My Bucket List

Before I entered into college, I had a lot of things that I wanted to accomplish before I died. I started dreaming and building on these dreams for my future ever since I was 13 years old. I knew that computers were what I loved, and I knew that I wanted to make a change in the world.

Entering into college, the main thing I was excited for was taking classes about material I actually liked. Sitting down and getting used to these classes I started to set goals that I wanted to accomplish for the year. The first goal was to become a better computer programmer. I came into college with somewhat limited programming experience, and I decided to take all of my professors advice to heart, and I have come a long way since I started. I knew that doing well in these classes would help me in the future when I want to make a positive impact on the world.

Getting my personal goals for my future out of the way, I focused on other goals as well. These included applying for tutors when I needed the help, and taking advantage of all of the resources available to me. I had a feeling these two things would push me to achieve more in school. I wanted to be active as a student as well. I signed up for multiple groups that you could categorize as nerdy, considering they deal with computers and technology. I signed up for mailing lists for special speakers, to get informed on opportunities from major companies. Last night was the first presentation I attended this year, and It was a Google Tech Talk and Info Session, and I learned a great deal from it. It was truly fantastic.

I always told myself that I wanted to have a nice respectable house in a great community, somewhere on the east or west coast, due to the amount of opportunities that lie there. I want to own multiple boats, and have a house on water, whether it be a lake, or the ocean. Looking past the materialistic things, I mainly want to work for a respectable corporation, whether it be one that I create, or an existing one. I want to make an impact on the world of computing as we know it. Mostly everyone likes technology, and it is a growing field with many opportunities for those that are interested.

Those are some of the major things that I want to accomplish in my life. Some may be far fetched, but like the saying goes "you can do anything if you put your mind to it". I'm sure in time that my goals and dreams will change or evolve into different ones, but for now, I'm pretty sure on where I want to be 5, 10, and even 20 years from now.

Life At Its Best

Entering into my junior year of high school was a big change. I was finally one of the upperclassmen, and nobody could tell me what to do anymore. I moved on from basic general studies, to more advanced classes, and I was starting to think about my future. In my first two years of high school, I didn't work to the best of my ability. As I entered the high school ready to star my third year, I knew it was time to change.

The first class of the day was chemistry, and I was ready to accept the challenge that was ahead of me. The first impression I had on my teacher, was that he was difficult. However, after a while I started to go into help sessions, and I developed a better teacher student relationship. The help sessions helped me grasp chemistry, and make me realize how much I really loved science. The study habits I used in chemistry, I carried over to all of my other classes, allowing my grades to rise.

As I entered my senior year, I decided I was going to try even harder than the year before. Once again, I had the same teacher that I had in chemistry in physics. Physics was my favorite class throughout the year, and ultimately  it was this class that helped me decide my major. When March rolled around, it was time for five students out of the physics class to travel to Houston, Texas for the NASA Space Settlement Design Competition. When I found out that I was one of the five chosen, my life changed. When we arrived at Johnson Space Center and divided into our settlement groups I found my calling in the Automation/Robot Design group. Here I designed futuristic computer systems for our space settlement, and I ended up being one of the main spokespeople for my group. I presented my idea's in front of famous NASA engineers, and it was one of the greatest experiences in my life.

On the eighteen hour bus ride home, I started to rethink the field of study I would take up at Iowa State. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be a computer engineer. To this day, I still honor the decision I made on the way home from the NASA trip. This was a pivotal moment that marked the end of two of the greatest years of my life before I started college.