Cities are great. They’re astronomical for opportunities, jobs, excitement, and everything in between. What’s there not to love about them? A lot. My mom, an immigrant from Jamaica, came to the U.S. looking for more than what was in her birth town. She ended up settling in St. Louis to raise her 6 children with my biological father. When I was around 5 years old, she kicked him out due to his being on drugs around his toddlers. This was the beginning of a laundry list of trauma I would come to obtain. At that age, I didn’t quite understand the scope of how neglected that part of town was. After all, how can you make a 5-year-old understand unfairness, cruelty, and the inopportune circumstances almost everyone in that district was bound to? Attending our underfunded elementary school, I felt at home. My teachers were fond of me because of my aptitude for learning, labeling me as “smart”. 35 minutes away, where I went to a new predominantly white elementary school, a completely different story occurred. For the first time, I felt dumb and excluded. I would look around and few faces were like mine. I was paid no mind and would eventually conclude that something was wrong with me, not understanding that I was judged because of my skin. 35 minutes away back at home, I would have to deal with other problems. I loved playing outside, but at some point, I had to stop. There was danger everywhere. Gunshots sounded every single night and as early as 8 years old, I was being catcalled by grown men. I heard stories about people getting kidnapped, homes getting robbed, and people dying too much for someone so young. I just wanted to play hopscotch outside, but instead, I had to be worried about my survival. Why, with these circumstances, would I ever need to care about school? My mom had no time to raise us. Being a single black woman with 6 kids, there was hardly any time for anything other than work. Even after her normal hours working, she would get up as early as 3 AM to bake cookies and sell them for some extra money, then continue with work. To compensate, my older siblings were forced to put aside their lives and forwarding of their careers to take care of us children. My oldest two siblings completed some college, but couldn’t finish their degrees due to tuition costs. Another one got involved with criminal activities after finishing high school, eventually getting arrested for a while. The older I got and the more exposure I had to lifestyles other than mine due to moving schools, the more I began to realize the horrible dynamics an impoverished minority family had to go through in cities. I wondered how I was able to live in the same city as some of the white folks in the suburbs yet the schools in my district were far less funded than the ones they went to. It took some time, but after many years of repeatedly feeling excluded, poor, and unworthy, I’d begun to form a passion for something. I had many irrational fears, but nothing—absolutely nothing—scared me more than ending up in the same cycle my mom and the rest of my older siblings went through. Fear seems to endure a negative connotation from mass opinion, but for me, it is a prime motivator, a mentor guiding me in my darkest times saying, “This could be you, you know?”, pushing me to get up and not be a victim to the cruel world so many people like me are bound to. My dream is to get an education in finance to become a financial advisor. I want to be a guide for someone, a guide my mother could’ve used before she had her first child. I’ve realized that money—or the lack thereof—rips apart families. It’s not about having the most money or being the world’s greatest investor, it’s about letting children and anyone in need feel like they have a chance at life, feel more secure, and avoid the issues my family had to endure.

I picture the more youthful ages as a grand foil to the being you’re bound to become. To me, life is not plagued by the consequences of your jurisdiction, but it certainly sums a large effect. When, however, your autonomy is stripped from you, leaving you vulnerable to ramifications that are not inherently your fault, what do you do? I never had a forward answer up until now. On any random Tuesday, I’d lay down in bed, scrolling through TikTok to temporarily escape the dourness of my immediate surroundings: blind to the small puddle of water on the floor from the thick crack in the roof, numb to the scouring heat penetrating every pore in my body, deaf to the series of gunshots down the street. When you live in this type of environment, you get used to it. The conditions others would deem unsafe, you’re indifferent to. My mom, an immigrant from Jamaica, kicked my biological father out when I was five for doing hard drugs around his toddlers while contributing little to finances even when we couldn't acquire basic necessities. Because of this, I grew up plagued with a laundry list of mental issues that even the most complex essay couldn't thoroughly explain. I was lucky enough to obtain a new stepdad a few years later, a dad who raised us children with maturity and care, however, my mom was still frustrated that she provided most of the funds. Alas, come sometime around June 2021, I was fatherless again. My mom still worked all the time, so we never had a solid foundational relationship. I never got the chance to be whole. It took some time, but after many years of repeatedly feeling excluded, poor, and unworthy, I’d begun to form a passion for something. I had many irrational fears, but nothing—absolutely nothing—scared me more than ending up in the same cycle my mom and the rest of my family went through. Fear seems to endure a negative connotation from mass opinion, but for me, it is a prime motivator, a mentor guiding me in my darkest times saying ‘This could be you, you know', pushing me to get up and not be a victim to the cruel world so many people like me are bound to. My dream is to get an education in finance to become a financial advisor. I want to be a guide for someone, a guide my mother could’ve used before she had her first child. I’ve realized that money—or the lack thereof—rips apart families. It’s not about having the most money or being the world’s greatest investor, it’s about letting children and anyone in need feel like they have a chance at life, feel more secure, and avoid the issues my family and I had to endure. To answer the question I had above: what do you do when you suffer for things that aren’t your fault? My answer is you keep trudging along, and you’re bound to find something worthwhile. I found serenity and an appreciation for all of my trials because they had shaped me into who I am today, and work indefinitely to fuel my desire to aid others in the future. Most of the adversity I faced was mental; though we're still economically underprivileged, I no longer stress about my family’s finances. I'm certain my expertise and drive will naturally aid my future endeavors. After coming to an understanding of what I want to do in this life, I could not be happier with where I came from, who I am, and the person I am becoming.

When I think about technology, my mind crystallizes images of artificial intelligence forming holograms, speaking intuitively and almost human-like like Sonny from I, Robot. I think of rows of computers in a school; a child's eyes are glued to a screen, trying to complete the next objective their teacher delegated to them. I picture a robotics team full of pioneers programming a functional design. One that presumably would help some grand issue in the world. All these are extremely impressive, but I don’t think any compare to the coolness of a calculator. I love numbers. I am highly fond of them even though my high school transcript would indicate otherwise (as evident by the C I earned in Algebra 3). Algebra 3 was one of my favorite math classes because it tickled a part of my brain few other math classes could, leaving me with a thirst to understand and learn more. This was all made possible with my handy TI-83 Graphing Calculator, of course. My calculator has been my best buddy for tackling difficult math equations since the 7th grade. She is swift, cunning, and extremely precise–not allowing any problem to escape her all-solution-encompassing guise. She is a superhero who is solely responsible for countless breakthrough discoveries in math and science. Where would this world be without her? My downfall in Algebra 3 often stemmed from small computational errors that accumulated into big ones. After all, I am human and I am imperfect. Miss TI-83 Plus, however, is worthy of godlike status; she makes no mistakes. She is, in essence, perfection. Yet still, so many deem perfection as boring, disregarding the toll of carrying success after success on her back and the lives she continuously saves. She works tirelessly, consistently providing us with answers necessary for our innovation and “Eureka!” moments. What more could you need? I carry my calculator’s elegance as an inspiration in my life. Her essence embodies something of simplicity yet complexity; poise yet mercilessness; dexterity yet ingenuity. In my future endeavors, my calculator will stay by my side indefinitely. If I, or anyone for that matter, develop something so astronomical and grand that it encompasses the world by storm and then floods the streets with its untouchable profoundness–we owe it all to this beautiful technological device that we tend to take for granted. She–single-handedly–will be our savior.

A young woman named Emily is sitting at a table near the window at Lakeview Grille, a restaurant at The Vintage Club in Indian Wells, California. A waiter brings her an olive martini and serves it with a warm, polite smile. She sits across from her father, a prominent figure in California who owns nearly a quarter of all estates. He’s describing to her the new house he bought for her and her husband, William. She rolls her eyes. “But Daddy, I don’t want that house. You know how I hate being in the Midwest.” Emily ends up getting a house on the east coast in a wonderfully wealthy district. She vents to her mom and friends about how her life was so unfair. For the longest time, that’s precisely how I viewed generational wealth: associating it with the colloquial term “old money”. For me, generational wealth was only attainable by white people whose families were slave owners a long while ago. I felt disdainful towards them, but would eventually realize my hatred stemmed from grisly envy for those residing in such a seemingly-exclusive sector; my wounded psyche longed to have a taste. Maturity would come with time, allowing me to detach from negative stereotypes regarding the wealthy, whom I longed to be, and the poor, who I identified with. Generational wealth essentially means accumulating wealth that can be used throughout future generations while also aiming for continuous growth. Recent moves within civil rights activism have allowed discriminatory placements on African Americans' (and other minorities') accumulation of wealth to be more obtainable, allowing the proportions between minority wealth and Caucasian wealth to distribute more evenly. Progress is slow, but certainly on an upward trajectory; I purposefully aim to be a part of this positive movement of accumulating generational wealth for my future descendants. Wellston is one of the roughest districts in St. Louis, where I happened to live for the majority of my childhood. Poverty was a way of life, and for years, I couldn’t imagine the margin of wealth we could accrue over time. I did not understand how my opportunities for success were limited in every aspect of my life until we moved out of the district, then enrolled at a predominantly white school. The emotional toll of being in a poor black family developed issues I still struggle with today. Because of the opportunities I never received as a child, it's my mission to help my future children acquire the opportunities and resources I wish I could have received to thrive early. I wish nothing else in this world than for my children to not endure the trauma I did. Access to the internet is what saved my limited vantage on available opportunities. I passionately researched all the various ways to accrue wealth over time, implementing strategies for investing and saving finances (even with the little money I had). I began to understand the numerous avenues to becoming wealthy/ensure a stable financial lifestyle for myself and my family. My adversity with financial resources makes me strive to pursue a degree in finance because my circumstances made it extremely personal; I am not scared to say that I am emotionally attached to providing my future descendants with a secure future. I aim to major in finance at a collegiate institution and graduate debt-free. As a future finance major, it’s essential to understand the impact of financial decisions early on and plan practical ways to ensure financial stability later in life. Applying for scholarships is one of the strategies I intend to use.

I hate being just another statistic. But all my life, that’s all my family and I have been. It blows my mind every day that I can look out my bedroom window and see the effects of redlining, which is still loud and clear in the district I live in. My immigrant Jamaican mom moved to America to find better opportunities then somehow wound up in St. Louis. Once Trump got elected and made more restrictions on border control, my family was scared because she could've been deported at any point in time. We couldn’t afford to go to a private school, so I got enrolled at a school in a local elementary school that had little funding. My older brother got sent to a middle/high school in the district that wasn’t all that great either. My family wanted us to go to a better school, but we couldn’t since we didn’t live in those districts or couldn’t afford it. My brother got introduced to a certain lifestyle and would end up pursuing it regardless of my family’s opposition. He was eventually incarcerated in 2019 on a murder charge. It’s rare to hear about the emotional toll something like that can have on someone. This happened especially to my mom, who despite all this, had to continue taking care of her other five children regardless of how hurt she felt. These types of things are continuously perpetuated within the black community. It is not because of a lack of intellectual ability, it’s because of being denied good opportunities for centuries and still catching up from setbacks. Black people make up 25.8% of the poverty class, 38.5% of incarcerated individuals, 48% living in single-parent households, and 37% are financially illiterate. These are the statistics that I hate so much. Every last one of the categories has fit the mold of my family at one point or another. I have always been insecure about it. Growing up the way I did and then having the privilege to transfer to a well-funded predominantly white school, I got to see both sides of the spectrum. The differences in lifestyles, attitudes, and success rates in numerous fields were like night and day. I became increasingly frustrated with how this whole system was set up and decided I wanted to change. I have hated all the negative statistics and data that black people were always a part of. It hurts to walk down the street I live in and see drug houses, drug addicts, homeless people, and psychically disabled people everywhere without anyone trying to help even though most of their circumstances are not inherently their fault. My love for my community has pushed me to want to render in the field that black people are continuously misrepresented and not taken seriously in: finance. It’s ironic how I hate the statistics that feel like shackles, yet I am trying to go into a field that handles just that (minus the focus on race). My ultimate dream is to help others, especially black people, with finance to slowly but surely decrease financial insecurity among many black people, enabling them to have the opportunities my family and many others in my community didn’t. The challenges my family and I face are conjoined with that of many others who happen to be black in America. I am a first-generation student navigating the realm of pursuing higher education alone, but I am determined to break out of this path and destroy the narrative for the people in my community that we cannot be successful because of our circumstances.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday. We exchanged a hug, followed by a withdrawal toward the door. “Abba, where are you going?” I asked my father. He had a suitcase in his right hand and his back facing me, slowly walking toward the door. “Away,” he replied. He sounded rather solemn, but that’s how all grown-ups sounded to me at that age. At five years old, the only possible explanation I had for my father’s random departure was a trip or vacation. I assumed he’d be back within two weeks. “Where away?” “Away.” “When will you come back?” I pressed, eager for a clue of some kind informing me of where his whereabouts would reside. “Soon.” “How soon?” “Soon, sweetheart.” He was halfway out the door, his left hand reaching for the door handle. “Okay.” I’d given up asking because I figured he wouldn’t tell me no matter what. Grown-ups seemed to do that a lot. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time I saw him for a great number of years. My family was a victim of the effects of someone who had a substance use disorder. I was only at the ripe age of five years old when my mom kicked my father out of the house for using hard drugs around her toddlers. I didn’t understand until much later; after all, I was only five years old. Who was I to discern whether or not my father was high? It only took about a month for me to figure out he wasn’t coming back for a very long time. I was left with all these issues and what felt like half of me was missing. I’d grow up to have a lot of anger and anxiousness confined without the slightest clue of how to let it go, except I could see myself in all these younger kids’ shoes who also grew up without a father figure. I felt this profound empathy and unique understanding, and I knew what I would dedicate my life to. My dream career is to get an education in finance, but it is so much more than that. My real dream is to be there for the children and families that need it, like mine, except we weren’t fortunate enough to receive help. Through founding a non-profit organization dedicated to educating people on Substance Use Disorder (including prevention, early intervention, and treatment), more families with similar stories like mine don’t have to suffer the same fate. Unfortunately, a significant amount of stigma still surrounds addiction, preventing many people from seeking help and receiving the support they need. Education and awareness are critical in reducing this stigma, promoting healthy lifestyles, and encouraging people to seek treatment. Even today, without the resources and reach an NPO could provide, I still dedicate time to educate anyone I can about SUD through forums, social media, and communicative tools while looking into organizations I can be of service to regarding topics of SUD/addiction. I am not shy about sharing my story because it makes a difference by making others feel more included, understood, and represented. That is the focus of my entire mission in this lifetime: ensuring that people feel safe and secure regardless of their circumstances and empowering them through their difficulties.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday. We exchanged a hug, followed by a withdrawal toward the door. “Abba, where are you going?” I asked my father. He had a suitcase in his right hand and his back facing me, slowly walking toward the door. “Away,” he replied. He sounded rather solemn, but that’s how all grown-ups sounded to me at that age. At five years old, the only possible explanation I had for my father’s random departure was a trip or vacation. I assumed he’d be back within two weeks. “Where away?” “Away.” “When will you come back?” I pressed, eager for a clue of some kind informing me of where his whereabouts would reside. “Soon.” “How soon?” “Soon, sweetheart.” He was halfway out the door, his left hand reaching for the door handle. “Okay.” I’d given up asking because I figured he wouldn’t tell me no matter what. Grown-ups seemed to do that a lot. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time I saw him for a great number of years. My family was a victim of the effects of someone who had a substance use disorder. I was only at the ripe age of five years old when my mom kicked my father out of the house for using hard drugs around her toddlers. I didn’t understand until much later; after all, I was only five years old. Who was I to discern whether or not my father was high? It only took about a month for me to figure out he wasn’t coming back for a very long time. I was left with all these issues and what felt like half of me was missing. I’d grow up to have a lot of anger and anxiousness confined without the slightest clue of how to let it go, except I could see myself in all these younger kids’ shoes who also grew up without a father figure. I felt this profound empathy and unique understanding, and I knew what I would dedicate my life to. My dream career is to get an education in finance, but it is so much more than that. My real dream is to be there for the children and families that need it, like mine, except we weren’t fortunate enough to receive help. Through founding a non-profit organization dedicated to educating people on Substance Use Disorder (including prevention, early intervention, and treatment), more families with similar stories like mine don’t have to suffer the same fate. Unfortunately, a significant amount of stigma surrounds addiction, preventing many people from seeking help and receiving the support they need. Education and awareness are critical in reducing the stigma, promoting healthy lifestyles, and encouraging people to seek treatment. Even today, without the resources and reach an NPO could provide, I still dedicate time to educate anyone I can about SUD through forums, social media, and communicative tools while looking into organizations I can be of service to regarding topics of SUD/addiction. I am not shy about sharing my story because it makes a difference by making others feel more included, understood, and represented. That is the focus of my entire mission in this lifetime: ensuring that people feel safe and secure regardless of their circumstances and empowering them through their difficulties.

We are still living out the repercussions of the brutal treatment our ancestors had to endure. Life conditions are generally better, but to exactly what extent? Nowadays, it's possible to enroll in a school and sit by or converse with all the races under the sun, but just because we have the social/community sectors available does not hide from the fact that employment in many fields, especially STEM, is hardly proportional. The United States has an increasingly high demand for innovation within the STEM sectors to maintain its establishment as a world power. All minorities in the U.S. continue to be underrepresented in STEM regardless of their intellectual competence compared to the majority (whites) in that field. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 11/20 of the most in-demand jobs are in STEM. Only 9% of black people have employment in those jobs. As a nation, we will not evolve if STEM careers maintain limited diversity among races. Should these sectors continue to lack correct proportional representation and employment, innovation will reflect this in our economic advancement. Progressions within STEM fields are not one-dimensional; they require ample amounts of complex data that is difficult to acquire with people with hardly variegated backgrounds. Solutions stem from these same people who tailor their “advancements” to the communities they are native to, which is not an equal representation of all the various identities and predicaments that the U.S. encompasses. As a female African American residing in the United States, I understand underrepresentation and being disregarded by others. I believe the importance of diversification in STEM is to ensure innovative accomplishments are achieved in the highest order possible. Creativity emerges from ideas springing off of another; ideally, creating something new should have maximum possibilities to select from, which diversification would solely provide, further quickening the advancement of our society. Other minorities, but particularly black people, are seen as incapable and less intelligent due to our history with stereotypes rooted in slavery and segregation. We are fighting this stereotype still today, but progress is slow; African Americans don’t particularly see themselves thriving much in STEM either, regardless of intellectual competence. The more black people see themselves in STEM, the more they'll want to join as well (as evidenced by the increasing attraction to athletics among black people). Increasing the percentage and drive for black people to pursue STEM careers serves numerous benefits for all of America, ranging from more inclusive innovations to African Americans being perceived in higher esteem due to the influx of academic pursuits. It is paramount for STEM careers to be more diversified to promote the health and efficiency of the United State's economy.