Starting from a young age, I understood the importance of money. It was what my mother worked for 12 hours a day for 6 days a week, and what allowed me to have clothes on my back, and food on my plate. A few cents can make a difference too. I knew how to differentiate between the cheaper, riper tomatoes from the ones that were of less quality and more expensive, and that a dinner at a restaurant equates to the price of a week of our household groceries. I also found that working as a waitress at a sushi restaurant on Saturday can earn me double the amount of money making bubble tea. The value and hardships to attain money taught me to be thankful and understand that money does not fall from the sky and to be grateful for the wonderful support that I receive to help better my circumstances and further my education. As a first-generation student and the eldest daughter to attend college this fall, I also learned that money is not quintessential. Learning to transmit warmth and uplift others like me was more impactful and rewarding. From my personal experiences, I understand the struggles of students like me: not being able to afford the cost of tutoring classes and summer camps on top of juggling to find the balance between school and making money. When my mother was laid off from her waitress job due to her recurring injuries, I registered 12 email accounts for free trials to learn code from Codecademy and earned money maintaining a website for a local restaurant. I also understand the feeling of coming home at night after work and school and cramming to get that Lab report written to make money and make ends meet. I strive to become someone who is passionate and can elicit concrete change in my community to better the lives of aspiring and curious individuals like me, who don't want to and won't back down from the obstacles ahead. To pursue my ambition, I volunteered at local summer facilities as a tutor for low-income students. I crafted holiday cards to donate to the senior facilities to bring warmth and companionship to the seniors living there. I also volunteered my summer hours to deliver English tutoring through zoom to students who immigrated to America and are in the process of learning the language. And one of my proudest projects I boast is serving on the planning committee of a science conference in which I coordinated opportunities for students to network and connect with influential leaders of various STEM fields, exposing them to research and internship opportunities that are usually hard to reach. I know that opportunities and support aren't handed and that they require hard work, patience, and resilience. The only way to improve yourself and help others is to learn to work extra hard and never give up on your dreams and aspirations. My mother works extremely hard to support my brother and me, and I will also work hard to help alleviate her burdens to the best of my capabilities. At this time, I can provide educational and emotional support to my family and others in my small ways. One day, I will use my gained knowledge and abilities to benefit others who are also struggling and lost in bigger and better ways. Creating change consists of one step at a time, and I believe that by taking these little steps, I will ultimately create a big footprint on the lives of myself and others.

"Hello World". The words flashed before my computer screen during an ordinary summer day of my eighth grade at the library. I was exploring a course on my free week-trial of codecademy, attempting to learn about HTML and CSS, programming languages that were useful in website design. As I typed commands into the computer, I saw how I could manipulate the texts and images on the screen, controlling them at my free will, it was as if I truly had said "hello" to a new "world"... But this new world was temporary. My free-week trial was over in an instant, and in order to resume my progress, I must pay a fee to continue on. Coming from a single parent household, it was already difficult to make ends meet, and impossible to scrounge out an additional $20. There were some computer science classes at my local library but my mother's long work hours during the summer made the mere 10 mile journey a unsurmountable obstacle. So, I proceeded to create 12 email accounts, each with a one-week trial, enough to use for the entirety of my summer break, and plenty for me to grasp an understanding of the workings of HTML, CSS, Java, and Python. The languages of computers were beautiful to me. They interweaved and integrated to create a product that was original and most importantly, interactive. It was a forum to communicate, to connect and collaborate with people from all around the world instantly. I translated the skills I acquired from these summer self-taught coding lessons into venues for others to learn about STEM education and promote causes that I felt were important. In school, I served as the social media manager for my school's Heartwise club, a club dedicated to bolstering local seniors' wellbeing during the the covid 19 pandemic through submitting videos to our website, writing letters, and hand-crafted goods and clothings. Through this position, I witnessed the power of the internet as a platform to foster and transmit care and empathy during times of isolation and distress. No only was my role in establishing such a platform nurturing for the community, but it also had the potential to be enriching for curious and proactive students like me. Through serving as the organizer and marketing lead of a county-wide hackathon, I employed my expertise in website design and leadership skills to coordinate members to meet agendas, seek out sponsors (ultimately accumulating more than $5000 from sponsors), and advertise the event to local middle and high schools (more than 130 attendees), to plan a hackathon connecting aspiring STEM students to professionals in the field and an opportunity to collaborate on coding projects. Outside of school, I am an avid tutor, teaching eager students the intro to website design, java script, engineering, and algebra to local and overseas students, expanding my influence to my community and beyond. For me, "Hello World" was not a just a greeting to the realm of internet fascinations anymore, it was a means through which I can introduce these skills to other people around the globe. The lack of exposure to STEM related career fields relates to the increasing disparity between the affluence of the respective areas, thus restricting these students from opportunities to flourish in these fields. I believe, that by having an education in STEM, I can work to bridge these gaps and obstacles to create a healthier society and empower future individuals.

Wendell Wilke said that "education is the mother of leadership". But what exactly makes someone/something a leader? As the popular saying goes "perhaps only time will tell..." Throughout history, the rise and fall of civilizations share one thing in common: they always have a leadership figure. During the Mongol Empire, that leader was Genghis Khan, who conquered and established the largest land based empire in the world, facilitating trade and the spread of culture and technology along the Silk Road. The key success to his powerful military is the organization of his troops, which translated into effective leadership and control over his troops. Having conquered his enormous empire, Khan assimilated local customs into his governing policies, enabling a great degree of religious and intellectual freedom. Examples of such innovation that stemmed from the Mongols was the introduction of gunpowder, paper, and the art of printing. As these products transferred along the trading networks, people modified and improved upon these things, bringing literacy and prosperity to a wider scope of people, and bringing the Eurasian world closer than ever before. However, the reign of the Mongols cannot just be summed up as a peaceful and prosperous period, it also bought devastation to those inflicted. In Europe, the Black Death, which was carried by Mongol people when traveling, lead to the deaths of more than 1/3 of their population, and the Mongols were notorious when defeating the Persians, capturing and torturing prisoners to assert authority. Like all empires, the all-powerful Mongol Empire eventually fell; Not to outsiders invasion, but collapsed from within. The vast geographical extent of the empire made it hard for the Mongols to effectively address each region's concerns, leading to discontent among the people and eventually rebellions in all corners of the empire. Through learning about the Mongols, I was able to spot parallels between the 1200s and the modern period that we are living in. I was able to capture the importance of accepting others' ideas and opinions because they can lead to the creation of something entirely novel and better. I understood the benefits of leadership, especially maintaining clear communication between each member of a team. I also learned that including a wide range of people from all kinds of backgrounds can include many unique perspectives into the discussion and lead to more innovations. I also learned to contemplate the actions I commit because they can have immense impact on those around me. During the covid pandemic, people from around the world worked together to isolate and quarantine in order to contain the spread of the virus. At the beginning of March of 2020, when my school officially transitioned into virtual school, my peers and I started off viewing this closure as an unexpected mini break from school to a viewing it as a dreadful isolation. Although it was difficult to grasp the concept of a contagious virus spreading across the world, my knowledge of the Black Death helped me to understand the direness of the situation and the significance of the actions that our governments took. In order to contribute to this cause, I volunteered at a local pediatrics clinic to help distribute vaccines to children in my community, acted as a tutor to students around America who are struggling with virtual school, and served as the president of a club dedicated to promoting physical and mental wellbeing to all during quarantine. I understood that by using knowledge to unite my community, it can help to inform and protect them. Education is the mother of leadership because knowledge unites to create something greater for the world.

Rice porridge is considered a staple in every Chinese household. To me, it smells like nothing, tastes, like nothing, but scorches my tongue when served straight off the pot. My grandmother, on the other hand, considers it a mandatory course accompanying every meal. Counterintuitively, this transparent tasteless porridge is extremely high in glucose sugar and would eventually lead to her developing diabetes in her early 40s. In Chinese, the term diabetes is directly translated to "sugary urine disease", thus, in my culture, the onset of diabetes is always attributed to "eating too much sweet stuff" rather than associated with "glucose". This misconception that avoiding sweet foods cures diabetes is not unique to my grandmother; Social media fuels the spread of misinformation through trending Facebook articles, convincing the elderly and young that "strawberries must be washed with dawn's dish soap before consumption", "mouthwash is the key to preventing the spread of coronavirus", and "prescription medicines are always slightly toxic". The increasing access to technologies such as tvs, social medias, and the phone has made the modern life fast paced, entertaining, but most importantly life-saving. Despite the clear benefits, there are some malicious content creators writing articles only for the sake of clicks and views have resulted in these false beliefs to be reflected in my grandmother continuing her high glucose diet with her daily rice porridge and refusal to take her medications, worsening her condition. Thankfully, the initial seemingly paranoid implantation of a diabetes monitor saved my grandmother's life. The implant alerts the fluctuation in blood sugar to my mother and I's iPhone app, notifying us when my grandmother's blood sugar was too low/too high and informing us whether or not she took her daily insulin medication. Thanks to this app, my mother and I were able to save my grandmother from numerous instances when my grandmother neglected to take her medication and/or had severely low blood sugar. Diabetes affects more than 420 million people worldwide and the percentage of diabetic patients in the American elderly populations is nearing 30%. Although these numbers seem extremely alarming, statistics show that these numbers are likely to continue to increase. It is important to utilize the internet and technology to spread accurate and positive information in order to prevent the development of such diseases and to ensure the health and wellbeing of those who are affected by it.