My favorite book is "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. This book represents one of the most important lessons in my life: my Personal Legend's pursuit. Just like Santiago, the main character, I am currently lost in what I want to do with my life. I "know" I have an idea of what I want to study and the places I want to go to, yet I am only twenty years old. Therefore, I have to go through endless adventures and hardships to know myself and the people around me. I was born and raised in Havana, Cuba. After living there for the first nine years of my life, my parents and I decided to move to Mexico. Four years later, the United States came to place. Living a nomadic existence challenges you to learn how to adapt to diverse situations, integrate with strange cultures, and struggle to determine whether or not to go on a journey—making the book a "perfect fit" for the circumstances that I have faced throughout my life. I am just dipping my toes into the world of adulting, responsibilities, and overall self-care. Like Santiago, I need to leave the countryside in Spain and go to Egypt to find my Personal Legend. However, luckily in this day and age, I don't have to ride camels and participate in a war in the desert to reach my goals. All I have to do is listen to my adventurous heart and my joyful soul.

Being diagnosed with autism were not the most wanted news. After going from doctor to doctor my mother was so desperate to understand what my brother Lucas had. Being such a docile yet restless baby and a sweetheart that cried over everything made Lucas an extraordinary boy. It is dictated that mothers should not compare pregnancies because every “belly” is different from the others, yet my mom kept telling herself that he was behaving oddly. My family and I lived in Mexico for a couple of years, and in those years my brother was born. Other than my father’s overwhelming workload and the living expenses getting a little too high, we left Mexico and came to the United States. Ironically, the moment we came here my mother’s schedule was booked with therapists, psychologists, cardiologists, and neurologists. In the beginning, it was hard to comprehend that your little brother was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. It’s such a big label for someone so small. Realizing that he might not live the life that I am living just because his perception of the world is so much different. Looking at the bright side, my parents divorced when he was still an infant, so he will grow up being used to a separated family where the parents fight for who gets the child each holiday. Even though I see him every weekend, each time is just as exciting as the last one. Ever since I was little, I aspired to become a veterinary. Watching the documentaries about the wild tigers in Asia to the wolves in Yellowstone set up my mind to save and cure our world’s fauna. Now I see myself in my sophomore year of college with the same wild mentality of saving the animal kingdom. But everything changed when I started to look around and see the people that surround me, especially my brother. He is my source of inspiration. Aspire to become someone great so one day he has a role model to look at. To make our parent’s efforts worth bringing us to the United States. All the challenges that we faced in the countries we lived in, along with the ones that are yet to come. Yet, something that I have always been curious about is how Lucas sees the world? How he interprets the little things that surround us? After that realization, I changed my mind about what I want to pursue in my professional life. I will forever love animals and the crucial role they play on our planet, but I want to know how my brother sees it. I will grow to be a neurologist that specializes in autism and look after wonderful people like my brother. I aspire to make a change in the world we live in to raise awareness for mental disabilities and coexist with such a beautiful community. I am currently in the Honors Program of Miami Dade College, yet my journey does not end here. I am shadowing Dr. Aliuska Alvarez, a Cuban neurologist that guided me through what it is to be a doctor in this intricate field. I believe that I should be awarded this scholarship because, despite my academic achievements, I want to pursue a degree in which I can see the world through my brother's eyes and have an approximation to what goes on through his mind. I am a great candidate because I still want to grow into a woman that hopefully one day my brother, my father, my mother, and myself will be proud of.

Self-care has just recently become part of my daily routine. For being a second-year college student, it took me a while to understand that "me time" is just as important as finishing up the assignments to a specific due line. Going to the gym and exercising somewhat regularly have helped me through this journey. I am proud to say that I finally have a "night routine" where I put on moisturizer and body lotion. But if there is something that I love doing is taking naps, which is very much necessary on a Wednesday afternoon after a mid-way heavy week. Self-care is crucial in a person's life since it symbolizes loving yourself along with taking care of your physical and mental health. It is important to take some time of the day, it doesn't matter if it is in the morning or at night, but dedicate the to no one else but yourself. A moment of peace to reflect and meditate. Obviously what works for some may not work for others. If make-up is your thing, which defiantly is not mine, or going to the gym to lift weights, go ahead! It's perfectly fine to detox from the daily stress in the little things, and never stop doing it. On the contrary, keep looking for activities, or places to be, or people to be around, to find a comfortable and safe spot where you are healing from the challenges that life brings us.

Students utilize the internet as a valuable learning resource. The capacity to locate and assess learning resources is an essential talent for lifelong learning and productive work in a variety of disciplines. Assisting pupils in finding answers to questions on their own is another excellent learning approach. Online resources have aided me in my personal development by opening doors to new information regarding my urge to know more and more. I aspire to become a neurologist, and the internet has definitely exposed me to what it is to study such a profession. Videos such as "A day in the life of a neurologist", along with articles that depict the necessary steps to become a doctor. So yeah, the internet has been, and will always be, a path to a better me. Either on the academic, professional, or even personal level.

My name is Veronica Amores, and I currently live here in the United States, yet my origins are quite interesting. I was born and raised in Cuba, and when I was 9-years-old my family and I moved to Mexico where we lived 3 years. Having a childhood in a developing country taught me the importance of appreciating what you have, and the significance of hard work. Mexico was a complicated stage in my life, because I literally had to start a new life, and making new friends was a challenge that hunted me for 2 ½ years. It was hard for me to approach them because I was afraid, afraid that they would not like me because I was different, but later on, I learned to love my differences and embrace an enormous pride for who I was. Unfortunately, the public education in Mexico lacks the opportunities that I have here in America; therefore, my parents were obligated to put me in a private school, a very expensive private school. In Cuba, I was an outstanding student with remarkable grades, which gave me the opportunity to apply for a scholarship. Thanks to that, I adopted the importance of school and always pushing myself to the limit to achieve my goals, which became a habit that I still do. Then it happened again, we moved to another country. After 3 years of extensive work in Mexico, we decided to move here because we knew that we would have even more opportunities to have a successful life for my brother and me. Now the same process as before, moving on, saying bye to your friends, and start over. These years, all those countries, all those schools, made me the person that I am today and the person I will become in the future. All this work will be worth it, not only because I will accomplish my professional dreams, but also because it will make my parents proud of the effort they put on carrying on to help me achieve that.