Five years ago, when I first moved into United States, my objectives nor goals were clear. I learned that in United States, unlike Brazil, students in high school are pushed to find and seek their objectives and career goals as early as sophomore year. Since I had never thought about it when I first came in, I was lost. In Brazil, when we finish high school, you are not expected to know which area you plan to seek. I was fascinated how young freshmen girls and boys already knew what they wanted to pursue for the rest of their lives. As an immigrant, perceiving the difference between our own culture and other’s culture becomes incredibly easy when living in a foreign country. I came with a destructive mindset that I need to work just barely enough to get what I want versus a culture that pushes students to give their best independently on which area they choose to pursue. Soon enough I learned that I needed to achieve that mindset as well. Aside from a discrepant cultural adaptation, I faced a big challenge; learn and master English. Although easier than Portuguese, learning a new language comes with many challenges. During my high school years, I had countless episodes of embarrassing moments where I would misspell, mispronounce, forget, or even speak Portuguese in front of many native American speakers. Those embarrassing moments are the ones that made me learn the most. From a scientific perspective, learning and memory are extremely plastic and susceptible processes of the brain that are subject to change. However, most of our memories are either forgotten or faded due to synaptic plasticity. To maintain these memories, our cortices save the relevant information when the memory is attached to a strong emotion. In this case, most of my learning occurred when I went through these embarrassing moments. Being different in high school and in college allows you to see the environment from a different perspective. Ever since my sophomore year in high school, I have developed a profound interest for the human brain, such a mysterious organ with mystical powers. Our brain being a cluster of molecules and cells that converse through chemical signals, is capable of planning, love, anger, learning, and remembering. We are the only animals that have developed a neocortex, which allowed us to reach as far as we did as a human species. It has many imperfections. The human brain is a miracle of biology that humans still have a rough time understanding it. This mysterious organ was what drove me to pursue Neuroscience, and now drives me to pursue the medical field in hopes to understand it better. Being an immigrant allows me to use these learning experiences that were attached to strong emotions and embarrassing experiences to have a different perspective in the scientific field. Having a different perspective of scientific topics is paramount in the scientific field. In the long term, I want to become a neurosurgeon, and I am aware of how difficult it is to be one, but I am willing to do whatever it takes. However, nothing is as easy as it sounds. I currently face a lot of difficulties in my path that make my dream hard to achieve. My current visa is L2 which does not allow me to work and I do not carry a social security. With no social security number, I do not qualify for FASFA as well. This scholarship will serve as a great financial help with my educational needs and will help me get one step closer towards my goals.