1. I am a 25 year old undergrad majoring in Biology, and I am a first generation immigrant whose family originally moved to the United States from Eastern Europe. What motivates me is learning about the world, especially about nature and the environment, and learning how to care for these things and protect them because they deserve justice too. Natural things and organisms are under threat in many places from environmental change and human impacts, and they deserve to be protected and their ecosystems kept intact so that they can continue flourishing. Being from Eastern Europe, which has its share of beautiful environments and species in need of protection, as well as relocating to the United States, which has much of the same, partly inspired this goal of mine. I love to volunteer my time to these ends, especially for habitat restorations, tree plantings, and beach cleanups, and I want to focus as much of my time and spirit towards activities like these to promote environmental justice and caring for our environment. If I could do anything with my life, I imagine I would want to study the world's habitats and use my knowledge to help restore environments lost to pollution, deforestation, agriculture, invasive species, or war, and help rebuild not only the physical environment of plants that historically would grow in those areas, but also help reintroduce native animal species, so that those ecosystems can truly thrive as they used to. My philosophy is that we should leave the world as good as or better than we left it, because the Earth deserves to be respected and this planet is not just a rock we live on, but our home, and a place that has thrived for millions and billions of years before humans ever colonized it in mass numbers. 2. STEM excites me because there are always new developments that are happening everyday in many scientific fields and disciplines. It feels like we are going so quickly into the future with how advanced technology is becoming and how advanced our understanding of the world is growing. However, being a STEM major, I am also aware of how far we still have to go, and how the more we learn, the less we realize we actually know about anything. I feel I could make a positive impact on the world through a job in information technology by communicating my findings about ecosystems and animals in need of care and support to the public and government, and telling them that these environments are important to care about because they have their own right to live. Nature has existed for so long before we ever came along, and it lived and grew in those times without interference, and so now it still deserves to live and grow without being harmed and targeted by destructive human actions. My future work on environmental conservation and sharing my work with people would make a positive impact on the world, and would make it so we can all help those environments grow and thrive once again. 3. The greatest challenge I've ever had to overcome was when I became infected with Covid 19 in the summer of 2020. I was bedridden for months; I couldn’t stand up or walk for long periods because my leg circulation was damaged, and my heart palpitations made standing up painful. My chest was tight, my heart was pounding so hard that I couldn’t sleep sometimes, and my muscles were weak all over from being bedridden for so long. There was one moment when I felt close to death as I was falling in and out of consciousness and felt a severe weakness and loss of control all over my body. Eventually, I had to retrain my body to learn how to stand up and walk, which was not easy and took a lot of patience.Even once I finally recovered, I still suffered multiple Long Covid symptoms that I had to manage for years afterward, such as; continuing heart palpitations, with many especially bad ones that led to me losing many nights of sleep; impaired leg circulation; a highly increased need to drink water constantly because of kidney damage from Covid; and a changed diet that meant I had to carefully balance certain electrolytes, such as potassium and magnesium, as a result of my impaired kidney function from Covid. I’ve had to deal with over 3 years of managing my Long Covid symptoms, long after acquiring Covid in the first place. I was still going to school for years during this time, which made doing my coursework difficult sometimes, and later on I also got a job that I had to balance along with my coursework and managing my symptoms. Now, I think I am greatly improved physically compared to where I was when I first got Covid, but I’m still not 100% to where I was before Covid; I’ve also learned in the last few years that all of this physical stress has given my body chronic fatigue, and I feel so much more tired after doing even ordinary, everyday things than other people at my age would feel, and it sometimes make fulfilling all the requirements of my daily schedule extremely difficult. In spite of this, I have regained a normal life and been able to make something of my life, and I am grateful for the opportunities I was able to take advantage of since I recovered from Covid. I'm glad I can still be here after all and that I didn't lose it all, including my life, during those dark days.

My mental health while attending school is incredibly important to me, and I do what I can to stay mentally healthy while I juggle the challenges of my academic and personal life. When my mental health reaches a low, it makes it very difficult for me to complete my school work or to stay on pace with my classes, and I often get behind if my mental health remains low. I suffer from bouts of depression, as well as PTSD related to a significant trauma that I experienced a few years ago. These conditions have made it hard for me to stay motivated or find a purpose to continuing my everyday routine, and they make me question the point of it all. When things get really bad, I'm unmotivated and I don't take care of myself or do the things that would benefit me in either the short or long term, which includes things like completing tasks to advance my academic career or finishing my degree. These instances can make life really hard, and make it so I cannot carry on with my regular life or life goals as I'm unable to cope or continue life in a productive way. In these instances, I also feel that I take too much time not moving forward, and I am so far behind from my peers, especially my male peers, who are successively building the lives that they want, while I’m here struggling to even do basic things just to get to that point. My additional struggles with self image and confidence as a woman adds to the list of obstacles I face, and it makes life even more stressful. My unique struggles as well as the struggles that I face as a woman really make life difficult for me, especially if they are not well managed. There are multiple steps that I take to make my mental health a priority, however, and to deal with these instances when they occur. One step is by finding support from family and friends and reaching out to them when I need assistance. Just having them be there for me and comforting me, even if they're not actively solving the problem at hand, proves to be very beneficial for me and has a profound impact on my wellbeing when I feel the genuine support and care that they have for me. As a woman, it feels scary to reach out to others as I’m usually expected to be the caregiver myself, but my community is really supportive of me and the struggles that I’m going through. Feeling alone and uncared for has deeply affected me during certain periods of my life, and their care and attention really helps me feel supported as I go through my struggles. I also find that going out into nature, whether that be to the beach, the park, or even the woods around my neighborhood, really helps me feel at ease, and the beauty of nature helps to inspire and motivate me when I'm feeling an emotional low. The calmness and beauty of nature brings out something deeply emotional in me that lifts me up during my darker periods, and it helps me to reimagine a higher purpose and inspiration that I may have lost during those troubled times. Over time, I’ve felt less pulled down by my mental health struggles, and I’ve become more motivated to advance my life and do the things I need to in order to accomplish my goals. It’s not perfect, but I am getting better day by day, which works for me.

I’ve grown up along the Pacific Coast my whole life, and I’ve had a very deep connection with the ocean ever since I can remember. I can remember going on trips to the beach near my dad’s work, running along the shore and catching up to the waves as they broke on the beach. I loved collecting seashells and finding little critters living in the sand, watching them live out their lives on the busy shoreline. Ever since I was young, the ocean has made an indelible impact on me, and I’ve always recognized its beauty, as well as the importance of taking care of this magnificent environment for generations to come. I plan to use my degree to protect our oceans by studying populations of endangered marine species and working to find ways to help those species so that they can continue to flourish on our beautiful coast. I want to use a variety of field research and tracking techniques, as well as study in a lab, to learn more about species that are at risk, and to research ways to prevent them from being affected by issues such as human pollution, habitat destruction, ocean acidification & warming, among many others. My degree will be in Biology at California State University Monterey Bay, which is more wide ranging than the usual marine sciences degree, but I think that this will help me to do a variety of biological related studies in marine biology/science so that I can better study and help affected marine species. My focus is still very much marine biology focused and I already have several marine biology related research experiences under my belt that will prepare me for a future in this career field. One experience with which that I’ve already carried out my goal of helping the marine environment is a citizen science group that I have been working with for 2 years called the Pacific Plankton Program at Cabrillo College. This program is an informal ‘class’ at Cabrillo, but is really an ongoing research project on the major planktonic species found at several sites along the Central Coast. I’ve helped my team with managing equipment, doing plankton tows & collecting samples for analysis at the lab, as well as looking at those samples under the microscope and recording the data that we end up sending to NOAA each week. This experience has given me a lot of information about how research in a lab works, as well as given me a wealth of knowledge of how to carry out studies in marine biology and practical field work collecting marine samples. I’ve even learned how to take that data and send it to the organizations that can practically use it, as scientists often rely on citizen science data to see trends happening out in the bay that they themselves don’t have the funding or time to observe. Finally, my work has taught me how to communicate these findings to the public, and to let concerned citizens know how important this work is and how important the health of planktonic species is for the health and vitality of our coast. I hope that my experiences, goals, and dreams of working towards the conservation of the ocean will be enough to persuade you over the course of this essay. Receiving this scholarship would be a massive help towards me finishing my studies towards my degree so that I can get out into the field as soon as I can and work even more to help conserve the oceans we all know and love.