Flashback: Chest slowly expanding and contracting, kurta hanging of of my sweating body, I hovered over a table in the 100 weather in the rural drylands of central India in mid-June, arranging several black and white isosceles triangles into countless patterns within a 16×16 grid with women from the most impoverished corner of the country. It was just another design day, all of us solving a big creative puzzle.

Flashback: Heart in my gut, cotton balls in my throat, I entered Addams Fine Arts Building after spending an all-nighter hunched over painstakingly hand-drawn plans, nervous for the first pin-up of my undergraduate architectural career.

Flashback: Mumbai, India. I`m standing at a bustling Kala Ghoda Arts Festival where visitors from India and all around the world have come to experience arts and crafts when a woman who just purchased one of our products inquires about the producers. I hold back tears as I share one woman`s proud story of providing for her family despite being illiterate, just one of the numerous tales of strength and empowerment supported by our organization.

Flashback: A sense of electricity fills a crowded west Philadelphia elementary school as students gather around and grab hold of the supplies: printed images, pencils and tracing paper. My fellow students and I all chuckle at one student`s creation: a castle with a massive Philadelphia-style soft pretzel superimposed on top. Beyond the giggles, I admire the student`s work, wholly inspired and reminded of the power of creativity.

Though they seem arbitrary and scattered, these instances are interconnected stories interlaced together to create an ongoing experience of being a student of the world- in the classroom, lecture hall, studio and beyond. The unique fusion of these people, places and instances have all been built up and supported by learnings as a student.

Understanding the invaluable knowledge that an education provides, simultaneously paired with an unrelenting passion armed with the necessary tools, I`m thrilled to have been accepted into Global Innovation Design, a joint master`s program that aims to merge the fields of design and technology for those students interested in creating an impact in the world.