There is a blue bracelet on my wrist that is older than any friend. It’s crazy to think how something so small and beat up can hold such a powerful account. Each tear and fray in my old knitted bracelet represents the obstacles I’ve faced. Like my bracelet, I was once small and beat up. At the age of six, I was diagnosed with stage 4 Rhabdomyosarcoma, an extremely rare muscle tissue cancer. For two years I battled persistently against the death sentence of cancer to become a survivor. Throughout the struggle of 52 weeks of chemotherapy, 30 days of radiation, four major surgeries, hundreds of nights in the hospital, and an additional diagnosis of lung cancer, my bracelet never broke and neither did I.

A two year setback in anyone’s life is difficult. Time is priceless, and opportunities pass.

When I should’ve been listening to a bedtime story, I listened to the beep of my heart monitor. While my friends sat at their desks learning and laughing in school, I laid in my hospital bed, eager to join them. I noticed that my attitude and actions as a patient differed greatly from those of other patients. My family, friends, doctors, and I were not willing to miss these years of my childhood. During my stay at the hospital, I found ways to stay engaged and active to keep on track with my friends back at home. Such ventures included studying math facts with my dad, singing and dancing to music with my mom, and playing IV soccer with my nurses. Even when chances were slim, I never once doubted my survival and comeback. I knew my potential for success and never gave up. I never fell apart and neither did that bracelet.

My life has taken a trajectory quite different than many of my peers. Abrupt halts, unexpected pain, and grim observations interrupted what was a normal childhood. However, my journey through this confusing time offered more than grief and suffering; I learned a great deal from experiences that shaped me in ways that could not be simulated, imagined, or vicariously absorbed. Early exposure to life’s darker clouds bred awareness of who I am and how to find the rainbows in the tempest. Missing school, sports, friendships, and other moments of my childhood weighed on me. Dark clouds eclipsed rainbows. My bracelet strained. Yet through every shadow of darkness, I found light because I kept looking. My .bracelet grew stronger. Realizing how quickly life could be taken away, I began to see the world and my place in it in a new light.

Cancer, paradoxically, strengthened a young man in love with life who aspires to conquer challenges and solve problems. I’ve applied this grit in many ways over the past decade and am ready to change the world.

My proudest qualities have evolved from my experiences. An analytical mind was born in the curiosity of the treatments performed on me. I’d wonder how something operated and why it worked. A joy for critical thinking emerged when doctors explained the hows and the whys.

Since then, I’ve dreamed of changing the world with my discoveries and innovation. My determination to defeat cancer fueled my desire to fulfill a task and not give up until it is finished, and finished well. You probably think I want to be a doctor or perhaps a researcher. However, I want to take my dreams to the field of engineering. I want to discover and design. I yearn to approach challenges in the world and build solutions to them.

Although I didn’t realize it then, my cancer journey made me the person I am today. What seemed to be the end was just the start of what I would become today. I still wear that blue bracelet as a reminder of how far I’ve come and how much left I have to do.