When I was applying to colleges, I knew that I needed to study something that would challenge me intellectually and fundamentally, but also allow me to engage in real change. As I considered my options, STEM programs drew my attention. It took time for me to decide which program to pursue, but I decided on biochemistry. Biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes that occur inside living organisms. As a field of study, it is very intellectually demanding, requiring a significant working knowledge of biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Additionally, a strong ability to synthesize these subjects is absolutely necessary to excel in this field. You must be able to comfortably combine these topics in various manners to understand the complex processes that living organisms are constantly performing in order to function. Furthermore, you need to have an exceptional ability to conceptualize large-scale ideas whilst still maintaining a good grasp on immediate minor details. All of this is very appealing to me as a student because it means that my studies will require a significant amount of mental effort in order for me to excel. This challenge is something that feeds my drive and inspires me to invest deeply in my learning. Additionally, biochemistry demands that we constantly question our own biases and beliefs. The nature of STEM is to always be questioning everything. A sense of wonder and an appreciation for discovery are basic requirements to truly be successful in any STEM field, but in discovery sciences especially, you also need to be truly willing to alter your perceptions and change your stances as new discoveries are made. As the implications of new discoveries in biochemistry can often be so personally relevant, especially as innovative technologies bring the realities of gene editing and other human modifications closer and closer to fruition, the personal fundamental challenges that present themselves can become especially demanding. As someone who thrives in an environment that requires that sort of deep introspection and constant adaptability, I view this aspect as another plus. Finally, biochemistry is the perfect major for me because it allows for a significant amount of direct research that can bring about real change. The laboratory works of biochemistry can include discovery and application science. Thus, I feel like my future work truly has the opportunity to make a positive impact. Be it through further discoveries in fields related to protein structure or gene editing, or through chemical engineering that can develop vaccines and medical therapies, biochemistry is a major that allows me to feel positive about my contributions. My decision to pursue biochemistry over other STEM majors is founded on the three principles I have addressed. Biochemistry is intellectually stimulating and personally challenging, and it allows me to make significant real-world changes and positively impact my community. I am proud of my decision to pursue this major, and I look forward to seeing where this path takes me, as well as the opportunities it opens up to make positive impacts.

As a full-time college student maintaining a 4.0 GPA whilst working two jobs is not an easy feat, especially as I try to take advantage of various leadership opportunities at work to help elevate my teams. For me, leadership is about finding opportunities to cultivate a sense of "togetherness" among my colleagues whilst encouraging an open-minded approach to the various cultures and experiences that each person represents. Giving people a chance to express themselves, recognizing complementing skill sets, and utilizing them to the greatest advantage so that everyone contributes are the core aspects of leadership as I define it. In one of my older jobs, the opportunity for leadership arose through food. At the time, I worked as a pharmacy technician, in a culturally diverse location. Still, our love of food was something we all had in common. I decided to take advantage of this fact as an opportunity to strengthen our team bonds by allowing us all to share foods from our diverse cultures with each other. I initiated a culturally diverse food wall where we could post pictures of foods from our cultures and share recipes. Then, I began reaching out to co-workers to see if they'd be interested in sharing pictures or recipes for the wall. The project took two weeks to coordinate, but by the end of it, we had a wall covered in pictures and about thirty different recipes. Some colleagues even brought in snacks to share, and it became an amazing opportunity to bring our team closer together. Another leadership opportunity arose at one of my two current jobs. At this job, much of the staff is older. They have promising ideas for how to advertise and sell our products, but they struggle with the technical aspects. In this situation, our skill sets ended up being complimentary, as I am fairly new to the store and don't know how best to market our goods yet, but I am pretty tech-savvy. I was able to take on a leadership role by creating a search-term database and an ad template. The first helps staff to pull up old promotional images, and the second helps them to compose marketing signs and infographics to promote our products to customers. In both cases where I took on a leadership role, there was a considerable time commitment that could have interfered with school if I failed to manage my time. However, through a variety of techniques, I am able to handle my time so that I can keep my GPA up whilst playing an active role in my teams. Two of the techniques I often use are time-blocking and multitasking. With time-blocking, I can break my day down into blocks of time that I dedicate to different tasks or events. In this way, I can plan out a whole week to respect school and study time, whilst still allowing time for work and various leadership opportunities. With multi-tasking, I take advantage of rote tasks to complete other work. For example, when I am cleaning or templating at work, I can simultaneously listen to a lecture and get in extra study time. Ultimately, taking on a leadership role is a big commitment that often requires a significant amount of time contribution. However, these opportunities can also be incredibly fulfilling and conducive to personal growth when we take advantage of them. Although it can sometimes be difficult to balance extracurricular leadership with school obligations, when we take advantage of time management techniques like time-blocking and multitasking, it opens up the possibility to become an active community leader whilst still excelling in school.

When I began thinking about college and what I wanted to study, I knew that it had to be something that really mattered, something useful and positive. Naturally, my mind turned to the STEM fields and the sciences as something I enjoy and that makes an important contribution to society. Science is important to society because it inspires people and gives them hope, challenges them in important ways, and helps them develop tools to create a better world. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of science is how much wonder it seems to inspire. NASA is an institution that is globally regarded with delight and respect, and the cosmological work they do is often seen as inspiring. When NASA finds a new planet or presents us with the first pictures ever taken of a black hole, their work has major implications and impacts beyond just their scientific community. Suddenly, science is expanding the universe around us and inspiring us to consider the possibility of realities that we previously had only ever thought of as whimsical fantasies. In these moments, science can remind us of how small we are, and this can put our lives into perspective. The realization that despite our own seeming insignificance, we can still accomplish these marvelous feats can encourage us to value a sense of discovery in our own daily lives and to keep striving for improvements in all of the work we do. In addition to this wonderful sense of inspiration, science can give people hope during troubled periods. A recent example of this is COVID-19 and the hope that the COVID vaccines inspired. Surely going through lockdowns and complete lifestyle upheavals, not to mention the loss of jobs or schooling opportunities, made us feel hopeless and afraid during the height of the pandemic as case numbers soared. During that time, knowing that scientists and medical professionals were working to develop the vaccine gave us hope of a return to normality, and when the vaccine was finally made available, people felt relieved and excited about the opportunity to get their lives back on track. A third benefit that society reaps from science is the way in which it challenges people. When I finally chose to major in biochemistry, I did so in large part because I knew it was a field that would require me to consistently grow and adapt at a rapid pace. That sense of challenge is necessary for my personal fulfillment and for society. Science provides this by constantly asking people to question their biases as new information is being discovered in various fields. With each new scientific discovery comes a slight paradigm shift as we absorb and respond to this latest information and make use of it. Often, this challenge of our biases allows us to utilize scientific discoveries to produce tools that improve lives such as new prosthetics, life-saving surgeries, and again, the COVID vaccine. Ultimately, STEM and the sciences are becoming increasingly important to our world. As we become more reliant on technology and continue to advance at a rapid pace, we gain exceptional value from the sciences. These fields give us hope and inspire us to go beyond, even during our darkest times, as they challenge our deepest held beliefs even as they reveal new information about our ever-evolving world, and provide us with tools to improve it. As a college student studying biochemistry, I am proud to be engaged in a STEM field and I look forward to all the future positive benefits our society will reap from the sciences.