Blog Post #1
Over the summer, I participated in two programs, one at Cedars Sinai and one at Harvey Mudd. I was also selected from a competitive pool of applicants to a highly selective internship at the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC. Here, with 12 other rising seniors, I learned extensively about cancer research and treatment from industry leaders. At the end of the internship, I presented the best possible treatment for my mock patient with metastatic melanoma and the treatment score I would give them depending on the reliability of the selected drugs that I researched, their history with cancer, and how aggressive the cancer is. Along with the programs and internship, I created an outdoor ceramic studio where I spent a lot of my time creating ceramic pieces on my potters wheel.
For this class, I am most excited to apply all of the concepts that we have learned from the past three years to creating the best possible solution to a problem that we believe is very relevant in our capstone project. For this year, I am most excited to sharpen my ceramic skills and use advanced techniques to create beautiful ceramics.
Blog Post #2
The capstone project is going well so far. My teammates, Thomas, Borna, Michael, and Efrain, and I are all working hard and our ideas have been great. We are trying to tackle the problem of idle USBs plugged into computers wasting energy. We have already come up with multiple solutions, but we are still trying to keep open minds so that we don’t limit our solutions. I am looking forward to what we can accomplish in the future and I believe that we can definitely develop a great solution to this problem.
One problem that I anticipate will arise in the future is that even though we are trying to keep open minds when thinking of solutions, we will subconsciously work on just one solution that we believe is the best and spend less time researching and developing other solutions. Also, by developing multiple solutions, one problem that could arise is having conflicting opinions on the best possible solution. However, everyone in my group are great teammates, so I don’t believe that arguments of clashing opinions will ever be unfriendly/unprofessional.
In the college application process I am currently working on my personal statement. However, my situation is a bit weird because I’m stuck between two different topics I have. I am currently evaluating which topic would best present who I am, and I will soon focus my time on upleveling and revising that essay. I have started some of the supplemental essays for a couple of my top schools, and I have interviewed for my top school. In the next few weeks I am going to start working on the supplemental essays for the school I am applying ED for, then I plan to start focusing on my UC applications. I wish that I would have been told to spend more time on the application process over the summer. Developing a first draft as early as possible is very valuable and allows for complete perfection before applications are due.
Blog Post #3
To me, “state” can have many varying definitions depending on circumstances. Right now, my definition of state relates to how I am doing, and how I am doing right now is perfectly encapsulated in this picture.
In the picture, a boat is headed straight into a storm. The boat knows that it is soon going to enter a storm, but it can only see the face of the storm, the rest is a mystery. This sense of uncertainty in the picture is paralleled to my sense of uncertainty right now. As a senior, it is my time to finally apply to college and I am uncertain about basically the entire process. I don’t know how I will feel in late November and early December when I am in the middle of the brutal storm that is the college application process, but I trust that I and everyone else in my boat will come out of the storm in one piece (hopefully).
Blog Post #4
The college application process is rough. The stress from the whole process took a huge toll on my mental health and anxiety. Now that I am in the middle—and almost at the end—of the process, I feel completely drained of motivation. I hear back from my first college on 12/11, which at the time of writing this is tomorrow, and I am beyond nervous. This school is my absolute top choice and I hope that I will be accepted. However, from my time of waiting for the decision letter, I have came to terms with the fact that—as cliche as it sounds—the college that I attend does not define me and that everything happens for a reason.
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Something that I would've liked to have known before going into the process is to have a clear narrative throughout my application that purely represents who I am. Everything that I present to the people reading my application should be connected and tell a deep story about who I am. And, at the end of the day, if a college does not accept me, I can be content with the fact that I genuinely presented 100% of myself through my narrative. As simple as it sounds, if a college does not want to accept the real me, then I would not want to be there.
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In the future, I am most excited about meeting new people and branching out in college. High school is great, but I feel that I have been a bit constrained in the environment. I can’t wait to branch out and take advantage of amazing resources, mentors, and technology in college. I can't wait to pursue research and work alongside professionals in technical bio/biomedical engineering research. I can’t wait to meet amazing people and make lifelong friendships and connections.
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A condensed summary of my experiences represented in a gif:
https://giphy.com/gifs/zHd8x7Pik0Ftm
Update after writing: I was accepted and will be attending Harvey Mudd College!
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Blog Post #5
When designing a product, an important question that many people are challenged with is whether to make their product for profit or for others. In terms of my group’s product, we tend to lean more towards helping others. Because our product tackles a very prevalent topic today, energy conservation, there are already many for profit products on the market that are hard to compete with. However, our decision comes down to how we feel: energy is wasted everyday and solutions to this issue need to become more accessible to people. In my opinion, the largest difference between a for profit product and a for the people product is that products made for profit tend to address subjects that are seen as luxuries and non-necessities, while products that are made for people tend to address subjects that are seen as basic rights and necessities. Of course, there are some exceptions to this—as some people value money over anything else—but this tends to be the model.
Let’s look at two different products that address the same subject: energy conservation. The first product is the Echo Dot made by Amazon, which is a for profit company. The Echo Dot is a smart speaker that can basically do anything that you ask—it can turn off lights and electronics, play music, and even tell jokes. The other product is the solar panel, which is mainly created for the people and can virtually be free for certain people courtesy of the government. Solar panels are able to absorb photons created by the sunlight and produce energy. This provides a clean, energy conserving, and cheap way to get energy. There are many pros and cons when comparing for profit products to for the people products. When looking at for profit products, it can be difficult to get people to buy the product at a price that is reasonable for them while still bringing in enough profit for the company. It can also be difficult to establish a good reputation around the product by constantly satisfying customers. However, if this can be achieved, the payoff can be great and the money can provide the opportunity to fund the creation of more products. When looking at products for the people, they can benefit many people by making certain things accessible to them that they otherwise wouldn’t have the access to—like stable and clean energy. However, because products made for the people don’t make any profit on their own—they need a different source of funding, which requires connections to generous people and organizations. It could also mean working with the government to fund the product. And, making these connections requires a good reputation, which can be hard to achieve with little funds.
Blog Post #6
My group is definitely facing, and will soon be facing, many challenges at the time of writing this. For a couple of weeks now, the capstone groups have been working on gathering all materials and resources necessary to build a prototype. Our prototype has multiple components, and our hardware component is the most hands-on-demanding component out of the three. Because of COVID-19, we can’t really meet with each other to build this prototype, so we have to put the responsibility on one individual. Everyone will have a part in the final product, but—in terms of our prototype—only one person will be able to build it. The usb hub is also a very intricate system of electronics and something that we don’t have much experience with. I know that it is going to be a tough challenge to understand the intricacies of a usb hub, but I believe that my group can overcome this challenge. There is also another challenge that we are trying to overcome. For our software component, which is the code for our usb hub/app software, we are relying predominantly on the python coding language. Even though some of my group members (Thomas and Borna) have some experience with this language, they haven’t done anything as big as writing app software and coding a usb hub. However, our mentor is an expert in python, so we will be asking her many questions in the near future. All in all, I am most proud of our prototype design. Even though it is inevitable that we are going to face challenges when creating our prototype, our design covers basically everything that we wanted. We are making conserving energy extremely easy with literally the press of a button via an app, we are educating the people on how much energy they are saving, and we are making a very clean and ergonomic usb hub—all in one prototype design.
The best piece of advice that I could give any incoming senior in the capstone engineering class would be to pick a topic that you are interested in, and to avoid picking groups based on who is in the group. We are motivated by our interests and passions and if you are not interested in the problem that your group is trying to solve, it simply won’t be a fun experience. This is the last year of engineering class, it is supposed to be fun. Having the freedom to solve virtually any problem should be exciting. All in all, I believe that the more you are interested in the problem you are trying to solve, the better your solution will be.
Blog Post #7
As the school year comes to an end, the graduating class has so many amazing plans for the future. For me, I plan on attending a 4-year private liberal arts college in Claremont called Harvey Mudd College. I plan on studying engineering there and hopefully learn under a professor’s research group. I then plan on attending graduate school to specialize my learning and either get a masters or PhD in biomedical engineering. My overall goal is to work in cancer research by designing and developing new technologies that will help further our understanding of the human body, its systems, and the way cancer is able to use our bodies resources to strive. Because if I have learned anything from my four years of PLTW, it's that to solve a problem, we first need to fully understand it.
Looking back at my experiences in the 4-year PLTW program, it is difficult to pinpoint my proudest accomplishment. The obvious choice would be my capstone project, however, I feel like I am most proud of my perseverance throughout the program. Engineering was virtually a completely new subject to me, and although the concepts and processes we learned had ties to math and science, at many times it was difficult to understand the material enough to be able to apply it in the many projects we completed. I am so glad that I stuck with it, and I didn’t allow myself to give up because I think that has helped build my character tremendously.