I am a first-generation Haitian American. My parents immigrated to America to find a better life due to the unsafe and dangerous socio-economic situation in Haiti. Growing up, I lived in a significantly disadvantaged community in which many individuals did not attend school and high-level education was not valued. My mother was fired from her position as a preschool teacher because she was undocumented. Eight years later, my mother pushed forward to pursue her passion for medicine and became a patient care technician. Along her journey, she ensured to teach me what she learned as she went through schooling. I remember that, after preschool, she would bring me to her afternoon classes and tell me what she learned through that day. Learning science at a young age helped me to discover my passion for health and medicine. As I grew older, I began to explore my creativity from a more artistic approach. I took a variety of art classes where I began to express myself through depictions of paintings, sculptures, and other designs. These were the two subjects that I naturally excelled at in school, the sciences and the arts. I navigated my journey through middle school and high school, where I discovered what I wanted to be, changing my intended pathway from law to medicine. When I started high school, I established that I wanted to be a physician, though I was not sure what area of medicine I wanted to specialize in. I had encountered problems expressing myself because my new school was limited in the coursework and extracurricular activities that they provide for the student body as it had been recently developed. I felt restricted and that I lacked the opportunity for self-expression I had sought out to find for years. As I approached my final year of high school, I began thinking of the occupations I could have that would combine my love for the sciences, more specifically the health sciences and medicine, with art. After looking into surgical specialties, I found plastic surgery to fit this role. A shocking, yet significant, moment in my life was when my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia and blindness. My grandmother's condition worsened to the point where she was having extreme hallucinations, was unable to recognize her own family, and not being able to feed herself. I then realized the importance of having access to proper healthcare and physicians that have experience with diverse groups of individuals. Due to a language barrier and the scarce amount of specialists in ophthalmology, my grandmother encountered difficulties having her condition diagnosed as she was unable to describe what she was feeling. As a result, we were notified that her condition was untreatable because of their inability to communicate. I witnessed a heartbreaking reality that people in our community are left uncared for due to the lack of diverse representation within the medical field. I plan to become a surgeon to help people like my grandmother. As a future surgeon, I plan to educate myself on the various ways I can increase the level of diversity and inclusion in the medical community and implement practices that ensure this becomes more prioritized by professionals. I would also like to focus on actions I can take to allow all people to feel accurately represented when seeking medical assistance. Further, I want to develop my knowledge of the differences in ethnic, cultural, social, and economic backgrounds so that I can treat them accordingly. Currently, I’m preparing myself by achieving my goals by studying hard in college, learning new languages, and about new cultures so I can ensure that I can help a variety of people and ensure success as a medical professional.

As a first-generation American, the pressure of being "the blessed savior" or the person who carries the family name out of poverty is prominent. All through my childhood, my family made sure to raise me in the light of being "perfect, competitive, and advanced." The sole purpose of raising this "perfect" child was to make sure I went to college, became a doctor, nurse, or engineer, and not continue my family's cycle of working minimum wage and not attending college. Both of my parents were immigrants from Haiti who came to America during their late twenties and early thirties. Due to immigration issues and the expensive expenses of getting a higher education, my parents did not attend college. My siblings as well did not attend college or pursue higher education due to a lack of motivation, family ideals, and poor grades. I am the youngest of my siblings but, I am the individual that my parents seem to put the most pressure on; you may wonder why. It is because I am their last chance. Growing up, I was always precocious, gifted in elementary, advanced in middle school, and starting hefty college classes in the ninth grade. My parents had always expected the most out of me from a young age, and sometimes they forget that I am still just a child. The lingering thought of me being the one who will take the family out of poverty never left their minds. The pressure of being a teen, dealing with sometimes chaotic family situations, and managing my education became too much. I felt as if I was doing it for them rather than doing it for me. Even on my worst days when I wanted to give up, I was obliged to put my emotions aside and "look at the more salient things in life." Silently while I coincidingly struggled with anxiety and depression, I managed to take on the weight of managing my household, caring for and feeding my partially deaf and blind grandmother while doing school work. Especially in the foreign community, mental illness is commonly looked down upon since we are often taught to repress our emotions, move on, and continue life. As a child of immigrants you are often told that "you have it easy" and "when I was your age..." but sometimes I feel that our family and our parents fail to notice that we grew up with different societal standards, and having your kids live a life that is "easy" is not a bad thing, because coming here you wanted to seek a better life for your kids that you did not have. The main thing that I want to achieve in the future is changing this intergenerational karmic cycle in my family and ensure when I have my own family we will value the importance of mental health, how our immigrant experiences affect us, and what we can do to ensure that all of us feel happy, heard, and free to express ourselves.

I am a first-generation Haitian American. My parents immigrated to America to find a better life due to the unsafe and dangerous socio-economic situation in Haiti. Growing up, I lived in a significantly disadvantaged community in which many individuals did not attend school and high-level education was not valued. My mother was fired from her position as a preschool teacher because she was undocumented. Eight years later, my mother pushed forward to pursue her passion for medicine and became a patient care technician. Along her journey, she ensured to teach me what she learned as she went through schooling. I remember that, after preschool, she would bring me to her afternoon classes and tell me what she learned through that day. Learning science at a young age helped me to discover my passion for health and medicine. As I grew older, I began to explore my creativity from a more artistic approach. I took a variety of art classes where I began to express myself through depictions of paintings, sculptures, and other designs. These were the two subjects that I naturally excelled at in school, the sciences and the arts. I navigated my journey through middle school and high school, where I discovered what I wanted to be, changing my intended pathway from law to medicine. When I started high school, I established that I wanted to be a physician, though I was not sure what area of medicine I wanted to specialize in. I had encountered problems expressing myself because my new school was limited in the coursework and extracurricular activities that they provide for the student body as it had been recently developed. I felt restricted and that I lacked the opportunity for self-expression I had sought out to find for years. As I approached my final year of high school, I began thinking of the occupations I could have that would combine my love for the sciences, more specifically the health sciences and medicine, with art. After looking into surgical specialties, I found plastic surgery to fit this role. A shocking, yet significant, moment in my life was when my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia and blindness. My grandmother's condition worsened to the point where she was having extreme hallucinations, was unable to recognize her own family, and not being able to feed herself. I then realized the importance of having access to proper healthcare and physicians that have experience with diverse groups of individuals. Due to a language barrier and the scarce amount of specialists in ophthalmology, my grandmother encountered difficulties having her condition diagnosed as she was unable to describe what she was feeling. As a result, we were notified that her condition was untreatable because of their inability to communicate. I witnessed a heartbreaking reality that people in our community are left uncared for due to the lack of diverse representation within the medical field. As a future surgeon, I plan to educate myself on the various ways I can increase the level of diversity and inclusion in the medical community and implement practices that ensure this becomes more prioritized by professionals. I would also like to focus on actions I can take to allow all people to feel accurately represented when seeking medical assistance. Further, I want to develop my knowledge of the differences in ethnic, cultural, social, and economic backgrounds so that I can treat them accordingly.

The hardest moments are usually the most significant moments of your life, and like they say “what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” Growing up I did not have a lot of money, I lived in a one-bedroom one-bathroom apartment with my parents and grandma. My grandmother slept on the kitchen floor since there was not enough space for all of us. After moving, I was enrolled in elementary school in a significantly wealthier area where students my age had iPhones and other expensive devices. I felt like I did not fit in, and I had difficulty making friends since I didn’t have things that other kids my age had. At school, I was bullied for being “lame” or not “popular” but I didn’t understand what that meant at that age because I didn’t value the importance of those devices or what was trendy at that time, I was just a kid trying to enjoy life. In middle school, things changed, I was older and materialistic items became more of my identity. In middle school, if you had the newest shoes, clothes, backpack, or phones you were deemed as cool but yet again I could not fit the standard since I never had the newest shoes or most recent iPhone. I felt like I was a dichotomy to what “trendy” is. The occasional bullying did occur due to how I dressed because my mom bought gym clothes that were x-large since I would “eventually grown into it” or how I ate ethnic foods that my mom cooked. These times became the lowest points of my life and I thought that changing myself to fit the standards set by my fellow students would help me fit in more. After leaving that school and enrolling in a smaller and more selective high school, I had more freedom to be me. The school was small since we were the first graduating class so I could make more friends and be in a comfortable place where I could explore my talents, although my high school experience was pretty rough, with the help of my friends and lessons taught from my past experiences I learned that my past should not hold me back from what I want to become in the future. People’s opinions are opinions for a reason and there is always going to be someone out there that is trying to bring you down but you have to make sure that you use their words as a motivator rather than a suppressor. After rediscovering myself I sought out to help others who were in similar situations like me through volunteering, organization work, and clubs. I developed my passion for medicine and helping. Because of my experience, I pushed forward to pursue a degree in the health sciences to become a doctor to help eliminate disparities in medicine due to race, gender, and economic disadvantages.