a rising sophomore in high school exploring different areas of STEM to find my career path.

waking up early for school to attend classes. After school, I usually have dance classes or dance team practice for a few hours, before going home and finishing my homework. Some days, I will also volunteer with school's key club at service events like cleanups, assisting in city events, and writing letters and cards to people in need. My night routine consists of winding down and relaxing.

that there is not always a right or wrong decision. I am an indecisive person. Whether it is choosing my career path or simply choosing ice cream flavors, I always take too much time overthinking my decision. This indecision has hindered me at times, but has also taught me an important lesson, that as long as you make the best of where you are at, you are in control of your future and success. Starting from freshman year, an intense grind to get into college began. From here on out, I felt that every decision I made mattered immensely, and I was constantly afraid of making the wrong one. However, from multiple experiences, I learned that there is not always a superior decision. When faced with a difficult decision, it may seem like the choice you make will steer your life path, but in reality, whichever you choose, as long as you make the most of the opportunities that it gives you, you will end up where you are meant to be.

I have worked in multiple teams including my competitive dance team, economics competition team, Scouts BSA patrol, and school project teams. These vastly different teams have all taught me different skills and values. Dance routines are a team effort and if one person does not put in 100% effort, the whole team suffers. Through working with this team, I have created bonds and connections unlike any other and learned how hardwork produces rewarding results. It has showed me the importance of practice as well. I formed an economics team with a few of my friends to compete in the YEI Econ Olympiad competition. This team has taught me that it is possible to put in hard work while having fun as well. We all balanced our school work with working on our presentation for the competition, which resulted in many late night calls and sacrificing our scarce free time to do research and work. This team has showed me that it is never too late to start exploring new areas of interests and subjects because our team started with very little understanding of the logistics of economics, but through our research, we produced a presentation that won us to the final debate round and we won our debate as well. This experience has helped me gain confidence in my ability to succeed in anything I put my mind to.

Throughout my life, my career path has never been consistent. When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an author when I grew up. Author would be my answer whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be in the future. I was an avid reader and filled my free time with reading fictional stories from piles of books that I borrowed on my weekly trips to the library. When I got to middle school, I lost some of my passion for writing and reading and I was uncertain of what path I was interested in. During the pandemic, my last year of middle school, like many others, I became interested in baking. Baking was a source of entertainment to save me from my boredom in quarantine and also produced delicious results. I started out small with basic desserts like muffins and banana bread, and eventually evolved to baking galettes, cinnamon rolls, and choux cream puffs. As I improved in my baking skills and moved on to more difficult pastries that required precision in measurements, I realized how baking was like experiments. The specific measuring of ingredients and how small mistakes in measurements could result in a catastrophe, or on occasion an unexpected success, prompted me to notice and gain knowledge of how different ingredients acted in a dessert and how combinations of them produced different results. There were endless possibilities in baking. One egg could act a certain way in a cake, but act completely different in a choux pastry because of the way it was prepared. Baking was what exposed me to and peaked my curiosity in science for the first time, translating into my interest in other fields of science later in high school. In high school, I learned of a Biotech program at my school called BTI. It is a cross-curricular program that allows students to be in a class of like-minded classmates that are passionate of science like you are. The humanities classes are science-based and prompt students to look at pieces of writing through a scientific lense. Biotech encompasses a variety of possible ways to better the world and help people, which has always been a goal of mine. Currently, as a high school student going into 10th grade, I am uncertain my career path, but I know that I am interested in STEM. I have a desire to better the environment and combat climate change. I am passionate about sustainability and would love to utilize biotech to create alternatives to wasteful materials that we currently use in our daily lives. I constantly notice the amount of waste that my family and I create throughout our day. I am determined to find a way to minimize the amount of waste that fills our trash cans and landfills, or have our trash cans be filled with materials that are able to degrade faster and easier, leaving a minimal footprint on our planet.

balletpianovolunteeringcrochetingsewingsustainability

The subject that I use the most within my daily life is Mathematics and English. Basic math is something I use constantly, whether I'm counting the amount of time of I have for a certain task, or paying for goods at a store. Even though I do not use more complex math concepts as frequently in my day to day life, mathematics has taught me to look at problems that come up in a critical way. What I like about math is that there is always a right answer. One small careless mistake can change your answer immediately, which is why I have made sure to always be precise in not only math but anything that I do. Making sure that careless mistakes do not hinder me from reaching my fullest potential is always something I keep in mind. My English classes have allowed me to improve the way I communicate my ideas. Communication is not only a part of daily life, but also a crucial aspect in the professional and academic world. When I have an idea, it is important that I am able to share my thought process and get my point across in the most clear and easy to understand way possible. My english class has been an integral part of my articulation and communication skills.

The skill that has been most important for my success in school and extracurriculars has been time management. As a high schooler, balancing my academics with extracurriculars, and maintaining a good mental state is not an easy task. A problem I am always encountered with is time conflicts. I have many interests, hobbies, and goals, but unfortunately I am not always able to participate in everything that I want to because there just is not enough hours in a day and on many occasions, multiple commitments that I have made fall on the same day and time. This is has frustrated me on countless occasions because it forced me to make a decision which is something that was hard for me to do, as an indecisive person. I can not always avoid time conflicts that are out of my control, but what I can do, is utilized time management. I make sure to always make a to do list and prioritize my more urgent tasks. I categorize tasks based on urgency and importance and finish my tasks based on that criteria. I have realized that mental health is something I must make a priority as well, in order to succeed in my other goals. I know that if I want to thrive and reach my career goals, I must manage my time well.