2011 Scholarship Entry #126: Melissa Sim

Greatness. The word brings to mind awe inspiring accomplishments of Olympic athletes, genius discoveries, or life altering speeches by world leaders. Yet what does greatness truly entail? This, the youth of my generation fear to ask. Few people dare to exceed pre-conceived notions of their potential and push past the comfort of mediocrity.

Confidence, fragile and fleeting, must be nurtured and developed from one's earliest years. Volunteering for several months as a teaching assistant at a rink and skating for 13 years, demonstrates how empowering confidence is. Building confidence progresses a young child from their first precarious steps on ice to becoming an assured, competent skater. The simple words ""I know you can"", are enough to motivate a child to stand back up after countless falls and failures. Witnessing children's belief in themselves, despite being merely four is what drives me to continue coaching to inspire youth to believe in their own capabilities. I hope that as their skills grow, looking to their coaches as role models, their self confidence and belief also thrive preparing a young generation, the future of this world, for success.

My experiences as a skater have also led me to pursue my own ambitions: entrance into the field of biomedical engineering. Engineering has long been a male dominated field, yet as a woman I strive to overcome these prejudices and build a successful career. Biomedical engineering, a recently emerging field melds health, medicine, and engineering enabling the design of innovative devices that ease the lives and recoveries of patients. It enables patients to overcome the physical barriers that impede their self-belief and dreams. As an intimidating, yet intriguing challenge, my hope is that my participation, a small yet significant contribution, will continue to motivate and expand the horizons of young woman aspiring for a career in this field. Engineering paves my way for not only local, but global impact as well. Engineers Without Borders improves infrastructure and access to basic needs, developing solutions to the wide spread poverty robbing millions of Africans of opportunity. My aspiration to participate in this movement opens a road for me to ensure that youth worldwide will have the opportunity to prevail over poverty and build and believe in their own potential. The opportunities that biomedical engineering and Engineers Without Borders can provide for my generation, both here and worldwide, both now and in the future, will enable youth to overcome insecurity, sickness, and poverty and create a vision for the future.

Self-belief sparks a fire. Without starting within, how can one hope to impact their community, their world, or ultimately improve the vision for the future? Few realize that greatness isn't necessarily an act that must leave a mark on history. Rather it's something tangible and achievable for those given confidence, opportunity, and hope to pursue their wildest desires.