Hello, my name is Ashley Sanchez and I am a second‐year mathematics major with an engineering physics concentration. I graduated from Cocoa High School in the year 2016. One of my favorite classes in university so far has been my calculus classes because of the professors. They really did help me understand the subject but they also had engaging personalities. My favorite professor is Dr. Moore because he actually wants to learn about his students and offers coffee hours for us to go and talk to him outside a mathematical environment. He also was a great calculus 1 professor because in the middle of the long lectures he read to us entertaining stories about random things, sometimes math related so that we did not get bored. I got involved in the GEMS/EXCEL program because I wanted to be in a living learning community in order to make friends with like minded people that will keep me motivated for my chosen degree program. I turned out to be right because now I have a group of amazing friends with a people who started out as a study group. I specifically became a GEMS mentor because of how greatly my own mentor influenced me my first year. I hope that I can be like that for my future mentees. Besides my academic life, outside of school, I like to spend time with my friends, play video games, watch youtube videos: mostly of numberphile and makeup channels. To conclude, I will try to restate something a former professor of mine has told us that really stuck. Do not be embarrassed to ask questions. A majority of the time the questions you ask are questions other people have and if they are not, then that does not matter. You gain from the questions you ask. By asking your questions, you are gaining knowledge for your future that the people around you do not have because they never asked the questions they needed to be answered.