Within NASA, there are a myriad of options to be able to inspire people on the outside, hoping to also be apart of a revolution happening in space. Rockets have always been what I’ve wanted to work in life. The idea of taking people up into the atmosphere and so far away fills me with excitement and courage to even go ahead and try to do it. So far, I’ve been able to help my community and the people around me with the issues plaguing them, and now I want to inspire everyone in the world with our future endeavors. As a Space Systems Engineer, I hope to be able to inspire the youth of the next generation through my endeavors on future satellites that might take after the ISS, or even new rockets (like Artemis II). First off, I want to be able to inspire others with my academic efforts that allow me to not only advocate for myself, but also to advocate for my community. One of the first ways I actually was able to do that was when I did a project surrounding the production of Sand Batteries (that was theoretical, the idea is still a work in progress). It was not only a project I took on for my Economic class, I was also able to tell people at college fairs and recruiters that I was working on it. I understand that it isn’t rocket science, but to me, it’s a start that’s I am fully willing to show off in order to advocate for myself. (If you really want to know, the name of the company I wanted to call for the Sand Batteries was SandAmp. I found it nifty to call it that.) I was able to inspire my peers and the people around me when I started to notice that people around me were starting to take on Engineering based classes around the same time I pitched the idea of Sand Batteries, alongside more technology-based Economic projects. As far as adversity, there definitely have been many major changes that not only me, but also my mom and dad have gone through. Beginning in 2025, was when my mom ended up losing her job as a TOSA (Teacher On Special Assignment) that she had been in for 25+ years. At first, and even now, it’s been hard on my family to have to accept it. Before then, my mom was always knowing what happened around the school, teachers relied on her, and my mom spoiled them. But after the switch to being a 4th Grade Teacher (which she hasn’t been an actual teacher for 25+ years), my mom was stressed, overworked, and tired. After the switch, she told me and my father that she felt like her experience with kids just reset when she went back into the classroom. We were eventually able to (mostly) overcome it by my father and me stepping up to help her out. We’d come and help her teach classes, which allowed the kids to get familiar with us, and also allowed us to slightly calm the kids down.Instead of teaching and managing children, I want to be able to inspire them through my endeavors in science and academia, all while representing Santa Ana.

Mental health isn’t become a problem, until it hits you in the face and keeps telling you to get up, just for it to hit you again. September 2025 was the month I found out a good friend of mine had been experiencing issues with their mental health, and just last year, had attempted to commit suicide. It hit me hard, because I realized that the issues I had were nothing in comparison to theirs. Growing up, my dad wasn’t scared to show me the potential of certain decisions. It began when my cousin Ryan first started experiencing Substance Use Abuse. He was becoming a father to a beautiful young boy, he has a role model to my brother, my father was his mentor, and he threw it all away. Mental health for me coincides with mental illness, thinking about it comes with the risk of hurting yourself and others. It was only recently that I saw that as not a risk, but a challenge. Something for me to help others with. Mental health became the focus of one of my AVID Projects, with me and my team coinciding the topic with Domestic Violence. It was an intensive project that allowed me and my team to learn about the misconceptions around Domestic Violence, while also investigating the effects it had on the mental health of the victims. It was me and 3 other people, and it was the first time I truly had to consider the mental health of others when leading a project. It began with an interview we had, a friend of ours named Rodrigo had volunteered to be interviewed, since he had past experience with domestic violence. It was apparent after the interview that his experience affected everyone a lot more than we thought. Going further we needed to make sure that we were still willing to take on a topic that had suddenly become much more closer to home. I decided on putting in weekly meetings, where we discussed our thoughts going forward, and figured out ways that we could support each other. Everyone’s stories are valuable, but not everyone is able to stomach those stories, even though they are important nonetheless. Ultimately, mental health became a reality to me once I had to fully realize the fact that people might not ever be able to understand it fully, not until they experience it with people, firsthand. I’ve had family and friends experience trouble with mental health, and their struggles taught me how important it was to think about mental health. Sure, the project I did helped me understand it a bit more, but it was only a piece of a larger, more complicated puzzle that even now I’m still trying to figure out.

Question 1: Queer identity and the celebration of such allows individuals to be more in touch with themselves, alongside being more open with others. It’s alright that people don’t align themselves as queer, but not supporting it is another story that I believe needs to be talked about. You’re told not to judge others by their cover, but something I learned on my own was not to judge myself by the image I show others. My queer identity allowed me to be more open with myself about how to trust with my sexuality, and who exactly to trust. A moment that highlighted this to me was when I first began to help my father understand gender pronouns. It began as a simple thing, he wanted to understand the pronouns of some of my friends who were Genderfluid, Non-Binary, Gay, etc. I walked him through all those pronouns, and I helped my dad understand a field that we were both learning in. Once I started talking to my dad about telling other members of my family about my sexuality, he warned me about the consequences of possibly doing that to people who would be considered Conservatives. Some of my family members don’t understand the choices in sexuality that some others will make, and I can’t use change that by coming out to them as a bisexual. That was when I realized that people can choose who to trust, and that I have to consider who I trust with that information to be absolutely trustworthy with what I tell them. To a lot of people, I am still just Sebastian, and I am alright with that. People are not obligated to show others everything about themselves. You can trust who you want, and that’s alright. Question 2: Through my academic pursuits, I hope to make at least a bit of an impact on the world through my efforts in Engineering, NASA, and Space as a whole. One of my biggest inspirations was seeing the Space Exhibit in the LA Museum of History, and since then, I’ve been wanting to become a person who’d get others into space. Now, I want to be able to know people better and know the field of Engineering/Astronomy better, so I hope that my academic pursuits would give me the advantage that I need to stand out to potential recruiters & internships. I know that with enough effort, I’ll be able to achieve my goals, no matter what.