President's Scholar

Several of my childhood friends succumbed to the temptations of gang life, as we grew up in a low-income, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in Hawaiian Gardens, California. I've witnessed many people my age and younger act out of desperation and hopelessness and a false sense of self-esteem. Once, I spoke to one of my closest childhood friends about his spending inordinate amounts of time with some known gang members. Confronting him made him noticeably uncomfortable. "Leave me alone," he said. "Maybe if you just got to know them better..." The lure of that life was sometimes hard to resist, as it served as a major social and political outlet for many people my age in the neighborhood. I struggled often with designing my own life path amid the hardships I witnessed around me.

Luckily, my parents were good role models. Both teachers, they taught me the value of a...
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