A quote that means a lot to me is "No one else can live your life but you. Only you will have to live with the aftermath of what you choose to do with it." A lot of people are afraid of failure and this can cause decision-making to be more difficult than it should be. There are so many ways that a choice can go in life and a positive response is not guaranteed. With that being said, some people rely heavily on other people's advice or recommendations on what they should do in a situation if it is too stressful. However, you can't be content with someone else making decisions for you in your life because at some point it feels like you have no control over your own life. The feeling of being lost in life because you aren't where you wanted to be or you didn't really feel like the right decision was made because you let someone else decide for you. You have to focus on what you want with your life and what will make you happy in it. This quote is meaningful to me because I feel like it took me too long to learn that I need to live for myself. I am a very caring and compassionate person. I enjoy taking care of others; however, I have noticed that I neglect my own self when I focus on doing things that will make other people happy. I use to follow instructions because I wanted to make my parents proud. I would compromise my own goals and happiness for what I thought the people I loved wanted. Now that I am a little older and I want to take life more seriously for me and my child, I'm realizing how letting other people make choices for me was really hurting me in the long run. The choices I neglected to make pushed me further from my dreams and happiness because I was making choices in my life that were not based on what I truly wanted. What this quote truly means to me is a reminder that I am in control of my life. If anyone is upset about what I choose to do with my life, then I don't need them in mine. I can no longer sacrifice my own happiness for the happiness of others. This quote reminds me every day to live for me because that is the only life I have complete control of from beginning to end.

One answer that could help more people who struggle with mental health would be to work on destigmatizing asking for help or seeking help. While there are a lot of ads letting people know where to go for help and media outlets are working to bring awareness to mental health in general, I notice a lot of people have a hard time determining when it is time to ask for help. Even though social media offers more possible ways for people to connect than ever before, it has hindered heavily humanity's ability to determine different social cues and ability to feel comfortable communicating. Between the cyberbullying and the superficial ideologies pushed through social media, people don't know how to reach out and ask for help until after they have already had their breakdowns. I myself struggle with my mental health and have fallen victim many times to being too late to ask for help and getting swept away in the feeling of dread and hopelessness. These emotions can and will make you feel like you want to be alone and disconnect from everything. If people have a hard time reaching out to the people in their lives but not when reaching for their phones, it's possible that technology could be a practical answer. An app on our phones that could help us determine if it would be a good time to reach out for help. If the user isn't sure if they should ask for help but they feel a little off or different. The app could use a medical questionnaire to determine the severity of the symptoms. If the severity is a med-to-high range, it can send a message to a trusted party asking them to check in with or recommend contacting a medical professional to the user.

I aim to see how far I can push myself in my dream career while also giving back to the world around me and the communities that I call home. Medicine is my passion. The medical field is what I have dreamed about since I was old enough to dream. My final goal is to acquire a doctorates degree, although I have yet to decide what form of medicine I want to be my focus of medicine. However, I know I want to help as many people with my expertise as I can. Something I would love to do after my doctorates is to open up a clinic in a predominantly black area and provide affordable health care services to the local area. I am actually really passionate about my desire to fix the atrocious acts committed against the black community as a whole. My goal is to help my community where ever I can. I would love to mix my love of Biology & the medical field with my passion for Black rights in my future. I want to be a part of and add to the solution to the problem of how the healthcare system treats and cares for its black patients. I think it is important to increase racial diversity in healthcare because everyone needs a doctor or a nurse or a hospital eventually. With all the racism present in medicine that has recently been put in the spotlight, not enough change is happening quickly enough that will help the black community that needs help. Instead of fixing the issues black people face in America, the government chooses to focus on petty wins like a holiday for hip-hop. Therefore, the errors that were present before are glanced over and are able to still remain alive and well. I believe we need more black people in healthcare that care about the health of black people. There have been multiple stories and studies that show the majority of people are more comfortable when they see familiarity in their surroundings. That is why representation is important in society. People feel like if they have someone that looks similar to them, they have someone who might care more about them if present. They believe they may have someone who would be willing to help them if they need their aid, someone who may be willing to stand up for them in their times of need. That is why racial diversity is important in healthcare. So we don't have just people who still believe black people experience less pain than any other race. So we have more than just the people that think black people are more likely to lie about their pain levels just to get drugs, when the faces of the opioid epidemic have been, respectfully, mostly non-black. It is important so back women and black babies don't have a significantly higher childbirth-related mortality rate in comparison to every other race. It is also possible that an increase in diversity can increase the black communities trust in hospitals and doctors again. It can lead to a great improvement in the black community's overall medical health if the healthcare field was more diverse.

My favorite book is Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. This is my favorite book because I love the dystopian concept from the angle of perfection. Humanity's societies are all built on trial and error. What did not work one time is scrapped and a new form of government or societal structure is formed. The story takes place in the future, in a society that is so full of indulgence and consequence-free pleasure that the citizens consider their way of living as perfect. However, the way of living expressed in the book just seems so unnatural and meaningless. The idea that giving in to all one's urges and chasing dopamine stimulation can result in a negative effect on society is an interesting take that was really unique to literature, especially at the time of the novel's creation. I really enjoy the critic on a form of government that the citizens wouldn't be quick to notice or oppose because it plays to the human nature of wanting pleasure. The concept is that what feels good must be good, even if it really isn't. I love that the author informs his readers to stay vigilant about all types of corruption and brainwashing. There are imperfections in every form of society, nothing is foolproof. I also like the implications of the concept of a "civilized" society verse a "wild" society being flawed. The colonization of areas because one country doesn't understand another's cultures and practices. I think there are so many ideas and perceptions one can pull from this book and that makes it such a great read. It can invoke different emotions and thoughts from different readers and allows us to reconsider what we see as normal. What we think should be considered acceptable from our own societies.