When I think about my future career aspirations, I have 2 separate thoughts one that involves what I will do with the main career I'm going towards and I also think about all the career options ahead of me, not just the one I'm going to school for. First I would like to talk about the career that I'm currently going for at this time. Right now, I'm majoring in public health in hopes of becoming a full-fledged epidemiologist down the line. How I eventually arrived in epidemiology isn't so simple, it wasn't on my mind from the start and I didn't wake up one day wanting to be an epidemiologist. It all started when my family implanted in my mind as a child that I should become a doctor. Maybe I shouldn't use the word implanted, it was more so that they widely encouraged me to become one. My philosophy even as a child was to live my life without much stress because I've seen firsthand how much stress breaks down a person. I knew a doctor's profession would be quite stressful as people put their lives in your hands, literally and personally and that's not something I could handle. At that point, I was thinking maybe I can be some sort of doctor that isn't as stressed and that made me think of dentistry and when I made a Google search it showed that it's a profession that doesn't result in much stress, which seemed perfect for me. Although I told my family I would be a dentist, internally I wasn't too confident about it, my hands aren't steady enough to be a great dentist. To play it safe in choosing a major I chose public health, which would lead me to a career in the health field which my family wouldn't be mad about. At that time Covid-19 happened, along with learning many things from my professors about disease and combating disease, something clicked in my mind. I thought maybe I can be a person who can help prevent disease and lift the burden for those that suffer because of illness. Now in 2023, I want to continue to pursue my epidemiological career and free those in distress because of disease. Despite my focus on epidemiology I still have something in mind for the future, a hobby that can be a side career. I remember during my middle school years, I listened to a little speech my uncle gave my brother and older cousin, in short, he told them to focus on a career in health and then maybe in the future they can go back and study a career that they had a hobby in. I have a hobby in art and animation, I'm self-taught in those principles but it's been something I've been passionate about ever since I was a child. Watching anime has inspired me massively and ever since I've been honing my art style and testing many animation software. Although recently, I haven't had the time to focus on my art and animation, looking at the work of others always gets me pumped to be like them and inspire others as they do to me. Yes, I will prioritize epidemiology but in the future, I want my chance to go back and take a shot as an animator.

I’ll be honest and say that overcoming adversity isn’t an easy feat and not everyone experiences the same levels of adversity, currently, I’m still in the process of overcoming mine. The adversity I’ve experienced doesn’t come from a singular event, instead, it stems from years of hardship. Growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money but for the most part that was ok, everyone worked together and lived under one roof. Aunts, Uncles, and Grandparents, all together and helping one another, well for the most part at least. As the years went by, slowly each family member would find their own places to live and eventually it would just be me, my brother and my parents in the house. This was truly when things became difficult, my mom was struggling to make payments, my brother was off doing his own thing and my dad had yet to have full citizenship as initially, he was living in Haiti. During this new transition of things I was just a young teenager, and it was hard to see my mom in so much pain. On top of that, we had tenants living in our house for some time and some of them made the environment very uneasy to be in, it was difficult to adjust to strangers living in the same household as us. Internally I had to decide on my future. I’ve always loved art and animation so much that I had dreams of becoming an animator, but I wasn’t certain I could be successful enough to help my mom and family if I took that route. Therefore, I decided the best course of action was to take the health route which my family has always encouraged ever since I was young. Although I won’t strive to be a doctor like they wanted, I’m looking forward to a career in epidemiology. Originally, I was quite unsure about the path I would take, so to be safe I chose a major in public health. At that time, however, it was my final year of high school and Covid-19 happened. Witnessing the impact Covid-19 had made around the world, allowed me to realize how more effective measures could have been taken to mitigate the effects of the disease. I was motivated to prevent an outbreak like that from occurring ever again. Whenever I land my epidemiological career I’m making sure to protect my community at home, around the United States and even abroad. My philosophy is that no one should have to suffer or struggle and if I become successful I can help make that a reality. With success I will be able to provide for my family and on top of that I will be able to aid communities that are impacted or could be impacted by diseases thus preventing and ending any suffering. That's the future I want to make possible.

In my life, there were only two options for me, pursuing a career in STEM or pursuing an art career. Ever since elementary school, I had a passion to draw and get better. I honed my skills throughout the years but I soon came to realize that I wouldn't make it far with art. I knew I needed a career that could help me and my family in the future. When I was young even before my interest in art started to grow, my family always wanted me to be a doctor. Since I'm a first-generation child, it was on me to make a change in the life of my family. I never gave much thought to it until middle school, when I believed that I would become a dentist. I couldn't have handled the stress of being a full-fledged doctor, so I thought that a career in dentistry would be a successful profession that my family would be on board with. Soon came the last 2 years of High school, where huge decisions had to be made. I don't regret it, but I foolishly thought majoring in public health would get me into dentistry, but at the same time I wanted to explore the health field more to make a better decision for myself. In the present day, I have changed my perspective, no longer do I want to be tied to my family's expectation for me to become a doctor and instead I'm focusing on epidemiology which still involves the health sciences and math. An epidemiologist's job is to uplift multiple communities and help them deal with diseases. With my degree, I would make it my goal to make sure not only the community I live in will be safe but the communities around me and abroad. After experiencing Covid-19 and how terrible the world was affected I knew I needed to pick up this line of work. If we handled the disease better than we wouldn't have been isolated from one another for months. The pandemic made people experience many mental health problems and caused many deaths. How we handled Covid was lackluster in my opinion, I believe we could've done better. I keep telling myself that I want to be there to make a change, so others don't have to suffer for no reason. Although I don't have much to do with the T and E in STEM, the science and mathematics part of it pushes me forward toward a better future.

Hello, my name is Raphael Lefils, I'm 21 years old and entering what might be my final year of college pretty soon, as I'm unsure if I would be able to afford further education after I graduate. So far in my college career, I've been able to maintain a 3.7-3.8 GPA and I plan to not drop that in my final year. As a public health major, I've experienced many obstacles relating to my grades and classes. This past semester was one of the toughest in terms of the classes I took. Although I successfully passed the semester, two classes, in particular, gave me some trouble. One of those classes had a professor switched during the middle of the semester so it was confusing trying to adjust to everything, in the end, I got my lowest grade of a B+ for that semester. In the next class I did pretty well with an A-, but despite that grade, the class had a great amount of material to go over and sometimes my brain can't process it all. I'm completely surprised I was able to pass that class and I soon realized it was a class I didn't even have to take. The real struggle for me during this past year was choosing a minor and the classes to go along with it. The class I mentioned before, the one I got an A- on was Human Biochemistry, a class to take for my biomedical sciences minor. After talking with my advisor I realized that biomedical sciences wasn't the right minor for me and I had to figure out if I would go along with no minor or choose a new one. My career goal is to become an Epidemiologist and I knew my current minor with the requirements I had to take wouldn't get me there. I soon settled with the public health information tech minor, which I believe would be beneficial for researching and tracking diseases in communities. I would say switching my minor to something that would suit my career was a personal accomplishment. In terms of community involvement and major accomplishments, I can admit that my experience is limited. The one major community service I have done is working at my local library, helping with projects during my senior year of high school. If working in the fast food industry counts, then I would say my job at Mcdonald's that same year involved working with my local community and serving them food. If that's not enough my job recently as a cashier for the hokey games at my university, brought me to interact with many in Lowell. My only major accomplishment through college has been my grades unfortunately, I've been telling myself that this last upcoming year is my last chance to branch out and make myself stand out, so I will try my best to do that. My major goal in life is to live stress-free, therefore with the money I save by paying down my student loans, would go to my mother and help myself. I still don't have a car which means my reach to places is limited and I'd like to have my very own place as well in the future. Overall, I want my family to no longer have to stress about money anymore because we've been through too much these past years and it's on me to make a change.

The year 2019 was coming to a close and everything seemed fine until a virus struck China. That virus was Covid-19, and in just a couple of months, the virus would leave China and infect the whole world. World leaders were scrambling to find ways to suppress the spread of Covid-19, many opted for day 1 lockdowns while other leaders were willingly not taking advice from health professionals until it was too late. Covid-19 to this day has infected hundreds of millions of people, caused millions of deaths and changed the livelihoods of many people including mine. I spent the last half of my senior year and my first year of college inside my house, but that's the reason why my state initially had lower cases compared to other states. Regulations weren't uniform within the country which lead to a massive spike in cases and the U.S. lead in case numbers compared to other countries. I was unsure about my career path at first but this major pandemic lead me to the path of epidemiology. I was disappointed with how the U.S. handled the pandemic, although the problem was mostly derived from those in power, the health professionals could've applied more pressure on our leaders. In the U.S. alone this pandemic caused many nurses and doctors to be overworked and many beds were taken by those who were infected, which meant if you had any other problems other than Covid-19 you'd be in a terrible situation. As an epidemiologist, I would be studying disease trends, doing surveillance, and regulating preventive measures so that fewer people are impacted by an upcoming disease. If a disease is already occurring then it would be my job to figure out the disease's origins, find a way to stop the spread and then give treatment to people who have already been infected. During my time in college, I learned about a multitude of diseases like cholera in Haiti, the recent Ebola outbreak in Uganda, Guinea-worn disease in Africa and so much more. In my opinion, it doesn't matter if you're poor or rich, you shouldn't have to suffer from preventable diseases. In all honesty, epidemiology wasn't my first choice, my family wanted me to become a doctor, so I was thinking about being a dentist. The more I thought about it, I knew that constant work on teeth wouldn't be for me, although it's a good profession that could make me a lot of money. I chose public health to get a wider feel of the health field and I'm glad that my major led me to epidemiology.

My favorite scientific discovery is the existence of penicillin. Like most science discoveries, inventions and innovations, penicillin was found by accident by the brilliant Alexander Fleming. Fleming was a scientist who mistakenly left his petri dish of a certain bacteria open to be contaminated. Fortunately for Fleming, mold fell into the petri dish and managed to kill some of the bacteria, it was then discovered that this mold was penicillin, which is mold found when some foods are nearing their expiration date. The reason why this scientific discovery is my favorite is because something so important was discovered in a lucky way. Imagine if Alexander Fleming kept track of the petri dish, then the discovery of the effectiveness of penicillin would've come later or probably wouldn't have been detected at all. Penicillin has been important to our society, it helps those who have been infected by bacteria within their bodies, it has helped many lives. Although penicillin has been useful in many cases it has caused many bacteria to become resistant, so a doctor's input is very important. The bright side is however, with the discovery of penicillin we have been able to find other effective antibiotics like tetracycline which can kill bacteria more effectively in cases where penicillin can't. In the modern world there's been many cases of endemics caused by bacteria, even though the first step should always be prevention, it's good that penicillin and the alternatives are here as backups if anything goes wrong.

Let's say there are 2 universes where a man contracted the same disease. In the first universe the man doesn't maintain a healthy lifestyle, instead he enjoys eating junk food daily and does little to know exercise. In the second universe the man is able to maintain a healthy lifestyle through constant exercise by going to the gym and grocery shopping to buy the freshest fruits and vegetables possible. The man who was able to live a healthy life is less likely to succumb to the disease compared to the man who hasn't been taking care of his body. The man in the first universe doesn't necessarily have to die from the disease, due to an unhealthy lifestyle without the necessary vitamins and minerals for a bountiful life, that man could've contracted underlying diseases that he wouldn't have known of, therefore his downfall was a weak immune system. The point of this hypothetical is to explain why a healthy lifestyle is important, it benefits an individual to help them live a life without worrying about contracting major illnesses. Most people want to live a long active life and to do that they need to keep track of what goes on with their body. I myself want to live a life where I don't have to worry about going to the hospital constantly for any heart problems or issues with my blood pressure. A healthy Lifestyle not only lowers the risk of fatal disease, but can save you the costs from hospital visits. In addition, if you are self conscious about how your body looks you can make a change with active habits along with nutritious diets. Lastly, I believe a healthy life is important because I've seen the statistics and America is falling behind compared to other first world countries. We have high rates of obesity, we have a lower life expectancy and we carry the most unhealthy lifestyles full of fast food chains every corner you take. I want the U.S to avoid the unnecessary deaths, I truly feel sorry for people who have to go in debt because they have no choice but to go to the hospital given their conditions. It's not easy to maintain a healthy lifestyle within this country, but despite the obstacles I have mostly maintained a healthy lifestyle. I'm able to maintain a healthy lifestyle because of advice from my Doctor. Growing up I've experienced heart palpitations, high blood pressure and more, which is why I knew I needed to change what I ate and how I exercise. As a result, I have done an excellent job at avoiding any fast food chains and have been eating as much fruits and vegetables as I can at home. When I was on campus there was variety in the food you could eat so therefore I had fruits for breakfast and lunch and vegetables for dinner every single day. In terms of exercise that has been a struggle but recently I've found a solution. On campus I only managed to work out once a week, but during summer vacation I managed to wake up early, jog and walk for about 35 mins 5 days a week. I realized that the healthy lifestyle I've chosen has benefited me from being sick and having to make a trip to the hospital. Even if you don't have access to great food or a place to effectively exercise, the bare minimum will come a long way.

A healthy lifestyle is a less stressful life. I know this because my unhealthy decisions in the past have negatively impacted me in the present. From late middle school, I was told to have above average blood pressure despite being so young. With my abnormal blood pressure came many problems with my heart, which led me to go to the hospital many times, luckily for me nothing seemed completely serious. My circumstances helped motivate me to improve in my health and one of these improvements involved participating in Track in Field. Exercising is a big part of a healthy lifestyle, aerobic activity was necessary if I wanted to lower my blood pressure. At the same time I also cut back on eating fast food, though my family isn't the wealthiest so sometimes there would be fruits and vegetables to eat and sometimes there would be snacks available for me to satiate myself. Senior year was the year I quit Track. I pulled my hamstring and couldn't run fast anymore, so I went back to not exercising as much. As a result of reducing a healthy lifestyle, I have experienced heart palpitations. My Doctor wasn't pleased so they recommended that I start going for walks, but I wasn't motivated. It became worse when Covid hit, I was stuck inside and barely walked and gained a lot of weight. I knew in my heart a change needed to happen but when would it start? The change would start during my 2nd year of college, when they finally opened on campus learning. The first change came with my diet, although I was eating more and never lost weight, the campus provided a great deal of fruits and vegetables I could eat. Although the food was good, I still felt the heart palpitations come in randomly, so I had to find some way to exercise. I dedicated one day of the week to going to the gym in the mornings. I couldn't go as much as I wanted because I wanted to get to my classes and finish my homework in time. I left Sophomore year of college unsatisfied, so I dedicated part of this summer to exercising in the morning. I jog for about 35 minutes, 5 days per week, which is pretty much it. I'm still doing this routine to this day and has been more effective than anything I’ve done after Track. Overall a healthy lifestyle is important to me because it's important to my health and wellbeing. I don't want to stress about going to the hospital anymore or stress about the problems my heart is giving me. I want to be able to enjoy life for what it is. You might not have health problems now, but that doesn't mean you won't in the future so it's better to start a healthy lifestyle now before it's too late.

I practice bravery and live boldly by not giving up no matter how dire the circumstances. This relates to what I'm going through at this moment. I unfortunately missed out on Financial aid by a day and tuition for my college isn't cheap, but despite this I won't let it get to me. I'm having a calm mind, I've emailed both the financial aid office and my University trying to find a way to fix the problem. If worse comes to worse, there's still many scholarship opportunities like this one. I won't stop applying to scholarships until I run out of them, I won't quit until I burn through all my options. Even if I fail at something, like securing a job, or failing a driving test,, that doesn't mean I can't just try again till I'm able to make it. If things don't go my way, most of the time that seems to be the case, at least I tried.