New Year’s Eve 2015, my family had a dinner reunion. “Oh well look at that one,” my uncle leans over and says about my cousin in the living room wearing a dress. “I’d always had my suspicions about him,” he jokes with a disapproving sneer and leans back in his chair. I was hurt. Why would my own uncle say that like it’s such a terrible thing that my cousin is wearing a dress? That it was the worst thing in the world if my cousin were gay or effeminate. “I think he looks beautiful,” my youngest uncle Rami chimes in. At that moment, I wish I could have hugged Rami. No, not because he was defending my cousin who actually isn’t gay, as my uncle was suggesting, but because Rami was defending me. My uncle has no idea that I recognized earlier this past year that heterosexuality was not meeting all of my needs for intimacy with other people and that I’ve come to define myself as queer. It all started when I took a hard look at how my upbringing in Beirut, Lebanon had taught me that the only way that boys are supposed to connect with others is by having sex with “beautiful” girls – that intimacy with other guys or “ugly” girls isn’t as meaningful. After freeing up that block in my brain that told me that I shouldn’t look at guys in a certain way, I could embrace the fact that I am attracted to men in a lot of different, new ways. My growth as a person was exponential. I rewrote so many areas of my life where I did not do things I wanted because of social conditioning. Two months later, I came out to my parents. With everything society, religion, cultural norms, and others had influenced, my dad didn’t understand the situation. Not only did I had to leave the house and my family, but I also had to leave the country. As someone who identifies as gay, I felt like parts of my family and large parts of my community marginalized me for being different because they were being told to by society. I wanted to change that. After I moved to the U.S. and with all the challenges for the last three years being in a place where I had to start everything from scratch. From all the challenges I had to face as a low income, non-white, and ESOL student at PCC, I am now not only being who I am but also really crave being in an environment of like-minded people who strive to do that same thing I want to: balance the images of people typically portrayed through cliché and stereotype with images of real people. When I came out to my aunt, she told me that people who are really set in their ways are more likely to be tolerant of different kinds of people after having relationships with these people. If my uncle can learn to love me, to learn to love one queer person, he can learn to love them all. If I can be an example to my family, I can be an example to my classmates. Not just through my relationships, but through my story. I am glad to say that I have one year left to graduate and without everything that happened to me, I won't be where and who I am today.

I am a Junior majoring in Civil Engineering at Manhattan College with leadership experience. As the first in my family to go to college, I had so many obstacles in my college journey. But I believe education is the key to success. I believe in working hard to achieve my goals, and I must never ever give up working for my goals. After spending three years with the student government as Programs Coordinator, the Director of Student Programs, and the Student Board Trustee and the Student Council Chair, I have gained a lot of knowledge and leadership experience. I did so with the intention of enhancing the breadth and depth of my background in conservation and sustainable development, gaining experience in programs and project management skills, coordinating within a dynamic and challenging work environment, and strengthening my writing and communications skills. In those positions, I supervised program staff, supervised budgets, submitted program renewals to the funding organization, and developed educational and social programs for the college. Between huge events to small workshops, I learned a lot that year about how to be a leader and a professional. My biggest achievement that year was creating, developing, and organizing TEDxPCC 2018. From following TED rules to planning professional events, finding and training speakers, fundraising, marketing, media production, stage design, I learned that you can achieve anything you want if you want to. I was very inspired that year and gained confidence as a person from my experience with student government. Following my academic work, I want to pursue my work in the civil engineering field. My passion has always been assisting the community and trying to improve their quality of life. I think that pursuing such a career will provide me the opportunity to help improve the community's civil quality conditions. My career vision is to one day be able to provide affordable consultation to build a green better world. I decided that I will attain a career as a civil engineer since my passion has always been assisting the community and trying to improve their quality of life. Furthermore, I want to contribute back to underserved populations in the world that struggle every day to sustain a family, and who do not have as much access to civil assistance as other privileged groups. I try to connect my passion for education with my desire to help others. As a result, I was honored to be currently serving as one of the National Student Ambassadors for ASCE ( American Society of Civil Engineers). My responsibilities consist of planning and organizing educational discussions, supporting the current initiatives across the organization. I want to advance student voices at institutional, local, state, and national levels. I believe that education should be a right, not a privilege, and when I see that students are being denied the right to a college education, I feel the need to take action. The opportunity to be able to pass along the information I have learned, that no one person other than oneself can keep one from achieving one's goals and that everyone has the potential to share with the world their unique talents, gifts, and abilities. While one may find motivation in one's hopes for the future, one must not devalue the steps one takes to get there, because it is through one's past joys and hardships that one comes to be who one is in the future.