About Me
I have been researching computer science, cyber security, and software engineering since the eighth grade. Ever since I got my first laptop for school, I have been interested in how computers work. In my fourteen-year-old brain, computers worked like magic, and I wanted to be a wizard.
The teacher in my eighth-grade technology class gave me an iOS Development course from Udemy that I studied and painstakingly completed over the course of the next summer. I came back to school in ninth grade having developed Image Editor. Image Editor was an app I created to make collages using the phone’s gesture recognizers like pinch, zoom and pan. I had to upload it in my mom’s name since I wasn’t eighteen years old yet. To my surprise, the app got accepted onto the App Store!
Throughout the next couple of years, I began researching cyber security, subscribing to engineering YouTube channels, and taking every online computer science course I could get my hands on. However, spending every waking minute of my time at a computer screen was not improving my health. It got so bad, that I was told I might get type two diabetes if I didn’t change something.
Hearing that was devastating. As a “fat” kid, I thought it would be weird if I started working out, so going to the gym was the last thing I wanted to do. However, my mom and brother encouraged me to join a gym called Iron Tribe. They even joined with me. Through the support of my family and new friends at Iron Tribe, I was able to regain my health and even become what I hated most (a gym rat). Since working out only took an hour out of my day, I was still able to work on my personal projects and maintain a healthy lifestyle. After working out and slowly improving for years, I found that it gave me more energy, improved my focus, and taught me lessons about life.
One of the lessons working out taught me that true change takes time. Like one of my favorite quotes by Confucius, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away stones.” By making small amounts of progress over time, I have been able to accomplish so many projects and find such amazing opportunities such as my time at ASPG, FICS, and many other personal projects and endeavors. All while excelling in my engineering classes at UF.
I am very lucky to have had great role models as parents, a supportive and loving family, and many great friends. I still have a lot of lessons and skills to learn on my quest to become a computer wizard, but I know making small incremental changes is my best chance at becoming one.