Pursuing computer science comes from my faith in God to become an educated Software Engineer in Christ. Creating websites, apps, and digital tools to glorify snippets of God's character is essential to me, as I serve with passion for people of color in my Oakland, California community. Since attending George Fox University, a nationally recognized Christian private university, in 2020, I have worked three jobs simultaneously to help financially sustain my college life on and off campus. As an Asian-American first-generation college student, I have witnessed firsthand how people of color generally have worse levels of mental health than White people on my Christian University campus. Racism is still alive and well in spaces where fundamentalist Christians and policies exist. Therefore, navigating the Christian space is a constant challenge for a person of color. It is growing my capacity for loving and leading my community and being kind to others because I am a first-generation scholar who cares for people and their passions, comforting them in their mental health journey. In the past semester, I was in a book club hosted by the Director of Intercultural Life that presented the book "How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice," which was written by Jemar Tisby. I learned to have deep and controversial conversations with those with different opinions than me. The kind of conversation that builds community and relationships engages massively better than simply screaming at the other side. As a first-generation student leader, I am community-oriented in my work. I have a first-year student mentee to guide them through their first year of college. My drive to mentor is rooted in my faith, friends, and family because we're all trying to navigate this bigoted, colonized, and hostile world together. My mentee is a Latino-American who is relatively outgoing with others in the BIPOC space on the George Fox University campus, which is not as BIPOC-friendly as one would imagine going to a Christian college. However, my mentee had me talk through those issues, and I had my book club mentors, Jesse and D'Metri, to lean on for Anti-Racism education and discussion. Anti-racism education catalyzes the importance of mental health to converse open-mindedly with other people of color, sharing deep traumas and stories of racism with each other because we are all image bearers of God. I aim to strive to be vulnerable in those spaces and hopefully in every space to help privileged folks be aware of these mental health issues regarding race for people of color. Political civility is essential for any household or community. As a Chinese person, the Asian community tends to be forced to conform and be quiet as we have been in the past by the upper class of primarily white men through policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and regulations of Japanese people through internment camps. During my last upcoming semesters in 2023-24, I will be the newest Director of Clubs, overseeing and facilitating student organizations to foster community and make students be known and heard. Building community empowerment for people of color is my priority at this predominantly White institution because we're not going anywhere. I'm not going back to China. America is my home because God gave my parents, who worked tirelessly to put food on the table, the opportunity to become first-generation American immigrants in 1990. My rooted passion and faith in God will always catalyze me to think with clarity, act with integrity, and share my story to help foster a resemblance and diversity of the Kingdom here on Earth.

As a first-generation college student, I have many indicators for my passion for community-based solutions. Before college, solving problems and building something innovative for the community was my beginning in computer science. I developed a—now-published—video game project with a team of five in 2019 at Gameheads. My summer team created “11 Years”, an immersive experience navigating the depths of the dying ocean through the perspective of a Clownfish due to ocean acidification. The surprising research that we found was that our normalized damaging behaviors caused the coral reefs and animals to suffocate. Another game project began in the summer of 2020 with a different team of seven. We created “Confined Indorms” to illustrate how college students feel during the pandemic while locked down in their dorms. The game title gauges mental health, hygiene, grades, schoolwork, and relationships, demonstrating the strength of our research at the beginning of our development. Through Gameheads, I realized the depth of education in my career. I desire to educate the community around me and lead my community into positive changes and ambitions. I was the Lead Game Designer and Co-Programmer for “11 Years” and learned how to present ideas concisely through collaboration. Despite intense code debugging throughout the development period, I took moments to take my time to understand what I was coding. I scripted the achievement-earning feature and associated animations for the player's ability to eat and complete objectives. I paused at the screen which was glaring at me in a dark and cozy development office, trying to debug my mishandling of the code I wrote. So, I asked for help from veteran students in the program to assist me in my efforts. With their help, I learned how to use scriptable objects in Unity which are serializable classes that store a collection of information more efficiently than using standard data structures. Similarly, in the 2020 production, I was the Project Manager and Programmer for “Confined Indorms". As an introvert with a bold passion for teamwork, I learned to gracefully assert myself as the leader for project accountability and completion while producing large-scale code at the same time, through the meticulous use of timeboxing and priority frameworks. The practice of creating and presenting projects would also allow me to execute my vision for creating products and services that matter to communities such as my Bay Area and Oakland community because I care deeply about the issues and solutions to reduce those problems. Education, a seemingly impossible dream for my immigrant parents, allows me to be inspired and contribute to Oakland, my home, with technological project-based work. My parents did not have secondary education growing up. However, this gap did not stop me from furthering my education in computer science. Through prior internship experiences, I am excited to be a Software Engineer, building community-oriented platforms. Ultimately, this scholarship would undoubtedly support me passionately in continuing my ambitious pursuit of professional and educational success and support my development as a computer scientist, developer, and community builder.

As a first-generation college student, I have many markers of what my future looks like. For starters, my parents who married in 1990 and are from China immigrated to the U.S. in 1993 when my brother was born, living in San Francisco at the time. By the time I was born in 2002, my family moved to the home we know today in East Oakland. Designing, developing, and maintaining products and services for my home community is my end goal. Before college, I developed a—now-published—video game project with a team of five in 2019 at Gameheads. My summer team created “11 Years”, an immersive experience navigating the depths of the dying ocean through the perspective of a Clownfish due to ocean acidification. The surprising research that we found was that our normalized damaging behaviors caused the coral reefs and animals to suffocate. Another game project began in the summer of 2020 with a different team of seven. We created “Confined Indorms” to illustrate how college students feel during the pandemic while locked down in their dorms. The game title gauges mental health, hygiene, grades, schoolwork, and relationships, demonstrating the strength of our research at the beginning of our development. Through Gameheads, I realized the depth of education in my career. I desire to educate the community around me and lead my community into positive changes and ambitions. I was the Lead Game Designer and Co-Programmer for “11 Years” and learned how to present ideas concisely through collaboration. Despite stuttering during brainstorming sessions throughout the development period, I took moments to take my time to introduce my contributions and ideas. When I stutter in discussions, I’d remember the speech gimmicks to take my time and not let anxiety overrule me. During the showcase in August, our team got up on stage in front of over five hundred industry professionals and residents. I felt a swarm of lingering butterflies in my stomach, but I charged through presenting. I did not stutter. Walking off the stage, I was proud of myself because of my seasoned presentation. Furthermore, I was the Project Manager and Programmer for “Confined Indorms” and delegated tasks to my team. Taking my time again, I often try to speak without stuttering to assert myself as the leader for project accountability and completion while producing large-scale code. I am proud, despite my stutter, that I was able to communicate effectively with my team. I’m able to speak with confidence, whether that’s working with a team or communicating with an entire audience. The practice of creating and presenting projects would also allow me to execute my vision for creating products and services that matter to communities such as my Bay Area community because I care deeply about the issues and solutions to reduce those problems. Education, a seemingly impossible dream for my immigrant parents, allows me to inspire and contribute to Oakland, my home, with my technological project-based work. My parents did not have secondary education growing up. Being one of the first in my family to enroll in a post-secondary institution is surreal and unimaginable despite growing up in an impoverished neighborhood. However, the educational gap did not stop nor limit me to further my education and passion for problem-solving through computer science. Ultimately, this scholarship fund would undoubtedly support me passionately in continuing my ambitious pursuit of professional and educational success and support my development as a computer scientist, developer, and public speaker to my East Oakland community.

As an Asian-American first-generation college student, I have witnessed firsthand how people of color generally have relatively worse levels of mental health than white students on my Christian University campus. Racism is still alive and well in spaces where fundamentalist Christians and policies exist. According to an institutional effectiveness survey that was filled out by students, there is a great discrepancy between people of color and white people's overall satisfaction with the university by a factor of 0.3. Navigating this historically conservative Christian space is a constant challenge for a person of color. It is still nonetheless growing my capacity for loving and leading my community and being kind to others because I am a first-generation scholar who cares for people and their passions, comforting them in their mental health journey. In the past semester, I was in a book club that read “How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice” which was written by Jemar Tisby. I learned to have a deep and controversial conversations with those who have different opinions than me. The kind of conversation that builds community and relationships engages massively better than simply screaming at the other side. As a first-generation student leader, I am community-oriented in my work. I have a first-year student mentee to guide them through their first year of college. My drive to mentor is rooted in my faith, friends, and family because we’re all trying to navigate this bigoted, colonized, and hateful world together. My mentee is a Latino-American who is relatively outgoing with others in the BIPOC space on the George Fox University campus, which is not as BIPOC-friendly as one would imagine going to a Christian college. However, my mentee had me talk through those issues, and I had my book club mentors, Jesse and D’Metri, to lean on for Anti-Racism education and discussion. Anti-racism education catalyzes the importance of mental health to converse open-mindedly with other people of color, sharing deep traumas and stories of racism. I strive to be vulnerable in those spaces and hopefully in every space to help privileged folks be aware of these mental health issues regarding race for people of color. Political civility is essential for any household or community. As a Chinese person, the Asian community tends to be forced to conform and be quiet as we have been in the past by the upper class of primarily white men through policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and regulations of Japanese people through internment camps. Even though I strive to be vulnerable, I recognize that there is a time and place to do that action. Building community empowerment for people of color is my priority because we’re not going anywhere. We’re not going back to China. We’re not going back to Africa. We’re not going back to Mexico. America is our home. Mental health is important because this is our home, and we deserve to be known and seen. America will always be a catalyst for leadership and integrity because of the people that live here.

Before college, I developed a—now-published—video game project with a team of five in 2019 at Gameheads. My summer team created “11 Years”, an immersive experience navigating the depths of the dying ocean through the perspective of a Clownfish due to ocean acidification. The surprising research that we found was that our normalized damaging behaviors caused the coral reefs and animals to suffocate. Another game project began in the summer of 2020 with a different team of seven. We created “Confined Indorms” to illustrate how college students feel during the pandemic while locked down in their dorms. The game title gauges mental health, hygiene, grades, schoolwork, and relationships, demonstrating the strength of our research at the beginning of our development. Through Gameheads, I realized the depth of education in my career. I desire to educate the community around me and lead my community into positive changes and ambitions. At George Fox University, I have been a web developer intern for the University’s marketing communications department for two years. I have architected 20+ robust data pipelines to crawl and filter the content management system through API scripts. I have also designed and created 40+ largely trafficked content pages with iterative development. Lastly, I have expanded content development by 95% by creating REST scripts to validate internal and routine tasks. During the past summer of 2022, I also interned as a Software Engineer at Recidiviz. I implemented 20+ automation scripts to perform comprehensive audits on group policies and elevated privileges in 17 B2B platforms, effectively verifying access controls and reducing manual verification time by 99%. I architected Node solutions to resolve 100% of vulnerabilities found in production codebases. I built 18 automation scripts to integrate telemetry and alerting across cloud environments for internal tooling. Through these internships, I have exemplified ambition, leadership, and integrity. Long term, I am a community-oriented and detailed leader who wants to positively impact the community around me, notably where I grew up in East Oakland, California. I am committed to personal and professional growth, and I plan to use my skills and knowledge to develop original and creative solutions that address the needs of my community and beyond. In two years, I want a full-time job that has a mission of supporting folks in marginalized communities and non-profit organizations. In five years, I desire to thrive in my role to aid in other’s issues because I have always been community-oriented and servant-minded, encouraging myself to go beyond my comfort zone, and learning about new perspectives and concepts to empower my capabilities as an engineer.

Before college, I developed a—now-published—video game project with a team of five in 2019 at Gameheads. My summer team created “11 Years”, an immersive experience navigating the depths of the dying ocean through the perspective of a Clownfish due to ocean acidification. The surprising research that we found was that our normalized damaging behaviors caused the coral reefs and animals to suffocate. Another game project began in the summer of 2020 with a different team of seven. We created “Confined Indorms” to illustrate how college students feel during the pandemic while locked down in their dorms. The game title gauges mental health, hygiene, grades, schoolwork, and relationships, demonstrating the strength of our research at the beginning of our development. Through Gameheads, I realized the depth of education in my career. I desire to educate the community around me and lead my community into positive changes and ambitions. At George Fox University, I have been a web developer intern for the University’s marketing communications department for two years. I have architected 20+ robust data pipelines to crawl and filter the content management system through API scripts. I have also designed and created 40+ largely trafficked content pages with iterative development. Lastly, I have expanded content development by 95% by creating REST scripts to validate internal and routine tasks. During the past summer of 2022, I also interned as a Software Engineer at Recidiviz. I implemented 20+ automation scripts to perform comprehensive audits on group policies and elevated privileges in 17 B2B platforms, effectively verifying access controls and reducing manual verification time by 99%. I architected Node solutions to resolve 100% of vulnerabilities found in production codebases. I built 18 automation scripts to integrate telemetry and alerting across cloud environments for internal tooling. Through these internships, I have exemplified ambition, leadership, and integrity. Long term, I am a community-oriented and detailed leader who wants to positively impact the community around me, notably where I grew up in East Oakland, California. I am committed to personal and professional growth, and I plan to use my skills and knowledge to develop original and creative solutions that address the needs of my community and beyond. In two years, I want a full-time job that has a mission of supporting folks in marginalized communities and non-profit organizations. In five years, I desire to thrive in my role to aid in other’s issues because I have always been community-oriented and servant-minded, encouraging myself to go beyond my comfort zone, and learning about new perspectives and concepts to empower my capabilities as an engineer.

As a first-generation and low-income college student, I have many markers of my identity such that I am Asian-American. My parents, married in 1990, are from China, immigrated to the U.S. in 1993 and had my brother in 1994, living in San Francisco at the time. By the time I was born in 2002, my family moved to the home we know today in East Oakland. My grandparents on my mother’s side immigrated to the United States in 2002 as well and were fully integrated into U.S Citizenship several years later. From 2002 to 2017, my mother and father worked more than 40 hours a week, as a seamstress and a clothing manufacturing worker, respectively, commuting every morning from Oakland to San Francisco on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. My parents had no formal secondary education experience given their immigrants and low-income status coming from Guangdong, China. I was raised by my grandmother mostly throughout the day when my parents were out at work. She has been the kindest person that I have seen growing up, and still alive to this day, reaching 80 years old last year. I remember her saying hysterically and sarcastically that every day is her birthday because she doesn’t actually recall when she was born, but everyone in the family knows she is 80. In my early formative years, she would also sing in the kitchen when making potato fries for me which were absolutely the best fries in town. As a first-generation college student, I am pursuing computer science in my final year of college coming up in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters. I am very much integrated and rooted in my family and faith to pursue technology that will help disadvantaged communities like East Oakland, my home. Education, a seemingly impossible dream for my immigrant parents, allows me to inspire and contribute to Oakland, my home, with my technological project-based work. My parents did not have secondary education growing up. Being one of the first in my family to enroll in a post-secondary institution is surreal and unimaginable despite growing up in an impoverished neighborhood. However, the educational gap did not stop nor limit me to further my education and passion for problem-solving through computer science. Ultimately, this scholarship fund would undoubtedly support me passionately in continuing my ambitious pursuit of professional and educational success and support my development as a computer scientist, developer, and public speaker.

Computer science is my centric and enduring passion because it impacts people's lives, especially the communities around me. As an engineering-minded individual, I can make that impact more positive and center humanity in technology. I strive to utilize my software engineering experiences and skills to fulfill my passion for serving the communities around me. My programming skills have expanded and materialized into creative engineering of quality solutions for large-scale projects. As a first-generation student, I want to learn more about programming in industry settings and innovative engineering solutions for high-end, functional, and well-tested systems and environments. Technology creates a need for empathy in creative, ethical, and quality systems. I am confident in using my problem-solving skills to tackle the tremendous challenges of the software development life cycle to allow for accurate and accessible technological solutions to be built for everyone, with human empathy and compassion. Since 2019, I have developed my career path in numerous ways. At a youth training program, Gameheads, my development team, and I created "Confined Indorms," a game featuring a college student sheltered in place navigating academics, health, and relationships. I developed the college dormitory environment and event systems as the gameplay engineer. At George Fox University, I have continued my zeal for developing web platforms to achieve tangible outcomes with human-centered designs. In 2021, I participated in a hackathon with an international team. I implemented a front-end design using React with cloud services connecting to the Wikipedia API, transforming and displaying Wikipedia articles into readable chunks. Thus, the website was awarded second place for 'Best Design with Code.' I created many opportunities for myself and others to expand my technical skill set. Aside from formal internship experiences, I have created a landing website for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter in Newberg, Oregon. I am also the President of the ACM chapter. I manage a team of four associates to operate the club and host its annual collegiate hackathon for George Fox. I made a website from scratch specifically for the collegiate hackathon, which includes a custom application programming interface (API) that gets project data from the popular version control tool such as Microsoft's Gitlab. The primary goal of the websites is to disperse and display valuable information about our chapter and the club's in-house hackathon information for participants, alums, and our local industry partners. Never in the history of ACM-W at Fox have we designed, developed, and deployed a website to host and disseminate information for students and alums of the University community. The project creating the landing website has given opportunities to my peers who are also interested in computer science to learn how website development works from start to finish. I have provided ample opportunities and great ideas for my ACM student chapter team to implement, so they can take ownership of their skills and the project as much as I have. Creating opportunities for myself and others have helped me apply better standard industry practices and skills to enter the industry more ready than ever.

As an Asian-American first-generation college student, I have witnessed firsthand how privileged people treat disadvantaged people of color. The model minority myth is alive and well because of the past laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese regulation into internment camps. Therefore, navigating the tech career space is a constant challenge as a person of color. It is nonetheless growing my capacity for loving and leading my community and being kind to others because I am a first-generation scholar who cares for people and their passions. In the past semester, I was in a book club that read “How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice” which was written by Jemar Tisby. I learned to have a deep and controversial conversation with those who have different opinions than me. The kind of conversation that builds community and relationships engages massively better than simply screaming at the other side. As a first-generation student leader, I am community-oriented in my work. I have a first-year student mentee to guide them through their first year of college. My drive to mentor is rooted in my faith, friends, and family because we’re all trying to navigate this bigoted, colonized, and hateful world together. My mentee is a Latino-American who is relatively outgoing with others in the BIPOC space on the George Fox University campus, which is not as BIPOC-friendly as one would imagine going to a Christian college. However, my mentee had me talk through those issues, and I had my book club mentors, Jesse and D’Metri, to lean on for Anti-Racism education and discussion. Anti-racism education catalyzes my integrity to converse open-mindedly with others who have opposite views of me. I strive to mediate between two parties as a leader because someone must be bestowed that right. Political civility is essential for any household or community. As a Chinese person, the Asian community tends to be forced to conform and be quiet as we have been in the past by the upper class of primarily white men through policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and regulations of Japanese people through internment camps. Even though I strive to mediate conflicts, I recognize that there is a time and place to protest mediocre opinions but always a time to reject ideas against fundamental human rights. Building community empowerment for people of color is my priority because we’re not going anywhere. We’re not going back to China. We’re not going back to Africa. We’re not going back to Mexico. America is our home. America will always be a catalyst for my leadership, professionalism, and integrity because of the people that live here.

Computer science is my centric and enduring passion because it impacts people's lives, especially the communities around me. As an engineering-minded individual, I can make that impact more positive and center humanity in technology. I strive to utilize my software engineering experiences and skills to fulfill my passion for serving the communities around me. My programming skills have expanded and materialized into creative engineering of quality solutions for large-scale projects. As a first-generation student, I want to learn more about programming in industry settings and innovative engineering solutions for high-end, functional, and well-tested systems and environments. Technology creates a need for empathy in creative, ethical, and quality systems. I am confident in using my problem-solving skills to tackle the tremendous challenges of the software development life cycle to allow for accurate and accessible technological solutions to be built for everyone, with human empathy and compassion. Since 2019, I have developed my career path in numerous ways. At a youth training program, Gameheads, my development team, and I created "Confined Indorms," a game featuring a college student sheltered in place navigating academics, health, and relationships. I developed the college dormitory environment and event systems as the gameplay engineer. At George Fox University, I have continued my zeal for developing web platforms to achieve tangible outcomes with human-centered designs. In 2021, I participated in a hackathon with an international team. I implemented a front-end design using React with cloud services connecting to the Wikipedia API, transforming and displaying Wikipedia articles into readable chunks. Thus, the website was awarded second place for 'Best Design with Code.' I created many opportunities for myself and others to expand my technical skill set. Aside from formal internship experiences, I have created a landing website for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter in Newberg, Oregon. I am also the President of the ACM chapter. I manage a team of four associates to operate the club and host its annual collegiate hackathon for George Fox. I made a website from scratch specifically for the collegiate hackathon, which includes a custom application programming interface (API) that gets project data from the popular version control tool such as Microsoft's Gitlab. The primary goal of the websites is to disperse and display valuable information about our chapter and the club's in-house hackathon information for participants, alums, and our local industry partners. Never in the history of ACM-W at Fox have we designed, developed, and deployed a website to host and disseminate information for students and alums of the University community. The project creating the landing website has given opportunities to my peers who are also interested in computer science to learn how website development works from start to finish. I have provided ample opportunities and great ideas for my ACM student chapter team to implement, so they can take ownership of their skills and the project as much as I have. Creating opportunities for myself and others have helped me apply better standard industry practices and skills to enter the industry more ready than ever.

Computer science is my centric and enduring passion because it impacts people's lives, especially the communities around me. As an engineering-minded individual, I can make that impact more positive and center humanity in technology. I strive to utilize my software engineering experiences and skills to fulfill my passion for serving the communities around me. My programming skills have expanded and materialized into creative engineering of quality solutions for large-scale projects. As a first-generation student, I want to learn more about programming in industry settings and innovative engineering solutions for high-end, functional, and well-tested systems and environments. Technology creates a need for empathy in creative, ethical, and quality systems. I am confident in using my problem-solving skills to tackle the tremendous challenges of the software development life cycle to allow for accurate and accessible technological solutions to be built for everyone, with human empathy and compassion. Since 2019, I have developed my career path in numerous ways. At a youth training program, Gameheads, my development team, and I created "Confined Indorms," a game featuring a college student sheltered in place navigating academics, health, and relationships. I developed the college dormitory environment and event systems as the gameplay engineer. At George Fox University, I have continued my zeal for developing web platforms to achieve tangible outcomes with human-centered designs. In 2021, I participated in a hackathon with an international team. I implemented a front-end design using React with cloud services connecting to the Wikipedia API, transforming and displaying Wikipedia articles into readable chunks. Thus, the website was awarded second place for 'Best Design with Code.' I created many opportunities for myself and others to expand my technical skill set. Aside from formal internship experiences, I have created a landing website for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter in Newberg, Oregon. I am also the President of the ACM chapter. I manage a team of four associates to operate the club and host its annual collegiate hackathon for George Fox. I made a website from scratch specifically for the collegiate hackathon, which includes a custom application programming interface (API) that gets project data from the popular version control tool such as Microsoft's Gitlab. The primary goal of the websites is to disperse and display valuable information about our chapter and the club's in-house hackathon information for participants, alums, and our local industry partners. Never in the history of ACM-W at Fox have we designed, developed, and deployed a website to host and disseminate information for students and alums of the University community. The project creating the landing website has given opportunities to my peers who are also interested in computer science to learn how website development works from start to finish. I have provided ample opportunities and great ideas for my ACM student chapter team to implement, so they can take ownership of their skills and the project as much as I have. Creating opportunities for myself and others have helped me apply better standard industry practices and skills to enter the industry more ready than ever.

Computer science is my centric and enduring passion because it impacts people's lives, especially the communities around me. As an engineering-minded individual, I can make that impact more positive and center humanity in technology. I strive to utilize my software engineering experiences and skills to fulfill my passion for serving the communities around me. My programming skills have expanded and materialized into creative engineering of quality solutions for large-scale projects. As a first-generation student, I want to learn more about programming in industry settings and innovative engineering solutions for high-end, functional, and well-tested systems and environments. Technology creates a need for empathy in creative, ethical, and quality systems. I am confident in using my problem-solving skills to tackle the tremendous challenges of the software development life cycle to allow for accurate and accessible technological solutions to be built for everyone, with human empathy and compassion. Since 2019, I have developed my career path in numerous ways. At a youth training program, Gameheads, my development team, and I created "Confined Indorms," a game featuring a college student sheltered in place navigating academics, health, and relationships. I developed the college dormitory environment and event systems as the gameplay engineer. At George Fox University, I have continued my zeal for developing web platforms to achieve tangible outcomes with human-centered designs. In 2021, I participated in a hackathon with an international team. I implemented a front-end design using React with cloud services connecting to the Wikipedia API, transforming and displaying Wikipedia articles into readable chunks. Thus, the website was awarded second place for 'Best Design with Code.' I created many opportunities for myself and others to expand my technical skill set. Aside from formal internship experiences, I have created a landing website for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter in Newberg, Oregon. I am also the President of the ACM chapter. I manage a team of four associates to operate the club and host its annual collegiate hackathon for George Fox. I made a website from scratch specifically for the collegiate hackathon, which includes a custom application programming interface (API) that gets project data from the popular version control tool such as Microsoft's Gitlab. The primary goal of the websites is to disperse and display valuable information about our chapter and the club's in-house hackathon information for participants, alums, and our local industry partners. Never in the history of ACM-W at Fox have we designed, developed, and deployed a website to host and disseminate information for students and alums of the University community. The project creating the landing website has given opportunities to my peers who are also interested in computer science to learn how website development works from start to finish. I have provided ample opportunities and great ideas for my ACM student chapter team to implement, so they can take ownership of their skills and the project as much as I have. Creating opportunities for myself and others have helped me apply better standard industry practices and skills to enter the industry more ready than ever.

Computer science is my centric and enduring passion because it impacts people's lives, especially the communities around me. As an engineering-minded individual, I can make that impact more positive and center humanity in technology. I strive to utilize my software engineering experiences and skills to fulfill my passion for serving the communities around me. My programming skills have expanded and materialized into creative engineering of quality solutions for large-scale projects. As a first-generation student, I want to learn more about programming in industry settings and innovative engineering solutions for high-end, functional, and well-tested systems and environments. Technology creates a need for empathy in creative, ethical, and quality systems. I am confident in using my problem-solving skills to tackle the tremendous challenges of the software development life cycle to allow for accurate and accessible technological solutions to be built for everyone, with human empathy and compassion. Since 2019, I have developed my career path in numerous ways. At a youth training program, Gameheads, my development team, and I created "Confined Indorms," a game featuring a college student sheltered in place navigating academics, health, and relationships. I developed the college dormitory environment and event systems as the gameplay engineer. At George Fox University, I have continued my zeal for developing web platforms to achieve tangible outcomes with human-centered designs. In 2021, I participated in a hackathon with an international team. I implemented a front-end design using React with cloud services connecting to the Wikipedia API, transforming and displaying Wikipedia articles into readable chunks. Thus, the website was awarded second place for 'Best Design with Code.' I created many opportunities for myself and others to expand my technical skill set. Aside from formal internship experiences, I have created a landing website for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter in Newberg, Oregon. I am also the President of the ACM chapter. I manage a team of four associates to operate the club and host its annual collegiate hackathon for George Fox. I made a website from scratch specifically for the collegiate hackathon, which includes a custom application programming interface (API) that gets project data from the popular version control tool such as Microsoft's Gitlab. The primary goal of the websites is to disperse and display valuable information about our chapter and the club's in-house hackathon information for participants, alums, and our local industry partners. Never in the history of ACM-W at Fox have we designed, developed, and deployed a website to host and disseminate information for students and alums of the University community. The project creating the landing website has given opportunities to my peers who are also interested in computer science to learn how website development works from start to finish. I have provided ample opportunities and great ideas for my ACM student chapter team to implement, so they can take ownership of their skills and the project as much as I have. Creating opportunities for myself and others have helped me apply better standard industry practices and skills to enter the industry more ready than ever.

I have $15,000 in federal student loans while preparing for another $7,500 for my last year of college in 2023-24. Computer science is my centric and enduring passion because it impacts people's lives, especially the communities around me. As an engineering-minded individual, I can make that impact more positive and center humanity in technology. I strive to utilize my software engineering experiences and skills to fulfill my passion for serving the communities around me. My programming skills have expanded and materialized into creative engineering of quality solutions for large-scale projects. As a first-generation student coming from immigrant parents, I want to learn more about programming in industry settings and creative engineering solutions for high-end, functional, and well-tested systems and environments. Technology creates a need for empathy in creative, ethical, and quality systems. I am confident in using my problem-solving skills to tackle the tremendous challenges of the software development life cycle to allow for accurate and accessible technological solutions to be built for everyone, with human empathy and compassion. Since 2019, I have developed my career path in numerous ways. At a youth training program, Gameheads, my development team, and I created "Confined Indorms," a game featuring a college student sheltered in place navigating academics, health, and relationships. I developed the college dormitory environment and event systems as the gameplay engineer. At George Fox University, I have continued my zeal for developing web platforms to achieve tangible outcomes with human-centered designs. In 2021, I participated in a hackathon with an international team. I implemented a front-end design using React with cloud services connecting to the Wikipedia API, transforming and displaying Wikipedia articles into readable chunks. Thus, the website was awarded second place for 'Best Design with Code.' I created many opportunities for myself and others to expand my technical skill set. Aside from formal internship experiences, I have created a landing website for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter in Newberg, Oregon. I am also the President of the ACM chapter. I manage a team of four associates to operate the club and host its annual collegiate hackathon for George Fox. I made a website from scratch specifically for the collegiate hackathon, which includes a custom application programming interface (API) that gets project data from the popular version control tool such as Microsoft's Gitlab. The primary goal of the websites is to disperse and display valuable information about our chapter and the club's in-house hackathon information for participants, alums, and our local industry partners. Never in the history of ACM-W at Fox have we designed, developed, and deployed a website to host and disseminate information for students and alums of the University community. The project creating the landing website has given opportunities to my peers who are also interested in computer science to learn how website development works from start to finish. I have provided ample opportunities and great ideas for my ACM student chapter team to implement, so they can take ownership of their skills and the project as much as I have. Creating opportunities for myself and others have helped me apply better standard industry practices and skills to enter the industry more ready than ever. So, after college, I plan to tackle the highest-interest debts from federal student loans, paying them in full every month. I have a robust budget because I am also a leader for myself, my community, and my personal finance budget. I strive to overcome my debts strategically, gaining credit history and points to further my money portfolio.

Computer science is my centric and enduring passion because it impacts people's lives, especially the communities around me. As an engineering-minded individual, I can make that impact more positive and center humanity in technology. I strive to utilize my software engineering experiences and skills to fulfill my passion for serving the communities around me. My programming skills have expanded and materialized into creative engineering of quality solutions for large-scale projects. As a first-generation student, I want to learn more about programming in industry settings and innovative engineering solutions for high-end, functional, and well-tested systems and environments. Technology creates a need for empathy in creative, ethical, and quality systems. I am confident in using my problem-solving skills to tackle the tremendous challenges of the software development life cycle to allow for accurate and accessible technological solutions to be built for everyone, with human empathy and compassion. Since 2019, I have developed my career path in numerous ways. At a youth training program, Gameheads, my development team, and I created "Confined Indorms," a game featuring a college student sheltered in place navigating academics, health, and relationships. I developed the college dormitory environment and event systems as the gameplay engineer. At George Fox University, I have continued my zeal for developing web platforms to achieve tangible outcomes with human-centered designs. In 2021, I participated in a hackathon with an international team. I implemented a front-end design using React with cloud services connecting to the Wikipedia API, transforming and displaying Wikipedia articles into readable chunks. Thus, the website was awarded second place for 'Best Design with Code.' I created many opportunities for myself and others to expand my technical skill set. Aside from formal internship experiences, I have created a landing website for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter in Newberg, Oregon. I am also the President of the ACM chapter. I manage a team of four associates to operate the club and host its annual collegiate hackathon for George Fox. I made a website from scratch specifically for the collegiate hackathon, which includes a custom application programming interface (API) that gets project data from the popular version control tool such as Microsoft's Gitlab. The primary goal of the websites is to disperse and display valuable information about our chapter and the club's in-house hackathon information for participants, alums, and our local industry partners. Never in the history of ACM-W at Fox have we designed, developed, and deployed a website to host and disseminate information for students and alums of the University community. The project creating the landing website has given opportunities to my peers who are also interested in computer science to learn how website development works from start to finish. I have provided ample opportunities and great ideas for my ACM student chapter team to implement, so they can take ownership of their skills and the project as much as I have. Creating opportunities for myself and others have helped me apply better standard industry practices and skills to enter the industry more ready than ever.

Computer science is my centric and enduring passion because it impacts people's lives, especially the communities around me. As an engineering-minded individual, I can make that impact more positive and center humanity in technology. I strive to utilize my software engineering experiences and skills to fulfill my passion for serving the communities around me. My programming skills have expanded and materialized into creative engineering of quality solutions for large-scale projects. As a first-generation student, I want to learn more about programming in industry settings and innovative engineering solutions for high-end, functional, and well-tested systems and environments. Technology creates a need for empathy in creative, ethical, and quality systems. I am confident in using my problem-solving skills to tackle the tremendous challenges of the software development life cycle to allow for accurate and accessible technological solutions to be built for everyone, with human empathy and compassion. Since 2019, I have developed my career path in numerous ways. At a youth training program, Gameheads, my development team, and I created "Confined Indorms," a game featuring a college student sheltered in place navigating academics, health, and relationships. I developed the college dormitory environment and event systems as the gameplay engineer. At George Fox University, I have continued my zeal for developing web platforms to achieve tangible outcomes with human-centered designs. In 2021, I participated in a hackathon with an international team. I implemented a front-end design using React with cloud services connecting to the Wikipedia API, transforming and displaying Wikipedia articles into readable chunks. Thus, the website was awarded second place for 'Best Design with Code.' I created many opportunities for myself and others to expand my technical skill set. Aside from formal internship experiences, I have created a landing website for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM-W) Student Chapter in Newberg, Oregon. I am also the President of the ACM chapter. I manage a team of four associates to operate the club and host its annual collegiate hackathon for George Fox. I made a website from scratch specifically for the collegiate hackathon, which includes a custom application programming interface (API) that gets project data from the popular version control tool such as Microsoft's Gitlab. The primary goal of the websites is to disperse and display valuable information about our chapter and the club's in-house hackathon information for participants, alums, and our local industry partners. Never in the history of ACM-W at Fox have we designed, developed, and deployed a website to host and disseminate information for students and alums of the University community. The project creating the landing website has given opportunities to my peers who are also interested in computer science to learn how website development works from start to finish. I have provided ample opportunities and great ideas for my ACM student chapter team to implement, so they can take ownership of their skills and the project as much as I have. Creating opportunities for myself and others have helped me apply better standard industry practices and skills to enter the industry more ready than ever.

I was relentless in succumbing to the popular idea of procrastinating and sleeping all day near the conclusion of my high school career. Generally, in the summer, I would participate at Gameheads in a physical space with other youth involved in game development. Through my Gameheads’ summers, my cross-functional teams and I built minimum viable products for players to demo at the showcases at the end of each development year. For project ‘11 Years’ in 2019, I conceptually designed all the metrics of the fish, sharks, point systems, and the environment layout with the Level Designer. I also scripted about 50 lines of code in C# demonstrating the eat mechanic and quests feature. Developing a three-dimension game changed my perspective on what it means to be human and a contributor to society. Through this passion project of mine and my team’s, to be human means to care for the Earth because we’re all on one team. I learned that I had to live for others and position myself to emotionally support my community, like friends and family. During brainstorming sessions, my team and I discussed the detrimental effects of our human behaviors, increasing my emotion of overwhelming distress. However, as a positive contributor to society, I can hope to achieve deeper connections with others like my team to carry out a common goal to educate people about a specific detrimental issue. Through the development of 11 Years, I found a vital way to express my voice and creativity passionately: developing video games and solutions-oriented technology encompassing complex social messages to convey humanitarian issues. Furthermore, in 2020, COVID-19 quickly escalated into my generation-Z lifestyle. My 2020 team and I were on the verge of transferring to remote development in March with Gameheads and my summer team. I explored project management intently and became the project manager and programmer for my second cross-functional team of seven that had a common goal of successfully developing a game in a remote environment. The 2020 indie game, ' Confined Indorms,’ conveys the mental and academic tensions of being quarantined in college while maintaining hygiene, grades, and stress. I was inspired to contribute to this project because I knew people like college students needed an outlet for their stressful experiences during this pandemic. My dad lost his job during the pandemic and has been receiving unemployment checks. Despite remote development, I managed and spearheaded a collaborative remote work environment utilizing software tools to organize ourselves. I was also responsible for implementing and restructuring scripts of about 500+ lines of code along with the Lead Programmer. My views and perspectives have permanently changed, concluding a project through said projects developed either remotely or in person. After developing “11 Years” and “Confined Indorms,” I never felt more passionate and hopeful to continue creating immersive experiences through technology, even amid the peer pressure to rest and sleep all day.

Being Asian-American or American-born Chinese has highlighted the deep traumas that the Asian community has faced due to the pandemic fears and systemic marginalization of said Asians. Taking those deep traumas made me reflect that being Asian-American is not just patriotic but also made me realize to be my authentic, decolonized, and unassimilated self. A community-oriented mindset is essential to maintain my unassimilated self and sense of identity. Like my Chinese culture, most cultures are rooted in collectivism and generational families living in the same household. I will never forget family dinners involving three or four family units and my grandparents. We do not resemble the nuclear family of 2 children and a dog, but we represent a large loving family. From fast dim sum restaurants to congratulatory dinners, I’ve got to know my cousins more because they immigrated to the United States in 2012 and 2017. Gaining an alliance with my cousins born overseas gave me a new perspective on my family tree. That family tree has driven me to leadership ambition and desire to branch out and meet new people. In my junior year of college, I have been a first-generation mentor for first-year students who are also the first in their families to graduate from high school and college. I did not have an easy route to college because of the lack of financial support before, during, and after the global pandemic. My parents were immigrants in 1993 and moved to East Oakland in 2002, when I was born from San Francisco, to purchase a spacier place for my brother and me. My parents have shown how integrity works in a person. You will not be honest with others if you’re not honest with yourself. Integrity starts from within before we can give acts of service to others. As a First Generation leader in my college community, my drive to mentor is rooted in my faith, friends, and family because we’re all trying to navigate this bigoted, colonized, and cruel world together. My mentee is a Latino-American who is relatively outgoing with others in the BIPOC space on the George Fox University campus, which is not as BIPOC-friendly as one would imagine going to a Christian college. However, my mentee had me talk through those issues, and I had my mentors, Jesse and D’Metri, to lean on for Anti-Racism education and discussion. Anti-racism education catalyzes my integrity to converse open-mindedly with others who have opposite views of me. Building community empowerment for people of color is my priority because we’re not going anywhere. We’re not going back to China. We’re not going back to Africa. We’re not going back to Mexico. America is our home. America will always be a catalyst for my leadership, professionalism, and integrity because of the people that live here. Ultimately, this drives my passion for computer science and software engineering to build high-quality, well-tested code for products and services that serve communities such as my Asian community. I want to help close the digital divide among minorities and relieve digital tension because everyone deserves to be empowered online to use it for work, school, or personal errands.

I am a first-generation college student ambitious about career opportunities and school-related computer science concepts. In my first-year high school computer science class, the amount of problem-solving and asking tough questions got me impassioned for coding. However, I felt computer science classes weren’t enough to engage quickly with the technology industry. I wanted opportunities for project-based work and networking with professionals. Thus, I applied to Gameheads, a training program for youth of color regarding professional game development and critiquing cultures to accurately develop products based on cultures we have not seen in mainstream society. I applied and was interviewed in 2018 for this exciting opportunity. I, with dedication, emailed the Executive Director weekly about my application status until I was rejected to enroll in Gameheads. Initially, I was distraught because I knew how beneficial this program was to step into the technology industry. College Track, a college readiness program I applied to and joined in 2016, picked me up and offered a Python after-school class. I enrolled as soon as I got it because an opportunity is better than none. In 8 months, I had proficiency in Python because of my ambition to keep growing my computer science knowledge. It wasn’t until later I applied to Gameheads once more in 2019. The day they emailed me made my heart skip a beat. I got in. I emailed the Director again once a week, and they quickly realized my persistence in applying twice, which “no one has ever done before.” I was grateful, and I quickly got used to the weekly rhythm of coming to Gameheads on Saturdays and enrolling in advanced classes like UI/UX, Prototyping, Advanced Programming in C#, introduction to Unity, a game engine, and various talks from industry professionals. With Gameheads, I gained around 150+ connections on LinkedIn and several productive conversations on the platform. I was also developing a technical—now published—project with a team of five in 2019 at Gameheads. This program trains youth of color like me in professional development through game design, programming, culture critiquing, and other technical roles in the technology industry. My summer team created ‘11 Years,’ an immersive experience navigating the depths of the dying ocean as a Clownfish due to ocean acidification. The surprising research and climate action development we found was that our small actions and normalized detrimental behaviors caused the coral reefs to suffocate. One other technical—almost published—the project began in the summer of 2020 with a different team of seven at Gameheads. We created ‘Confined Indorms’ to illustrate how college students feel during the pandemic while locked down in their dorms. The game title gauges mental health, hygiene, grades, schoolwork, and relationships, demonstrating the strength of our research at the beginning of our development. I am now a computer science major in my third year pursuing software engineering. In my Communications class from my first year, I had to present a topic regarding the video game industry, which I chose. I knew where to get my information because I had my connections. I asked two chief executives and one manager on LinkedIn whether they’d be interested in doing a 30-minute interview about my chosen topic. I can’t even begin to describe how my peers and professor looked when they saw my experts’ interviews, extensive research, realizing my professional connections with my desired field, and gaining a sense of leadership and respect from my peers. Ultimately, through Gameheads’ project-based work and learning, I obtained critical skills to enter the industry and opened many potential connections and opportunities for myself as I continue and eventually graduate from college.

Being Asian-American or American-born Chinese has highlighted the deep traumas that the Asian community has faced due to the pandemic fears and systemic marginalization of said Asians. Taking those deep traumas made me reflect that being Asian-American is not just patriotic but also made me realize to be my authentic, decolonized, and unassimilated self. AAPI culture derives community and requires rising above the oppressors, trodding through hate and racism. A community-oriented mindset is essential to maintain my unassimilated self and sense of identity. Like my Chinese culture, most cultures are rooted in collectivism and generational families living in the same household. I will never forget family dinners involving three or four family units and my grandparents. From fast dim sum restaurants to congratulatory dinners, I’ve got to know my cousins more because they immigrated to the United States in 2012 and 2017. Gaining an alliance with my cousins born overseas gave me a new perspective on my family tree. That family tree has driven me to leadership ambition and desire to branch out and meet new people. In my junior year of college, I have been a first-generation mentor for first-year students who are also the first in their families to graduate from high school and college. I did not have an easy route to college because of the lack of financial support before, during, and after the global pandemic. My parents were immigrants in 1993, moved to San Francisco in 1994, and then moved to East Oakland in 2002, when I was born, to purchase a spacier place for my brother and me. My parents have shown how integrity works in a person, generating a catalyst for my drive to exceed my personal goal of becoming an ethical software engineer. You will not be honest with others if you’re not honest with yourself. Integrity starts from within before we can give acts of service to others. As a First Generation leader and mentor in my college community, my drive to mentor is rooted in my faith, friends, and family because we’re all trying to navigate this bigoted, colonized, and hostile world together. My mentee is a first-year Latino-American who is relatively outgoing with others in the BIPOC space on the George Fox University campus, which is not as BIPOC-friendly as one would imagine going to a Christian college. However, my mentee had me talk through those issues, and I had my mentors, Jesse and D’Metri, to lean on for Anti-Racism education and discussion. Anti-racism education catalyzes my integrity to converse open-mindedly with others who have opposite views of me. I strive to mediate between two parties as a leader because someone must be bestowed that right. As an Asian, my community tends to be forced to conform and be quiet, as we have been in the past by the upper class of primarily White government officials through policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. Political civility is essential for Asian households, but that does not mean we stay quiet for hundreds of years in the political sphere. Even though I strive to mediate conflicts, I recognize that there is a time and place to protest ideologies that conflict with fundamental human rights and freedoms. Building community empowerment for people of color is my priority because we’re not going anywhere. We’re not going back to China. We’re not going back to Africa. We’re not going back to Mexico. America is our home. America will resemble a catalyst for my leadership, professionalism, and integrity because of the people who I love and who live in this world with me.

I applied my experience as a stutterer to my vocation by developing a game project with a team of five in 2019 at Gameheads because public speaking became a passion instead of a hindrance. My summer team created “11 Years”, an immersive experience navigating the depths of the dying ocean through the perspective of a Clownfish due to ocean acidification. The surprising research was that our normalized damaging behaviors caused the coral reefs and animals to suffocate. Another game project began in the summer of 2020 with a different team of seven. We created “Confined Indorms” to illustrate how college students feel during the pandemic while locked down in their dorms. The game title gauges mental health, hygiene, grades, schoolwork, and relationships, demonstrating the strength of our research at the beginning of our development. Through Gameheads, I realized the depth of education in my career. I desire to educate the community around me and lead my community into positive changes and ambitions. I was the Lead Game Designer and Co-Programmer for “11 Years” and learned how to present ideas concisely through collaboration. Despite stuttering during brainstorming sessions throughout the development period, I took moments to take my time to introduce my contributions and ideas. When I stutter in discussions, I’d remember the speech gimmicks to take my time and not let anxiety overrule me. During the showcase in August, our team got up on stage in front of over five hundred industry professionals and residents. I felt a swarm of lingering butterflies in my stomach, but I charged through presenting. I did not stutter. Walking off the stage, I was proud of myself because of my seasoned presentation. Furthermore, I was the Project Manager and Programmer for “Confined Indorms” and delegated tasks to my team. Reclaiming my time, I often try to speak without stuttering to assert myself as the leader for project accountability and completion while producing large-scale code. Despite my stutter, I am proud that I could communicate effectively with my team. I’m able to speak with confidence, whether that’s working with a group or communicating with an entire audience. Creating and presenting projects would also allow me to execute my vision for creating products and services that matter to communities, such as my Bay Area community because I care deeply about the issues and solutions to reduce those problems. Ultimately, this scholarship fund would undoubtedly support me passionately in continuing my ambitious pursuit of professional and educational success and support my development as a computer scientist, developer, and public speaker.

Being Asian-American or American-born Chinese has highlighted the deep traumas that the Asian community has faced due to the pandemic fears and systemic marginalization of said Asians. Taking those deep traumas made me reflect that being Asian-American is not just patriotic but also made me realize to be my authentic, decolonized, and unassimilated self. AAPI culture derives community and requires rising above the oppressors, trodding through hate and racism. A community-oriented mindset is essential to maintain my unassimilated self and sense of identity. Like my Chinese culture, most cultures are rooted in collectivism and generational families living in the same household. I will never forget family dinners involving three or four family units and my grandparents. From fast dim sum restaurants to congratulatory dinners, I’ve got to know my cousins more because they immigrated to the United States in 2012 and 2017. Gaining an alliance with my cousins born overseas gave me a new perspective on my family tree. That family tree has driven me to leadership ambition and desire to branch out and meet new people. In my junior year of college, I have been a first-generation mentor for first-year students who are also the first in their families to graduate from high school and college. I did not have an easy route to college because of the lack of financial support before, during, and after the global pandemic. My parents were immigrants in 1993 and moved to East Oakland in 2002, when I was born from San Francisco, to purchase a spacier place for my brother and me. My parents have shown how integrity works in a person. You will not be honest with others if you’re not honest with yourself. Integrity starts from within before we can give acts of service to others. As a First Generation leader in my college community, my drive to mentor is rooted in my faith, friends, and family because we’re all trying to navigate this bigoted, colonized, and hateful world together. My mentee is a Latino-American who is relatively outgoing with others in the BIPOC space on the George Fox University campus, which is not as BIPOC-friendly as one would imagine going to a Christian college. However, my mentee had me talk through those issues, and I had my mentors, Jesse and D’Metri, to lean on for Anti-Racism education and discussion. Anti-racism education catalyzes my integrity to converse open-mindedly with others who have opposite views of me. I strive to mediate between two parties as a leader because someone must be bestowed that right. Political civility is essential for Asian households, but that does not mean we stay quiet for hundreds of years in the political sphere. As an Asian person, my community tends to be forced to conform and be quiet as we have been in the past by the upper class of primarily white men through policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. Even though I strive to mediate conflicts, I recognize that there is a time and place to protest certain problematic ideals that go against fundamental human rights and freedoms. Building community empowerment for people of color is my priority because we’re not going anywhere. We’re not going back to China. We’re not going back to Africa. We’re not going back to Spain. We’re not going back to Mexico. America is our home. America will always be a catalyst for my leadership, professionalism, and integrity because of the people that live here.

I am someone who has had a speech impediment for as long as I can remember. In my sophomore year of high school, I felt incompetent about my speech, so I have become more ambitious and serious about working with a speech pathologist to practice techniques to help mitigate my stuttering. Using easy onsets, the primary approach, helped in social situations. I frequently felt fear and anxiety speaking to my closest friends because I thought I would be judged and mistreated. In these moments, tools like this do not increase confidence in public speaking or conversing with others. College was a catalyst in changing how I respond to chronic stuttering. As a first-year undergraduate student with 17 units and a federal work-study position, I have eagerly joined, with pride, my first student-led panel at the Asian Student Union. At first, it was frightening, and I could feel my muscles tensing up and tightening my speech again. However, that changed later in college when I became more open about my chronic stuttering condition and open to speaking in large crowds. When I became aware of slowing down my speech and talking through my views, I gained more confidence and a desire to communicate with my friends. This newfound confidence has allowed me to deep dive into my immense passion for public speaking, alongside my integral degree in computer science. Speaking with other panelists created a space for the audience to hear our thoughts and a recollective and imaginative environment for me to enunciate every word that came out of my mouth. In my sophomore year of college, I went to another panel led by a psychology professor for her class involving other panelists of color to speak on our multifaceted cultures and backgrounds. Despite my stutter, I was proud that I controlled the stutter by presenting confidence in what I had to say. In hopes that the audience associates with my culture and how it responds to current events, I look to the students of color in the room to share intricate experiences that shape who I am in this world. Following that panel, I have also joined another forum with the Asian Student Union again to speak on Asian heritage and biblical faith with professors that had doctorates in ministry and pastoral experience where I had none of those positions or credentials. However, the forum coordinators invited me to give the student perspective. Quickly affirming that invitation and stepping into the panel discussion room, I felt imposter syndrome which is a feeling that invalidates my experiences and thoughts, not allowing me to express who I am. Through this experience, I learned that I could speak in truth even as a student because to the average student, I am like them to be the one perspective and voice, validating imagined insecurities for lacking some knowledge in specific topics in the Bible or Asian heritage. In college, we all are here to learn and open up our minds to truths, discovering in faith that we all can discern reality and truth. The tremendous college experience of speaking to other students of color allowed me to relate with others who are like me in identity and perspective. Through panels as a platform and conversations in those panel discussions, communicating with an audience has been a powerful passion, using my authentic voice despite my speech challenges. Now that I have advocated for myself and built my confidence upon public speaking and burning conversations, I can enunciate with pride in any forum that drives my ambition to put the best foot forward in my community.

Growing up as a first-generation Asian-American was an emotional ride for me. I was raised in Oakland, California, and my parents moved to San Francisco, California from China to have my older brother. My mother has always pushed me to do academic excellence and sometimes both of my parents scold me when I return home with a C or B grade. In middle school, I would whimper excessively because of their assertive remarks. My mom would whip me in reaction to my grades in elementary school. From then on, I have received good grades and never got lower than a B on a report card consecutively through middle and high school. As a first-generation student in the public school system, I didn’t have any trouble when it came to my ethnic identity. My parents indirectly pushed me to be the model minority and wanted me to avoid African-Americans because they implied that “they were a hindrance to academic success” for me. That perception of conflict had to change and be dismantled. Realizing my privilege was a permissible struggle. I have been a part of Gameheads, a non-profit that trains youth through game development in the culture of today’s world, and I learned what it means to be Asian-American in one of the classes taught by the Executive Director. To be Asian-American, I have to recognize my privilege given by the upper class to pit Asians against African-Americans. At first, it was a shocking conflict for me because it changed the trajectory of my perspective on the model minority. The model minority myth was a phenomenon created by the White upper class to form a hostile division between African-Americans and Asians in America. One historical event given in class was the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, a transformative protest caused by the death and police brutality of Rodney Kings in 1991. Additionally, when 2,200 Korean-American businesses were burned and looted by rioters, it only reinforces the hostility among Black and Asian communities. Asians then were not participating in politics or protests and often seen as foreigners. So after the class in Gameheads and after George Floyd’s death, I realized, as an Asian-American young man, that I am empowered to bring unity among minority communities because the upper class won’t win politically and socioeconomically if we’re all united for the injustices in America. On Instagram, since the day that Mr. Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, I have been posting resources, sharing vital information for protesters, and not using George Floyd’s and other victims’ names in vain as a means of an Instagram trend. From that class, I have a newfound perspective that the model minority is a hoax given by the upper class, giving Asian-American a mirage of privilege. Thus, to be Asian-American means I have to harness my privilege to support Black lives, dispose and unlearn the model minority myth to break the hostility between Asian-Americans and African-Americans. Now that I attend George Fox University, located in Newberg, Oregon, populated by predominantly White Americans, I constantly feel socially and ethically alone because I felt overwhelmed by the lack of ethnic culture on the first day. Turns out, I was underlooking it. I signed up and joined Fusion: Asian-American Club which holds special events on the weekends. I went to an event when they showed the Mulan Live-Action film in the auditorium and it already felt like I belonged seeing other ethnic people like me. The club also made a statement about Mulan that it also has controversial downsides. Mulan Live-Action may have an all-Asian cast but it also has a majority of White producers. As an Asian-American, I again felt challenged about whether I should watch this in the first place. Thus, I have learned I must discern and debate critical questions. While the live-action film has some bad qualities on the production side, there is still good to be celebrated. Through Gameheads and the Fusion club, I am a first-generation Asian-American college student who is a conscious and expressive advocate for anti-racism, dismantling the model minority myth, and discerning controversial topics in modern culture. Ultimately, this scholarship would undoubtedly assist my dire financial need because as a low-income first-generation student, I am determined to study and lead in my passions despite having financial challenges. Through this fund, it will help me continue the ambitious pursuit of my professional and educational success and support my development as a first-generation student, Asian-American, and culture critic.