostering kittens is rewarding for many reasons, but for me, it’s more than just being able to see adorable faces every day. Getting to help these creatures grow and mature from helpless newborns into inquisitive, creative, and intelligent beings gives me hope for my own future. I’d like to take my enthusiasm for problem-solving and focus it on real-world problems through computer science. I hope to incorporate my interest in psychology into my career in computer science by creating programs and algorithms to aid in the study of the brain, human development, psychology, and mental health with intuitive, user-friendly interfaces. If kittens can grow and learn so much without instructions in life, is there any limit to what I can accomplish?

No Instructions? Looking into the carrier, I see a squirming, squeaking mass of fur, tails, and noses. They do not come with instructions, but I am their lifeline. In the past five years, I have fostered over 50 neonatal kittens. I was taught the basics – bottle feeding, keeping them warm, and pottying. However, without their mother to teach them, walking, playing, eating, and using the litter box are difficult to learn. This lack of instruction is counteracted by their endless curiosity, as they learn through experimentation. They don’t give up when they fall down with a crash after failing to scale a gate. From their endless curiosity to their resilience and dogged independence, I see myself in these kittens every day. I like when I am not given instructions. I enjoy testing my limits by experimenting with my own knowledge and abilities and discovering new techniques to solve problems. My physics teacher assigned a lab giving us an opportunity to learn for ourselves, much like kittens do. Instead of providing procedures introducing us to the topic, we simply received one prompt: calculate the water flow rate out of the plastic bottle. In the world of physics unknowns, I was now the orphaned kitten, abruptly stolen from the comfort of my rubrics and thrown headfirst into the world of science with only my intuition as my guide. I decided to approach the problem like a kitten would, testing the limits of both the lab and myself through experimentation and exploration. Armed with only measuring tools and previous knowledge, my team experimented with calculations, formulas, and measurements. I found it incredibly freeing to be creative and problem-solve naturally instead of mindlessly following provided procedures. I did not have to wonder why I was using certain formulas, measuring certain values, or analyzing certain data points - I knew because I had decided to do it myself. This curiosity likely stems from my Montessori preschool and elementary education where the emphasis was on hands-on, self-guided learning. There, I “learned how to learn”, actively exploring presented information in depth of my own accord, and it is something I still enjoy doing today. Several years ago, I attended an academic summer programming camp, where learning how to learn took on a whole different meaning. My teacher’s style did not match my learning style and, while frustrating at first, it created the perfect environment for me to explore and experiment with different approaches. When the TA noticed that I had finished quickly, she encouraged me to enhance my program, giving me one example line of code and let me figure out the rest for myself. After many trials and errors, I successfully created the most colorful, psychedelic, and chaotic interface in the whole class! Although the product was far from perfect, I learned more about coding and logic than if I had been shown the exact method. Fostering kittens is rewarding for many reasons, but for me, it’s more than just seeing adorable faces every day. Getting to help these creatures grow and mature from helpless newborns into inquisitive, creative, and intelligent beings gives me hope for my future. I’d like to take my enthusiasm for problem-solving and focus it on real-world problems through computer science. I hope to incorporate my interest in psychology into my career in computer science by creating programs and algorithms to aid in the study of the brain, human development, psychology, and mental health with intuitive, user-friendly interfaces. If kittens can grow and learn so much without instructions in life, is there any limit to what I can accomplish?

Referees are Leaders Too I have played lacrosse and soccer for as long as I can remember. I played from the age of three through seventeen. In high school, I transitioned from local intra-club play to representing my club in the county league. Playing became a consistency in my life, teaching me at a young age how to work with both friends and people I’d never met. More importantly, though, sports taught me how to oppose and compete with respect, being aggressive, focused, and determined on the field, but kind and courteous off the field. When I was younger, I was confused about the end-of-game high-fiving tradition – why would you congratulate the other team for losing, or show your appreciation that they beat you? As I grew, I came to understand and enjoy the act of appreciating my peers who challenged me to become better, while maintaining respect for myself and my team and upholding good sportsmanship. This type of competition only grows exponentially throughout life. In school, classes become progressively more challenging. However, I am proud that I have never succumbed to the pressure to cheat, one-up, or sabotage my classmates in order to get ahead. I contribute this largely to all I learned during my years playing lacrosse and soccer – unsportsmanlike conduct rarely wins games. When it does, that is worse than losing honestly. In the same way, grades, college acceptances, job offers, and everything else are so much better when they are earned honestly and fairly. In eighth grade, I became a referee. I took a class, passed a test, and suddenly, I was employed for the first time in my life. Although I was only looking for some work experience and spare pocket money, this job became much more meaningful than I ever expected. Working as a referee gave me an opportunity to branch out and do something out of my comfort zone, while still working to serve my community. Having played recreationally for so long, I had accrued a significant amount of experience and knowledge about the game. Through refereeing, I put my knowledge of the game and its intricate rules to good use, while also developing my leadership skills and learning more about the technicalities through real-life experience. This opportunity helped me gain confidence while I led, as I had to learn how to assert myself and be confident in my decisions and those of my fellow referees, while remaining calm in the face of angry parents (and occasionally coaches). As a referee, I was not only a mediator and a judge but also a teacher. This position allowed me to teach the children I refereed about the game as I corrected them and demonstrated proper techniques while enforcing safety guidelines. Sportsmanship, however, has been the most important thing to teach, especially when the players are so young. Although playing fairly, treating others with respect, and following rules are taught as sportsmanship in the context of the game, these qualities can be applied to life as well. I taught players the proper way to treat their peers, both on and off the field. I know that, like me, children who learn the value of sportsmanship – respect for others and oneself, cooperation, and the ability to gracefully handle conflict, among many others – will carry these lessons throughout their whole lives. As I move forward, I am confident that continuing to live my life in the most sportsmanlike way possible will help motivate me to work hard, work honestly, learn for the sake of self-improvement, and make many friends along the way.

No Instructions? No Problem! Looking into the carrier, I see a squirming, squeaking mass of fur, tails, and noses. They do not come with instructions, but I am their lifeline. In the past five years, I have fostered over 50 neonatal kittens. I was taught the basics – bottle feeding, keeping them warm, and pottying. However, without their mother to teach them, walking, playing, eating, and using the litter box are difficult to learn. This lack of instruction is counteracted by their endless curiosity, as they learn through experimentation. They don’t give up when they fall down with a crash after failing to scale a gate. They stay focused on growing, experimenting, and developing so they can achieve their goals. From their endless curiosity to their resilience and dogged independence, I see myself in these kittens every day. By focusing on what I can control and thinking positively, I know I can achieve anything. I like when I am not given instructions. I enjoy testing my limits by experimenting with my own knowledge and abilities and discovering new techniques to solve problems. My physics teacher assigned a lab giving us an opportunity to learn for ourselves, much like kittens do. Instead of providing procedures introducing us to the topic, we simply received one prompt: calculate the water flow rate out of the plastic bottle. In the world of physics unknowns, I was now the orphaned kitten, abruptly stolen from the comfort of my rubrics and thrown headfirst into the world of science with only my intuition as my guide. I decided to approach the problem like a kitten would, testing the limits of both the lab and myself through experimentation and exploration. Armed with only measuring tools and previous knowledge, my team experimented with calculations, formulas, and measurements. I found it incredibly freeing to be creative and problem-solve naturally instead of mindlessly following provided procedures. I did not have to wonder why I was using certain formulas, measuring certain values, or analyzing certain data points - I knew because I had decided to do it myself. This curiosity likely stems from my Montessori preschool and elementary education where the emphasis was on hands-on, self-guided learning. There, I “learned how to learn,” actively exploring presented information in-depth of my own accord, and it is something I still enjoy doing today. Fostering kittens is rewarding for many reasons, but for me, it’s more than just being able to see adorable faces every day. Getting to help these creatures grow and mature from helpless newborns into inquisitive, creative, and intelligent beings gives me hope for my own future. I would like to take my enthusiasm for problem-solving and focus it on real-world problems through computer science. I hope to incorporate my interest in psychology into my career in computer science by creating programs and algorithms to aid in the study of the brain, human development, psychology, and mental health with intuitive, user-friendly interfaces. I am headed on a great path so far in life. I plan to use scholarship money to directly pay for my college tuition to lessen the financial burden on my parents and extended family. I cannot wait to see what’s around the next corner for me. If kittens can grow and learn so much without instructions in life, with my positive attitude is there any limit to what I can accomplish?

“Hey Kelly, did you eat today?” my mom calls from upstairs. “Ummmm, no?” “Please eat something! There are a lot of healthy choices in the fridge.” She replies. This was a pretty typical exchange most days when I would arrive home from high school. It wasn’t that I had an aversion to eating or an eating disorder perse, it was just that I would forget to eat. Compounding is the fact that I have misophonia – a neurological difference that causes a fight or flight response to certain sounds. A very common trigger is the sound of other people eating. So even if I did take the time during the day to eat, I often did not want to eat in the cafeteria. I continued on this way for years. I was often tired and grumpy, but I thought I was doing just fine. When I arrived on my college campus in the fall of 2021, I was excited about the change, but it was a major adjustment to move 500 miles from home, where I knew nobody, and live on my own. My meal skipping became even worse as remembering when to eat meals, or even eat meals at all, was difficult with all the changes and newness I was juggling. I realized that my skipping meals behavior was no longer going to cut it. I was often out of energy and had trouble focusing on my tough college classes. Walking all over campus used up most of the energy I had. Something had to change. I had to change. I had to start taking my health seriously. My old ways were not going to work in this new environment. I began to make a concerted effort to go to the dining hall at the same time every day for lunch and dinner whether I was hungry or not. Going to the dining hall on a regular schedule was a great start, but as a typical college student, I often find myself tired. I don’t drink coffee or energy drinks, so instead of using caffeine, I have sometimes resorted to eating sugary foods to give myself an energy boost. I know this is not a good habit and I am working hard to correct it. I try to be more mindful and choose healthy foods. Often, when I did eat in the dining halls, I chose whatever meal would be easiest and fastest. I was not always choosing objectively “unhealthy” meals, but I definitely was not paying much attention to how balanced my diet was. Often, I would think back on what I had eaten that day and realize I hadn’t had much protein, or that I had eaten only vegetables and nothing else, or that I had had a lot of sugar. It became fairly easy for me to connect what I ate that day with how I am feeling at the end of the day. Am I tired and sluggish? Yep, I ate a lot of sugar. Do I feel pretty good, satiated, and have clear focus? Yep, I ate a good amount of protein, vegetables, and fruit that day. Though it’s hard to eat healthy all the time in college. I am more in touch with how healthy eating simply makes my life better – focus, sleep, mood and energy are all better. Every day, I try to make better choices when it comes to my diet. Like all kids, I still eat junk food, but I am trying harder to minimize it and make better choices.

“Hey Kelly, did you eat today?” my mom calls from upstairs. “Ummmm, no?” “Please eat something! There are a lot of healthy choices in the fridge.” She replies. This was a pretty typical exchange most days when I would arrive home from high school. It wasn’t that I had an aversion to eating or an eating disorder perse, it was just that I would forget to eat. Compounding is the fact that I have misophonia – a neurological difference that causes a fight or flight response to certain sounds. A very common trigger is the sound of other people eating. So even if I did take the time during the day to eat, I often did not want to eat in the cafeteria. I continued on this way for years. I thought I was doing just fine. When I arrived on my college campus in the fall of 2021, I was excited about the change, but it was a major adjustment to move 500 miles from home, where I knew nobody, and live on my own. My meal skipping became even worse as remembering when to eat meals or eat meals at all was difficult with all the changes and newness I was juggling. I realized that my skipping meals behavior was no longer going to cut it. I was often out of energy and couldn’t focus on my tough college classes. Walking all over campus used up most of the energy I had. Something had to change. I had to change. I had to start taking my health seriously. My old ways were not going to work in this new environment. I began to make a concerted effort to go to the dining hall at the same time every day for lunch and dinner whether I was hungry or not. Once there I tried to choose foods that would fuel me and not just fill me. Pretty quickly, this concerted effort turned into an unconscious routine. I found myself feeling better all around. In addition to my meal-skipping issues, college is stressful. Very stressful! I am in a very tough major at a top college. I worked hard in high school, but college is a whole other level where I am no longer the big fish and am now surrounded by kids who are extremely smart. Just as I worked on my eating behaviors, I needed to work on my stress management if I was going to survive the semester, much less the 4 years, at college. I began to use exercise and mindfulness to manage stress. When I am stressed, I tend to overthink everything, imagining worst-case scenarios and overanalyzing things that have already happened. Exercise helps me distract myself from what I am stressed about and do something with all the nervous energy I have built up. This also makes it easier to sleep later that night – helping me develop a healthier sleep routine as well. I find that when I come back to the stressor later, it often wasn’t as big of a deal as I was making it out to be. Distracting myself with exercise helps me put things in perspective. There are many other things I need to do along my wellness journey such as starting a mindfulness practice. But, for now, I'm focusing on eating regularly, exercising and handling stress in healthy ways. So far, the changes I’ve made are paying off. Not only am I feeling a lot better, but I have been thriving in all of my courses. For me, health and wellness is definitely a journey, not a race.

“Hey Kelly, did you eat today?” my mom calls from upstairs. “Ummmm, no?” “Please eat something! There are a lot of healthy choices in the fridge.” She replies. This was a pretty typical exchange most days when I would arrive home from high school. It wasn’t that I had an aversion to eating or an eating disorder perse, it was just that I would forget to eat. Compounding is the fact that I have misophonia – a neurological difference that causes a fight or flight response to certain sounds. A very common trigger is the sound of other people eating. So even if I did take the time during the day to eat, I often did not want to eat in the cafeteria. I continued on this way for years. I thought I was doing just fine. When I arrived on my college campus in the fall of 2021, I was excited about the change, but it was a major adjustment to move 500 miles from home, where I knew nobody, and live on my own. My meal skipping became even worse as remembering when to eat meals or eat meals at all was difficult with all the changes and newness I was juggling. I realized that my skipping meals behavior was no longer going to cut it. I was often out of energy and couldn’t focus on my tough college classes. Walking all over campus used up most of the energy I had. Something had to change. I had to change. I had to start taking my health seriously. My old ways were not going to work in this new environment. I began to make a concerted effort to go to the dining hall at the same time every day for lunch and dinner whether I was hungry or not. Once there I tried to choose foods that would fuel me and not just fill me. Pretty quickly, this concerted effort turned into an unconscious routine. I found myself feeling better all around. In addition to my meal-skipping issues, college is stressful. Very stressful! I am in a very tough major at a top college. I worked hard in high school, but college is a whole other level where I am no longer the big fish and am now surrounded by kids who are extremely smart. Just as I worked on my eating behaviors, I needed to work on my stress management if I was going to survive the semester, much less the 4 years, at college. I began to use exercise and mindfulness to manage stress. When I am stressed, I tend to overthink everything, imagining worst-case scenarios and overanalyzing things that have already happened. Exercise helps me distract myself from what I am stressed about and do something with all the nervous energy I have built up. This also makes it easier to sleep later that night – helping me develop a healthier sleep routine as well. I find that when I come back to the stressor later, it often wasn’t as big of a deal as I was making it out to be. Distracting myself with exercise helps me put things in perspective. There are many other things I need to do along my wellness journey such as starting a mindfulness practice. But, for now, I am focusing on eating regularly, exercising and handling stress in healthy ways. The more aware I become of the healthy choices I can make in my wellness journey, the healthier I will continue to become. For me, health and wellness is definitely a journey, not a race.

I come from a long line of STEM history. My brother is a computer scientist, my parents are both software engineers, my grandfathers and great-grandfathers on both sides of my family were electrical engineers. Carrying on in the STEM field just seems to come naturally to me. I have always been excited and impressed by the everyday impacts that STEM has on the world. I suppose STEM is my legacy. The most impressive feats of engineering, to me, are things that impact daily life in small, yet important ways. My great-grandfather, who I was fortunate to know for the first six years of my life, was my initial inspiration to pursue STEM. He was completely colorblind, but this didn’t stop him from becoming an engineer. If anything, it helped him see what others often missed. He put his unique viewpoint to use, creating indicator lights on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The lights hang above each lane and display a green arrow, to indicate that you are traveling the right way, or a red X, to indicate that you are travelling the wrong way. This replaced a singular light that would either display red or green, without symbols. Although this does not seem like a huge feat, it was revolutionary at the time and it was incredibly helpful for people who are colorblind, especially because red-green colorblindness is the most common type. When I and millions of other people drive across the Bay Bridge now, we are safer because of my great-grandfather’s ingenuity, and I am reminded that some of the most life-changing inventions are things that may be small and taken for granted. Google Translate has fascinated me since I can remember. At fifteen, I started wondering what this tool could really become. Could it someday learn to understand languages like a human, instead of relying on dictionary definitions? Again, my STEM interests were peaked. I realized that this involved computer science, so I investigated programming and machine learning to see if these topics interested me. The Johns Hopkins’s CTY (Center for Talented Youth) programming camp I attended confirmed this interest and began my computer science education, quickly leading me to wonder about all of the ways Google Translate could be improved by machine learning and complex algorithms. Considering how far artificial intelligence like Watson has already come, computers do have some ability to learn and mimic human conversations already, so why can’t that capability be merged with translation? What else can computers learn to do? Questions like this really motivate me to learn more about computer science, especially in the areas of machine learning and AI. I have also continued to pursue my interest in linguistics and develop my career in the area of natural language processing, computational linguistics and sociolinguistics. As a computer science major, I won’t be designing huge buildings, airplanes, or prosthetic limbs. My code could be used on major projects in breakthrough scientific research, or perhaps I will be working on smaller projects, yet ones that change the world for the better. As a computer scientist, I don’t need to create programs that look impressive. In drawing from my grandfather’s work, I see that sometimes simply considering the viewpoint of another person can make a huge impact; one that can be a legacy and carry on for generations.

Leadership comes in many forms. When I was in eighth grade, I decided to become a soccer referee. I took a class, passed a test, and suddenly, I was employed for the first time in my life. Although I was only looking for some work experience and some spare pocket money at the time, this job has become much more meaningful to me than I ever expected. Working as a referee, especially for young children as I do, has given me an opportunity to branch out and do something out of my comfort zone, while still working to serve my community. Having played soccer recreationally since I was three years old, I have accrued a significant amount of experience and knowledge about the game over my lifetime. I have found that through refereeing, I am able to put this knowledge about soccer and its intricate rules to good use, while also developing my leadership skills and learning more about the technicalities of the game through real-life experience. This opportunity has been great in helping me gain confidence while I lead, as I have had to learn how to assert myself and be confident in my decisions and those of my fellow referees, while remaining calm in the face of angry parents (and occasionally coaches). Not only am I a mediator and a judge as a referee, I am also a teacher and a leader. This position gives me the opportunity to teach the children I referee about soccer as I correct them and demonstrate proper techniques for throw-ins, goal kicks, corner kicks, and other soccer skills. I also teach safety, for example, ensuring that the players know how to avoid heading the ball (it is not allowed in the young leagues that I referee) and making sure that all players who need special protective equipment, such as mouthguards for braces, padding for casts, or glasses that are designed for playing sports, have this equipment ready and in use while they play. Sportsmanship, however, is the most important thing I can teach in any sport, especially when the players are so young. Although playing fairly, treating others with respect, and following rules are taught as sportsmanship in the context of the game, these qualities can be applied to life as well. I teach the players the proper way to treat their peers, both on and off the field. I am glad that I have an opportunity to be a leader and a role model for younger kids and that I can give back to my community with my time and service. I feel it is our duty to each other to step up and be a leader where we can.

Right now I am exploring a career in computational/sociolinguistics. For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. I knew that I loved math and decided to major in computer science in college. It was not until more recently that I realized I could combine all of my academic interests into one career goal. When I got into programming and decided to major in computer science, I was excited for my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. Luckily, during my first year at Georgia Tech, I quickly discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love with the coursework. I declared the minor after about two months of college, and it has been one of the best decisions I have made here at Tech. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. My favorite class in college so far has been a course called “Languages and Computers”, where we discuss NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. In this course, we look at the linguistics but also the code, as we analyze a variety of relevant topics from the computer science perspective (such as the Naive Bayes Classifier, Peter Norvig’s Spell Checker, and Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm), as well as use at tools like nltk and SpaCy. However, the unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as, for example, why we take out stop words when processing a query, or how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. In addition to the CS and Linguistics courses I have taken, I am working as an assistant researcher at Georgia Tech’s Natural Language Processing Lab, where we are currently working on a project to improve text simplification models to be more accurate and truthful in their summarization. I am really enjoying this opportunity, and I am sure I will learn a lot in the years to come. Overall, I’m interested in NLP because it is the perfect combination of all of the things I am interested in - computer science, linguistics, and foreign language. I am excited for the chance to get involved in a similar field or to branch out and discover new interests as I continue in my college education and career.

The activity that I feel is most significant, in terms of its impact on my community and my personal development, is my job as a referee. When I was in eighth grade, I decided to become a soccer referee. I took a class, passed a test, and suddenly, I was employed for the first time in my life. Although I was only looking for some work experience and some spare pocket money at the time, this job has become much more meaningful to me than I ever expected. Working as a referee, especially for young children as I do, has given me an opportunity to branch out and do something out of my comfort zone, while still working to serve my community. Having played soccer recreationally since I was three years old, I have accrued a significant amount of experience and knowledge about the game over my lifetime. I have found that through refereeing, I am able to put this knowledge about soccer and its intricate rules to good use, while also developing my leadership skills and learning more about the technicalities of the game through real-life experience. This opportunity has been great in helping me gain confidence while I lead, as I have had to learn how to assert myself and be confident in my decisions and those of my fellow referees while remaining calm in the face of angry parents (and occasionally coaches). Not only am I a mediator and a judge as a referee, I am also a teacher. This position gives me the opportunity to teach the children I referee about soccer as I correct them and demonstrate proper techniques for throw-ins, goal kicks, corner kicks, and other soccer skills. I also teach safety, for example, ensuring that the players know how to avoid heading the ball (it is not allowed in the young leagues that I referee) and making sure that all players who need special protective equipment, such as mouthguards for braces, padding for casts, or glasses that are designed for playing sports, have this equipment ready and in use while they play. Sportsmanship, however, is the most important thing I can teach in any sport, especially when the players are so young. Although playing fairly, treating others with respect, and following rules are taught as sportsmanship in the context of the game, these qualities can be applied to life as well. I teach the players the proper way to treat their peers, both on and off the field. I am glad that I have an opportunity to be a role model for younger kids and that I can give back to my community with my time and service.

For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. I knew that I loved math and decided to major in computer science in college. It was not until more recently that I realized I could combine all of my academic interests into one career goal. When I got into programming and decided to major in computer science, I was excited for my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. Luckily, during my first year at Georgia Tech, I quickly discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love with the coursework. I declared the minor after about two months of college, and it has been one of the best decisions I have made here at Tech. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. My favorite class in college so far has been a course called “Languages and Computers”, where we discuss NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. In this course, we look at the linguistics but also the code, as we analyze a variety of relevant topics from the computer science perspective (such as the Naive Bayes Classifier, Peter Norvig’s Spell Checker, and Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm), as well as use at tools like nltk and SpaCy. However, the unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as, for example, why we take out stop words when processing a query, or how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. In addition to the CS and Linguistics courses I have taken, I have recently started a position at Georgia Tech’s Natural Language Processing Lab, where we are currently working on a project to improve text simplification models to be more accurate and truthful in their summarization. I am excited for this opportunity, and I am sure I will learn a lot in the years to come. Overall, I’m interested in NLP because it is the perfect combination of all of the things I am interested in - computer science, linguistics, and foreign language. I am excited for the chance to get involved in a similar field or to branch out and discover new interests as I continue in my college education and career.

In the age of the internet and instant gratification, we all have access to an overabundance of information and countless opportunities for new experiences right at our fingertips. It is easy to become complacent in the endless routine of life, knowing that we have the opportunity to learn and experience, but never actually taking advantage of that opportunity. Most people find comfort in routine, but it is hard to know when that comfort turns into mindless repetition, when the stability and predictability of your life turns to monotony. Getting out of your comfort zone does not have to mean doing something terrifying or changing your life forever. Sometimes, just avoiding monotony by getting out of your comfort zone is enough to keep you alive, awake, and experiencing life with both eyes wide open. The quality I most value about myself has been my ability to get comfortable being uncomfortable. As an introvert, speaking in front of a group of people or just someone I don’t know can bring me out of my comfort zone. However, it is very important that I do this. It isn’t healthy to live an isolated life, so getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, in this manner, improves my social relationships and makes me more confident as a person. I have grown due to the efforts I have made to become more comfortable with public speaking. I participated in Model United Nations all through high school and middle school. When I first joined, everyone was surprised. I was and still am a quiet person. I never felt the need to make my opinions known to everyone. I am also a STEM kid. I do well in the humanities, but they are often not my favorites. But I figured it would be good to push myself to try it. I got nervous and uncomfortable before conferences, but once immersed in debates, I become confident and assertive. At seventeen, I chaired a middle school conference. I did not understand how much I had grown until I had the opportunity to help younger. In these students, I saw where I was - shy, unconfident, and confused. I now recognized how I had grown in a short time – well-versed and confident – enough to help new, young delegates. I stretch beyond my comfort zone through other pursuits as well. Being president and co-founder of my school’s Psychology club helped me get used to speaking in front of a group of people as a teacher. After doing diligent research, I presented topics and encouraged club discussion. As captain, I was the voice of my school’s “It’s Academic” quiz bowl team. My main focus is on encouraging teamwork amongst the team, and on making quick decisions in the case that we are unsure of an answer. This position is very unlike my roles in Model UN or Psychology club. I have continued to keep myself from getting too comfortable in the routine of life by pushing myself to do and lead more, which benefits not only myself but I hope those around me as well. Six years ago, I would have never seen myself in all of these leadership positions, teaching others and voluntarily putting myself into high-pressure, uncomfortable situations. However, I am extremely glad I did. Just because something is uncomfortable does not have to mean it is unpleasant. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is just a part of my life now, making me a more confident, more aware, and a more active individual in both my life and the lives of people around me.

Details Matter I come from a long line of STEM history. My brother is a computer scientist, my parents are both software engineers, and my grandfathers and great-grandfathers on both sides of my family were electrical engineers. Carrying on in the STEM field just seems to come naturally to me. I have always been excited and impressed by the everyday impacts that STEM has on the world. I suppose STEM is my legacy. The most impressive feats of engineering, to me, are things that impact daily life in small, yet important ways. My great-grandfather, who I was fortunate to know for the first six years of my life, was my initial inspiration to pursue STEM. He was completely colorblind, but this didn’t stop him from becoming an engineer. If anything, it helped him see what others often missed. He put his unique viewpoint to use, creating indicator lights on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The lights hang above each lane and display a green arrow, to indicate that you are traveling the right way, or a red X, to indicate that you are traveling the wrong way. This replaced a singular light that would either display red or green, without symbols. Although this does not seem like a huge feat, it was revolutionary at the time and it was incredibly helpful for people who are colorblind, especially because red-green colorblindness is the most common type. When I and millions of other people drive across the Bay Bridge now, we are safer because of my great-grandfather’s ingenuity, and I am reminded that some of the most life-changing inventions are things that may be small and taken for granted. Google Translate has fascinated me since I can remember. At fifteen, I started wondering what this tool could really become. Could it someday learn to understand languages like a human, instead of relying on dictionary definitions? Again, my STEM interests were peaked. I realized that this involved computer science, so I investigated programming and machine learning to see if these topics interested me. The Johns Hopkins’ CTY (Center for Talented Youth) programming camp I attended confirmed this interest and began my computer science education, quickly leading me to wonder about all of the ways Google Translate could be improved by machine learning and complex algorithms. Considering how far artificial intelligence like Watson has already come, computers do have some ability to learn and mimic human conversations already, so why can’t that capability be merged with translation? What else can computers learn to do? Questions like this really motivate me to learn more about computer science, especially in the areas of machine learning and AI. Although I do not know exactly what I will accomplish with computer science in the future, I am excited to investigate more and find out. As a computer science major, I won’t be designing huge buildings, airplanes, or prosthetic limbs. My code could be used on major projects in breakthrough scientific research in a cure for cancer, or perhaps I will probably be working on smaller projects, yet ones that change the world for the better. As a computer scientist, I don’t need to create programs that look impressive. In drawing from my grandfather’s work, I see that sometimes simply considering the viewpoint of another person can make a huge impact; one that can be a legacy and carry on for generations.

One Work, Many Opportunities I love the deep, philosophical nature of books that raise questions of morality and make you think for weeks. Perhaps an unexpected recommendation, I would have everyone read A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. Although the novel has prominent themes of psychology and the inherent nature of evil that made me question my own ideas about humanity, the aspect of this novel that influenced me the most was the unusual linguistics used throughout. At least 20% of the book was written in Nadsat, a made-up language based on Russian, English, and gibberish. This did not deter me from my fascination with the language or the book, as I took delight in the strange ways that Burgess contorted and played with languages to create his own. By the time I was halfway through the novel, the words just made sense. Upon finishing, I was surprised to realize that the aspect of the book that I anticipated being frustrating and cumbersome had become my favorite part. This prompted me to take a deeper interest in my Spanish classes. I quickly realized that language is inherently logical by nature, with correct and incorrect ways to construct words and sentences based on pre-established patterns and rules. However, languages can also be incredibly creative and expressive. The words in a sentence can be arranged in many ways, punctuation can change, and tone can shift ever so slightly to alter the meaning of the ideas communicated. Although I had appreciated these details in literature before, something about the use of completely made-up words and phrases grabbed my attention. Though writers have the freedom to use language creatively, it is still important to follow some rules if they want to effectively convey their message. When I started to investigate computer science shortly afterward, I quickly recognized that it would be perfect for me. The logic and mathematics of coding coupled with the creativity and expressiveness of language makes computer science the perfect career for me. Without the influence of A Clockwork Orange, and its crazy use of languages, I would not hold this interest in linguistics, nor would I be following the path toward computer science today. Though what I gained from this novel may be different from what others gain, that is one of the many joys of reading. Everyone can garner different things from a single written work.

Referees are Teachers Too I have played soccer for as long as I can remember – age of three through eighteen. In high school, I transitioned from local intra-club play to the county league. Playing every fall was a consistency in my life, teaching me at an early age how to work with both people I was friends with and people I had never met before. More importantly, playing soccer taught me how to oppose and compete with respect, aggressiveness, focus, and determination on the field, yet still remain kind and courteous off the field. When I was younger, I was confused by the tradition of high-fiving the other team at the end of the game –why would you congratulate the other team for losing, or show your appreciation that they beat you? As I grew, I came to understand and enjoy the act of appreciating my peers who challenged me to become better, while maintaining respect for myself and my team and upholding good sportsmanship. This type of competition only grows exponentially throughout life. School classes have become progressively more challenging. However, I am proud that I have never succumbed to the pressure to cheat, one-up, or sabotage my classmates to get ahead. I contribute this largely to all I learned during my years playing soccer – unsportsmanlike conduct rarely wins. When it does, that is worse than honestly losing. Similarly, grades, college acceptances, job offers, scholarships, etc. are so much more rewarding when they are earned honestly and fairly. Not only have I played soccer, though. At thirteen, I became a soccer referee. I took a class, passed a test, and suddenly I was employed for the first time in my life. I was only looking for some work experience and spare pocket change, but the job became much more meaningful than I expected. Refereeing forced me to do something out of my comfort zone, while still working to serve my community. Having played soccer recreationally for so long, I had accrued a significant amount of experience and knowledge about the game. Through refereeing, I put this soccer knowledge and its intricate rules to good use, while also developing my leadership skills and learning more about the technicalities of the game through real-life experience. This opportunity helped me gain confidence while I lead, as I learned how to assert myself and be confident in my decisions while remaining calm in the face of angry parents (and occasionally coaches). As a referee, I was not only a mediator and judge, but also a teacher. This position gave me the opportunity to teach the children I refereed about the game as I corrected them and demonstrated proper techniques for throw-ins, goal kicks, and corner kicks, and enforced safety guidelines. Sportsmanship, however, has been the most important thing to teach, especially when the players are so young. Although playing fairly, treating others with respect, and following rules are taught as sportsmanship in the context of the game, these qualities can be applied to life as well. I taught players the proper way to treat their peers, both on and off the field. I know that, like me, children who learn the values of sportsmanship – respect for others and oneself, cooperation, and the ability to gracefully handle conflict, among many others – will carry these lessons throughout their whole lives. As I move forward, I am confident that continuing to live my life in the most sportsmanlike way possible will help motivate me to work hard, work honestly, learn for the sake of self-improvement, and make many friends along the way.

For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages, but it was not until more recently that I realized I could combine all of my academic interests into one career goal. When I got into programming and decided to major in computer science, I was excited for my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. Luckily, during my first year at Georgia Tech, I quickly discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love with the coursework. I declared the minor after about two months of college and it has been one of the best decisions I have made here at Tech. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of NLP and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. Winning the Eitel Scholarship will help me continue to afford my education. We all know that college is expensive. And the burden the cost puts on me and my family is large. Every little big I can do to help offset that burden will be a big help.

Honestly, going to college has always been in my plan since I was small. My family values education and always encouraged me to make it a priority. Throughout my K-12 years, I continued to excel, especially in math and science. It became clearer every year that I loved learning. The decision came down to how I was going to pursue higher education. Would I go to a community college, part time while working, military then college, or a university full time? I chose to attend a university far from home. I wanted to get more than academics out of my experience. I wanted to get out of my bubble and meet people from other parts of the country and world. Georgia Tech has been more than I ever could have imagined. I love my classes, friends I’ve made, discussions I’ve had, different people I’ve encountered and really everything about it. I come from a family of generations of engineers and scientists on both sides. It has been no surprise that STEM was interesting to me as well. I have always loved math and science. They have been my happy place subjects in school. During high school, I participated in courses and camps centered around my budding interests. These included engineering, programming, psychology, logic and languages. I also did several internships in computer science. Every new experience influenced my possible future studies and career. I discovered that while I liked the engineering courses, the parts I liked the best were the programming portions. I really enjoyed all of the programming courses as well the unquiet minds course. Finding Georgia Tech was perfect. Through their threads program, I am able to combine my love of computer science with psychology. I’ve added a linguistics minor to cover all my top interests. Following graduation from college, I am currently mulling over two options. The first being to go straight on for my master’s degree in computer science at hopefully either Georgia Tech or UC Berkeley. At the moment, I think I would focus on human-computer interaction, interactive intelligence or computational linguistics. The second is to go to work in industry. While working, I plan to pursue my master’s in computer science part time. In industry, I hope to work on projects where I can make an impact on the human condition. I would like to tie together my love of computer science with linguistics and psychology. Perhaps I will work in computational linguistics, creating a real universal translator. Maybe I will develop software to aid in diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. No matter what my projects, I will always consider how a people can benefit from what I create.

Computer Science Puzzle, challenge, intriguing Found my passion, yay!

Whether it helped raise you, feed you, or teach you something new, a community benefits everyone, so we should all strive to give something back. From a young age, I have helped my church participate in "Winter Relief", a local program held annually to keep homeless individuals warm and fed. My duty is to make and serve food for our guests, but it’s important not to neglect the duty we have to help each other emotionally too. Something as simple as eating and talking together can really make a difference, as homeless people are often seen as “lesser than” due to their misfortune. Conversing with complete strangers can be uncomfortable for me as an introvert, but it’s helped me grow as a person. In that sense, we help each other out: I offer a keen ear to whatever they'd like to talk about, and they give me a little glimpse of their world and challenge me to be more open to others. Through conversations, I have learned about different causes of homelessness and have been surprised at how often it is caused by untreated, undiagnosed mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or addiction. These illnesses can ruin a life, making people blind to misfortune until it's too late. This shocking fact has increased my interest in psychology and the brain. I know that many cities have a significant amount of homelessness. No matter where I am, I plan to continue to participating in outreach to the community around me to help the individuals that most need it, and to destigmatize mental illness and poverty so that my peers can feel empowered to help as well. One way I am currently and plan to continue making the larger world a better place is by doing my part to affect climate change. I could write hundreds of words on different ways to impact climate change. But instead, I feel it is really a simple matter of personal responsibility. Every person needs to find ways in their lives to make small changes that, when put together with everyone else's small changes, will add up to big changes. Small things such as: - ride a bike or walk to a local event or store instead of driving - when you cannot walk or bike, use public transportation instead of driving your car - turn off the lights and power down electronics when not in use and/or not at home - keep the thermostat lower in the winter and higher in the summer - buy only the food you need and plan to use thus reducing food waste - purchase items in recyclable packaging or better yet, no packing at all - plant a garden and trees - reuse items instead of always buying new - support local building projects that plan to install solar panels with your voice - support renewable energy sources such as wind farms and solar farms with your donations I personally strive every day to do the small things on this list that can add up to make a difference. If we all encourage our friends, neighbors, and fellow world citizens to also make these changes, we will go a long way to helping combat climate change. Everyone can find some way to help their local community and broader world be a better place. We all have strengths and if we just use even a tiny bit of them, we can each make an impact in the lives of others.

I could write hundreds of words on different ways to impact climate change. But instead, I feel it is really a simple matter of personal responsibility. Every person needs to find ways in their lives to make small changes that, when put together with everyone else's small changes, will add up to big changes. Small things such as: - ride a bike or walk to a local event or store instead of driving - when you cannot walk or bike, use public transportation instead of driving your car - turn off the lights and power down electronics when not in use and/or not at home - keep the thermostat lower in the winter and higher in the summer - buy only the food you need and plan to use thus reducing food waste - purchase items in recyclable packaging or better yet, no packing at all - plant a garden and trees - reuse items instead of always buying new - support local building projects that plan to install solar panels with your voice - install solar panels on your home and business - support wind farms and solar farms with your donations I personally strive every day to do the small things on this list that can add up to make a difference. If we all encourage our friends, neighbors, and fellow world citizens to also make these changes, we will go a long way to helping combat climate change.

Lights and Arrows The most impressive feats of engineering, to me, are things that impact daily life in small, yet important ways. My great-grandfather, who I was fortunate to know for the first six years of my life, was my initial inspiration to pursue STEM. He was completely colorblind, but this didn’t stop him from becoming an engineer. If anything, it helped him see what others often missed. He put his unique viewpoint to use, creating indicator lights on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The lights hang above each lane and display a green arrow, to indicate that you are traveling the right way, or a red X, to indicate that you are travelling the wrong way. This replaced a singular light that would either display red or green, without symbols. Although this does not seem like a huge feat, it was revolutionary at the time and it was incredibly helpful for people who are colorblind, especially because red-green colorblindness is the most common type. When I and millions of other people drive across the Bay Bridge now, we are safer because of my great-grandfather’s ingenuity, and I am reminded that some of the most life-changing inventions are things that may be small and taken for granted. As a computer science major, I won’t be designing huge buildings, airplanes, or prosthetic limbs. My code could be used on major projects in breakthrough scientific research in a cure for cancer, or perhaps I will probably be working on smaller projects, yet ones that change the world for the better. As a computer scientist, I don’t need to create programs that look impressive. In drawing from my grandfather’s work, I see that sometimes simply considering the viewpoint of another person can make a huge impact; one that can carry on for generations.

For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. I knew that I loved math and decided to major in computer science in college. It was not until more recently that I realized I could combine all of my academic interests into one career goal. When I got into programming and decided to major in computer science, I was excited for my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. Luckily, during my first year at Georgia Tech, I quickly discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love with the coursework. I declared the minor after about two months of college, and it has been one of the best decisions I have made here at Tech. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. My favorite class in college so far has been a course called “Languages and Computers”, where we discuss NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. In this course, we look at the linguistics but also the code, as we analyze a variety of relevant topics from the computer science perspective (such as the Naive Bayes Classifier, Peter Norvig’s Spell Checker, and Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm), as well as use at tools like nltk and SpaCy. However, the unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as, for example, why we take out stop words when processing a query, or how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. In addition to the CS and Linguistics courses I have taken, I have recently started a position at Georgia Tech’s Natural Language Processing Lab, where we are currently working on a project to improve text simplification models to be more accurate and truthful in their summarization. I am excited for this opportunity, and I am sure I will learn a lot in the years to come. Overall, I’m interested in NLP because it is the perfect combination of all of the things I am interested in - computer science, linguistics, and foreign language. I am excited for the chance to get involved in a similar field or to branch out and discover new interests as I continue in my college education and career.

For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages. However, in high school, I was discouraged in my pursuits of match due to gender bias. Knowing my true heart and that STEM what where I belonged, I pushed back and was able to get the education I wanted and deserved. In group projects in high school, I could easily see that the girls and the boys brought different perspectives to the challenges. Now in college, where I am surrounded by many people of diverse backgrounds, group projects are truly enlightening. As I work with my peers, we each bring different insights to everything we do. If we were all of the same cookie cutter, we would never come up with some of the very creative and fantastic solutions that we do! I know now, even more than I did several years ago, that diversity breeds brilliance. I hope that in my future work environments, I can continue to be surrounded by people of all walks of life. I knew that I loved math and decided to major in computer science in college. It was not until more recently that I realized I could combine all of my academic interests into one career goal. When I got into programming and decided to major in computer science, I was excited for my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. Luckily, during my first year at Georgia Tech, I quickly discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love with the coursework. I declared the minor after about two months of college, and it has been one of the best decisions I have made here at Tech. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. My favorite class in college so far has been a course called “Languages and Computers”, where we discuss NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. In this course, we look at the linguistics but also the code, as we analyze a variety of relevant topics from the computer science perspective (such as the Naive Bayes Classifier, Peter Norvig’s Spell Checker, and Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm), as well as use at tools like nltk and SpaCy. However, the unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as, for example, why we take out stop words when processing a query, or how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. In addition to the CS and Linguistics courses I have taken, I have recently started a position at Georgia Tech’s Natural Language Processing Lab, where we are currently working on a project to improve text simplification models to be more accurate and truthful in their summarization. I am excited for this opportunity, and I am sure I will learn a lot in the years to come. Overall, I’m interested in NLP because it is the perfect combination of all of the things I am interested in - computer science, linguistics, and foreign language. I am excited for the chance to get involved in a similar field or to branch out and discover new interests as I continue in my college education and career.

For many years I have known I enjoyed and excelled at math, logic, grammar, and foreign languages, but it was not until more recently that I realized I could combine all of my academic interests into one career goal. When I got into programming and decided to major in computer science, I was excited for my future, but I felt it was missing a major passion of mine - linguistics and language learning. Luckily, during my first year at Georgia Tech, I quickly discovered the Linguistics minor and fell in love with the coursework. I declared the minor after about two months of college and it has been one of the best decisions I have made here at Tech. Since then, I have researched my career and future options - I am truly fascinated with the fields of Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics, and I hope to work in these fields one day, especially focusing on translation systems or a similar concentration that also involves foreign languages. My favorite class in college so far has been a course called “Languages and Computers”, where we discuss NLP topics and techniques through a linguist’s lens. In this course, we look at the linguistics but also the code, as we analyze a variety of relevant topics from the computer science perspective (such as the Naive Bayes Classifier, Peter Norvig’s Spell Checker, and Shaheel Khan’s Machine Translation algorithm), as well as use at tools like nltk and SpaCy. However, the unique thing about this class is that we all deeply understand exactly what we are doing conceptually, as the course focuses on the linguistic reasons that certain decisions are made - such as, for example, why we take out stop words when processing a query, or how we should and shouldn’t store information given to a chatbot. In addition to the CS and Linguistics courses I have taken, I have recently started a position at Georgia Tech’s Natural Language Processing Lab, where we are currently working on a project to improve text simplification models to be more accurate and truthful in their summarization. I am excited for this opportunity, and I am sure I will learn a lot in the years to come. Overall, I’m interested in NLP because it is the perfect combination of all of the things I am interested in - computer science, linguistics, and foreign language. I am excited for the chance to get involved in a similar field or to branch out and discover new interests as I continue in my college education and career.

Lights and Arrows The most impressive feats of engineering, to me, are things that impact daily life in small, yet important ways. My great-grandfather, who I was fortunate to know for the first six years of my life, was my initial inspiration to pursue STEM. He was completely colorblind, but this didn’t stop him from becoming an engineer. If anything, it helped him see what others often missed. He put his unique viewpoint to use, creating indicator lights on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The lights hang above each lane and display a green arrow, to indicate that you are traveling the right way, or a red X, to indicate that you are travelling the wrong way. This replaced a singular light that would either display red or green, without symbols. Although this does not seem like a huge feat, it was revolutionary at the time and it was incredibly helpful for people who are colorblind, especially because red-green colorblindness is the most common type. When I and millions of other people drive across the Bay Bridge now, we are safer because of my great-grandfather’s ingenuity, and I am reminded that some of the most life-changing inventions are things that may be small and taken for granted. As a computer science major, I won’t be designing huge buildings, airplanes, or prosthetic limbs. My code could be used on major projects in breakthrough scientific research in a cure for cancer, or perhaps I will probably be working on smaller projects, yet ones that change the world for the better. As a computer scientist, I don’t need to create programs that look impressive. In drawing from my grandfather’s work, I see that sometimes simply considering the viewpoint of another person can make a huge impact; one that can carry on for generations.

No Instructions Necessary! Looking into the carrier, I see a squirming, squeaking mass of fur, tails, and noses. They do not come with instructions, but I am their lifeline. In the past five years, I have fostered over 50 neonatal kittens. I was taught the basics – bottle feeding, keeping them warm, and pottying. However, without their mother to teach them, walking, playing, eating, and using the litter box are difficult to learn. This lack of instruction is counteracted by their endless curiosity, as they learn through experimentation. They don’t give up when they fall down with a crash after failing to scale a gate. From their endless curiosity to their resilience and dogged independence, I see myself in these kittens every day. I like when I am not given instructions. I enjoy testing my limits by experimenting with my own knowledge and abilities, and discovering new techniques to solve problems. My physics teacher assigned a lab giving us an opportunity to learn for ourselves, much like kittens do. Instead of providing procedures introducing us to the topic, we simply received one prompt: calculate the outgoing plastic bottle water flow rate. In the world of physics unknowns, I was now the orphaned kitten, abruptly stolen from the comfort of my rubrics and thrown headfirst into the world of science with only my intuition as my guide. I decided to approach the problem like a kitten would, testing the limits of both the lab and myself through experimentation and exploration. Armed with only measuring tools and previous knowledge, my team experimented with calculations, formulas, and measurements. I found it incredibly freeing to be creative and problem-solve naturally instead of mindlessly following provided procedures. I didn't have to wonder why I was using certain formulas, measuring certain values, or analyzing certain data points - I knew because I had decided to do it myself. This curiosity likely stems from my Montessori pre-school and elementary education where the emphasis was on hands-on, self-guided learning. There, I “learned how to learn”, actively exploring presented information in depth of my own accord, and it is something I still enjoy doing today. Several years ago, I attended an academic summer programming camp, where learning how to learn took on a whole different meaning. My teacher’s style did not match my learning style and, while frustrating at first, it created the perfect environment for me to explore and experiment with different approaches. When the TA noticed that I had finished quickly, she encouraged me to enhance my program, giving me one example line of code and let me figure out the rest for myself. After many trials and errors, I successfully created the most colorful, psychedelic, and chaotic interface in the whole class! Although the product was far from perfect, I learned more about coding and logic than if I had been shown the exact method. Fostering kittens is rewarding for many reasons, but for me, it’s more than just being able to see adorable faces every day. Getting to help these creatures grow and mature from helpless newborns into inquisitive, creative, and intelligent beings gives me hope for my own future. I’d like to take my enthusiasm for problem-solving and focus it on real-world problems through computer science. I hope to incorporate my interest in psychology into my career in computer science by creating programs and algorithms to aid in the study of the brain, human development, psychology, and mental health with intuitive, user-friendly interfaces. If kittens can grow and learn so much without instructions in life, is there any limit to what I can accomplish?

No Instructions? Looking into the carrier, I see a squirming, squeaking mass of fur, tails, and noses. They do not come with instructions, but I am their lifeline. In the past five years, I have fostered over 50 neonatal kittens. I was taught the basics – bottle feeding, keeping them warm, and pottying. However, without their mother to teach them, walking, playing, eating, and using the litter box are difficult to learn. This lack of instruction is counteracted by their endless curiosity, as they learn through experimentation. They don’t give up when they fall down with a crash after failing to scale a gate. From their endless curiosity to their resilience and dogged independence, I see myself in these kittens every day. I like when I am not given instructions. I enjoy testing my limits by experimenting with my own knowledge and abilities, discovering new techniques to solve problems. My physics teacher assigned a lab giving us an opportunity to learn for ourselves, much like kittens do. Instead of providing procedures introducing us to the topic, we simply received one prompt: calculate the water flow rate out of the plastic bottle. In the world of physics unknowns, I was now the orphaned kitten, abruptly stolen from the comfort of my rubrics and thrown headfirst into the world of science with only my intuition as my guide. I decided to approach the problem like a kitten would, testing the limits of both the lab and myself through experimentation and exploration. Armed with only measuring tools and previous knowledge, my team experimented with calculations, formulas, and measurements. I found it incredibly freeing to be creative and problem-solve naturally instead of mindlessly following provided procedures. I did not have to wonder why I was using certain formulas, measuring certain values, or analyzing certain data points - I knew because I had decided to do it myself. This curiosity likely stems from my Montessori pre-school and elementary education where the emphasis was on hands-on, self-guided learning. There, I “learned how to learn”, actively exploring presented information in depth of my own accord, and it is something I still enjoy doing today. Several years ago, I attended an academic summer programming camp, where learning how to learn took on a whole different meaning. My teacher’s style did not match my learning style and, while frustrating at first, it created the perfect environment for me to explore and experiment with different approaches. When the TA noticed that I had finished quickly, she encouraged me to enhance my program, giving me one example line of code and let me figure out the rest for myself. After many trials and errors, I successfully created the most colorful, psychedelic, and chaotic interface in the whole class! Although the product was far from perfect, I learned more about coding and logic than if I had been shown the exact method. Fostering kittens is rewarding for many reasons, but for me, it’s more than just being able to see adorable faces every day. Help these creatures grow and mature from helpless newborns into inquisitive, creative, and intelligent beings gives me hope for my own future. I’d like to take my enthusiasm for problem-solving and focus it on real-world problems through computer science. I hope to incorporate my interest in psychology into my career in computer science by creating programs and algorithms to aid in the study of the brain, human development, psychology, and mental health with intuitive, user-friendly interfaces. If kittens can grow and learn so much without instructions in life, is there any limit to what I can accomplish?

The most impressive feats of engineering, to me, are things that impact daily life in small, yet important ways. My great-grandfather, who I was fortunate to know for the first six years of my life, was my inspiration to pursue engineering. He was completely colorblind, but this didn’t stop him from becoming an engineer. If anything, it helped him see what others often missed. He put his unique viewpoint to use, creating indicator lights on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The lights hang above each lane and display a green arrow, to indicate that you are traveling the right way, or a red X, to indicate that you are travelling the wrong way. This replaced a singular light that would either display red or green, without symbols. Although this does not seem like a huge feat, it was revolutionary at the time and it was incredibly helpful for people who are colorblind, especially because red-green colorblindness is the most common type. When I and millions of other people drive across the Bay Bridge now, we are safer because of my great-grandfather’s ingenuity and I am reminded that some of the most life-changing inventions are things that may be small and taken for granted. As a computer science major, I won’t be designing huge buildings, airplanes, or prosthetic limbs. My code could be used on major projects or missions, but I will probably be working on smaller projects, yet ones that change the world for the better. As a computer scientist, I don’t need to create programs that look impressive. In drawing from my grandfather’s work, I see that sometimes simply considering the viewpoint of another person can make a huge impact; one that can carry on for generations. I can have that kind of impact in today’s world through computer science.

My Teachers Were Gender Biased Being a woman in STEM can be a tough road. I have experienced gender bias a number of times. Here are just two of them. In eighth grade, while picking my freshman year courses, I wanted to take two math courses. This is not a typical path. I told my math teacher. She commented “oh, you shouldn’t do that Kelly. It will be too hard.” In the same breath, she turned to two boys in my class and suggested they do that very thing. I had better grades and was a more conscientious student. Both I and the boys knew that. They looked stunned having heard the entire conversation. But she was biased against girls in STEM which I found very odd for a math teacher. This shook my confidence a bit, but I went forward with my plan. In high school, I wanted to take both AP Physics 1 and 2 along with AP Calculus AB/BC my junior year. My guidance counselor literally said to me “that’s too hard, wouldn’t you rather take dance?”. NO! I love STEM! Again, my confidence was thrown a bit, but not as much as before. I ignored her biased remarks and took the STEM classes. I excelled in all of the courses and graduated as the top girl in my class (3/493). Women need to be confident to pursue a field that is male dominated. It’s unfortunate, but true. I have become more confident and able to ignore such biased comments. I continue to study and explore STEM, even when teachers try to imply it's not a girl thing. Not only was this a good thing for me, but I was able to encourage other girls my year and younger to not listen to the bias.