My academic goals would be to obtain a master's degree in computer engineering whilst also making the most of my experience and learning everything I can. The family member who has influenced my character and my dreams of becoming a software engineer the most was my dad. My dad is someone who I have always looked up to and will forever look up to, as I shall eternally be shorter than him, in both standing and in height. My dad was always a well of knowledge and always had an answer for everything. In fact, when he first married my mom, he won over her family by being the person who could always help them in whatever situation they were in and advise them on a variety of subjects. If their car broke? Need only let him know, and it'll be fixed in the blink of an eye. A family member was in desperate need of a job? He only had to look through his connections for a short amount of time, before being able to find an available job opportunity. Legal documents needed to be signed? Let him take a look, and he'll make sure it's not a scam and that you're getting the best that you can out of the situation. My dad knew everything about anything because he spent his whole life absorbing any information he could get his hands on. He would talk about when he was a child, his father would drop him off at the library and my dad would stay there all day reading, sometimes he would take radios apart and put them back together again. Whenever we needed a repairman to fix something, my dad would always watch to see how the appliance got fixed so he could do it himself next time. My dad originally came from Jamaica to Miami all on his own so he could go to college. My dad wanted to become an engineer and started working as a bagboy at a grocery store, but never got to finish college. He worked at that store for over 20 years and had become a manager. Even though he quit college, he still wanted to grow. He went to a trade school to become a realtor and now works freelance and makes more money than most in our family. Once I started showing an interest in seeing how things work and function, he and my mom started getting me little puzzles and craft kits to let me explore my hobby. This all worked to nurture my fascination with computer engineering, seeing as I could create my own machines and simulate them on programs to test how they function. My dad has been an inspiration to me all my life and the fact of the matter is, I'll never stop looking up to him. I know how much he wanted to become an engineer and how much he wants me to go to college and to take advantage of the opportunities that he never had. By pursuing engineering, I'd hope to be able to make leaps in technological advancement that would allow for people to have easier access to resources that can help them, instead of having to rigorously pour over thousands of books in the library like my dad had to. If I were to work in software engineering, I'd want to allow people to access completely new worlds of technology that allow them to excel without as much struggle as before, like my dad had to go through.

Throughout life, we all face trials and tribulations that shape us and how we view life. I myself had one such experience that when I look back on it, was something I struggled with my whole life without realizing it. This trial I faced was O.C.D. and the harmful stereotypes that were associated with it. I believed in those stereotypes and let them influence my life. To begin with, when I was little, I would feel the need to touch a door handle maybe more than once or I felt compelled to stand on one tile on the floor. It didn't make any sense to me and when I didn't listen to the compulsion, it only got stronger and I would feel irritated with myself. "What am I doing, this is literal nonsense, why can't I control myself". This scared me deeply because it felt like I somehow wasn't even able to control my own movements, and that wasn't my only fear. I must mention that even the smallest things can influence a person's childhood, for example, once I heard a girl I was friends with arguing with another friend of mine and said, "Stop being difficult. We all know you go to therapy." Another instance of this was when my parent's relationship was strained at the time and my mom, a believer in therapy, wanted to go to couple's therapy with my dad. My dad was against the idea because, in his mind, a marriage that required couples therapy was broken and unfixable. He thought if they went to therapy, it would have been the being of the end of their marriage. I looked up to my dad as he was someone who knew almost everything about everything and I was a timid child that wanted to fit in with others, so when I heard these things from people I cared about, it gave me the idea that people with mental illness and the need for therapy were better off hidden away because they were broken and beyond repair. I knew that no matter what, I could not be that person. I tried to fight my O.C.D. and in turn, it fought back. It only got worse in middle school and I ended up pushing away my family and friends and started crying every night. It was until I had cried and watched myself cut off a piece of my own hair because I made my compulsions worst, that I finally decided I needed to change. Every day I struggled to tell my mom about it, waiting for the right moment. One thing I learned, was that there will never be a right moment and that sometimes you just needed to say it, no preamble or anything. I couldn't go another day. I cried and told my mom right before she dropped me off at school and she promised to talk about it with me after school. I was so lucky that she and eventually the rest of my family were willing to learn how to understand me. To say that it felt like the world was lifted off my back would be an understatement. Having someone who could talk to me and not judge me was more than I could ask for. My compulsions lessened to a point I never thought it would ever get to all just because I no longer had to resist who I was. As someone who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, I don't want anyone to have to ever go through that experience again if I can help it.

Throughout life, we all face trials and tribulations that shape us and how we view life. I myself had one such experience that when I look back on it, was something I struggled with my whole life without realizing it. This trial I faced was O.C.D. and the harmful stereotypes that were associated with it. I believed in those stereotypes and let them influence my life. To begin with, when I was little, I would feel the need to touch a door handle maybe more than once or I felt compelled to stand on one tile on the floor. It didn't make any sense to me and when I didn't listen to the compulsion, it only got stronger and I would feel irritated with myself. "What am I doing, this is literal nonsense, why can't I control myself". This scared me deeply because it felt like I somehow wasn't even able to control my own movements, and that wasn't my only fear. I must mention that even the smallest things can influence a person's childhood, for example, once I heard a girl I was friends with arguing with another friend of mine and said, "Stop being difficult. We all know you go to therapy." Another instance of this was when my parent's relationship was strained at the time and my mom, a believer in therapy, wanted to go to couple's therapy with my dad. My dad was against the idea because, in his mind, a marriage that required couples therapy was broken and unfixable. He thought if they went to therapy, it would have been the being of the end of their marriage. I looked up to my dad as he was someone who knew almost everything about everything and I was a timid child that wanted to fit in with others, so when I heard these things from people I cared about, it gave me the idea that people with mental illness and the need for therapy were better off hidden away because they were broken and beyond repair. I knew that no matter what, I could not be that person. I tried to fight my O.C.D. and in turn, it fought back. It only got worse in middle school and I ended up pushing away my family and friends and started crying every night. It was until I had cried and watched myself cut off a piece of my own hair because I made my compulsions worst, that I finally decided I needed to change. Every day I struggled to tell my mom about it, waiting for the right moment. One thing I learned, was that there will never be a right moment and that sometimes you just needed to say it, no preamble or anything. I couldn't go another day. I cried and told my mom right before she dropped me off at school and she promised to talk about it with me after school. I was so lucky that she and eventually the rest of my family were willing to learn how to understand me. To say that it felt like the world was lifted off my back would be an understatement. Having someone who could talk to me and not judge me was more than I could ask for. My compulsions lessened to a point I never thought it would ever get to all just because I no longer had to resist who I was. As someone who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, I don't want anyone to have to ever go through that experience again if I can help it.

Communication skills, leadership, time management, and problem-solving. Some of the most valuable skills that are needed in the everyday adult lives of our time. It is important to nurture these skills when you are young, so you can put them to use in your career when you are an adult. However, to be adept in all these areas of expertise is something that can take a long time to achieve. Yet, I have found, that by contributing to volunteering and community service, I can work to improve upon all these skills and put them into practice at a fast pace. I have worked on several community service projects throughout my time in high school. These included assembling kits that were to be donated to hospitals and given to patients who are undergoing chemotherapy, sewing over seventy masks during a spike in cases of Covid-19 to be donated to nurses working in close contact with patients who had contracted Covid-19, and assisting teachers during the summer in preparing the materials needed for the upcoming school year. Participating in these activities and providing assistance to those who need it has taught me to be more thoughtful to those I see in my everyday life. Volunteering has significantly transformed my character and has bettered me in ways I could not have imagined when I took my first step into community service during my Freshman Year. The first community service activity that I ever took on was during the first spike of the Covid-19 pandemic. There was an immense increase in the demand for masks at that time to protect oneself against the contraction of the virus. One place in particular that this demand was the most crucial were hospitals, where it was of the utmost importance that hospital staff remained protected as they dealt with the constant arrival of patients with the virus. I first realize the severity of this situation as a close family friend of mine who worked in a hospital requested my help in sewing some masks for them, as I am in possession of a sewing machine and have sewed for many years. I started off with sewing a few masks for them when I realized that this family friend is not the only hospital employee who is struggling with obtaining enough masks to use in their everyday work. As a result of this realization, I reached out to the family friend again and decided to see if I could take on the task of sewing a multitude of masks that could be distributed to the rest of the nurses and doctors working at their hospital. I ended up sewing from a range of seventy to eighty masks, which were then all promptly donated to the hospital. This activity taught me to be more observant of the issues that others around me were struggling with and to learn about the ways that I could help. By participating in this community service project, I was able to learn the full capacity of my abilities in helping people even when it is during a time of crisis or a difficult situation. The second community service activity that I contributed to was assisting teachers during the summer before the start of a new school year. Teachers during this time are swamped with work due to having to make countless preparations for their lesson plans for the whole year. I was well informed about the difficulties teachers have to undergo during the summer, as my mother herself is a teacher. Knowing this, I reached out to some of my former teachers at my old middle school to see if I would be able to help them during the summer in preparing the materials, they needed for the school year as well as setting up their classroom. When I received approval, I went to the school for several days to assist in preparing the documents that the students would need for the curriculum, arranging the classroom, and running around the school performing errands that would otherwise take up much more time for the teachers to do. This activity taught me to value my teachers much more and the struggles that they go through for their student's education. In addition, it also taught me to be more efficient with my time as I had to complete dozens of tasks in a short amount of time. The most recent community service project that I’ve undertaken is the construction of “Chemo Kits”. Chemo Kits are kits that are to be donated to patients in hospitals that are undergoing chemotherapy. These kits would include supplies that would help them in their everyday lives at the hospital. I learned about this community service opportunity through my sister, whose high school had been promoting the project to their students. I decided to participate as well and constructed several kits alongside my sister to donate to the hospital. These kits would include supplies for the patients to use for hygiene, such as toothbrushes and soaps, however, we also included supplies that would improve the patients’ quality of life, such as word searches and crossword puzzles that would keep them preoccupied. My sister and I worked as if we were in an assembly line as we assembled these kits and we had to effectively learn to communicate with one another as we put them together. This activity greatly improved my communication skills as my sister and I learned how to better work as a team together so we could best finish the kits on time. These skills are invaluable to function properly in the world. Community service has greatly taught me how to work through problems more effectively in the real world and has taught me to be more considerate of the problems that the people around me in my community go through on a daily basis. Without community service, I would not be the person I am today and neither would the people who lives I touched.

My academic goals would be to obtain a master's degree in computer engineering without being too reliant on student loans, whilst also making the most of my experience and learning everything I can. The family member who has influenced my character and my dreams of becoming a software engineer the most was my dad. My dad is someone who I have always looked up to and will forever look up to, as I shall eternally be shorter than him, in both standing and in height. My dad was always a well of knowledge and always had an answer for everything. In fact, when he first married my mom, he won over her family by being the person who could always help them in whatever situation they were in and advise them on a variety of subjects. If their car broke? Need only let him know, and it'll be fixed in the blink of an eye. A family member was in desperate need of a job? He only had to look through his connections for a short amount of time, before being able to find an available job opportunity. Legal documents needed to be signed? Let him take a look, and he'll make sure it's not a scam and that you're getting the best that you can out of the situation. My dad knew everything about anything because he spent his whole life absorbing any information he could get his hands on. He would talk about when he was a child, his father would drop him off at the library and my dad would stay there all day reading, sometimes he would take radios apart and put them back together again. Whenever we needed a repairman to fix something, my dad would always watch to see how the appliance got fixed so he could do it himself next time. My dad originally came from Jamaica to Miami all on his own so he could go to college. My dad wanted to become an engineer and started working as a bagboy at a grocery store, but never got to finish college. He worked at that store for over 20 years and had become a manager. Even though he quit college, he still wanted to grow. He went to a trade school to become a realtor and now works freelance and makes more money than most in our family. He also wants to make sure that all of his daughters know how to do practical things like repair appliances or read legal documents. Once I started showing an interest in seeing how things work and function, he and my mom started getting me little puzzles and craft kits to let me explore my hobby. This all worked to nurture my fascination with computer engineering, seeing as I could create my own machines and simulate them on programs to test how they function. My dad has been an inspiration to me all my life and the fact of the matter is, I'll never stop looking up to him. I really do wish to grow up to be like my dad one day, as someone who could solve any problem thrown at me and help my loved ones. I also know how much he wanted to become an engineer and how much he wants me to go to college and to take advantage of the opportunities that he never had. By going to college, I'll be able to achieve both my own dreams and my dad's as well. By pursuing engineering, I'd hope to be able to make leaps in technological advancement that would allow for people to have easier access to resources that can help them, instead of having to rigorously pour over thousands of books in the library like my dad had to. If I were to work in software engineering, I'd want to allow people to access completely new worlds of technology that allow them to excel without as much struggle as before, like my dad had to go through.

My goal would be to obtain a master's degree in computer engineering whilst also making the most of my experience and learning everything I can. The family member who has influenced my character and my dreams of becoming a software engineer the most was my dad. My dad is someone who I have always looked up to and will forever look up to, as I shall eternally be shorter than him, in both standing and in height. My dad was always a well of knowledge and always had an answer for everything. My dad knew everything about anything because he spent his whole life absorbing any information he could get his hands on. He would talk about when he was a child, his father would drop him off at the library and my dad would stay there all day reading, sometimes he would take radios apart and put them back together again. Whenever we needed a repairman to fix something, my dad would always watch to see how the appliance got fixed so he could do it himself next time. My dad originally came from Jamaica to Miami all on his own so he could go to college. My dad wanted to become an engineer and started working as a bagboy at a grocery store, but never got to finish college. He worked at that store for over 20 years and had become a manager. Even though he quit college, he still wanted to grow. He went to a trade school to become a realtor and now works freelance and makes more money than most in our family. Once I started showing an interest in seeing how things work and function, he and my mom started getting me little puzzles and craft kits to let me explore my hobby. This all worked to nurture my fascination with computer engineering, seeing as I could create my own machines and simulate them on programs to test how they function. My dad has been an inspiration to me all my life and the fact of the matter is, I'll never stop looking up to him. I really do wish to grow up to be like my dad one day, as someone who could solve any problem thrown at me and help my loved ones. I also know how much he wanted to become an engineer and how much he wants me to go to college and take advantage of the opportunities that he never had. By pursuing engineering, I'd hope to be able to make leaps in technological advancement that would allow people to have easier access to resources that can help them, instead of having to rigorously pour over thousands of books in the library like my dad had to. If I were to work in software engineering, I'd want to allow people to access completely new worlds of technology that allow them to excel without as much struggle as before, like my dad had to go through.

Hair Cut Too Short “I like your hair!” That’s what she said when we first met in kindergarten. I still remember it. I saw her and thought her straight hair was lovely but was too shy to tell her. I had never made a real friend before. But surprisingly, as if she knew I wanted to talk to her, she came up to me and said she adored my curly hair. Simple as that, she became my first friend. She would share her snacks with me, and I would share mine with her. We did it so often that our parents packed extra snacks for us because they knew we would just end up sharing with each other. I was there when she was first learning how to swim. I was there when she first started drifting away from dolls and stuffed animals. I was there when we started in the same middle school, and I was there when she was applying to high schools. I was not there when she died. I didn’t know. I didn’t know why I stopped seeing her at school and I didn’t know she was sick. I was going to homecoming and taking the PSAT, and I was too busy for her then. When you make your first friend, you think about everything you will get to do together: sleepovers, playing house, first crushes. It never crosses your mind that you two would end up having a friendship that would persist for years afterwards. And you never would have expected that one of these two girls would far outlive the other. One of them would never get the chance to go to prom, have boyfriends or go to college. The other, for reasons still unknown to them, would get that chance. That some force in the universe decided that you were the one who got to experience life, you, the one who could never be noticed in a room full of people, you, who would fearfully turn away from others, you, who couldn’t even face yourself in the mirror, you, who hid behind her. And what of her? She, the one who could face a crowd, offers kindness to even the least deserving person, beloved by all those around her. She must get cancer in the seventh grade, she must be taken out of school, she must lose all her friends, and she must miss out on her childhood years, all while still smiling and comforting all who love her. And then finally, when she gets so close to conquering her own demon, thinking that it’s finally over, she must die in a hospital bed, four months after her sixteenth birthday. She had always been my lifeboat; when I was not strong enough to fight for myself, she was there. Now that she was gone, I had to finally learn to live for myself all while struggling with her absence. Even now, as I was taking my senior photos, I could not help but think about it being her instead of me sitting in this seat, in a cap and gown. I had felt guilt for feeling any joy in anything I did because I knew that she would not be able to experience any of this. I felt bitter and bile for her because even in her last moments, she was consoling her mother instead of feeling for herself. But eventually, all I felt was shame, because I knew that even now, she would not want me to remember her this way. So, I decided I wanted to live for her, to do everything she couldn’t, and be someone she would be proud of. I am going to go to prom, I am going to graduate, and I am going to have as significant of an impact for others as she did for me. She lost her hair, but I kept mine.

My academic goals would be to obtain a master's degree in computer engineering whilst also making the most of my experience and learning everything I can. The family member who has influenced my character and my dreams of becoming a software engineer the most was my dad. My dad is someone who I have always looked up to and will forever look up to, as I shall eternally be shorter than him, in both standing and in height. My dad was always a well of knowledge and always had an answer for everything. In fact, when he first married my mom, he won over her family by being the person who could always help them in whatever situation they were in and advise them on a variety of subjects. If their car broke? Need only let him know, and it'll be fixed in the blink of an eye. A family member was in desperate need of a job? He only had to look through his connections for a short amount of time, before being able to find an available job opportunity. Legal documents needed to be signed? Let him take a look, and he'll make sure it's not a scam and that you're getting the best that you can out of the situation. My dad knew everything about anything because he spent his whole life absorbing any information he could get his hands on. He would talk about when he was a child, his father would drop him off at the library and my dad would stay there all day reading, sometimes he would take radios apart and put them back together again. Whenever we needed a repairman to fix something, my dad would always watch to see how the appliance got fixed so he could do it himself next time. My dad originally came from Jamaica to Miami all on his own so he could go to college. My dad wanted to become an engineer and started working as a bagboy at a grocery store, but never got to finish college. He worked at that store for over 20 years and had become a manager. Even though he quit college, he still wanted to grow. He went to a trade school to become a realtor and now works freelance and makes more money than most in our family. Once I started showing an interest in seeing how things work and function, he and my mom started getting me little puzzles and craft kits to let me explore my hobby. This all worked to nurture my fascination with computer engineering, seeing as I could create my own machines and simulate them on programs to test how they function. My dad has been an inspiration to me all my life and the fact of the matter is, I'll never stop looking up to him. I know how much he wanted to become an engineer and how much he wants me to go to college and to take advantage of the opportunities that he never had. By pursuing engineering, I'd hope to be able to make leaps in technological advancement that would allow for people to have easier access to resources that can help them, instead of having to rigorously pour over thousands of books in the library like my dad had to. If I were to work in software engineering, I'd want to allow people to access completely new worlds of technology that allow them to excel without as much struggle as before, like my dad had to go through.