While it may sound cliche, I want to pursue higher education because I want to become as worldly and educated as I can. Whether its learning how to make homemade tamales with my grandma or learning how to play a song on guitar through 'Youtube University', I am up for the challenge of learning about the things I don't know. As people, we tend to define education as something throat cut and solid, like math or reading, but education is more than that. It's about discovering passions, meeting new people and just widening your perspective about your environment and beyond. I love to explore and learn about the world around me. In quarantine, I impulsively purchased a guitar and decided I was going to become the next John Mayer. Well, I'm not exactly there yet, but each day I am learning to become better and better and playing, which is extremely gratifying because not only did I work hard to learn the chords and tabs of guitar playing, but I can proudly say I learned something because I wanted to, not because I was forced to. Like my guitar, attaining higher education is a choice I am making. I deserve to be educated, especially when it is not an option for others in this country, it is a responsibility I want to take on to honor them as well. For many reasons, I didn't always love school. My grandmother, a Lebanese woman who married as a uneducated seven-teen year-old, always placed importance on how I must be educated. She didn't care if I became a doctor or anything else, but she wanted me to be able to support myself and be independent, something she was not exposed to or taught as a child. Hearing my grandmother's stories as I grew up broadened my perception on how valuable an education is, especially as a middle-eastern woman, who's ancestors before were not even allowed to think about. I like to believe I have multiple mini-passions within my much larger passion to create. One of those mini-passions is writing music. I've written forms of poetry and music forever. I could be sleeping and suddenly feel a spark of creativity, and get to work at 12 AM. To me, music allows me to combine the emotions of words and sound in one, which perfectly expresses how I am feeling in that moment, getting me through whatever is happening in my life. This fall, I will be studying at New York University (with my first year being Florence, Italy). I hope that while attaining an education, I can combine all my passions and turn my dreams into reality.