I had always been good at math, so when I was placed into Integrated 2 as a freshman, it wasn’t surprising. I was one of three freshmen in a class full of older students that I didn’t know, which terrified me. My math teacher, Mr. K, was immediately one of my favorite teachers and I found out he was the advisor for a school club that met every Monday during lunch. It was called Interact Club. To me, as a brand new freshman in high school, at the end of COVID, and trying to find people like me, it sounded a lot like a math club. Math teacher, Interact, that’s a logical conclusion, right? So I went to a meeting and discovered that I was wrong; Interact was a community service club. The club was a majority of seniors, some juniors, one or two sophomores, and me, the only freshman. Again, I was terrified, but I also wanted to impress these upperclassmen that I looked up to. And they had pizza once a month. So, I went to almost every single Interact club meeting that year and I loved it. It was also simpler than I thought it would be. To impact and be involved in my community, all I had to do was show up once a week for thirty minutes and simply start planning something.
With success in my latest venture, I enthusiastically joined the swim team, ready for a new challenge. I grew up swimming every chance I got, in the creek next to my house or at a pool in my dad's apartment complex, but I had never learned how to swim any of the specific strokes. I picked up the basics easily enough, met some of the most amazing people, and became known for doing a swan dive that I unintentionally did whenever I dived. I proved to myself that my body was capable of incredible physical feats, effectively getting rid of most of the negative body image issues I carried with me throughout middle school. With newfound confidence in my physical abilities, I decided to pick up mountain biking by joining the local Thunderbirds, and even though I’m not the fastest biker, I’ve loved the opportunity to be in nature and traverse up and down my local mountains. The people I met by joining the swim and the mountain biking team have been incredible role models for me as I’ve grown throughout my high school years and I will never forget how kind my coaches and teammates were as they accepted me into their lives.
Looking back, I’ve noticed just how much I’ve modeled myself after the older girls and women from Interact, Thunderbirds, and Swim. As a senior, this is my third year as President of the Interact Club and we’ve done many incredible things from helping set up the Italian Heritage Festival to growing the reach of our Food Drive each year. By pushing past my fear I learned that trying new things can impact my life in unforeseen ways and leave me with valuable lessons and experiences that I will cherish for the rest of my life. In my plans for the future, I plan to contribute to the fields of math and science by getting my degree in Nursing, using it to travel the world and run my own clinic, further establishing a connection to my community that I’ve cultivated since starting high school.
Growing up, I was obsessed with space. I would spend my summers in the city library reading books about planets and neutron stars, learning about things called quarks and hadrons while trying to wrap my mind around the enormity of the universe. I have always been a curious person, often driving my parents to the brink of insanity with my constant questions. And it was this curiosity that prompted my parents to sign me up for my first robotics class in elementary school. Lego robots powered by servo motors are not considered the epitome of advanced machinery, but they were to me at the time. In middle school, I joined my school’s robotics team, competing at robotics competitions at UC Davis and meeting professors from Stanford University. Tinkering with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, I navigated the world of circuitry and learned the language of C++. My childhood interest in outer space coupled with these experiences sparked my curiosity in space exploration, computer science, and engineering, inspiring my pursuit of a career in aerospace engineering.
It is because of this that I have heavily involved myself with advocacy for STEM education and opportunities in my community. Women are a minority in STEM careers, especially engineering, and I use my position as Vice President of Women in STEM—a club that educates women at my high school about careers in STEM—to advocate for female interest in engineering. Additionally, my work for my school district’s Strategic Visioning Guiding Coalition is centered around adapting education to incorporate STEM classes and extracurriculars into schools across the county.
In the fall, I will begin my time as an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley as an aerospace engineering major, with the intention of going to graduate school to earn either a master’s degree or a Ph.D in aerospace engineering. I plan to use my curiosity and drive to explore the many aerospace opportunities the Bay Area provides, allowing me to immerse myself in space exploration and enterprise. In this, I plan to participate in research and become an aerospace engineer with NASA, working on developing materials and machinery that would help facilitate humanity’s drive for answers, helping to explore the many mysteries of the universe. I am particularly interested in the presence of life outside of Earth and want to use my knowledge to contribute to the development of observational spacecraft to search for signs of organic material in space.
I believe that my experiences as a woman in a male-dominated field will bring new perspectives to projects, potentially leading to innovative solutions to challenges that will arise. Additionally, I want to inspire other women to pursue a career they may find daunting. I want to continue what I started in high school during my time at UC Berkeley and beyond, allowing for more female representation in STEM fields.
William Briggs’ work in the aeronautical engineering field alone is commendable, but his support of the female pursuit of the same field is something I look up to. With the help of this scholarship, I will be able to represent William Briggs’ efforts in advocating for women in STEM while also being able to achieve my own dreams of exploring space and all it has to offer.
