A growth mindset is a hard thing to quantify. To be able to grow, I think it is essential to wait for your time. But while you wait, always find a way to make the most out of the present. I was struggling to make ends meet for tuition at the beginning of the semester. I was also signed up to go to the military in early November. So I had a lot on my mind in the fall. My military dates were canceled, and I needed a new way to pay for college, so I got a job. In my first month at chipotle, I made 700 dollars working at 12 dollars an hour. I wanted to get into music, so I started listening to 30 hours of old records to sample and put into my music to start recording and producing my songs. Being dedicated to growing is about doing as much as possible and having a stoic outlook on life. If I can't change what someone else will do, why should I care? If I improve every day in even the subtlest of ways, I am doing the right thing.

My favorite artist goes by the name of J-Dilla. Using a newly invented electronic midi device called the MPC 3000, he gained fame by creating organic sound out of inorganic machines. While sampling tracks in the studio, he gave new life to old music. And because of this, many artists still utilize the techniques that he innovated due to his dedication to his craft and unparelled musical genius.

Patience is a necessary part of life. To be patient means to wait for something. To know when the right opportunity strikes. Patience is not laziness; it is an active search for something greater. I was patiently waiting for my first job interview and waiting for my first check to come in the mail. But I needed to work on being patient with my spending habits. I was so used to not getting anything that when I got just 200 dollars, I thought that I was rich. My mom was patiently waiting 13 years for her ticket out of the ghetto. Our whole family was lucky because we were waiting for the opportunity to get a better education in a good community finally. I learned my patience from her, how to wait for the things I want. Many times, it is better not to get what you want on the first try. Some people never find what they want even if they wait. Patience is hope that one day, soon or otherwise, you will get what you desire. Patience and ambition are balancing acts. Greed will prevent you from seeing the best option, and laziness will make the best option pass by someone. Active patience is the best way to succeed in work, school, and everything I want to do.

My goal for my medical career is to use my degree in psychology to help break the cycles of poverty and violence in my community. Too many times, I have seen kids I grew up with take a wrong turn in life. It wasn't necessarily their fault; many of these kids don't have the support system many other Americans had. They didn't have the familial support that I was lucky to have. Their anger against the odds they are put up against seem impossible to overcome. Children need role models in their life, to help guide them through the upps and downs. With the knowledge I wish to gain, I want to build that foundation to help the next generation of kids break the chains that bind them to the lowest class in society. Racial diversity in healthcare is more important than ever. America has long neglected the needs of the black community. Many times America has hurt black people with medical research than helped. As a result, Black and minority communities have a stigma against mental health and medicine because of white America's unjust and exploitative practices. All we need is someone who understands our pain, our struggle. The hesistancy and supersition in the black community was based on the exploitation of many people. Henrietta Lacks had her cells stolen and profited from in secret, and many others had gone through the same fate. Black doctors would be able to bridge the gap we have in American society. People will open up to others who they believe come from the same experiences as them.Minority doctors will often be able to speak to immigrants whose first language is not english. Studies have shown, people who talk in their mother tongue have a greater outlook on the person they are speaking to.Because of this sense of empathy would be achieved that would allow an open discourse and better treatment for the patient. This allows us to become healthier as a society. But this is a two way street, black people in urban communities often struggle to pay for basic necessities, working extreme hours every week to support their families. Minority doctors must meet these people halfway, and that comes with a possible cut to their pay. The culture in the black community is very hostile to education. Many times the only people who are able to make it out of the ghetto successfully are those with raw talent or ability, not education. Increasing the accessibility to education in our communites and funding to provide black teens with scholarships to fully pursue their aspirations will be a major step to racial diversity in medicine.

My most inspirational song is Family Business, by Kanye West. The song opens up with a light piano melody. Then an old soul sample of the Dells, saying, "All the Glitter is not Gold." It is chosen to remind the listener of the true meaning of life, fulfillment, and joy in the things you care about. All through the song, Kanye speaks about the troubled past of his family and the great moments of his childhood. I relate to this song because my family has gone through a lot to get where we are. We all used to live in the same apartment building together, and nowadays, we are a hundred miles apart. So when I see my family get together once every few years. I know what we all achieved, and it motivates me to make them proud. When we are kids, we don't understand how unforgettable these moments were in our lives. Before debt, school, and jobs, we were all smiling. Even when we had family members serving five years in prison, it didn't matter. It was the hope that when we all met, we would forget every care in the world for that thanksgiving or Christmas night. Family Business reminds me of that feeling. Although we are all in a better position in life, the sense of childhood joy will be something we could never forget. It inspires me to become a better person, "for the ones that cant be with us."

The stigma of mental health that many people possess in the black community has been passed down generation after generation. Stuck in the survivor mentality, our parents never had the opportunity to see their lives in the third person, to contemplate their emotions. Many of these mental health problems in the black community are caused by a lack of future direction. The next paycheck is all we see, paying bills on time, having money for rent. This societal and self-imposed barrier to mental health is what holds us back from success. First, we need to remove the generational trauma that parents impose on their children. The mentality that "you have a much better life than I had" is dangerous to black adolescents. Parents should be a shoulder to cry on, to open up to, and look for guidance. When parents raise their kids to be stone solid, it leaves many of them confused. As a result of this, they look for acceptance and medication in the most dangerous places. A part of this is because of the culture we have built around ourselves. We judge our brothers and sisters by what American society tells us. That child who grew into a vilified drug dealer could have just as quickly become a scientist in a major pharmaceutical company. The kid that promptly rose to the ranks of a gang could have become a business executive with the proper guidance. What we absolutely need to fix this is access to education. When property taxes fund our schools, and we own no property in our own communities, what does that make us? The teaching of our youth needs to be a concentrated effort by black celebrities and people in business. Black people having to leave the same communities they grew up in to succeed in America is not a sustainable model. A utopian vision for the black community starts with us releasing the black men from prison. Because America did not construct a prison system to rehabilitate the black man, it was meant to subjugate and destroy a man's will. After they are released, they should be given a stable job and a place to live. When a person is given direction and a chance, they are infinitely better off than someone cast out by society. Next, we take our addicts off of the streets and rehabilitate them with love and care. We need to understand their problems, and many times, addicts self-medicate to solve their own issues. They inject to forget, forget the pain of loss, the uncertainty of life. Understanding the trauma of these people society would typically label as degenerates will help us all in the long term. Lastly, we improve our school systems by outside funding and private schools. The public educational system in America has been failing us for generations; why would we trust it to help us rise from poverty? Instead of school merely keeping black teens out of trouble, why can it not teach kids to use their minds and work with their hands? As much as we need black educators and scientists, we need carpenters and mechanics even more. An open dialogue will go a long way, an arm to reach out and help people who would otherwise not have the resources. Therapy is a significant part of helping our community, but it is not the whole story. Solving these mental health issues in the black community is as much preventative as it is rehabilitative. If we cannot rely on anyone else to help us, we must make the first move.

Like most stories, this one starts in a hospital. However, this was not just any hospital; this was one my Grandmother, a Puerto Rican immigrant, had worked at for 30 years. And my father, a Jamaican immigrant by the name of Damien Cargill, was on the other side of the glass. My mother had been all around the United States, from Los Angeles to Miami, to San Francisco. This time she ended up in Spanish Harlem. I never knew much about my father, only that he could not see me as a baby. Even though my loving uncles and aunts taught me about my Spanish heritage, I always felt like something was missing. That was when I met my aunt for the first time. Relatives who had come from a place thousands of miles away to start a better future for themselves in the City of Dreams. I learned about the culture I was missing, the part of me that I felt ashamed of. It didn’t take a sociologist to know that New York was not what it once was, and the city, which was once a thriving cultural haven, was now a black hole of poverty and violence. My mother would not repeat her parents’ mistakes, which could not escape the depressing cycle of poverty and drug offense. So we moved to the south in exchange for a place that we learned quickly was a different kind of poverty. The kind where ignorance is bliss, where you cannot walk 10 minutes down from section 8 housing and see the ultimate display of wealth and prosperity shining in your face. Nevertheless, the schools were much better because redlining was not able to dissect the economic classes fully. The parents of those kids had reached the pinnacle of the American dream four times over. Over time, my mother got promotions, and we bounced from place to place until high school. High School was where I found myself. Even though I was far away from the streets of Harlem, I still carried the culture with me. As time went on, my negative feelings about my blackness went away, and I felt a new pride in myself. I began exploring salsa music, reggae, and hip hop and fusing them with the jazz and blues traditions I learned in the south. In my junior year, I woke up. On my 16th birthday, I went into Arby’s dining hall for my job interview. So I started working. It did not matter; I worked 40 hours a week at 8 dollars an hour on school nights. That I would stay up until 1 am to practice my violin and bass. I found purpose; I would reach the dream that my mother had sacrificed so much for me to get. By the time I walked down the stage of my high school graduation, I knew that I had done what I could for my future. That brings me to this point; I do not know what I will be years from now like many college students. My goal is to help other kids who did not have the 1 in 10,000 odds. Because just as easily, I could have been staring down the barrel of a gun like many of my old friends. In the future, I wish to create a program in the name of my Grandmother called the Encarnacion fund. To help teenagers enter a place where they do not have to be what society wants. Every kid deserves a chance to find themselves and change the world in the process.