Once I get home after a 12-hour day and long tutoring shift, I take a quick break to eat dinner and shower. Then, I’m back to studying until the clock strikes midnight (or one in the morning, if I have an upcoming exam). Working 18 hours per week while being a full-time undergraduate student wouldn’t have been my ideal college life, however I’m grateful for the lessons it’s taught me in how I can make a meaningful impact. I’m majoring in bioinformatics, a highly specific field that focuses on the intersection of biology, computer science, and statistics to analyze biological data. This meant that I had to choose a school that offered this niche coursework, leading me to Baylor University. I knew if I attended a private university, I would have to play my part in financial support. This reality didn’t scare me, but instead fueled me to grow independently and professionally. The summer before my freshman year I set a goal for myself: to take on financial responsibility and help my parents pay for my education. I found employment at my school’s athletic department and student success center, where I work as a tutor. Though an integral step to supporting myself, I didn’t perceive getting hired as my stopping point. I was fully devoted to doing my job to the best of my ability. As a tutor in two separate departments, I often work with students that have the courage to ask for help and are willing to learn from a fellow student. I quickly began to take this seriously, committing myself to making each student feel better at the end of each session. Whether it’s drawing diagrams or comforting someone after a challenging exam, it’s a privilege to be able to plant the seed for the passion of learning every time I clock in to my shift. Looking back as a rising senior, I can recognize that my initial motivation to get these jobs was to accomplish my goal of financial freedom. However, I don’t see my job in that light anymore. Witnessing my peers become active learners, using strategies I taught them, and return weekly with pure joy after reaching their academic goals has helped me realize my original goal changed. Tutoring became a way for me to intentionally help others and add kindness to their lives. During tutoring sessions, I encourage students to be open with me, ask questions freely, and listen to all their concerns, big or small. I focus on being empathetic and respectful to create a safe, judgement-free learning environment. These techniques have made me a better tutor, but more importantly, have shown me how significant it is to carry a positive impact wherever I go. As for my next goal, I’m working to graduate a semester early and begin working at a full-time position for a pharmaceutical company. Delivering high-quality work is a core part of my work ethic, but just as importantly I’ll constantly be looking for the opportunity to lend a helping hand. No matter where I go, being supportive and uplifting others in their own journeys will always be my overarching goal.

I have always dreamt of fighting a high-stakes, sci-fi war against a cruel enemy. As crazy as it sounds, I believe I can live out my dream. I’m majoring in bioinformatics, a field that combines computer science, biology, chemistry, and statistics to analyze and interpret biological data. With this skillset, I will have the ability to impact hundreds, even thousands, of people through research advancements. As a rising senior, I have completed most of my battle training in the form of coursework and academic projects. I also completed an experimental mission as an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Benton’s bioinformatics lab. I trained a clustering model that could categorize primates based on their biomarker levels to research how long-term alcohol use affects the body. I visualized my results by coding scatter plots and presented my findings at a poster session. Completing this project not only gave me invaluable experience, but showed me how impactful my work is. My findings are useful for selecting the biomarkers and parameters to train a model that can later be developed for assessing a patient’s risk of developing an alcohol use disorder, for example. Research is my preferred fighting tactic, and seeing it has meaningful value first-hand makes it all the more powerful. This semester, I’ve been deployed to the frontlines. I’m an Informatics Analyst intern at Medpace, a clinical research organization that runs clinical trials for new pharmaceuticals and medical devices. I’m responsible for querying data and designing visualizations that will be presented to pharmaceutical companies. Though not directly interacting with biological data, I’m still part of the battle against cancer, rare disease, and chronic illness. I work on trial feasibility, which has been extremely rewarding because I play a role in starting a trial, choosing which hospitals can run the trial, and calculating enrollment projections. Witnessing each trial startup is surreal because with each activation, it means a patient is getting unprecedented medical care that empowers them in their own battle. My upcoming goals do not shy away from the war for health. I plan to complete an independent capstone project focused on developing a bioinformatics tool in my last year of college. Then, I will take my sharpened fighting skills and weapons back to war. I’ll research the genomes of drug-resistant bacteria to discover how they are building shields against our current medicine. I plan to work in the drug development sector, further specializing modern medicine for precision and personalized treatments. My career will allow me to benefit the entire population with new discoveries and breakthroughs for healthcare. I’m passionate to bring hope, care, and a solution to this generation’s medical challenges. In a more personal sense, I strive to be a positive resource in my closer community. I enjoy helping and working collaboratively with my peers at school and at my internship. Serving as a tutor at my school’s success center, I work with students that could be struggling academically. I create a safe and respectful environment where I aim to make each student feel better after each session. Having a technical background combined with a teamwork-oriented environment has kept me focused on leveraging skills I learn in the classroom to bring positive change to society. Looking back, I’m proud of myself for achieving the goals I set for myself when I chose to pursue bioinformatics. I still have so much to do and am so motivated to continue making a difference in healthcare. The war against disease is not over, but I’m excited to play my part for the health of humankind.

If bioinformatics did not exist, I probably wouldn't have gone to college. Actually, I probably would have gone to college, but been miserable studying something mundane that did not interest me. Before I discovered bioinformatics, I planned on majoring in computer science and accepted my fate of pursuing a career in insurance analytics. I only found bioinformatics once I began researching computer science more, only because of the doubts in my head asking if this was the right path for me. The only thing I could think of when I discovered bioinformatics was "yes". Bioinformatics was immediately appealing to me. I was searching for a major that was an applied subject, a gateway into a strong job, something that was already specialized. Bioinformatics is all that for me and more. Using technology that not even my parents grew up with, I can create my own databases to observe, record, and analyze biological data. The combination of multiple academic areas, specifically math, biology, and computer science, is exhilarating to me. Strongly unique and intriguing, bioinformatics combines the best of these subjects to become its own field. Its interdisciplinarity attracts me in that I know I will continue to gain knowledge in my favorite subjects. Even though I had no previous computer science experience before, I was right when I knew this was what I wanted to study. Only a week away from completing my first semester of college at Baylor University, I have loved learning to program. CSI 1401 has taught me how to code in Python and is the foundational class all bioinformatics majors must take to graduate. Through this introduction to programming, I have learned how a computer functions, built-in functions and methods, variable assignment, containers, expressions, loops, user-defined functions, list comprehensions, string splicing, and so much more. I understand that I am considered a beginner in the coding world, but learning Python is one of my proudest accomplishments. Having no prior coding experience, this is a class I work tirelessly in to ensure my programming base is a strong one. Currently, I have held an A all semester. Additionally, I have begun to make connections with the bioinformatics professors at my university. I have a close relationship with my CSI 1401 professor, Professor McCreary. Every time I walk into his office, I am guaranteed to laugh. If I express concern for the content covered in class or if I have questions, Professor McCreary offers his help in a way that forces me to find the right answer. I have also been attending Dr. Benton's lab meeting every Friday afternoon. Dr. Benton is an assistant professor at Baylor University and has a research lab that focuses on gene regulation. Attending her meetings has inspired me to pursue a spot in her lab as an undergraduate researcher and has opened my eyes to the true application of bioinformatics. Making these connections at my university affirms my choice of study and has fortified my achievements. These professors are extremely supportive; they want me to succeed. Even though I am a freshman, I am currently looking to start graduate school after obtaining my Bachelor of Science. I may not be completely sure what career I want to pursue at this moment, but I am sure I want to obtain my Master's. I am highly interested in entering cancer research or combatting antibiotic resistance as a career. My journey to bioinformatics has only just begun, but it already feels that I have learned so much. I know I couldn't possibly learn all of it, but I can't wait to continue.

As someone that already had years of previous horse experience, I was taken aback when I was handed a camera and told to "take some pictures of that child's therapy session." The arena the group was working in was large, and I wasn't allowed to go inside for safety reasons. In my opinion, the pictures I took weren't great, but I still did the job as best I could. I volunteered at Compadres Therapy in my home city starting at 12 years old. I worked for four hours every Saturday before I had my own riding lesson at another facility nearby. I knew how to work with horses: lead them on their left, do not make sudden movements, never panic if something goes wrong. Yet I felt limited in the help I could provide to the organization. Due to my age, I wasn't allowed to help in therapy sessions, and some directors did not like me interacting with the animals. Joy, on the other hand, was different. She would push for me to become more involved. She'd ask me to bring in horses from their stalls and brush them, even if they weren't to be used. Under her command, I would feed and water horses, learning every individual ones' needs, likes, and schedule. And during it all, she'd allow me to prepare participants for their sessions, assisting them in getting a correctly fitting helmet and belt. I specifically remember when a retired horse that was boarded at the barn was experiencing muscle soreness. The veterinarian arrived and began performing stretches on the animal. Joy stopped me and took up what I had been doing, and ordered me to watch the vet at work. "I want you to learn what she is doing. I want you to watch her working with the horse," she told me. I quickly learned the release signals of a horse, that shaking is good, and that they lean into you to relieve the tension in their bodies. In the moment, I recognized how much I was taught on horses and their habits. Now, I realized working with these beautiful animals taught me that life isn't a set of rules to follow. As I had mentioned before, my volunteering experience began slow and I felt confined, almost punished. It almost felt as if the barn was the place with the most regulations and safety procedures. Although significant, my service allowed me to look away from those rules for a breath of fresh air. Like the real world, horses, and really all animals, do not have a definitive set of characteristics. There are multiple symptoms to colic, yet not all horses that have it may experience all of them. I tend to formulate a plan when completing tasks in my life, and when I cannot follow it perfectly I easily become discouraged and unproductive. Being involved in an environment that is essentially unpredictable forced me to stray from my own plan. I had to learn to fly while plummeting towards the ground. I became increasingly adaptable as I continued volunteering. I am proud to say is that my "plans" are now broader, and I allow myself room for change. I do not become disoriented when I am presented with a surprise. I keep my composure if a deadline was moved up, or if an unexpected event takes away from study time. Allowing myself to step away from what I had considered necessary granted me the power to regain focus on my goals and complete them to a higher standard. Horses, and all their chaos, gave me freedom.