Throughout my entire life, two things have remained constant: my inclination towards learning and discovery, and my desire to make a difference in the world.
These constants have manifested themselves in different forms over my entire life: at first through a Pokémon fan website called Buizel’s Island back in 2006 where I grew a small community through text and image content, games, forums, and more. Then throughout my studies I discovered engineering, first through a Lego robotics team, and then through my computer science classes and continued involvement in a robotics team.
It was because of this that I decided to study computer engineering in college at Ohio State. I enjoyed both programming and working with hardware, and wanted the chance to how both of them work, and work together. All throughout I was motivated to use these skills to really make an impact on the world, and as a result I was heavily involved in many student organizations, hackathons, meetups, and personal projects during my time there. Eager to get my feet wet in the workplace, I did internships at Bloomreach, Google, and Raytheon SI.
All the while I nurtured my creative side through music. When I initially started playing trumpet I had no idea what to expect, but music came to be a perfect fit for me and one of the defining aspects of my life. I was involved in many bands throughout high school and college, and eventually I narrowed down my focus to jazz. I loved the creative freedom of jazz improvisation, and performing was always a delight as I was able to both have fun and put on a great show for others.
Even though I’m out of college now, the self discovery and learning never stops for me. After learning about so many things - web development, hardware, music, information security, and more, I’ve started to believe that I am best suited to be a generalist, as my love of learning and doing new things overshadows my passion for any one field I have ever studied. Barbara Sher coins this term “scanner”, and is described more in detail here.
While I constantly look for the best ways to use my unique skillset to make an impact on the world, I also am learning more and more about fields that catch my interest every day. Right now the ones I’m looking into are music theory, game development, 3D printing, food technology, but I’m always on the lookout for the next greatest thing to catch my eye.