My goals are to graduate from high school with straight As and go off to a university and graduate from there. From there I plan on going to a four-year university to meet all the pre-med classes needed to go to med school in time to graduate in four if not five years. I will then go on to med school for four years and hopefully take the following steps to become a doctor. I will do anything in my power to be the best person and doctor both to patients and other staff. I plan to be a doctor until I retire and hopefully become a very well-known doctor. Other than that I will see what life has for me and overcome obstacles thrown at me and just enjoy the time I have here because death is inevitable and can happen at any point in time. I hope to gain independence when I go off to college so I can be more outgoing and just live life to the fullest while I am working on getting my degree and my dream job.

I am a 17-year-old Hispanic female senior in high school and I am a very confident and outgoing person but I also like keeping to myself and spending most of my time alone at the beach. I don't think I have any hobbies since I'm always doing homework after school and babysitting, but during the weekend when I get the chance I love to go to the beach because it calms me so I don't stress too much after a hard week of school. I'm constantly busy trying to take care of a 3-year-old and two 12-year-olds so I hardly have time to go and help other people but when I can I always do. I used to volunteer at my church during Sundays ever since 2017 or 2018 but because of covid, I haven't really been able to help since parents don't want their children to leave their side which is understandable. I also volunteered in this school program on Saturdays called FELA during 2018-2019 and I would help parents learn basic English and I would also help parents with the basics of how to use a computer. Now I spend my weekends helping my parents babysit and clean the house while they are out and about. Now my goals are to graduate from high school with straight As and go off to a university and graduate from there. From there I plan on going to a four-year university to meet all the pre-med classes needed to go to med school in time to graduate in four if not five years. I will then go on to med school for four years and hopefully take the following steps to become a doctor. Something that motivates me is proving everyone that doubted me wrong because I have been doubted by my family all my life and just being ab to prove to myself and them that I am capable of doing anything I set my mind to is enough motivation to get me through all the hardships of my pre-med classes and med school classes. If I could do anything with my life I would become either a nurse or a doctor and move out to an island and help people while enjoying life and maybe travel to other places and see if they need any help while also taking time to enjoy and explore the places I travel to. I do not want to be a travel nurse simply because I do not see myself as a travel nurse but I do want to travel and use my experience and knowledge if anyone needs it. I chose to go into a stem major because I wanted to pursue a career in the medical field and become a doctor one day. I spent most of my childhood in the hospital because something was always wrong with me and it was never anything deadly but it was so painful that I had to seek professional help. With that being said I was always around doctors and nurses and I was just so intrigued by what they did and how they did it and ever since the first time I saw them I knew I wanted to be like them. I also want to go into this stem major because something about figuring out how we humans function and just learning more about the body is so interesting to me. I have also been really good at science and I'm hoping I can further my knowledge in science and the body through this stem major and future career. I think I would make a positive impact in STEM because I am a Hispanic female and you do not usually see us Hispanic people going into the medical field so I could be a form of motivation and encouragement to those females going into STEM. Also, I am extremely passionate about becoming a doctor so my enthusiasm could b a benefit to both the patients and staff. A hardship that I have had to overcome was getting over the fact that no matter how hard I tried I would never live up to my parent´s expectations. On top of that, I had to deal with depression and this caused me to struggle in school because no matter how hard I wanted to do the work my body just wouldn't let me. It took me a few months to realize that I'm just ruining my future and I shouldn't care about them no matter how much it hurts. I overcame this severe depression by taking time to reflect and come to the conclusion that I only needed to make myself proud in order to succeed and I shouldn't depend on anybody else. I took a few hours to coach myself and get myself ready for the amount of work I had to do to get my grades back up to where I wanted them.

When I was in middle school I had to go to the hospital to get surgery because my appendix was close to bursting. I consider this a challenge because I was out of school for a few days and I had missed important assignments and some quizzes that I couldn't make up so I was stressing about it which caused me to sort of hurt myself even more and I was forced to miss more school time. By the time I was able to go back to school I had multiple things to do to get my grades back up to where I was before I left and I knew It was going to be challenging. I am all for accepting failure sometimes to help myself grow but I knew leaving all the assignments undone and blaming it on my trip to the hospital was not even an option. I am not a person that accepts a bad score on anything so the fact that I had so much to do was just overwhelming and caused me to lose motivation and slack off even more. I do not know if it was the feeling of trying to understand that I had surgery done or just that I felt like a failure for sort of allowing all the work to pile up but it was eating me alive and it caused me to fall into depression. I could not do anything at all and people started to notice but I did not care because I felt numb and nothing anyone said to me could make me change. It wasn´t until I was laying in bed one day that I had a sense of realization of what I was becoming. I reflected on all the things I did wrong and I did not blame myself for feeling the way I felt but I did blame myself for not dealing with it in a proper manner. I started doing all my work and doing extra credit to try and bring my grades up to a percentage I was happy with but I did not stop there. I started working on myself and trying to be more involved in class so I could make up for lost time caused by both my surgery and depressive episodes. Although to this day I still struggle with depression caused by childhood trauma I have found a way to take care of myself and give myself time to heal while still being able to get amazing grades and manage my time wisely.

I am a 17-year-old senior in high school and I am trying to pursue a career in the medical field, so in a few months, I will be a college freshman majoring in biology. Although I don't have much support from my family I still hope to become the first doctor in my family and use my knowledge to help everyone that ends up in the hospital. I know a lot of people only want to be a doctor so they can help people get better and of course, I want to help people, but I decided to pursue this career because I spent most of my childhood in a hospital because I always had some issues going on, like heart issues or stomach problems and I underwent surgery to remove my appendix. It was never deadly, but I was always there and I saw how the nurses and doctors would do, and ever since then I was so determined to become like them. I believe that my enthusiasm and love for the career/job could be essential in helping people when they get sick because I could not only help them get better but make them feel safe and put a smile on their faces when they are in pain or are scared. I am aware that there are already doctors like that but you could never go wrong with another happy doctor. I can also be a symbol of hope to other people trying to pursue a career in the medical field because I come from a low-income family and I am not the best at school and pushing myself but I know that I can do this because I have the motivation to become a doctor and fulfill my dreams and if I am able to do it then I am sure anybody can. I know it is not going to be easy but I will try my best and I will prove everyone that doubted me wrong. I also think me being a Latina will also have a positive impact because when you thnk of doctors you either think of a white man or woman or a colored man. You never really expect a Latina to be your doctor and having one will encourage other Latinas to follow the same path. I know that I can be someone that encourages both the patients to keep pushing to get better and the staff to keep their head up and not give up when stuff does not go as planned because something positive always comes out of every situation. I hope to be good at my job so I can have happy and healthy patients and make any situation as positive as I can because the hospital does not need a negative doctor making the situation depressing or making people lose hope.

I didn't always have this mental illness, I was always a happy child with no care in the world but ever since I entered my teen years I have experienced a lot of depressive episodes. I was a teenager that suffered through a lot of trauma because of strict and old-fashioned Mexican parents. Although most of the trauma is in the past I still suffer from flashbacks of the things that happened and it sometimes interrupts my ability to focus and do well in school. One way I try to cope with this depression is that I go on walks to clear my mind whenever I can because I'm still not trusted enough to go alone. It helps ease my mind and it relaxes my body so I don't do anything dumb and so I can focus on what I'm going to do once I get back from my walk. I also try to go out as much as I can to the beach with my sister because hearing the waves crash on the shore really puts me at peace and makes me realize that everything is okay. Another thing that I do is listen to music while laying down, basically taking a break from what I'm doing to focus on myself and calm myself down. These all help me try and think of the consequences of the actions I would take if I don't calm myself down so I don't end up doing it. Now some goals I have for myself in the future are to go to a university to take all the pre-med classes needed to go to med school and do everything I can to become a doctor and live the life I have always dreamed about and wanted. I want to be able to prove everyone wrong because there have been a lot of people who have doubted my ability to progress and strive. They all thought I wouldn't make it so simply putting myself first and achieving my goals is something I need to do to try and overcome my past.