1. My name is Tadelin De Leon and I'm seventeen. What motivates me is the possibilities of what the future holds and my imagination of what my life could be like. Seeing myself walking through a college campus, making a path of my own. Going to classes where I learn to code and work on college projects while also making personal programs on the side to strengthen my knowledge of code. Hanging out with my friends on our terms and making new ones at college. The possibility of what my future holds, especially with something as versatile as coding, just inspires me to learn more and to work hard towards my future. If I could do anything with my life, I think that I would work at NASA. I've always loved lessons in school about space and stars. It's a bit ironic since I live in New York and because of the light pollution, I can't see many stars at night. However, I recently went on a trip to the Dominican Republic to visit family, and while, there weren't as many stars as I'd hoped, it was a lot more than I'd ever seen in one sky. I couldn't help but keep staring at them. I'd love to study stars and dedicate my work to learning more about them, observing from telescopes, and maybe helping write code for the next rover. One day, I'd like to gaze at a sky full of stars. 2. Science, in general, has always been exciting for me as it is a subject in school that feels different from all the rest. Instead of only writing notes, a lot of the time we'd be doing labs and experiments which I always found fun because of how hands-on it was. From learning about how magnets work in elementary school to looking at hair through a microscope in middle school. Science has always been interesting and fun. Learning about the world and how it works to even beyond the world. It is such a vast subject with so much opportunity to learn and discover. I would love to be able to make a positive impact in the field. Making my mark on the world, a testament to science as it grows and evolves. I know that it won't be easy, especially since science and STEM are hard to grasp, but I love the challenge. I don't know where exactly I will end up in the STEM field. I could end up working at NASA and making discoveries about the world beyond us. I could also work on visualizing climate change data and help on raising awareness about the state of our planet. I could end up tutoring people and teaching them computer science, sharing the knowledge I have so that they can enjoy it in their way. The possibilities are endless so I'm excited to see where in the world I'll end up. 3. As a choir member at a music school, it was very difficult being able to continue to work on our music skills while in quarantine. Our teacher opted to focus on our sight-reading as we couldn't sing together over zoom. However, these examples of sight-reading were different because instead of starting on "Do" like they usually would, instead they would start on another note like "So" or "Mi" and thus, we would receive that as our starting pitch. This was very difficult for me to grasp. At first, I would tackle the challenge with confidence, but later on, I couldn't help but hesitate when I knew I was going to make a mistake. After a while, I had completely lost confidence in my sight-reading ability and felt disappointed in myself. I couldn't help but compare myself to my previous ability, but then after a particularly bad class, I decided that I didn't want to continue feeling like this. After classes, I would practice sight reading with different starting pitches and during classes, I decided to try my best to continue singing the example even if I might've made a mistake. I would finish the measures, even if I was just grasping at notes. My teacher had noticed my improvement and even commented about how commendable it was to continue even if I wasn't sure what was next. I gained my confidence back and even if I wasn't sure what to do next, I would keep singing.