When I started high school, I enjoyed sciences and wanted to initially study medicine. My high school made me take an aptitude test. After seeing the test results, my academic advisor encouraged me to study law or journalism and advised me to stay away from sciences, especially engineering or medicine as she did not think I would excel in those based on my score. I was bothered by what she had told me because I strongly believed that I had the potential to succeed. The next few years of high school, I worked really hard and enrolled into advanced placement science classes at my school. At the age of 17, I was selected for an interview at University of Cambridge in UK for medicine. I did not get accepted to medicine at Cambridge and that made me re-think my career choice. I ended up studying biochemistry for two years. After working in research labs, I realized that I did not want to be a researcher or pursue medicine. I eventually studied engineering after winning an Environmental Innovation Award and was selected to represent my university at the Western Engineering Competition shortly afterwards. I was always curious about what engineering was all about and when taking those classes, everything seemed to make sense and click for me. I realized that engineering was more than the “applied science” most simply state it to be… it’s a field of study that allows us to materialize everything we learned in our class and make them a reality which positively impacts thousands of lives around us.

Throughout high school and undergrad, I was actively involved in various extra-curricular activities in school and within the community which allowed me to network with numerous professional and take on multiple leadership roles. I was the vice president of a few STEM based student societies at my university and also took part in various innovative design competitions around the country.