Undergraduate / Creating something on my own - My College Essay (common app #6) [3]

with my own ideas and hands

This is my essay for the common app; Im answering prompt #6. I don't have anyone to look over my essays so any comments or constructive criticism would be very helpful. Prompt: Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

It's Sunday morning and the whole family is upstairs watching football, but not me. I'm currently locked in my "workshop," otherwise know as my bedroom, with no sense of time. In front of me is the dark-stained table that is way too small for me, covered in sawdust, superglue stains, and a number of mechanical pieces that could have come from anything. Like most kids, I played sports, hung out with friends, and enjoyed video games. Most often, however, I would be in my room or the airless garage, designing and engineering projects of all sorts.

Looking back at old pictures, I realized that Legos were where my obsession with creating started. Since I can remember, my brother and I would be assembling sets from 60 to 6,000 pieces. Eventually, I strayed from the set instructions and began building sets of my own imagination, from candy machines to spaceships and everything in between.

After Legos, my interest in building truly commenced. I started to learn more about different materials and techniques. Utilizing wood, metal, and circuitry, I was able to advance many of my projects further than I thought possible. Some projects would take me days and even months and would require me to put in hours of work, but this didn't matter to me. As I put more and more time into my projects I would become more invested it to them, doing whatever I could to finish with a working final product instead of a pile of junk.

One project that consumed me for months was my take on a wooden hidden blade from a video game. This was by far the most complex and tedious project that I had attempted. Before I could start building, I blueprinted the internals and exterior of the blade. Looking through blogs, detailed screenshots, and official books, I was able to pull together enough information to construct a feasible design. I started off thinking that the assembly wouldn't be hard but I was soon met with numerous obstacles. The perfect alignment of all the moving pieces, the hours of shaping and sanding the inside mechanisms, and the tiny pieces, many times smaller than a toothpick, made me finishing nearly impossible. But the worst was the airless garage that caused me to swelter for hours on end. The constant cuts on fingers from the saw intensified from the sweat that seeped through all aggravated the lack of air often made me exasperated to the point of wanting to quit; though the worst came when the finished project failed to give even a slight sign of functioning.

I wanted to be done by this point, but I knew I had already put in too much time to move on. So I looked for help and eventually contacted a known YouTube creator that had a similar design. Through a back and forth on Facebook messages, I was able to incorporate some of his designs into my own and finish for once and for all. After countless hours, finishing this project made me realize why I love to invest hours into these builds. For each project, I start with nothing that resembles the final design, but by putting in the time and work I am able to create something with my own hands and ideas, giving me something tangible to look at, appreciate, and be proud of.

For me, creating something on my own without a set guide on how to do it, but instead with my own ideas and hands gives me a sense of accomplishment that does not come lightly. This process has led me to create my own YouTube channel and compete in engineering competitions that I never knew existed. Although I have learned a lot, and the information that I have acquired has helped me on my numerous ventures, I know for a fact that there is still much for me to learn, and this possibility of acquiring new information about what I love is what draws me back every time.

Undergraduate / If You could have any career, what would it be? (technology) [2]

If you could have any career, what would it be? Why? Describe any activities you are involved in, life experiences you've had, or even classes you've taken that have helped you identify this professional path.

from lego bricks to programming

My choice of a dream career has always wavered from whatever I had set my interests on. When I was younger I wanted to be a master builder for Lego or a Nerf gun designer for Hasbro, but it wasn't until I took my first programing class that I realized I wanted to become a programmer. The first coarse sucked me into the world of code and showed me all of its possibilities, they seemed endless. I was able to implement the basic skills I learned in my extracurricular activities such as my robotics club and engineering competitions, only peaking my interest in code even more. Learning more about programing not only furthered my understanding of the language, but also how it encompasses our everyday life. From smartphones, to watches, to even our houses, technology will continue to develop faster than ever creating a need for better software and when it does I want to be there in the middle of it all. In the future I plan to streamline these technological advances with business opportunities, perhaps by improving on already sophisticated artificial intelligence to service advancing problems, make the community we live in more efficient, or shed light on obstacles that may be out of our own grasps. Time moves quickly, and technology becomes obsolete quicker than ever, leaving the chance of this whole career field to take a drastic change after my years of college are completed. The key to keeping up this ever-changing field of technology is to remain in the center of it all, keeping up with the thing that powers all technology, code.

Undergraduate / My academic record is a mirror of myself [2]

Do you believe your academic record (transcript information and test scores) provide an accurate representation of you as a student? Why or why not?

Student's academic record

For myself specifically my academic record does shed light how I am as a student. I took classes that I knew would facilitate me in what I'm passionate about, that being the plethora of engineering and computer science classes that gave me something exciting to look forward to on a day-to-day basis. These classes were something that I exceled at, not because they were on par with a study hall, but because I was completely in tune what was going on. The teachers along with the classes provided me with something that was truly exiting no matter what I was learning and at the same time undoubtedly introduced me into the field of engineering. Overall grades are important, but I've realized that they are not a concluding factor in how the rest of a student's life will unfold; instead the journey that the student took in receiving his or her grade is what's most important. Junior year is still a reminder of this for me. I continued taking all the AP courses that were available including Physics. Going into the class I thought it would be an easy A just as Chemistry and Biology were, but before I knew it my grade started to slip. I was stressed out and dazed at the fact that this class was as difficult as it was, leaving me with two options, drop or adapt. I went with my gut and stuck it through knowing that I would have to change my entire façade to get make it through this class. I acclimated my study habits to match the rigor of the class and took advantage of all the tools necessary to make this happen; going to after and before school tutorials, meeting with my teacher constantly, and repeatedly going over arduous material bolstered my grade from a C to a high B. These instances have proved to me that the singular grade I received after each semester doesn't represent me as well as the work I put into each grade.

Undergraduate / How are you a leader and how will this show on campus? [2]

Hi this is my supplement for UT Austin any feedback will be appreciated!

How do you show leadership in your life? How do you see yourself being a leader at UT Austin?

setting the bar

Tips to consider: Leadership can be demonstrated by positions you hold as an officer in a club or organization, but other types of leadership are important too. Leaders can emerge in various situations at any given time, including outside of the school experience. Please share a brief description of the type of leadership qualities you possess, from school and non-school related experiences, including demonstrations of leadership in your job, your community, or within your family responsibilities, and then share how you hope to demonstrate leadership as a member of our campus community.

In my four years of high school I learned that having a title attached to a position does not define a leader. It has become apparent that being a leader is about setting the bar for others including yourself; carrying out actions that elevate your friends, peers, or even complete strangers. For myself leadership has come in the form of helping my peers in miscellaneous classes to incorporating my best friend into launching my sneaker business. Although these forms of leadership are important to me, the start of my schools robotics club has been taught me thoroughly the gravity of leadership. I always connected with everything engineering and this translated to co-founding our schools first robotics club during my sophomore year with, Chris, a friend of mine. It took months to gather funding, resources, and assemble the club, but eventually everything fell into place. One thing was missing though, not a single girl was part of our team, we had no diversity. One of my goals in starting this club was to bring together as many people that shared the same interest in engineering as I did, and clearly this goal had not been met. This didn't stop us though; we discussed this dilemma with our engineering teacher who was able to convince a group of girls from her class to join. To this day or our robotics club has grown exponentially and has been something I've been extremely proud of. In less than 8 months I hope to be able to carry out the same role I played in my robotics club at UT. On campus to classes a goal of mine will be to play an instrumental part in bringing fellow classmates together in anyway possible.