For me, happiness comes from pursuing activities that challenge my skills and and build a sense of community by connecting me with others who share the same passions. One example is my passion for dance, which sparked in middle school after I discovered open style choreography. As I watched the dancers, I became captivated by their ability to embody the music, express emotions, and tell a story with their body. Mostly, however, I found myself drawn to the dancers’ self-confidence. Because others had always misunderstood my experience with disability and gender dysphoria and ridiculed my gender non-conforming presentation, I struggled with many insecurities. Seeing the dancers’ self-confidence, I dreamt of one day feeling just as empowered in my body and self. Although my parents did not support a hobby in dance due to religious beliefs, I chose to listen and commit to my own needs. When opportunities arose, I explored dance improvisation in my room and mirrored what I saw online. Dancing proved to be both therapeutic and freeing and helped me cope during my middle and high school years, a period that encompassed some of my most difficult childhood experiences. Slowly, I started feeling more comfortable with my identity. Starting in college, I found more opportunities to learn and perform with others. Through dance, I finally felt a sense of community, a privilege I never had growing up. I also experienced, for the first time, the joy of practicing a hobby with others who shared the same passion. Finally, dancing with peers at Wellesley College, MIT, and CJT Dream helped me reach a wider audience, which further strengthened my confidence in my body and identity and brought me additional pleasure.

My passion for dance sparked in middle school after discovering open style choreography. I first explored dance through improvisation. I enjoyed seeing my dance evolve as I trained my body to isolate and control a muscle group, which improved my proprioceptive and introspection capacities. As I developed mind-body awareness, I recognized dance as a lifelong learning process. Over time, this practice of moving mindfully helped me engage my subconsciousness to understand and express my inner self and experiences and navigate challenges. My first dance struggle occurred when I began practicing with peers in college. Through reflection, I identified synchrony as my weakness and coordinated with another dancer to discuss constructive feedback. After college, I sought a more advanced group that challenged me to pick up choreography at a faster pace. This set-back compromised my execution. After conceptualizing the challenge, I recorded and evaluated my movements following rehearsals. Seeing my growth, I later auditioned for MIT’s Asian Dance Team and placed into advanced dances. My previous strategies no longer worked, so I struggled considerably. After I caught myself comparing my movements with my peers’ and ruminated, I designed a new strategy: I arranged side-by-side videos with my solo rehearsals and the official dance practice. Through this strategy, I identified and understood execution errors, which helped me advance my skills at a quicker pace. Overall, I value dance as a form of self-expression and, going forward, will continue to expand my relationship with creative movement through both artistic and intellectual exploration.

Overall, I fuel my life with activities that re-direct my attention to heighten mind-body awareness, ground myself, and maintain wellness. I generally set time outside of work to enhance mind-body awareness and manage stress in one of three ways: 1) high-intensity workout, 2) improv dancing, or 3) a combination of walking, listening to music, and visualizing choreography, which enhances metacognition. Fostering mind-body awareness reminds me that stress can worsen health. This prompts me to put extra effort into preparing healthy meals and managing my sleep schedule. Additionally, it increases my ability to be flexible and ground myself to navigate stressors when they unexpectedly arise in different settings, such as with work conflict. Engaging in mind-body awareness also helps me recognize when I should seek more help and resources to tackle a difficult situation, rather than accept a stressor. Finally, maintaining a support network with family, friends, and peers helps manage my stress and maintain my well-being on a day-to-day basis.

From a young age, I began learning how disability can influence physician-patient dynamics. Seeing other patients struggle with disability-related health disparities showed me that our voice was underrepresented in medicine. As someone with disabilities, I bring to my pursuit of medicine a keen ability to appreciate details of care that matter to patients but are often overlooked. For example, I would provide accommodations, like adjusting ambient light, validate each patient’s unique presentation and level of functional impairment, and manage both disability and illness. Ultimately, I aspire to become a physician to help my colleagues understand what living with disability means to clarify our community’s unmet needs, enrich care for disabled patients, and reduce health disparities. Amidst a religious household, my medical adversities also raised additional voices, which I have not seen in medicine. When my health declined in 2016 and my parents saw the lack of medical support, they turned to religion. This led to exorcism and rituals to heal black magic. By sharing my story, I can stress to the medical community the risks that patients of different backgrounds face when not offered adequate support. In addition to causing trauma, these practices further the divide between patients and medicine. Overall, I hope to use my voice to help similar youths overcome cultural barriers to healthcare. Overall, these narratives give partial insight into my unique combination of life experiences and identities. My backgrounds collectively nurtured a distinct voice that I hope to contribute to medicine to improve care and access to marginalized patients.

My passion for dance sparked in middle school after discovering open style choreography. I first explored dance through improvisation. I enjoyed seeing my dance evolve as I trained my body to isolate and control a muscle group, which improved my proprioceptive and introspection capacities. As I developed mind-body awareness, I recognized dance as a lifelong learning process. Over time, this practice of moving mindfully helped me engage my subconsciousness to understand and express my inner self and experiences and navigate challenges. My first dance struggle occurred when I began practicing with peers in college. Through reflection, I identified synchrony as my weakness and coordinated with another dancer to discuss constructive feedback. After college, I sought a more advanced group that challenged me to pick up choreography at a faster pace. This set-back compromised my execution. After conceptualizing the challenge, I recorded and evaluated my movements following rehearsals. Seeing my growth, I later auditioned for MIT’s Asian Dance Team and placed into advanced dances. My previous strategies no longer worked, so I struggled considerably. After I caught myself comparing my movements with my peers’ and ruminated, I designed a new strategy: I arranged side-by-side videos with my solo rehearsals and the official dance practice. Through this strategy, I identified and understood execution errors, which helped me advance my skills at a quicker pace. Overall, I value dance as a form of self-expression and, going forward, will continue to expand my relationship with creative movement through both artistic and intellectual exploration.

At the age of seven, I experienced a constellation of symptoms that led to a non-cancerous cerebellar tumor resection. Due to inaccessible interpretation services, my non-English speaking mother struggled to fully understand the nature of my condition and its sequelae. As I faced this perplexing situation, I embarked on a journey of enlightenment and transformation. I tried to learn the neurological underpinnings of my condition while acquiring more familiarity with English. This journey began a lifelong process of learning, self-reflection, and acceptance that brought me to medicine. Building mind-body awareness helped me adapt in college when I started experiencing additional challenges with my health. During that period, I began my first clinical research internship in the Valera Lab, where I designed a study on sensory processing and its neural circuitry in adults with ADHD. Although I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of running my own project, my symptoms continued to progress into the Fall. Despite the intensification of my condition, I persisted through the semester until requiring bed rest, at which point I withdrew from classes. Once able to resume baseline physical activity, I remained resilient and returned to research, which led to other internships and several first-author publications. Filled with the desire to help patients navigate both illness and quality of life and provide them a voice and sense of security, I expanded my clinical experience. I began working with ICU patients and followed up with them after hospital discharge. Despite facing declining health, many patients opened up with time. Such was the case of ‘Kai,’ who initially struck me with his contagiously vibrant personality. During our last follow up, I saw an alarming change in his demeanor that prompted me to inquire about significant changes. He responded by sharing his concerns, including becoming homeless, and their effects on his motivation to complete routine activities. Understanding the severity of the situation, I felt compelled to address his worries by discussing potential resources, including housing security. After I took Kai’s concerns seriously and showed genuine support, he began voicing other worries. At the end, I saw a positive shift in his demeanor when he related feeling motivated to take his routine walk, which he had forgone for weeks, immediately after our visit. Seeing his levels of trust and hope increase, I felt grateful for having made a difference. This patient encounter is one of many that stirred the desire to help patients share their stories. In addition to offering support, communicating with patients can contribute to individualized medical treatments and expansion of medical knowledge. Thus, it is crucial for physicians to encourage patients to communicate by carefully listening and engaging with them. After talking with a physician who runs narcolepsy support groups, I realized that patient discussion is not limited to clinic and felt inspired to hold support groups for those with chronic, complicated conditions as a physician. Overall, my experiences shaped the person I am today: driven by the desire to support chronically ill patients and lifelong learning. As a future physician and scientist, I hope to feed these drives and become a successful physician, one who advocates for patients, approaches each case holistically, values personalized medicine, and thrives from learning and research. Moreover, I am confident that the insights and unique perspectives I gained on my own clinical journey will help translate between patient experience and clinical practice and allow me to provide the best personalized care for my patients and ultimately improve care for marginalized patients in America.

As a child, I faced multiple adversities, one of which was my struggle with selective mutism. My desire to regain my confident self drove me to learn about my condition. By gaining a deeper awareness of myself, I hoped to gain control over the situation and heal myself. This approach moderately improved my condition. As talking with others became more manageable, I felt encouraged to push myself further, such as by entering a speech tournament or joining mock-trial. However, my fear surrounding access to career opportunities resurfaced when my attempts at participating in the mock-trial club were denied. Although I felt invalidated because of my differences, I reminded myself that I had come so far on my own and promised myself to keep seeking improvement. By persevering through this challenge, my symptoms became less debilitating in time for college. Reflecting over my growth motivated me to approach life differently. Rather than focus on ‘un-doing’ my social anxiety, I made a life-long commitment to seek self-improvement across all areas of my life. My priority became building the skills I need for success. For instance, I prioritized seminar courses and research opportunities due to their discussion-based structure and the challenge of regularly interacting with strangers and authoritative figures. At the end of college, my decade-long journey and persistent efforts proved fruitful. I was finally free of my social anxiety and fear of authoritative figures. However, I kept pushing. By seeking my current job, where I regularly interact with critically ill patients, I continued to gain comfort with different social interactions. Recently, I felt proud after giving a talk at an Ataxia Symposium, after which I was told I came off as very confident. Seeing myself overcome these challenges motivates me to keep seeking growth.

After experiencing childhood medical adversities while struggling to get access to health services, I strove to educate myself as a patient. Through this journey, my passions for research and neurology flourished. Working in research these past five years taught me the value of bridging research inquiry and patient interactions and drove me to become a physician scientist. As a future physician scientist, I envision myself pioneering research on poorly understood conditions to help patients. Additionally, my relationship with my own disability, religion, and gender identity, along with my medical struggles, inspires me to combat health disparities. I intend to hold support groups for disabled patients and advocate for patient education and equitable access to healthcare for patients of different backgrounds. On the administrative side, I am interested in institutional leadership roles through which I can promote cultural competency and physician education, while enhancing accessibility for patients and physicians. Finally, after attending a conference and talking with residents, I learned that physicians are researching ways to ease residency burnout. This awareness inspires me to support this cause. Because burnout in residency presents a barrier for disabled individuals interested in medicine, helping design a superior training program that maximizes both quality of patient care and resident safety would allow me to reduce burnout while removing barriers in medicine.