The best day of my life was on my 10th birthday, I had waited for as long as I could remember to receive this gift and I excitedly followed my mom into our new apartment. Before this day I had spent all of my life sharing a twin-sized bed with my mother and lived with eight of my family members in a studio apartment located in the inner city of the Bronx. It was me, my mother, two of my aunts, my four cousins, my grandfather, and my uncle all sharing one bathroom and constantly stepping on each other's toes. I remember how I had to shower on a “designated schedule” because it was the only way we could get ten people to equally share the bathroom. While many children my age wished for the latest gaming system or a bicycle my greatest wish was to have my bedroom, one where I had a bed just for me, and a bedroom that I could decorate with my favorite toys. We moved into our very own apartment in government housing as that is all my single mother could afford with her job as a health aide to the elderly. The weekends were spent indoors due to the dangerous area we lived in and the sounds of local gang members shooting their guns or fighting were my nighttime lullabies. Our tiny two-bedroom apartment served as a shelter from the hazardous neighborhood we resided in. Due to her not speaking English I could not count on her to help me with homework but she did teach me how my education was the key to bringing the cycle of poverty. It was then that my fire to attend college was ignited and although no one in my family had even enrolled in college I decided to use those hurdles as my motivational fuel to get there. I always had a passion for helping people and my career aspirations are to become a clinical psychologist where I can help those with mental and emotional disorders. I want to bring my unique experiences as a Latina American with depression and ADHD to open a community behavioral health center where I can provide treatment and counseling to underrepresented individuals such as myself. Being an advocate for mental health and first-generation students pushed me to start a youtube channel where I share how to navigate college while dealing with my debilitating mental disorders and teach other immigrant students college advice. Sadly like many other students I suffered financial difficulties once coronavirus hit as I was laid off from my job right after transferring to my four-year year university. My financial aid was not enough to cover my tuition cost. To make matters worst I faced homelessness when I was kicked out of my home by my religious parents because they discovered I was bisexual. Through all of these obstacles, it was easy to give up but I had overcome too much, so I reached out to friends for a couch to sleep on, obtained a new job, and took out a loan so I could continue. Today I am in my senior year of college, and as pressure to pay off my loans and tuition is increasing receiving this scholarship would support my efforts in walking across the graduation stage as well as reaching career goals and making a difference in the lives of others. The struggles I faced only ignited my drive to keep striving and I hope to use those hurdles to serve low-income communities, immigrants, and LQBTQ individuals like myself who desperately need help.

For some people, the most difficult thing they have done is running a marathon, finishing college, or raising a family but for me, it was staring into my parent's eyes and confessing that since the age of eleven I had been struggling with depression. How do you tell the humans who love you the most and brought you onto Earth that you don't want to live anymore? What I feared was my parent's lack of knowledge of mental health causing them to ignore my feelings or even worse to "prescribe" me a dose of prayers instead of taking my illness seriously. The words were almost trapped in the back of my throat and for months I had put off this conversation. I thought of all the sacrifices my family had made for me by immigrating to America and being the first in my family to attend college. My grandmother passed away with only a first-grade education and she never got the chance to learn how to read and write. The guilt was almost impossible to swallow. My advice as a depression veteran is to speak up to anyone and everyone who will listen about your mental health. I do this with my own circle of family and friends but also through my youtube channel where I make videos on college advice and how I handle my own depression with a busy course load. Take the first baby step and talk about your mental illness because that's one of the best things you can do. Tell your parents and family how your symptoms affect you, how you feel, and most importantly how they can support you. Some people might not entirely understand you or even make hurtful comments, find the people in your life who can support you and ignore the rest. I also fight my depression by trying to spend time in nature for at least 15 minutes daily. This small but mighty habit helps to keep me distracted from dark thoughts, provides me with much-needed sunlight, and grounds me with the beauty of nature. Doctors will tell you to exercise daily and eat a healthy diet but when even brushing your teeth is a hurdle exercising can feel too overwhelming, instead try stretching in bed and celebrate your tiny accomplishments, treat yourself like your best friend would. Forgive yourself for what you could not accomplish. Through encouragement from my family I dared to reach out to a therapist and ask for help, statistics show that a person can suffer from depression for ten years before they ever seek professional help. By the time I was able to see a therapist covered by my insurance it had been over 6 months from the peak of my mental health crisis, for those going through a crisis 6 months is entirely too long to receive help.' My dream is to finish my bachelor's degree so I can continue my education and serve others struggling with mental illnesses as a clinical psychologist by opening up my own community-based behavioral health center. I would love to be able to take my suffering and use my bilingual skills to provide support for impoverished and underrepresented communities. Mental health is just as valid as any other illness and it's time we took it seriously and reinvented how we manage behavioral healthcare.

LA GRANDE BELLEZA is Italian for The Great Beauty, a film I had the joy of watching for my film history course my sophomore year of college. Our final assignment for the semester was to select an international film from the modern era. Seeing the movie's backdrops of Roman statues and the alluring romance of the Italian cities I was energized to write my paper. I have been dreaming of Italy ever since I watched that movie, my wish to be in Italy feels like the experience of having a catchy song stuck in your head. I bought a membership to rosetta stone so I could teach myself Italian and taught myself how to make a pretty mean lasagna recipe. My dream life is to live in Florence for the summer, studying psychology through a study abroad trip to Italy. For years I pushed away my dream due to the overwhelming financial burden of the program, but I made it my mission to apply for scholarships, save up money from my job, and run a fundraiser with freshly made pies. Although I am at a disadvantage from many of my peers because of my disabilities and being a first-generation student I am determined to not let those barriers stop me. It is a 12-week program where I will be staying in an apartment in the historic center with roommates from my university. In my classes, I will be taking developmental psychology and food, arts, and culture in Florence where we will get to cook Florence-based recipes and have the cities' architecture be our teacher. I hope to have my hard work pays off so I can send a postcard from Firenze

“Are you sure you are depressed, maybe you just need to pray mi hija”, these were the words my mother used to comfort me the night I dug up the courage to finally open up to my family about the monster living inside of me. My dad piped in and added “ well I say you stay away from those shrinks, they will just pump you full of medicine” I do not blame my parents for having such a bleak reaction the reality is they did not know about mental health issues as they did not get the opportunity to attend college. For the past eleven years, I suffered in silence because of how ashamed and lonely the disease made me perceive life to be. So many other people are unable to speak up and ask for help because of a lack of access to familiar support or the mental health stigma that surrounds the Latino community. Being an advocate for breaking meal health stigma is a huge personal passion of mine because I feel that channeling my pain into something productive is my way of taking ownership of depression instead of it being the other way around, I post videos on youtube detailing my struggles and sharing ways other disadvantaged students can manage their symptoms while submitting that research paper in on time. In my desperate search to better my mental health, I fell in love with psychology and became a geek for anything related to the subject. Psychology serves as a way to better understand each other, why do humans behave and think the way we do, but it also serves as a way to heal, treat, and bring help to those who suffer from psychological diseases. While juggling a part time job and a full course load I also attended countless doctors visitors to try to I have prescribed a total of five different antidepressant medication and yet I still struggled to find the drive to get out of bed and complete my college assignments or enjoy a coffee date with a friend. Just to see a therapist would take over 3 months which for someone suffering from a crisis is just unacceptable. There are other treatments for diseases like depression and in fact, talk therapy combined with medication is the most effective but it doesn't work for everyone and there is still so much research needed on the actual causes of depression. While in my drugs and behavior course at the University of South Florida I got to learn about the neurobiological effects of drugs and in that class I read journals on the promising research psychedelic such as shrooms on LSD have demonstrated in bringing relief to patients with depression. This is exciting because the psychedelics effects of improving mood and cognitive abilities in depressed, traumatized, or anxious patients lasted days and even weeks after administering the microdose or psychedelic, this is an improvement to the prescriptions we give out today that have to be taken daily otherwise the drug effect diminishes quickly. This type of research brings us closer to offering better behavioral health services that people like myself need. I want to get involved in alternative treatments because I have tried over five different types of antidepressants with little to no relief from my mental illness. It's time we revamped and improved our behavioral health system and I plan on bringing my experience as low-incoma e first-generation student to the psychology field

The tiny numbers on the screen were starting to blur once more as I glanced at the clock, and sighed I felt like a dummy. Although I started three hours ago I was still stuck on the third question. My parent's tax return was in hand I tried to focus my eyes on the tax questions from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA). ``What was your net income?” Why didn’t any of my friends tell me this FAFSA thing would be so hard I thought to myself. This section was inquiring about my parent's wages and investments and is meant to be completed with the help of a parent but unfortunately, my parents could not help me. My dad while being my biggest cheerleader only understands basic English and so I was left on my own to figure it out on my own again. When I asked my best friend how she managed to make sense of the confusing tax questions she stared at me with utter confusion, “my mom just filled out all that stuff for me. I did not even look at all that. It sounds hard though, maybe you can google it ?” I felt so defeated, if college admissions were a race I was a mile behind from the starting line being a first-generation immigrant my parents did not have experience filling out FAFSA, or even attending college their support came through savory home-cooked meals during late study night sessions or offering their ear when I needed to vent. I can proudly say I did manage to complete my FAFSA that night and while others may see my disabilities and low-income status as disadvantages those hindrances inspire me to work twice as hard! My determination persisted even after I received the devastating blow of losing my job and housing during the start of the covid pandemic or when I discovered that my community college financial aid department would not have the funds available in time to pay for my courses. My drive to keep pushing came from my mental health struggles since the age of eleven my mind has been plagued by the darkness of depression and anxiety disorder and I have channeled that pain into educational YouTube videos on my channel where I help others by showing how to cope with mental illness while juggling college assignments. I want to bring my experience battling mental illness to help fight the stigma and work to treat other under-prilviged and marginalized groups struggling with psychological disorders as a clinical psychologist. There is a severe lack of diversity when it comes to healthcare, specifically in the field of science and my dream is to give back to my community by operating a community behavioral health center where we provide affordable, accessible, and holistic treatment as well as getting involved in research for mental health treatments. Through my YouTube videos and higher education I hope to be an advocate for the cultural stigmatization of psychological disorders, I dream of a society where going to therapy is as normalized as going to your doctor.

My playlist is called the Affections of an Academic Track 1 Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey. Lana's ethereal voice paints the darkness experienced by t when the days turn shorter and we have pulled away from the joys and freedom of summer break and back into the classroom for the start of a semester Track 2 20 Somethings by SZA. This song reminds me of my freshmen year of college and the start of my 20s because much of my experience in college has felt challenging and confusing. As a first-generation student, I lacked the community and financial support and had a heavy learning curve to overcome. Track 3 is In da Club by 50 Cent On my 21st birthday, I had my first alcoholic drink surrounded by friends, cake, and of course my laptop because there was a research paper due at 11:59 pm that night and no college students celebration would be complete without first submitting course work. Track 4 is Nobody by Mitski If there is one thing I wish I had to know about college s the immense loneliness, your high school friends move away and suddenly you've left juggling classes, making new friends, and keeping your head above water. Track 5 is Otis by Kanye West, Jay Z, and Otis Redding This song is part of a personal playlist I have for those all-nighters spent cramming for a test. This is one of those songs perfect for when I need audible caffeine to push me through the long study session and brighten my mood