Help Mikayla Finish Her Engineering Dream

When Mikayla was 5 years old, she attended a science fair, and when she got home, she announced that she was going to be an engineer. She excelled in academics and enjoyed a multitude of extracurricular activities. Then, during her senior year of high school, she had a traumatic brain injury after a severe fall during a seizure. Afterward, she couldn’t read, her short-term memory was destroyed, she couldn’t remember how to add, subtract, or multiply, and we genuinely thought college was going to be out of the question.

We went to a neurologist who said that her brain had dumped some information that wouldn’t come back on its own, but that she could start cognitive therapy and do exercises, puzzles, and other activities that could help recall some information and regrow new pathways. Some of it was just gone, and she processes information differently now, but most of her memory and skills came back over time. She had been accepted into the Penn State School of Engineering, and she was DETERMINED to get her degree. She studied, worked, and fought, and has made it through to her senior year. I am SO PROUD of her determination, fight, and ability to overcome every obstacle she’s come across to make her dream of being an engineer become a reality. She will graduate in spring 2026.