My name is Shanelle, and I am a conglomeration of many facets. I grew up in Ghana and I currently live in New York, carrying both worlds inside me. Ghana shaped my early understanding of community, family, and perseverance, while New York sharpened my ambition and pushed me toward opportunities I once thought were impossible. Between these two places, I learned that identity is not a single thing. It is layers, experiences, memories, and quiet hopes that follow you even when life shifts around you. My path toward STEM began long before I recognized it as such. As a child in Ghana, I was surrounded by the reality that access to healthcare is not promised to everyone. I saw how illness could disrupt entire families, not just individuals, and how fear traveled quickly when medical answers were slow or unclear. Even then, without having the language for it, I felt a pull toward understanding the human body and the systems meant to protect it. When I moved to the United States, that curiosity grew into something heavier and more purposeful. Losing my grandmother became the defining experience that shaped my interest in science. Grief arrived suddenly and changed everything. Watching someone you love decline without fully understanding what is happening is one of the most helpless feelings in the world. That loss made me want to step closer to medicine, not just to learn, but to eventually offer the kind of understanding and compassion my family needed. As a Black woman, stepping into a STEM field is not just an academic choice, it is an act of courage. STEM remains male dominated, especially in positions of power. Often, rooms do not look like me, and yet I walk in with confidence because I know that representation is a form of impact on its own. When young girls from underrepresented backgrounds see someone who looks like them succeeding in science, it widens their vision of what is possible. My interest in biology deepened because STEM allows me to combine curiosity, purpose, and empathy. It gives me the chance to understand the very systems that shape our health and our lives. My goal is to become a physician who listens deeply and treats people with both knowledge and compassion. I want to work in spaces where communities like mine are often overlooked or misunderstood. I want to make sure that families who navigate illness do not feel alone or confused the way mine did. STEM gives me the tools to make a real impact. It gives me the chance to bring visibility, voice, and understanding to populations that are too often ignored. Science is not separate from humanity, it is deeply woven into it. And my journey, shaped by Ghana, by New York, by loss, by resilience, and by hope, makes me determined to bring something new and necessary to the field. In choosing STEM, I am choosing purpose. I am choosing representation. I am choosing to build a future where my identity, my experiences, and my voice become sources of strength for others.

My name is Shanelle, and I am a Biology major who hopes to become a physician. When I read about Aaryn Railyn King, I stopped for a moment. Her love for education, held so tightly in her short life, reminded me of my own journey, and of how fragile and precious our dreams can be. It also brought me back to When Breath Becomes Air, a book that changed the way I think about medicine. In it, Paul Kalanithi writes about the space between living and dying, and how a doctor’s role is not just to treat the body, but to walk with people through some of their most vulnerable moments. That idea has stayed with me, shaping the kind of doctor I want to become. My path toward medicine has been shaped by both pain and purpose. Losing my grandmother was one of the hardest experiences of my life. She was the person who made me feel grounded, and when she passed, it felt like the floor had fallen out from under me. Grief does not care about deadlines, classes, or exams. It follows you around quietly, asking you to grow before you think you are ready. But even in that pain, I heard her voice reminding me that education is the one thing no one can ever take from you. So when things get heavy, I remind myself that every lecture, every study session, every difficult day is part of the promise I am keeping to her. Financial hardship has also shaped my story. There were times when the cost of tuition, books, and even basic school fees made college feel out of reach. I learned what it means to stretch dollars, to sacrifice, and to carry stress that most people never see. But those challenges did not take away my ambition. They only made me more determined to create a future where stability is possible, not just for myself, but for the patients and families I hope to serve. I want to become a physician who sees the whole person, not just the symptoms. I want to be someone who listens gently, who slows down, who offers comfort without judgment. I want to serve communities who are often overlooked, especially Black and immigrant families like my own. When I think about my future career, I think about the doctors who stood beside my family during difficult times, and I think about Kalanithi’s reflection that the purpose of medicine is to preserve dignity and meaning, even when cure is not possible. Pursuing medicine is my way of honoring my grandmother’s belief in me, honoring the resilience I have built, and honoring stories like Aaryn’s. Education is my path to purpose. It is the way I hope to bring healing into the world, one person, one family, one moment at a time.

Going to college, for me, is more than just earning a degree, it is choosing a life my younger self did not always believe she could have. I grew up in Yonkers, in a family that worked hard, sacrificed quietly, and carried their own struggles with grace. Education was always presented to me as the one thing that could not be taken away, even when life felt unstable. When I step into a classroom now, I feel like I am stepping into a future I am fighting to build, one class, one lab, one late night at a time. My path has not been simple. Losing my grandmother was one of the hardest moments of my life. Grief has a way of shaking everything you think you know, and I had to balance that pain with staying in school and trying to be strong for my family. On top of that, financial strain has always shaped my reality. There were semesters where I did not know how I would afford books, lab fees, or even tuition. I have worked multiple jobs, taken every opportunity I could, and stretched myself thin because quitting has never been an option for me. As a Black woman in STEM, I have learned that opportunity does not always come freely, sometimes you have to knock, sometimes you have to build the door yourself. College has given me space to explore who I want to become, a physician who shows up for patients and families who feel unseen or underserved. Every internship, every research experience, every volunteer moment has pulled me closer to understanding the kind of care I want to give, compassionate, patient, and rooted in equity. Going to college also means breaking cycles. It means creating a new legacy for my family, one where pursuing medicine is not a distant dream but something real and possible. It means honoring my grandmother by continuing the path she encouraged me to follow, even when it hurt to keep going. It means becoming the representation I wish I had when I was younger, someone who looks like me, who pushed through doubt, who refused to let grief or financial hardship stop her. Through my education, I hope to gain the scientific knowledge, clinical skills, and human understanding needed to serve communities like the one that raised me. I want to use my degree to open doors for others, the same way people once opened doors for me. College is my chance to transform the challenges I have faced into purpose, and to prove to myself that where you start does not define where you are capable of going.

Like many children, when people asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the answers around me were things like pilot or superhero. But I always said I wanted to be a doctor. That dream began after I had an accident in Ghana and had to stay in the hospital. Even as a child, I realized something important: the best medical care required money, and my family had to support me emotionally and financially to make sure I received it. Children are often unaware of the seriousness of their situations, and honestly, I enjoyed being in the hospital. I made friends, played, and adored my doctors, they were so kind. At that age, I wanted to become a doctor simply because I wanted to dress like them. It sounds silly now, but it was real. As I grew older, my dreams changed. I wanted to be an artist, singer, dancer, soccer player,& a poetess. But no matter how much my goals shifted, I always felt myself crawling back to becoming some kind of medical professional. It was a strong calling—an urge I couldn’t explain. In high school,I read When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. As a poetry&literature enthusiast, his writing has exemplary. His story resonated with me deeply. Here was someone who spent years studying literature, only to realize he had a calling to become a physician. His life was short, but his journey taught me something essential: you have to go after what truly calls you. Medicine has been that calling for me.This path has not been easy. Losing my grandmother was one of the hardest experiences I’ve lived through. Trying to stay focused on school while coping with grief made everything heavier. My finances have been the biggest barrier between me and my goals. I need to take two winter courses to graduate in the spring, but I cannot afford both. I have searched everywhere for scholarships. I even considered donating plasma to earn money, but I I’m anemic. It feels like every time I find another door forward, it slowly closes on me again.That feeling, of pushing through one obstacle only to run into another, has been painful. But I haven’t given up. These experiences, the grief, financial hardship, and constantly feeling doors close—have shaped me into someone who sees difficulty as something real, human, and transformative. They have given me an open mind, a resilient heart, and a deeper understanding of what it means to keep going even when the path is uncertain. That is why the story of Manny and Sylvia Weiner touches me so deeply. Manny was a fellow pre-med student whose dream was blocked by financial barriers and unfair limitations of his time. His circumstances mirror parts of my own journey, and seeing his descendants create this scholarship shows the power of turning pain into purpose. It is beautiful and a full-circle moment to witness a family honoring him by giving other students the key to a door that once remained closed for him. If awarded this scholarship, I would be able to afford my winter tuition, purchase MCAT prep books, and pay for the exam. Currently, these steps feel out of reach. More importantly, it would affirm that hardship can lead to compassion and purpose. These challenges have strengthened my desire to become a doctor who recognizes the hidden burdens my patients carry and who leads with empathy, openness, and resilience. I hope to be the kind of physician who helps others move forward, even when life has closed many doors on them.

1) As I have entered my 20s I look back to a time where life was all about going to school, recess, lunches, and racing my brothers to and from the bus stop. As an adult now, there have been a plethora of books that have occupied spaces in my mind and heart. One of those books was The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. I was about 10 when I read this, although I was not so sure about my future I had aspiration to join the STEM field. That book planted one of the first seeds. In the story, a man enters the rainforest planning to cut down a giant kapok tree. As he rests and falls asleep under it, the animals that live in and around the tree come down one by one to plead with him. A boa constrictor, a bee, a frog, monkeys, a jaguar—they all explain how cutting the tree will destroy their home, and that more destruction will follow. Toward the end, a young native child appears and says, “Senhor, when you wake, please look upon us all with new eyes.” That moment really stuck with me. When the man wakes, he sees the animals and the child, puts the axe down, and walks away. That story made me think differently about the natural world. We humans too are part of nature not separate from it. The little child in the story reminds us that when we "other" ourselves from nature, we stop appreciating the balance and wholeness that exists all around us. That book helped me understand that nature isn’t just something we use or visit it’s something we belong to. And that’s a big part of why I was drawn to biology: to better understand the systems that connect all living things, including us. 2) One cool science fact I love is about a muscle called the palmaris longus. You can test if you have it by touching your thumb and pinky together and slightly flexing your wrist if a tendon pops up in the middle of your forearm, that’s it. Not everyone has it! It was useful for better grip when climbing, but now it’s pretty much useless. What’s cool is that surgeons often use it for reconstructive surgeries, since it can be removed without affecting strength. I just think it’s fascinating that our bodies still carry little pieces of evolutionary history like that. P.S I have it on both hands.