I enrolled in my first operations research (OR) course as a first-semester sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). In almost every OR lecture that semester, I was amazed by the translation of real-world problems into the language of mathematics and, specifically, optimization. In our OR coursework, we graphed feasible regions and used the simplex method to visit the feasible region's extreme points to solve linear programs. In addition, we drew Markov chains and learned their elegant mathematical properties. 

The following semester, I enrolled in a computational methods course that radically altered my perception of problem-solving. Throughout the semester, the computational methods course taught me how to take the mathematical concepts I practiced in my OR course and use programming to solve similar problems at a larger scale. I began to imagine creating broader impacts by applying OR methods to any global challenge. In the middle of the semester, I gathered my courage and attended my computational methods course's instructor's office hours to ask how I could help his research team during the approaching summer. In the years since, we have written two academic journal manuscripts together and are preparing a third as I continue to work toward a Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering.