Any help is GREATLY appreciated! I'm hoping to have this done within 3 days. Thank you!
2. Describe an experience that sparked your interest in mathematics, science or engineering. (1000 words max)
Sophomore year only seems like yesterday when I remember spending nights talking with my friend overseas. We told each other the latest tales of our civilizations; on my side, stories such as the release of the newest iPhone or OS, and on his side, how developers and engineers were struggling to make advances in technology to provide his city with the same level of comfort that I took for granted. I challenged him that night: "Hey, why don't you think about moving to the States? We've got just about everything here, and if we don't have it yet, we will by 2100." "You don't have everything," my friend rebutted. "Look around and you'll find out that the answers aren't as clear as they seem." I went to sleep that summer night with a challenge in my mind, a challenge against my faith in science.
About a week later, my friend invited me over one morning with the whole gang to his house. I skipped playing video games and pigging out on pizza to talk to his dad, a materials science engineer who worked at Boeing and was home on break. I proposed my friend's challenge to him and asked, "We have science figured out, right?" In some sort of cross between wit and excitement, he drove me down to the plant and unveiled the glory of his concrete workstation. "See those flaps over there?" he asked, pointing to some smooth, gray blades lying in the corner. "Didn't stand a chance. Material didn't hold out. We're still working on it." I looked at a turbine engine that was half-open and asked, "What happened to that?" "It's a prototype," he replied. "It's not an efficient process to combust fuel, and we're trying to cut down carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emission." I took a seat and glanced at a report he was writing. After minutes of scanning, I looked up at him, smiling at my unbelief, and asked, "Where's the progress? How come we're not going anywhere?" At this, he laughed, took a seat down, and simply told me, "We're just not there yet." He drove me back home, still digesting what I had just witnessed. Score one for my friend in Asia, score zero for me.
I searched the Internet for recent major scientific breakthroughs. I looked at reports, data collected over the years, and published findings. I found nothing groundbreaking, nothing impressive, with little headway in science. One site on nanotechnology answered questions on applied science with phrases such as "once this is possible", "in the future", and one in particular: "before this can happen." We weren't anywhere close to discovering everything. In a world where scientists and engineers struggled every day to make progress, I was caught in the crossfire and only turned my head towards products, not process.
Resigned, knowing that I had only deluded myself out of scientific reality, I knew that my friend was right. I knew that we didn't have or discovered everything and weren't close to it, and what we already discovered and had was mostly either imperfect, inefficient, or lacking complete understanding. Yet I knew that if one person could revolutionize people's lives with inventions such as the iPhone and pioneering in fields such as nanotechnology, one person could break down the barriers of science that keep us at bay. One person could collaborate with others, experiment with materials and chemicals, design more efficient procedures, engineer, innovate and revolutionize the world just the same; we just weren't there yet. Maybe I could be that person.
I could be that person. I could start now while I was in high school, get my feet wet into the world of science, form the zeal that only the best of engineers and scientists possessed to impact the world with their research, and leave high school with a determination well founded and unmatched, ready to start my own research. I could be that person. Though my friend had won the battle, he hadn't won the war.
My friend and I talked again three weeks later. Wrapping up the night, he asked me wittingly if I was ready to take back my challenge. With that same expression on the face of the materials engineer, that expression out of wit and excitement, I told my friend, "We still have ninety years left, don't we?" Score one, Henry Garcia.
