"Why do you rush?" It's a Tuesday night, and I am running through my Chopin Ballade one more time. It's my last lesson with my piano teacher before I play the piece in Carnegie Hall, so I feel my own self-imposed pressure now more than ever. There is no room for mistakes, no time to fix missing notes or broken phrases - but as I'm playing, I feel like I'm driving in a car, losing control of the steering wheel...

The clock is ticking as I look down at the next calculus problem with my fellow math teammates. It's a convoluted integral, and the four of us initially look to each other in confusion and horror. While other questions may arise while finding the integral (Is this a series that converges? And what is the square root of 34785?), the real question is: can we work together, and if so, how? It's silent in the Microbiology Lab at Florida Atlantic University....

If there is one thing about my heritage that I am extremely proud of, it is my family's history for exploration and excellence. I come from a family with two immigrant parents - both who have been immigrants twice in their lives. My father went from the tiny island of Jamaica at age 17 to study engineering in the United Kingdom, and then moved again to the United States to get his master's degree on a Fulbright Scholarship. My mother moved...

As a classical pianist, one of the great drawbacks of my instrument is that for the most part, you work alone. Playing the piano is a very solitary activity; unlike string players or brass players who are surrounded by their orchestra, the pianist practices alone, performs alone, and develops their sound alone. It was something that I had gotten used to, until I was chosen to play a piano quartet with three other musicians as part of a summer music...