The Word That Changed My Family I learned the meaning of septic shock through the absence it left at our table. Before my grandfather passed awayy, sepsis was a word I could not have explained. Afterward, it became impossible to forget. My grandfather was the father figure in my life. He helped raise me, paid my school fees, remembered my birthdays, and showed up for my school plays and football games. He believed in me before I had grades, awards, research, or even anything else to prove myself with. When his health began to fail, I took a gap year after high school because being present for him mattered more to me than rushing into the next chapter of my own life. Then came septic shock. What I remember most is the helplessness. My family was trying to understand what was happening while hoping that the person who had always seemed permanent in our lives would somehow come home. He did not. Losing him changed more than our family structure. It changed me. Grief affected the way I ate, slept, thought, and imagined my future. I eventually reached a mental health crisis and attempted to end my life. Therapy helped me keep going, but healing did not arrive all at once. For a long time, I thought recovery meant returning to the person I was before his death. Eventually, I understood that there was no going backward. I had to decide what I would carry forward. My favorite saying I hold close is, “However long the night, the dawn will break.” My dawn did not arrive as one dramatic moment. It came slowly through education, service, research, and the realization that my pain could make me more attentive to the pain of others. Today, I study Computer Science at Morgan State University and maintain a 4.0 GPA. I am interested in the place where technology and healthcare meet because I know what it feels like for a family to need clear information, timely care, and hope. That experience now influences the way I approach projects such as DermaBridge, a health technology project focused on skin cancer awareness and fairness across different skin tones. DermaBridge addresses a different condition, but the lesson I carry from sepsis is the same. Health information matters most when people can understand it early enough to act. I also carry that lesson into community service, including supporting families, young people, individuals with disabilities, and people with special needs. I want my future career to create technology that does not forget the people who are easiest to overlook. The Begin Again Scholarship would help me continue an education I now view as part of my grandfather’s legacy. Sepsis took his life, but it also changed the direction of mine. Overall, If loss can teach us to notice what others might miss, perhaps the people we lose can still help us save something in the lives that come after them