Unique is usually a word that I would associate with something good. It is good to be unique. Sadly, in the case of many unique immigrant stories like mine, unique is just another word for tragic...when I was growing up in Syria I never thought I would ever be an immigrant, or someone that wanted to leave the place they grew up in but in 2011 I was put in a place where sadly, that mindset had to change. When the war started in Syria I was just a child who had just celebrated being eight years old. Little did I know that was the last celebration we would ever have in my home country. Months passed and I lost family members, friends, I even lost my elementary school to a bombing. What started off as the most shocking and blood boiling event, slowly started becoming a numbing normal. Three years passed this way until my mother decided to take my sister and I and try to escape. Little did I know escaping was ten times harder than accepting the normal and just living there. We went from country to country trying to get to American only to be kicked out from Mexico and sent back to Syria. A few months later we tried again. This time Brazil kicking us out and sending us back to Syria. Last and final try, we made it. But made it just seems so...positive and good, and I so wish that it was. It was another hardship...one that I took with open arms compared to the ones previous. A culture shock and a language barrier seemed so easy compared to a war. But to 11 year me they weren’t. I felt as though I had left the war in Syria but it just wouldn’t leave me. No matter how hard I tried to get rid of it and all it’s memories it stuck. But what also stuck was my will and ambition to break that language barrier and show this new world that I was suddenly a part of that I deserve to be. And so I did. I learned and I taught my self a language that terrified me at first. I taught myself to embrace a new culture while so carefully keeping mine along...even when it was tempting at times to leave it behind with Syria. My dreams and ambitions only grew with my education. My dreams of becoming a doctor and making my mom, my family and my country proud. But also making eleven year old me, who never thought I could even leave a war zone, proud. This scholarship will bring me one step close to that. And as insignificant it may seem to make an eleven year old that only lives in my memories proud, it means the entire world to me and all my family left in Syria that still cheer her on. Naya swid