My name is Malak Ettahali, and I am an incoming freshman at Rice University. I like to think of myself as a jack of all trades, with my hobbies ranging from skateboarding, cardistry (the art of cards), writing, and baking. Some of my passions include youth empowerment and political advocacy, which I’ve pursued through working as a main organizer at the Houston Youth Voter’s Conference, a nonpartisan youth civic education conference, and tutoring elementary and middle school-aged students in STEM-based courses with Vern Tutoring Classroom. Academically, I’ve always found myself drawn to the natural sciences and their role in helping me understand our world. I plan on majoring in Applied Mathematics and minoring in Biochemistry while in university. I found that this combination of studies not only prepares me for a future in healthcare but also allows me to study what I love--math. I used to be strongly against learning math, but over time, I realized that math has so many practical applications, and to me, its usage in cancer medicine and research stood out the most. In the future, I hope to attend medical school and study to become a pediatric oncologist, where a background in mathematics can help me be a more well-rounded physician. With technological advances, mathematical models have had an increasingly important role in cancer research due to their ability to map tumor growth without human samples. I hope to use math to improve non-invasive techniques in medicine further. I need this scholarship award to help mitigate the cost of attendance. Rice University’s cost of attendance is upwards of $80,000, and I received no financial aid package due to non-liquid family assets. My family not only has to fund my college education but also must pay my younger brother’s upcoming college tuition and remittances to family abroad. To pay for college, I plan on working jobs at university, taking out student loans, and asking for financial help from my family members.  My love for heavy metal began in middle school. In 2019, my friend returned from San Francisco after attending the Metallica S&M2 concert. They brought me a Metallica T-shirt as a concert souvenir. From then on, what started as an innocent curiosity about the heavy metal genre turned into a love for it. Although heavy metal is a wonderful genre for head banging, what particularly attracted me to heavy metal was the circumstances around which it became popular. Heavy metal wasn’t used to pacify listeners, but rather, empower them to make a difference in the world. One prominent example is “Children of the Grave” by Black Sabbath, which calls for listeners to end political corruption, particularly due to the looming threat of nuclear warfare. I believe that music and the arts should be used to share artists’ opinions and knowledge, and I find that heavy metal music represents my beliefs about the role of music in society.

It’s 3-3. We’re tied. I feel my calves weighing me down, and my breathing is labored. I get ready to return the serve and watch the neon yellow tennis ball fly down the court. I feel my body slowing down from fatigue. Why have I worked this hard, only to end up in a tie? Should I give up? But I keep playing - I have to win. My ambition to perform well motivates me to reach perfection - maintaining high grades; being the quintessential daughter, sister, and friend; and achieving the goals I set for myself. But no matter what I do, it’s like a game of catch-up - I feel so close to reaching my goals, to winning the match, but achieving this constantly feels so far away… It’s 3-4. I’m down. My efforts to achieve perfection proved to be futile. My hands shake, and I try to wipe down my sunglasses, a nervous habit. My opponent is too - I see her hands shake, just like mine are. She’s getting nervous, and I frown in pity - I know exactly what it’s like to be in her position. I put my glasses on, and the ball stands out from the glasses’ contrast as I go to pick it up, ready to serve. I double-fault. The shaking intensifies, so I walk away from the court. It’s as though my perfection feels asymptotic: I get so incredibly close to perfection, but never quite there. However, as time goes on, I feel myself inching towards the asymptote, becoming the person and the player I dream of being. Determined, I go back to the baseline and call out the score: Love-15. I notice the shaking has lessened, and in my moment of calm, I serve. It’s 4-4. We’re tied again. I’m on edge. I anticipate the next point, the next set, the next game, preparing myself for the challenging journey ahead. I’m back to where I started, a tie, but now I feel hope blossom in my chest. For the first time, I think that I can win. Despite my hope, I’m still playing it safe, afraid of the possibility that I’ll crack under the pressure. I can’t afford any slip-ups. I go into athletic stance, ready to return the serve. It’s how I anticipate the next assignment, the next quiz, the next test, because I know I can’t let myself down. I learn to thrive under the pressure - to crave it. To use it as motivation to make me work harder, to bring me closer to the asymptote. I return the serve. It’s 5-4. I’ve come back up. Now, I put my glasses on without wiping them down. My hands feel steady. I grip my racket tightly, knowing that these next few points will dictate the rest of the set. I prepare to serve, and I feel in control. I proved to myself that I wouldn’t crack under pressure, but rather, I would thrive. I serve - it’s an ace. This is the closest thing to perfection in tennis. I need to continue with this performance. The end of the set is in sight - perfection is near. It’s 6-4. I won the set. Now it’s time to tackle the next one. Each match, each assignment, each goal is a challenge, but I take them all in stride - I do it all to eventually reach the asymptote. Tennis has taught me the importance of resilience, and that I don't always have to be perfect--but that I always have to try my best in everything I do.

I stare into the empty auditorium hall. In a mere hour, this hall will be filled with students from all over the Houston area. As one of HYVC's (Houston Youth Voters Conference) 2022 organizers, I can't help but feel nervous about this event. I, along with other Houston-area high school and university students, had been working tirelessly for months to pull off this event. Our goal? To educate Houston-area youth on the importance of civic duty and voter participation. An hour has passed, and I look to the auditorium once again. Now, it is filled with students, eager to participate in our educational conference. Throughout the day, students learn about polling booths, recent legislation, and the influence they have in policymaking institutions. As HYVC concludes, participants shared that their experience with the conference has made them more politically literate and that they feel better equipped to be agents of social change. This year, I saw this sentiment again, as our 2023 HYVC organizer team was now also comprised of students who attended last year's conference, and decided that they wanted to educate Houstonian youth, just as they had previously experienced. I hope to continue my work in political activism, creating a more educated and politically active youth voter population in Houston, and beyond. I sit behind my laptop, writing a myriad of emails, sent to various entities - music directors, nursing homes, and student organizations. I am one of the executives for Healing Notes of Houston (HNH) organization, which aims to bring the performing and visual arts to various groups in the Houston area. In my inbox, I see replies to my emails - nursing homes are booking our organization for performances, and musicians are volunteering to perform with our organization. As HNH’s first nursing home performance rolls around, I do work behind the scenes - finding music stands/instruments and collecting participation forms. On the day of the performance, I sit in the back of the audience. A pianist begins to play, and I close my eyes, listening to the music. I begin to hear voices - the audience is singing along to the pianist's piece. As I look around the crowd, I see a sea of smiling faces. I felt fulfilled, but more importantly, I felt happy. Happy that I was able to help coordinate an event that brought happiness to so many other people. But I itched to do more. I wanted a more active role in sharing joy. So, I began learning the violin. Within two weeks, I had learned "Silent Night," and performed it for another HNH audience. Again, I saw happiness in the resident's faces, and I was ecstatic that I was the one that caused this joy. In the future, I plan to continue learning the violin and expanding my repertoire. And in the process, I hope to share joy and smiles with even more people than before.

In my freshman year, I took my first computer science course. At first, I was terrified - this was my very first experience with this subject, and I felt underqualified and unknowledgeable. But as the year went on (and as I gained some more confidence in my CS abilities), I unequivocally fell in love with programming and Computer Science - more specifically, its problem-solving aspect. Ever since I was a child, I was always playing some sort of puzzle or strategy game, like crosswords, chess, and sudoku, which I believe heavily contributed to my love for programming. At the end of the year, I was one of the top-performing students in my computer science class, and I began to seriously consider if I could pursue this for the rest of my life. Next on my agenda was seeing if I really could make a career out of this - so I took more STEM courses, dedicated more of my time to CS extracurriculars, and gained proficiency in more coding languages. A year and a half later, I'm even more dedicated to pursuing a CS degree, and my only reason is that I wholeheartedly love it, and believe that I can truly create a passionate, successful career for myself. I never expected to go down this route - at first, I dreamed of being a pharmacist, then a surgeon, and finally a corporate lawyer. But I only wanted to be one of these because I thought they paid well, not because I would be happy. I had no background knowledge in any of these careers, and I had originally planned on entering college unprepared with a smidge of confidence and a pinch of blissful ignorance to get through a four-year university. But that all changed when I discovered my love for CS and programming. I realized how gratifying and relieving it felt to truly believe that my future felt secure! The stars aligned, and all the puzzle pieces finally fell into place -- and that was the biggest difference between all of the careers I had considered -- this felt like what was right for ME, and not for my bank account. However, I didn't expect to enter this field without challenges. I'm a first-generation Arab-American, the first in my family to (hopefully) attend a four-year university in America, a woman entering a male-dominated field, and a Muslim. Essentially, I'm the minority poster child, and I realize that my ethnic and familial background carries stigma and stereotypes that very well may follow me into the workplace. I believe that many viable, innovative ideas are potentially overlooked in these male-dominated STEM fields because they come from women. But despite this, I feel empowered to defy the image people may create of me, and prove that I also belong, regardless of my background, and that my unique and diverse background provides a new perspective in the workforce.