Algebra is often the first challenging math course students are given, as it is a basis for more difficult subjects such as Calculus and Computational Theory. The importance of math, specifically algebra, lies in the fact it shapes one’s resilience and self-confidence when learning complicated concepts. When I took my first algebra class in the 8th grade, I was excited to finally have the opportunity to learn higher-level math, and be one step closer to reaching my goal of becoming a software engineer. However, my teacher that year constantly intimidated me, suggesting that I not ask questions during class because “it was a waste of time to explain things to me”. Although I studied into the early hours of the morning every day, I nearly failed math that year. My parents were often too busy to help me, as they each had two jobs to support the family, and couldn’t afford a tutor. Unable to get help, I was lost and doubtful that I could ever understand math. At the end of the year my teacher went around the classroom, awarding each student for their mastery of a specific Algebra topic. Finally, when he got to me, he announced that “I wasn’t very intelligent, but at least I had a good attitude”. The words cut me deeply, and the stares and snickers of my classmates burned. That night I emptied the money out of my piggy bank, and begged my parents to let me purchase a summer course to move up a grade in math. At first they were skeptical, but seeing that I wouldn’t give up on myself, decided that they wouldn’t allow themselves to give up on me either. That summer I worked tirelessly, re-teaching myself Algebra through every online resource I could find. Then, using that as a basis, I moved on to study Geometry. I often struggled with finding motivation to study due to my previous failure, but understood that I had to be the one to continue to push myself forward, regardless of my frustrations. That August, I took the credit exams for Algebra and Geometry, earning a perfect score in each. I cried tears of relief after getting the result. I had finally proved to myself that even though I wasn’t as naturally gifted as my peers in math, my attitude and grit were truly what would help me achieve my goals. This mindset persisted, and in high school I was invited to join the Math Honors society, and was even selected to take Harvard’s course in Discrete Mathematics, where I remained top of my class. Today I work as a math tutor, trying to be the support I wish I had when I was struggling. My services are free, and anyone, regardless of skill level or learning disability is invited to sign up. Tutoring truly made me love learning math because I love being able to teach it. By encouraging my students to take on challenging math problems, I am able to guide them through mistakes and teach them that they can learn and grow from them. Each student leaves my sessions having gained not only a stronger understanding of math, but also confidence in their own ability to handle setbacks, which I hope will be the foundation of their growth and success for the rest of their lives.

My father is arguably the most impactful person in my life, but what I remember most about him is not his face. What I remember are his tired shoulders as he left for another red-eye flight. I remember setting a plate in the microwave so that when he arrived, he could heat his dinner and save some time to sleep. I remember the warmth and energy of his voice when he would tell me about how proud he was of me that I tried so hard in school, regardless of the C’s on my report card. My father is the humble and courageous man that inspired me to pursue my education, as I wanted to show him how grateful I was for his unconditional love and support. However, even though I was motivated and had talent, I struggled to accomplish much in school. I was the only girl in many of my Computer Science classes, and it was often difficult for me to get along with my peers. Therefore, I was unable to be a part of many clubs and competitions, which were essential to my education. Seeing these as barriers to my success, I consulted my father, and to my surprise he told me to try and join the Speech and Debate club at my school. I was confused and frustrated, as I felt that he was telling me to give up on Computer Science. However, trusting his guidance, I joined the club and debated an array of topics at home with him. Through the rigorous practice I received at school and at home, I learned how to structure logical arguments and how to keep a cool, calm exterior when asserting myself in a debate. Although these skills were not math nor science based, they improved my ability to participate in STEM. It became easier for me to deal with excuses my classmates and teachers gave for excluding me due to my gender. Instead of becoming frustrated, my training in Speech and Debate allowed me to identify inconsistencies and contradictions in their justifications, and then compose a logical rebuttal that convinced them to believe in my capabilities regardless of my gender. My persistence allowed me to become more involved in coding, and I even led the competitive Computer Science team to take 3rd place in state competitions. Although I have chosen to focus on Computer Science in college, I still find that understanding the power of language is essential to the pursuit of my goals. The career I have chosen often requires me to defend myself with both the diligence and determination that I learned through Speech and Debate. However, my motivation to take on this challenge in hopes of becoming an accomplished Software Engineer can be attributed to the tireless encouragement of my loving father.

There’s a stranger at my bedroom door, I thought. The night air electrified my 12 year old veins. She slowly creaked the door open, and her exhausted shadow flooded my bedroom walls. I said nothing and spread my arms, inviting her in. She slowly trudged over, dragging each foot on the carpet. Once she finally landed in my arms, the wailing began. I brushed the hair off her humid face. “I’m here. We’re going to be okay,” I whispered, “but we’re going to have to get help.” The stranger looked up at me. In her eyes, I could feel the animalistic desire to run. I hugged her closer. For the first time in years, I held her stare and spoke dauntlessly. “And I’ll be proud of you no matter what anyone says or thinks.” When the words reached her, the sobs exploded. I caressed her hand with my thumb and held her there until she drifted off to sleep. The next day an orange bottle revealed itself to me by clashing with the ornate oak desk next to my mother’s pillow. My grit makes me who I am; it’s a survival instinct that always pushes me to succeed because growing up, I didn’t have a choice. As the top student in my elementary and middle school, I thought that being smart was all I needed. However, when my mother became mentally ill and my grades began to fall as a result, I was stripped of my identity and forced to reflect on the person I was. As the eldest child in an immigrant family, I felt that it was my responsibility to help my mother. I worked relentlessly, holding her hand through her breakdowns and trying to convince her to overcome the stigma surrounding mental health and seek treatment. There was no other option. It took me a year until she finally agreed to see a therapist and take medicine to get better. Through accepting my story, I have been able to work through the pain it once gave me, and now that same story has become a source of power for me. It reminds me that I am someone who will always be able to work hard enough to accomplish their goals. Although talking my mother into treatment was inarguably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, I’ve learned how connecting with the right person can give you the strength to overcome your fears of looking weak and admitting that you need help. Therefore, with my grit and passion for mental health and CS, I want to create a start-up that connects those who are afraid of admitting they need help with the right people to help them recover.

There’s a stranger at my bedroom door, I thought. The night air electrified my 12 year old veins. She slowly creaked the door open, and her exhausted shadow flooded my bedroom walls. I said nothing and spread my arms, inviting her in. She slowly trudged over, dragging each foot on the carpet. Once she finally landed in my arms, the wailing began. I brushed the hair off her humid face. “I’m here. We’re going to be okay,” I whispered, “but we’re going to have to get help.” The stranger looked up at me. In her eyes, I could feel the animalistic desire to run. I hugged her closer. For the first time in years, I held her stare and spoke dauntlessly. “And I’ll be proud of you no matter what anyone says or thinks.” When the words reached her, the sobs exploded. I caressed her hand with my thumb and held her there until she drifted off to sleep. The next day an orange bottle revealed itself to me by clashing with the ornate oak desk next to my mother’s pillow. My grit makes me who I am; it’s a survival instinct that always pushes me to succeed because growing up, I didn’t have a choice. As the top student in my elementary and middle school, I thought that being smart was all I needed. However, when my mother became mentally ill and my grades began to fall as a result, I was stripped of my identity and forced to reflect on the person I was. As the eldest child in an immigrant family, I felt that it was my responsibility to help my mother. I worked relentlessly, holding her hand through her breakdowns and trying to convince her to overcome the stigma surrounding mental health and seek treatment. There was no other option. It took me a year until she finally agreed to see a therapist and take medicine to get better. Through accepting my story, I have been able to work through the pain it once gave me, and now that same story has become a source of power for me. It reminds me that I am someone who will always be able to work hard enough to accomplish their goals. Although talking my mother into treatment was inarguably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, I’ve learned how connecting with the right person can give you the strength to overcome your fears of looking weak and admitting that you need help. Therefore, with my grit and passion for mental health and CS, I want to create a start-up that connects those who are afraid of admitting they need help with the right people to help them recover.

The fibers of Maya’s eyebrow hairs rise together like a wave, creating small, shallow wrinkles that undulate upwards to the top of her forehead. Her eyes and lip corners follow as she takes in the image of my good friend, Alex. I recognize this facial ballet as her excitement, but watch as it is met with a monotone “Hi” from Alex, who quickly picks up his iPad and continues gaming. I feel a familiar pang of sadness and glance back at her confused face. I replay the moment in my mind, trying to understand why I recognized Maya’s excitement as happiness while Alex registered anger, by his account. Her eyebrows rose entirely, not halfway, indicating happiness, not anger. Unfortunately, Alex cannot make this distinction because Alex is autistic. Searching for a way to help him analyze faces, that winter I developed FaiCE AI, a visual recognition program that reads facial expressions to determine one of five core emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust. The program locates facial landmarks (eyebrows, nose, ears) and uses the distance between them to detect which of the five emotions is present, and then, in real time, notifies the user. And yet, after weeks of developing and researching, the error rate of FaiCE AI was still too high. After several debugging sessions, I theorized that to make more accurate predictions I had to incorporate more than one type of machine learning model. I looked into different machine learning architectures and explored how to combine them in the most efficient way. I determined which parts of each model to implement by plotting training and validation curves, thus evaluating each candidate model. But even with the perfect mix, the code was right less than half the time. I had a hunch that I was overfitting the model to the training data. And so, after simplifying the aggregate model, I felt a rush of excitement — the accuracy assessment revealed that my program had become more precise in identifying emotions in real time than the average human. This would undoubtedly help people with autism recognize facial expressions and I uploaded it to Github so that anyone could use it. Since we so often rely on reading human emotions in life, I want to continue devising ways to assist people with autism navigate social interactions and become more independent. Creating FaiCE AI made me recognize how vital an emotional connection is to designing lasting solutions for others. My desire to help Alex motivated me to persevere amidst initial setbacks in developing a solution. I wanted to support him as much as he had supported me as a friend: when we moved from the Bay Area to Austin, Alex was the only person I knew in my new school as he had made the same journey three years prior and he made me feel at home. Although the production of FaiCE AI required me to study large datasets and analyze multiple algorithms, I never saw my work as simply making sense of a bunch of numbers, it was about Alex. Often, when we think of global change, we picture helping those far away, in grand visions of making an impact for the world to admire. However, what I realize now is that changing the world does start with helping those around you, those who you love and care for. As I am about to go to college and connect with a new group of people, I want to continue to understand issues and look for solutions which yes - will flex the muscles at the sides of my mouth, indicating happiness.

The words cling to my tongue, begging me to close my mouth shut. They cling to the world that has always been. They cling to the obedient girl that has always done her chores, her homework, and never texted boys. Who has always been the daughter her mother wanted. But it was time to come out of the closet. It was time to tell her that- “I like girls, mom,” my throat threatens to close as I take another breath, “ I like girls.” “...and I don’t want you to know ten years from now when I can see you on my own terms. I want you to know who I am now,” I finished. She stared back, “This isn’t you, you’re lying.” My honesty in coming out to her was an act of trust and respect. Although I understood her view on the LGBTQ community, I trusted that she would love me enough to evolve her old beliefs and become a more accepting person. Eventually, she did, and I created a stronger relationship with her than ever before because I could finally open up to her. I no longer worried about accidentally outing myself, so I could speak my mind and ideas, giving her a better understanding of who I was. This changed her view on the LGBTQ community, as she realized it was a community of people who simply wanted to love and be loved. My honesty gave me the space to be myself, and my hope is to continue creating that space for anyone who feels afraid to be who they are. Unfortunately, many households in my community lack the same space for honesty, which makes many students in my community feel compressed by the secrets that they hide from their parents about their sexuality. As some of my closest friends come from unaccepting households, I decided to start the “4PM” club, an “underground” club for LGBTQ students in my community. The “4PM” club, as the name goes, would choose a route to bike around at 4PM on the weekends. I decided to have our club be mobile so that we could pedal our bikes fast enough so that others couldn’t hear what we were saying but slow enough so that we could savor each other’s words. As the sun melted into the sky, we would yank our rusted tires out of the garage to ride around the city. It was a mobile safe space, free of judgment due to sexuality. We freely questioned each other about being LGBTQ since we couldn’t talk about it anywhere else. Where do you get your binders? If I marry a girl, should there be two wedding dresses or should one of us wear a suit? Just being together, strung and harmonized by honesty, gave us the freedom to connect without being worried about being crushed by the rainbow elephant in the room. In three short years of pedaling in the apricot-orange sunsets, my mobile safe space attracted over 400 students, all from different cliques and grades in our high school, including differently-abled teenagers. Being honest about our sexualities gave us a sense of camaraderie, extending far past the childish labels we gave each other. Hackers, athletes, drama, and debate kids forged bonds that continued throughout and past high school. Cliques dissolved and our school evolved into an LGBTQ friendly space as the “4PM” club grew and more students were able to decompress during our meetings. In the future, I hope to continue supporting communities with things like the “4PM” club and contribute to making an open, honest, and safe environment.