All my life I have had trouble sticking to a career that I wished to pursue. Every year I jumped from firefighter, to pilot, to microbiologist, and to many, many more unrelated fields. But as I have matured I have finally begun to narrow down my career from hundreds to just dozens of options. And all of them fall into the field of engineering. I have always been fascinated by how things work. Growing up, I drove my parents crazy with persistent questions about why and how everything from the fridge to touchscreens worked. My father, who for the past 9 years has worked at NAS Pax River to buy new helicopters and planes for the Marine Corps, has taught me a great deal. Often, when I asked a simple question, thinking I understood a machine, he would show me that I had an entirely wrong idea. I think the moment that I definitively decided to become an engineer was while we were changing the support beams on our front porch. My father spent hours trying to lever it up with a crowbar. I took one look at the situation and suggested using the car jacks. It took 15 minutes once we got them out. This not only made me focus on engineering as a career, it let my father teach me perhaps the most important lesson for an aspiring engineer. Diversity is crucial for any team trying to solve a problem. Different people with different backgrounds will solve problems differently, and someone with a different background to you may think of a solution you would have never thought of.

My pursuit of a life as an engineer can be clearly seen in the courses I have taken. I have always been in the most advanced math class available to me. Already I have completed PreCalc, and am in AP Calc AB currently, which is ahead of the expected course progression of students my age. While this has been difficult, it has also given the building blocks of engineering, which is to say, math. Additionally, I have already completed AP Physics 1, and look to complete AP Physics C my senior year. Physics is crucial for an aspiring engineer to understand. Afterall,  is engineering anything more than applied mechanics? In Physics I hope to gain an understanding of the theory behind engineering, but in Engineering here at the tech center I hope to gain hands on experience. Theory is useless without the understanding of how to apply it. Any engineer must know how to work with their hands, to visualize and model inventions, and to fix problems. This can't be taught in any setting other than the workshop.

Outside of school most of what I do is related to swimming. The only sport that I have ever enjoyed success in is swimming. My experiences on multiple teams has taught me several important lessons. During my sophomore year high school season I learned the importance of leading by example. Telling others what to do is useless unless you demonstrate the behavior that should be exhibited. A leader must be at all times levelheaded, calm, collected, and make good choices. Coaching for a summer team taught me how to lead. It showed me the importance of discipline over punishment. When someone is out of line, the necessary action is not to punish them, but to show them the right thing to do. Lastly, my time as a lifeguard has given me experience in a position of authority, and shown me the importance of clearly defined rules. People ultimately want to follow rules, to be told what to do, but if they don't know what those rules are then they can never follow them. This is something any leader must learn.

I don't have a true plan for my life. Professions and life goals come and go. But I do feel a paradoxical calling to the most controversial industry of any peace loving people, the defense industry. It is strange, claiming to improve lives while designing the machines that take so many. But ultimately, the defense industry is a necessary evil. In this world there too many people who would inflict untold pain and suffering for personal gain. Often, our military is called in to protect the victims of these interests. And, if our soldiers don't have the right tools for the job, many won't come home. In an ideal world, making tools of death wouldn't be an option for an engineer. But our world is far from ideal. There is a reason that in almost every nation on earth there is a group who dedicate their lives to killing. Any state without a military will be destroyed. As shown by Ukraine, even a European nation cannot bet everything on diplomacy protecting their citizens. In many cases, men and women must kill and die in order to keep the rest of their countrymen safe.

I don't enjoy the thought of designing instruments with no purpose other than taking lives. Every human life is a sacred thing. But ultimately, there are evil groups in this world. Who would see every right and freedom Americans hold sacred burn. Who would, if the opportunity presented itself, plant themselves as the leaders of a world where all who are seen as troublesome are tortured and killed. I hope that by the time I close my eyes for the last time this world of ours is a united set of democracies, pushing boldly forwards into a new era of human history. That no longer will American Military members die on foreign soil opposing forces of tyranny. That militaries, and the industry that supplied them, are a thing of the past. That all of human resources, ingenuity, and effort can be spent on making life better for everyone. That my sister could walk unaided once again. That my county would have no more homelessness. That every human being, regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, religion, sexuality, age, and ability would be seen as equal. While I do not think, even in my most optimistic moments, that most of these are possible, a few are. Better equipment for members of our military would let more of them come home. Better designed weapons would make collateral damage and civilian causalities in war a thing of the past. I know that this path is controversial. Many would think that I wish to profit from human misery. Nothing could be further from the truth. I cannot wait for the day that militaries are rendered redundant. But until then, I intend to give our forces the tools to protect the peoples of all the world, and to come home safely.