“¿De donde eres?

The teacher questioned where I was from. I couldn’t answer, his words were foreign to

me-they were gibberish. My eyes wandered off, as far away from his gaze as possible. The cool,

steel bars of my desk confined me. There was nowhere for me to escape from my

incomprehension, and there was nobody to console in. I only had myself. The eyes of my fellow

classmates stared at me blankly, waiting for a response that never came. My time in Mexico

would be a challenge compared to my previously simple and sheltered life.

After living in the States for 10 years, my parents decided to move to Mexico City. The

city was monstrous, and it’s scale was matched by the obstacles that I would need to overcome.

Despite my young age, I was determined to blend into the world around me. I took exams, and

failed them because of my language barrier. At times, it felt as if my efforts were useless,

especially when my results stayed stagnant, but I pushed myself to keep learning, and my grades

gradually improved. The sentiment changed though when one day in class while reading a

Spanish novel, the teacher asked me to read. I swallowed my anxiety and began to read the lines

that laid in front of my eyes. The words began to flow out of me, and they weren’t choppy like

they usually were. Once done reading, my teacher blurted out a line that I will never forget.

“Por qué ese chico puede leer mejor que ustedes?” She had told the class, “Why can this

guy read better than you guys?” At that moment I realized that I had made it, my work had paid

off. I couldn’t help but smile at my teacher’s comment. It left me with a deep feeling of

satisfaction, a feeling that I work towards achieving in every aspect of my life.

My experiences in Mexico have left me with a hunger for learning that I would never

have had otherwise; they left me aware of my limits, and with an ability to recognize when I am
not pushing myself enough in my life and studies. For these reasons, I have found a particular

interest in statistics. I have always passed standard math courses with ease because they’re

straightforward: receive notes, do the homework, and then take the tests. I always got through

my math classes by following this rudimentary cycle. Statistics challenges me in a way that no

other math course has. Its content is often not straightforward, and many of its answers are left

up to interpretation. The lack of finite answers in statistics challenges my brain. Even when

things don’t click for me, I become engrossed in its concepts, searching for the answers, and the

deep feeling of satisfaction that is attained once I get them. The broad nature of statistics and its

associated research is what seems to interest me the most. It opens up the doors for discovery in

a plethora of ways, leaving countless ways that one can influence meaningful change.

If you were to ask me as a ten-year-old, whether or not I feared what I didn’t know, I

would surely respond that I did. That side of my character has since developed after my time in

Mexico, and I now look for things that leave me asking more questions. Questions about why

certain things work the way they do, and other questions about how I can influence change with

new-found knowledge. On a personal level, the field of statistical analysis has provided me with

an abundant source of said questions, and with my desire to learn, I am confident in my own

ability to produce meaningful results through my studies. I long to be trapped in a room full of

uncertainty, being forced to create my own escape route towards success.