@laylasuniversee

Growing up in school as a Syrian immigrant, facing persistent bullying throughout elementary and middle school became routine. Over time, its effects on my academic performance and overall well-being became so significant that I neglected all my academic dreams by the end of 7th grade. As I started 3rd grade, I had been flashed by a wave of bullies, picking me apart due to my clothes being constantly dirty or wrinkled since our house at the time was a 15-minute drive to the nearest coin-wash, and because of our desperate scarcity of money, that 15-minute drive would affect our bank like a 15-hour drive. My looks did me no favors either, since at that age I had a retainer the size of Saturn's rings, and yet I still had teeth that stuck out my gums like a crooked fence. 3rd grade had become the first year where I grew increasingly resentful of school. On the days my parents had to force me to go, slanders, insults, and even at times punches, led to feelings of isolation, and anxiety. As a result, my academic performance suffered, marked by countless cycles of bad grades and missed opportunities. The emotional turmoil hindered my ability to concentrate on my studies and participate in extracurricular activities, causing my academic journey to be a chaotic mess, which combined with my insecurity, made me self-doubtful that I had any potential at all to even pass the class. The turning point in my life came around the middle of 9th grade when I met a friend of my Mother who was a successful researcher, particularly in the field of medicine. Her passion ignited a spark of interest that I hadn't felt in years. The more I delved into the subject of science, the more my confidence grew. I found solace in the notion that I could contribute to advancements in healthcare and make a tangible difference in people's lives, just like she did throughout her life. This newfound passion became a driving force that propelled me forward, I felt destined to become a medical researcher in Bio-medical engineering and Medicine. With a renewed sense of purpose, I embarked on a journey of self-improvement. Therapy sessions and inner reflection played a crucial role in rebuilding my once-hopeless brain. Slowly, I began to shed each insecurity and doubt that once latched on my skin like parasites. What once were words that tore me down, became memories that no longer stood a chance between my will. With determination and an iron will, my academic trajectory made a 180 turn. I started dedicating more time to my studies, and seeking answers to all my questions, despite how strange others would perceive them. Gradually, my grades began to improve. The desire to excel in these fields fueled my motivation, leading to many scholarly collaborations with professors, doctors, scientists, and more. Substantially, my GPA climbed, going from a 2.778 in the first half of high school, to a 3.8 now, in 10th grade, thanks to a plethora of summer courses and my new adoration of learning. As I still learn and grow, I am also researching on holistic/detail-based memory and how memory loss is correlated, as I hope to someday make a treatment targeting both types of memory loss and ensuring a better tomorrow! :)

2011, my stubby legs were still too new to walk, and my toothless smile had only begun to speak. Amidst my youthful innocence, my ears resonated like the relentless waves of a tsunami, as a symphony of terror engulfed my homeland, Syria, transforming it into a notorious and bloody warzone. Fueled by a surge of epinephrine, my parents hurriedly ushered me to the airport, seeking refuge and salvation in the United States—the sole sanctuary we possessed, thanks to my mother's birthright. On arrival, the stride on each of our soles whimpered and wailed onto the ground, as we realized in exchange for safety, we had lost assurance of our family's safety. It had been about 1 year after we moved, and my English was still sub-standard, so even in my pre-school, which was filled to the brim of extroverted toddlers like me, I wasn't able to connect with almost any of them. During this time, my parents had decided to start taking me to the local library on the weekends, to teach me English, as their English was just as shoddy as mine at the time. Ennui tormented my following weekends at the library, and what were hours in the bleak, claustrophobic halls, felt like an eternity. It was then, on one fateful weekend, a saturated, neon cover peeked out from a collection of books on a table. Beguiling my desperate, stultified self, I grasped my little hands onto the book's spine, and although my reading comprehension in English was still developing, I read the cover out loud in my head, as if it were some instinctive nature. "X-Men". Figures and statures of all strains were stamped across each page I turned, with my eyes skewed at the print even with the wind of each turn. I had become so obsessed with these X-Men comics, that I learned to comprehend English so rapidly that I was virtually fluent by Kindergarten. That year, classmates finally accompanied me, and I had fulfilled my yearning for a friend, and my school days would consist of long tangents about "who the coolest superhero was", and what superhero we wished we could be, which filled the school's atmosphere with so much noise we would get in trouble on occasion. Weeks passed by, and we had a career day project, where we were assigned to draw our future selves in our job. The walls were blanketed with sketches of astronauts, teachers, and doctors, except for one singular sketch, it was of the X-men, and myself next to them, securing a criminal into a police car. As my body grew and changed, my dream of being a superhero and assisting those in distress never changed with it. The X-Men comics I grew up with instilled in me a fascination with the concept of using technology for justice, just like the superheroes I admired. With the current news of AI in the past few years, my passion for criminal justice led me to explore the potential of combining criminology with cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence. I envisioned an AI system that could process eyewitness testimonies and morph/generate more accurate facial reconstructions of suspects. By improving the current technologies of Evofit and EFIT-V, I believe it could achieve even better success rates in identifying criminals. Additionally, I aimed to develop AI-powered tools to assess the mental well-being of both victims and perpetrators, fostering a more rehabilitative approach to justice. Inspired by the X-Men comics, I am optimistic and determined in using these advanced technologies to improve the justice system and make the world a safer place.

I have chosen to double-major in Bio-Medical Engineering and Psychology. I hope to get my Associate's Degree in both before I finish high school, as it is much cheaper, however, once I graduate from High school I hope to go to the University of Miami, or many of the Universities in Massachusetts or Denmark because of how valuable their programs are. I want to become a Bio-Medical Engineer and Psychology so I can help those around me, especially those in Syria, my home country, as many are not able to get the proper care. I hope to research a similar Bluetooth technology that allowed Gert-Jam Oskam to walk again after being paralyzed for 12 years, to help victims of war with injuries and paralysis. My biggest strength by far has to be my determination to achieve my goals of growing and being a better person today than I was yesterday. Allah has blessed me with the determination to do things that I once before would deem impossible, like my grades, which in my first 2 semesters, I had gotten a 2.8 unweighted, but through an arduous journey, heightened my GPA in just 2 semesters to a 3.8. However, my skills become very lacking when it comes to social interaction, I sometimes forget to check in on friends because of how busy I make myself, but it is a struggle I try my best to work on as I grow. I am not just Layla Mahjoub, but the experiences, values, and lessons that my name represents. I am a proud Muslima, who hopes to help the world around me in every way that Allah may allow me to. I hope to be considered for the scholarship because of the effort I put into everything I do. I want a good education so I may provide for my parents who worked very hard to come here to the USA, start a Non-Profit some day in the future to help underprivileged kids to get a proper education, and use part of the money for charity to please God, and because I view it as an important necessity to give back to the community. As I child I always loved comic books, especially Batman, X-men, and Hulk comics, cause I always thought of how fulfilling it would be to be a superhero, and as I've aged I also started loving novels. So far my favorite is "Hannibal Rising", and the majority of Shakespeare's and Franz Kafka's works. My favorite movie has to be "Top Gun", "The Batman", "Ace Ventura", and "The Adams Family", because they were all movies I spent so much time watching with my Mom. When I was younger we would watch "The Adams Family" almost every weekend. My favorite song is "I'll Be Around" by "The Spinners". I have always loved jazz but when I listened to the song, I didn't just love it but I felt it through each part of my soul, and it fills me with so much joy. My greatest accomplishment as a Muslim is that I've been able to come through so much and still come out with greater faith and greater love for Allah. Especially growing up in a part of the USA that's not only predominantly Christian, but also encourages many haram actions such as drinking, partying, and disrespecting your parents, I got used to seeing all these things around me and began to conform to those expectations by others to party or skip prayer. However, in recent years I overcame those obstacles, dedicating my life to pleasing Allah through charity and hard work.

Growing up in Syria until I was around 4, and then moving to the USA, I had a huge culture shock when I came here, especially when it came to school. I was inspired by the amount of opportunities that were possible here, compared to my home country. I remember the year we moved here, I saw a family friend who was a woman, Muslim and worked as a scientist, which put me in complete awe, and I knew from that day I want to be a scientist just like her. I would start telling my friends, family, and teachers at my Saturday school that I would become the best Muslima scientist. However, during the 1st year of coming here, I had to go to an American kindergarten and was only able to go to an Islamic school on Saturdays. Everything in the kindergarten was so different than to what I was used to, the body language you're supposed to have, the languages you're socially "allowed" to speak. As I started spending more and more time around my American classmates instead of my family members back home, I had been that to "fit in" I had to make a choice. I had to choose between my Islamic upbringing or conforming to the Christian standards that were expected of me to be normal. As I grew older, so did my desire to be accepted, and I started to reject one of the biggest parts of myself. For example, when I was in 3rd grade, I began rejecting my Islamic identity in small and subtle ways that I would brush off. I would "forget" to pray to study, I would sneak in a slice of ham during lunch, and I would tell my friends I was Christian. To seem normal, or at least worthy of respect, I took the words of other people as more valuable than the ones from Allah (peace be upon him). Over a few years, as my Islamic faith deteriorated, it affected my mental well-being, which in turn demolished my academic grades. By 7th grade, I had forgotten how to speak Arabic, didn't pray a single second, and ultimately gave up on my goal of being a scientist. Then high school started, and I started to become more curious of the world around me. I began learning of the different sciences and how the world came to be. Overwhelmed by the sheer amount I don't know of the world, I decided to give the Qu'uran a try. I still didn't know Arabic, nor did I remember how to pray, but I fell in love, and I trusted Allah (Peace be upon him) once more. Since then Allah (Peace be upon him) has blessed me with the ability to allow myself to pray to him, and the ability to combine my passion for science with my love of pleasing God. He has helped me achieve things I never knew were possible, and even though I now once again don't "fit in" with my Christian friends, I have learned that it's OK, and it only allows me to show other young Muslim girls like me that they don't have to sacrifice their faith for success, as both interlock with one another. I hope to use the scholarship in my passion for science, get a degree in Bio-Medical Engineering, and use 20% of it to start an organization. I hope to make a non-profit with my dear mother that brings educational opportunities and tools for students of all kinds, especially for Muslimas who were once in my shoes.

I owe all my successes to being a failure. Ever since I was very young I had always made myself believe I would never amount to anything, spiraling myself into a cage filled with the torment of others, and in time, I learned to use that torment as the key out of that cage. It started back in Kindergarten, I had a teacher who loathed me, Ms.Madruga. It had been afternoon when I began growing tired from the day, and I was ecstatic to go home with my mother. As my mother walked through the door, she turned to the hallway as she and Ms.Madruga started walking into a room. Ms. Madruga pierced daggers at me, motioning for me to come to the room with them. I had sat down next to my mother, and Ms.Madruga, with a piercing voice, looked straight at her and gave her a speech as long as a movie script. I had completely zoned out until my blankness had been broken by her shrill tone. "Ms.Mahjoub, I would like you to know that if you don't stop talking in my class, you will NEVER pass 1st grade." I stood silent in shock. I came home defeated and ashamed, and although my mother later had a talk with Ms.Madruga about the inappropriate statement, her words still stuck with me like super glue until last year, my 9th-grade year. I had forced myself to stop talking over time, as I had noticed that it increased the torment, however, her words kept pushing me farther into my self-doubt spiral, even with every exam I would get top scores in, I could still hallucinate red ink covering the entire paper, exclaiming "You will never pass 9th grade", and for a while, I genuinely believed that, and end up forcing myself to give up. For the first 2 semesters of high school, I had completely spiraled, ending the first half with barely a C, even with relatively easy classes. Then on December 28th, 2022, something major has overcome me. It was winter break and I had isolated myself like every school holiday, I wanted to be invisible, I wanted to be forgotten, and spend all my days wasting away on the bed. I had spent so much time alone that all I had to do was talk to myself, and just like when I was young, I began to talk every second of every hour, but this time, I had fun having conversations with myself. I realized that my success shouldn't end from doubt, but if it must, should end from the effort. I had become determined in my goal, and brought back my dreams, I finally felt what it was like to be alive again. I came back to school, a completely new person, despite what it seemed from my visible flesh. The next two semesters I had gotten straight A's, which is something I never believed I could achieve, and grew further in love with my journey of self-improvement. 6 months had passed of my arduous journey of becoming the best, I knew that it won't be till years later until I can truly reach the top, but I had also realized, why stop now? Thanks to one day of my kindergarten year, it helped me pursue the absolute maximum I can, leading me to start taking Dual-Enrollment classes, finishing Geometry and Algebra 2 in 3 months so I can start Pre-Calculus my Sophomore year, and being alive enough to help those around me, especially the people who have been enslaved to their insecurities like I once was.