10 THINGS THAT MAKE ME FEEL HUMAN
- Taking risks by getting out of my comfort zone and exploring new things
- Spending time with people who truly understand me, support me, and lift me up
- Using my voice and skills to help others
- Having drive, motivation, and ambition to strive to conquer my goals
- Being productive and taking steps each day to achieve my goals
- Being empathetic and understanding other people and their perspectives
- Finding joy and appreciation in the smallest of things
- Feeling grateful for my privilege
- Taking ownership of my actions and not being a victim of my circumstances. Instead, acknowledging my circumstances and moving ahead bravely with a positive outlook
- Being optimistic
I am ambitious. I set high goals for myself and strive to conquer them. I’m hardworking, motivated, and driven. I’m not competitive with others – my only competition is myself. I take challenges bravely, with a positive outlook. I’m not afraid to put in extra hours of work. I’m empathetic, kind, and understanding. I’m patient and always ready to help. I like mentoring other people and guiding other people to achieve their dreams. I strongly believe that what goes around, comes around. I’m extremely genuine and don’t like to surround myself with drama and toxicity. I love spending time with my family and friends and creating memories with them.
I love traveling and opening myself to different countries and cultures. Despite growing up in a metropolitan city like New Delhi, I had no exposure to any culture but my own, sparking a deep desire for cultural diversity. In search of that, at the age of 15, I went to summer school at the University of Chicago where I engaged in intellectual conversations with students from all over the world and made friends who shared their cultures—Mexican, Brazilian, Vietnamese, and Egyptian—with me. Through discussions about our respective stereotypes, festivals, and social norms, I encountered diverse perspectives and learned the true meaning of global citizenship, making me more respectful towards other cultures. In continuation of my quest for diversity, a year later, I attended the World Youth Meeting in Kyoto. Inspired by Japanese culture, I mirrored their punctuality, politeness, and attention to detail. Through my diverse experiences, I encountered new degrees of my own self-awareness, humility, and inclusivity. By opening myself to different countries and cultures, I became more understanding of other people and felt more connected to their lives. Interacting with people from different walks of life broadened my perspectives and made me more emotionally intelligent. Through these experiences, I found myself becoming more compassionate, adaptable, and resilient. Hoping to build on these qualities and diverse experiences, I chose to pursue my undergraduate degree in the US instead of India. I want to continue to immerse myself in diverse experiences. Doing so has not only made me comfortable with the uncomfortable, but also made me more confident, innovative, and eager to learn. As a learner, I would like to continue engaging in different academic courses to broaden my horizons and learn across disciplines. I want to continue to be ambitious and driven to achieve the high goals I set for myself. I’d like to continue to mentor people and guide them. Staying true to my Indian roots and values is extremely important to me. I hope to continue to be proud of my culture and heritage.
Specifically, in relation to my LVSIF project, I want to engage by programming the virtual reality games, contributing to the prototypes and ideation of the games, as well as gain feedback from the users, and conduct analysis on the data they provide. I must engage because I’m passionate about promoting game-based informal learning as well as working towards a sustainable future. Moreover, being a woman in STEM, I hope to help make STEM learning more accessible. I must engage with the LVSIF fellows in my project team, the professors I’m working under, as well as the partners of my project like the Nurture Nature Centre and Lehigh Gap Center. There would be several challenges that would come up while programming the games like bugs. I would have to work around them by continuing to learn new features of the programming language and problem-solving as a team. I’m excited to test the games out on the users, gather data, and see the entire project come together.
My epitaph might read “With a smile on her face and brave stride, she conquered it all”.