I grew up believing that the best way to make an impact on the world was to become someone important. The older I got, the more I learned that impact starts at eye level. It happens when one person shows up to serve another. My parents sent my siblings and I to public schools, and they worked hard jobs to support us. We could not afford tutors or private counselors. There was no safety net or advice I had to learn through trial and error. I had my first job at 13 to contribute to household expenses and to start saving for college. The work I am most proud of doing has never been for a paycheck. It has been in service. As a high schooler, I was recognized by the International Rotary Club the biggest non-profit service organization winning the Rotary Youth Leadership Award, and returning as an assitant counselor the following summer. I was not just shadowing the counselors I was in charge of a cabin of campers. I focused on ensuring campers felt seen and heard, that there were people who believed in them. After that day, I saw campers’ confidence blossom. I realized that small gestures of service could make all the difference. Fast-forward to today. I study computer science at the #1 ivy league for CS and #7 overall in the nation where I serve as the professional development chair for Underrepresented Minorities in Computing. I am responsible for programming events, mentorship, and workshops to support first-year students who are seeking a career in computing. I want these students to know they are not alone. Many of these students come from underrepresented backgrounds, as I did, and I want to ensure they always have a home here. I also work on a software engineering team to build programming tools and technology for students that are used at Cornell and Stanford. My service is intentional. I believe in showing up for people in service, but also in building infrastructure to ensure our work lasts. If you help one person believe in themselves, they will go out and help others believe in themselves. You cannot always see that impact, but I know it’s there. In the future, I hope to continue serving others in whatever ways I can, especially through computer science. I want to build access-expanding tools, support systems for low-income students, and mentorship platforms for first-generation students, so young people who feel like they have been shut out of a system have somewhere to turn. I also use my storytelling skills to tell my own story through videos and online content. I openly talk about how I lost financial aid, and how I learned to navigate scholarships to help others. I do pro-bono college counseling despite never having had any of my own. I do it so students like me do not feel alone in their journey. In the long term, I hope to eventually start a nonprofit that will focus on students in tech telling their stories and using community to access resources needed to be successful. Service has been a lens through which I view my work and life. Service is also the lens through which I will lead. Whether I am mentoring students, writing code for other students and teachers to use, or planning an inclusive workshop, I will lead with the understanding that the most powerful thing you can do is show up for someone else.

494/2500 Words Humanize Check for AI Calculus is applied math. It is used by engineers, physicists, computer scientists, and data scientists. You find it in the equations modeling stress on a bridge or the motion of an object. It is used by data scientists to crunch and model numbers and analyze data to make predictions. It is how computer scientists optimize their algorithms. It is foundational. I have used it in every job I have ever gotten. For me, it has done so much more. It has given me an advantage. I went to public school. I had no tutors, no enrichment program, no special STEM pipeline to hold my hand. All I had was a willingness to work hard and take on challenges. That is why I skipped AB and went straight into BC. It was not easy, nor will I say that the transition was seamless, but it changed the way I think. I had always been able to coast by in school. I had a knack for finding patterns, memorizing what I needed to, and coming away with good grades. BC Calculus changed that. It was the first time I was forced to slow down, deconstruct, and go step by step. It was the first time I had to truly understand what I was doing instead of simply plugging numbers into a formula to get the answer I needed. It changed the way I learned. I went from treating assignments like a checklist of things I had to get through to thinking about assignments as systems I was trying to understand. I went from trying to solve most problems to find an answer I didn’t care about to trying to find answers I was curious about. Equations in physics were no longer just numbers, they were the language w to explain how energy and motion related. In computer science, I started to think about decomposing functions and logic into smaller parts as I was able to do with math problems. I am now a computer science major in the No. 1 Ivy League for CS and No. 7 in the nation. I do research, startups, and software development on projects that model real systems and account for unpredictable behavior. Calculus has given me the fundamentals to break all of it down and work through it. It is the same thought process I take when minimizing a machine learning loss function, optimizing an algorithm’s runtime, or architecting a full-stack system for an actual product. I always think about how change can impact performance and how I can control that change. Calculus also gave me confidence. It taught me that I could grapple with things I did not initially understand, persevere, and come out on the other side. It gave me patience and structure. It showed me how to learn from failure and struggle. That is the kind of growth that sticks with you. It is far more meaningful than easy test scores and good grades. In retrospect, I did not skip AB because I wanted to move fast. It was because I wanted to challenge myself and had no idea I could jump from public school into a notoriously difficult engineering program in the top CS school in the country. It gave me a challenge that made me stronger, and, at the end of the day, that is what STEM is about. Solving hard problems, adapting to when things break or don’t work as we thought they would, and building solutions that can withstand pressure.

My sophomore year brought me to an impossible situation. An injury to our 190-pound state qualifier created a significant gap in our wrestling team lineup. Our team needed someone to fill the 190-pound spot after the state qualifier got injured so my coach assigned me to it since I was the only available athlete with minimal freshman wrestling background. I lacked the necessary preparation time to get ready for the challenge. Seasoned varsity wrestlers with years of experience dominated the mat where I found myself competing. It didn’t go well. I lost my first match. Then my second. Then my third. Eleven consecutive losses went against me as I was thrown down and pinned while crowds watched my repeated embarrassing defeats. Stepping off the mat after every match left me feeling like I had disappointed my team. I became unsure of why I was here or who I was to believe I could do this. As someone who excelled in football, my aspirations reached beyond wrestling to other areas. I aspired to pursue a computer science degree at a top-tier university and chose Cornell because it stands as the premier Ivy League school for CS. The thought of spending four years each day double-blocking made me anxious because I believed it could hurt my chances of getting into elite colleges. I questioned whether my time investment in the sport was futile because it only served to wear me down. I considered quitting all athletic activities because wrestling was no longer fulfilling. Given that I had AP classes and a part-time job while preparing college applications, dropping wrestling appeared to be the sensible decision. Whenever I considered quitting, memories of my original motivation to start kept coming back to me. The essence of wrestling lay in enduring tough challenges rather than achieving quick victories. The sport taught me to endure hardship while pushing my boundaries and striving for advancement even when progress seemed unattainable. So I kept showing up. I increased my drill intensity and analyzed my defeats to overcome my weak points. Slowly, something shifted. I quit wrestling to escape defeat and started wrestling to achieve victory. My first varsity win happened after that. And then another. And another. My wrestling journey reached new heights when I achieved 13 consecutive wins which propelled me towards regionals by season's end. That underdog season changed everything. Initially unsure about my place in wrestling I progressed to win two team captain titles and qualify for the state competition. The sport which I thought made me worthless became the foundation that instructed me to withstand hardship and believe in gradual progress while managing stressful situations. That same mentality carried over into academics. My schedule included double-blocked athletics and AP courses as well as a part-time job and college applications but I still managed to follow my passion for computer science. I earned admission to Cornell which leads my major's Ivy League ranking even though I faced numerous obstacles. Reflecting on my past I understand that wrestling provided me with benefits that extended beyond winning matches. It gave me resilience. I learned through wrestling that underdog status depends not on your initial position but on your ability to fight back.

My mother is Rosalyn Jackson, but to me she’s Rose — and that’s the perfect name for her. Like a rose amidst thorns and cold, she continues to develop, thrive, and give me life no matter what. Often I have felt out of place, far from my African American heritage in Georgia having lived there for years before moving back to Texas as a kid, and far from my Native American heritage in North Carolina where the annual pow-wows gave way to a simpler time and summer farming. I felt even more out of place as an aspiring Computer Scientist who also practiced football and wrestling, the only one programming in a jersey on Fridays. My identity often felt lost in the mix of it all, and I feared becoming a jack of all trades but master of none. Yet her example has taught me how to move forward. As a child in Flint, Michigan, Mom grew up in poverty. Money was always tight, and her family constantly struggled to make ends meet. Even now, she shares with me the creative methods she used—and still uses—to stretch every dollar, from repurposing old items to saving in ways I never would have imagined. On top of the financial strain, her parents placed most of their hopes and resources into her older brother, believing that as the son, he had the greatest potential to succeed. Yet, despite these low expectations and the limited support she received, she refused to let her circumstances or others’ perceptions define her. My mom lived up to her name's meaning of Rose, except not with soft femininity but rather hard work that would defy all expectations. Her hard work and honing her own talents despite the doubts of everyone, she earned acceptance to elite universities like Duke. In the end she chose Florida A&M University (FAMU), because of the generous scholarships offered that would allow her to afford it. At FAMU, she was top of the class and earned a master’s degree in business—all while raising a family. It wasn’t easy. She juggled coursework, jobs, and parenting, excelling at it all along the way. In my own life I have thought I would simply be a jack of all trades master of none by spreading myself over so many diverse fields, but thanks to her inspiration I realized that with hard work I could succeed in all my passions. I have thrived in every field I’ve pursued despite my similar struggles with balancing a job, athletics, and computer science. I earned scholarships in athletics for both football and wrestling and was admitted to the #1 Ivy League for computer science, Cornell University. As a freshman, I have already achieved a place on Cornell’s #1-ranked computer science project team as a freshman. These accomplishments are rooted in the lessons mom taught me: to persevere, to embrace my many passions, and to let others judgements define your limits.

From a young age, I was fascinated by the concept of paradoxes—the idea that two seemingly contradictory statements could both be true. This fascination led me to delve into ancient literature, where I discovered the Dissoi Logoi, a work renowned for its exploration of contradictory arguments. One particular paragraph from this text captured my imagination, prompting me to reflect on the nature of truth and perception in a way that profoundly influenced my understanding of the world. "Furthermore, it is argued by some that fish can fly and birds can swim, while others maintain that such assertions defy the natural order of the world. Indeed, there are those who claim that the moon is made of cheese and the sun is but a flickering candle in the vast expanse of the heavens. Yet, amidst these fantastical musings, one cannot escape the enigmatic allure of the unknown, where reality and imagination intertwine in a dance of cosmic proportions. In this surreal realm, where the boundaries between fact and fiction blur, the mind is free to wander into uncharted territories of thought and speculation. It is a place where the absurd and the profound coexist, challenging the very foundations of our understanding. For in the realm of the bizarre and the surreal, truth takes on a shape-shifting guise, eluding the grasp of rational thought and inviting the curious mind to explore the limitless boundaries of possibility. Here, amidst the whimsical fantasies and outlandish conjectures, one finds a sanctuary for the imagination, a realm where the laws of physics bend and reality is but a fleeting illusion. It is a world where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the mundane is transformed into the miraculous. And in this strange and wondrous landscape, the mind is set free to dream and to wonder, to ponder the mysteries of the universe and to embrace the infinite possibilities that lie beyond the realm of the known." In the excerpt from the Dissoi Logoi, the author presents a series of paradoxical assertions, challenging conventional notions of reality and inviting readers to ponder the nature of truth and perception. This passage and furthermore text is akin to a true devil's advocate. The passage begins with the assertion that "fish can fly and birds can swim," a statement that defies the laws of nature as commonly understood. This assertion is immediately juxtaposed with the opposing viewpoint, suggesting that such claims are absurd and contrary to the established order of the world. However, rather than dismissing these assertions outright, the author delves deeper into the complexities of perception and belief to somehow justify fish flying, and birds swimming as a reasonable statement! The author's underlying meaning becomes apparent when considering the broader context of the Dissoi Logoi, a work known for its exploration of contradictory arguments and moral relativism, perhaps one of the greatest works to define this concept. Through the use of paradoxical statements, the author challenges readers to question their assumptions and consider alternative perspectives of some confusing statements. In this particular paragraph, the author highlights the subjective nature of truth, suggesting that what one person perceives as reality may be perceived quite differently by another. By introducing fantastical assertions such as the moon being made of cheese and the sun being likened to a flickering candle, the author pushes readers to confront the limits of their own understanding. These absurd claims serve as a metaphor for the arbitrary nature of belief and the human tendency to ascribe meaning to the unknown. Just as the assertion that fish can fly contradicts our understanding of biology, so too do the claims about the moon and the sun challenge our understanding of cosmology. Ultimately, the author's underlying message is one of intellectual humility and openness to different perspectives. Rather than clinging rigidly to preconceived notions of truth, the author encourages readers to embrace uncertainty and engage in critical thinking. Even a scientist should be able to practice this kind of humility, and realize the world is no-where near black and white. I put this into practice in my own life, as when someone tells me things are impossible, or I am frustrated with situations around me I can bounce between perspectives to understand those around me better or find unconventional solutions that could be overshadowed by the usual fixes. By acknowledging the inherent ambiguity of reality, the author invites readers to explore the human experience and recognize the value of diverse viewpoints. The excerpt from the Dissoi Logoi serves as a thought-provoking meditation on the nature of truth and perception. Through the use of paradoxical statements and fantastical claims, the author challenges readers to question their assumptions and consider alternative viewpoints. This challenge from the author has made me a better engineer, brother, son, and friend. It is a reminder of free will, and the fact that no statement is without its truth. Next time you are solving a problem, or arguing a point remember by embracing intellectual humility and openness to ambiguity, you too can gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of the world, those around us, and the myriad ways in which reality can be handled.