There are many people these days who tend to shy away from math, either because it’s too tedious to learn, or it feels too far from reality to matter. However, I love math specifically because of how well it can help us describe the world around us. I’ve gone through many years of education, and math has been a strong suit throughout the years. This wasn’t because it came naturally, either. When it became especially difficult, I was curious to find out the reasons why certain math techniques worked. I’d find myself diving into long video essays about things not even taught in class yet, simply because it was so fascinating. When more complex math was first being developed by historical mathematicians, they had a common goal: to understand the nature of the universe. They sought to capture the inner workings of everything around us in some form of tangible language. That language became what we know today as math. High-level calculus isn’t complex just for the sake of giving students a headache, but it truly serves to describe things that feel more unpredictable in the world. So many of the math concepts taught can be found existing out in nature. Take some common growing ferns, for example. They can grow as a fractal, a repeating geometry that scales to infinity. Or, if you were looking at a rushing river, you could use fluid dynamics to predict the motion some time in the future. The thought of something so rigid and complex on a computer or on paper could describe such a natural environment is incredible. Without the help of math, we wouldn’t be able to revolutionize technology like we have. I love math, because the beauty and the necessity of it is everywhere. I’m pursuing an engineering degree right now, precisely because I want to take math and apply it to real world applications. I want to solve problems, and I can’t do it without the language of math.

I've always been drawn to STEM-related topics. It's been my interest even as a little kid, watching Bob the Builder or playing with Lincoln Logs in preschool. Today, I'm spending my time watching videos about random engineering or physics questions, and I've been pursuing all of the engineering pathway classes in high school. I was ecstatic when I got out of middle school because I knew it meant I could take the classes that mattered for my future. STEM has played a big part in everything I've been interested in over the years. I've mostly been interested in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. I love space exploration as much as I do engineering fields, and I believe these specifically will help with the development of technologies for further expansion into space. With my future career path, I would love to stay involved with modern technologies. I want to help make a change in the next 30-40 years, and I want to be part of our attempts to possibly colonize Mars, or set up bases on our moon. Our technological development has been exponential since the dawn of the Industrial Age, so hopefully that means that in my lifetime we will see progress, unlike anything in the past. It has been talked about for decades, but we may very well see flying cars in our lifetimes. If things like this can become a reality, then I would love to be a part of its creation. One great example of this innovation is Boston Dynamics. They are the innovators who greatly improved on more realistic movement from robots emulating dogs or humans. They created a machine that could replicate human parkour almost flawlessly. It's progress like this that I have a great passion for, and it's what drives me to pursue a career in the STEM field. This scholarship would help fund my plans for a proactive engineering career. My family can be considered low-middle class. We have enough income to be comfortable, but when college funding gets involved, there is not nearly enough extra to fund the college path that I want to take. My ideal college would be the University of Kentucky because they truly care about all of the engineering fields there. They have amazing programs like the First-Year Engineering Program and the Engineering Living Learning Program that sound perfect for the kind of study I'd like to do. However, the tuition is nearly 13,000 a year, and excluding room and board, that's only half of the expense. A scholarship like this would make it possible for me to pursue higher-end colleges and help me make the impact that I want to have in my engineering career.

I've always been drawn to STEM-related topics. It's been my interest even as a little kid, watching Bob the Builder or playing with Lincoln Logs in preschool. Today, I'm spending my time watching videos about random engineering or physics questions, and I've been pursuing all of the engineering pathway classes in high school. I was ecstatic when I got out of middle school because I knew it meant I could take the classes that mattered for my future. STEM has played a big part in everything I've been interested in over the years. I've mostly been interested in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering because I believe both of those fields will play a big part in future expansion, and possible exploration of our universe. That's another big reason why I love the engineering field so dearly. I love space just as much. The idea of creating a hunk of metal that can withstand launching off of our planet, let alone surviving out in outer space, is incredible. Companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX have made incredible strides toward cheap and renewable space exploration. They created rockets that can touch back down to earth, instead of turning into shrapnel during re-entry. Our society has the power to make incredible things happen, and it's specifically because of science, technology, engineering, and math that it's possible. My father has also played a big role in how I view the STEM jobs. He is a welder - more specifically a boilermaker. He played a very large role in constructing a power plant in the Appalachian region of Byesville, Ohio. He's always working with parts and tools, and he collaborates with teams to complete huge projects. In the spaces that he works in, he has to deal with a lot of engineering problems, and only he and a couple of others have the skills to solve them. I won't be going into his field in particular, but he's certainly influenced my job choice. He has taught me the importance of discipline, and respecting tools instead of being afraid of them. I owe a lot of my strengths in the STEM fields to him. With my future career path, I would love to stay involved with modern technologies. I want to help make a change in the next 30-40 years, and I want to be part of our attempts to possibly colonize Mars, or set up bases on our moon. Our technological development has been exponential since the dawn of the Industrial Age, so hopefully that means that in my lifetime we will see progress, unlike anything in the past. It has been talked about for decades, but we may very well see flying cars in our lifetimes. If things like this can become a reality, then I would love to be a part of its creation. One great example of this innovation is Boston Dynamics. They are the innovators who greatly improved on more realistic movement from robots emulating dogs or humans. They created a machine that could replicate human parkour almost flawlessly. It's progress like this that I have a great passion for, and it's what drives me to pursue a career in the STEM field.

In my 1st grade year, my mom made me play in our school’s Upward Bound basketball team. I was never interested in sports, but Mom decided to make me get out of my comfort zone and try something new. One of my most prominent flaws was that I could not take criticism without beating myself up or throwing in the towel. So, when I took on this new challenge, I was entirely unprepared to be told most of what I did was wrong. I'd get on the court, and several times the coach would tell me to pass the ball or try to make the shot. The worst moment was when, in a real game, I almost shot into the opposite hoop and scored against our team. I was my own enemy. I couldn’t get out of my head. I wanted to quit, but my mom wouldn't let me. I finished the season, but I never tried basketball again. It should have been clear to me that you can’t expect to be good at something immediately. I was also just a child, but this one event steered me away from trying sports again for a long time. Academics always came easier to me, so I focused most of my energy on that. It wasn’t until my Junior year of high school that I decided to get involved in sports again. This time, it was tennis. It seemed less intimidating than working with a team on a basketball court. Several players on the team were my friends and convinced me to join. I tried to have a better mindset toward a new challenge. The first few practices I went to, the obvious happened. I was one of the worst players there, swinging the racket like I was trying to chop a tree down. However, it had been almost ten years since I had last tried to get good at something that took extra effort. Now I was older with more maturity. I took everything the coach said about my playing as a lesson learned. If he said my form was wrong, I changed my position. If he said I wasn’t moving my feet enough, I would try to stay light on my feet and move more. I was also persistent. I rarely missed practice, and sometimes would stay extra hours to try and work on my swings. Once I saw some visual progress, I knew I would stick with it until the end of the season. The practices eventually turned into actual competitions with other schools. For a while, I was just on the bench. I cheered on players who were on our team for much longer than me. Finally, the day came and the coach put me in games he was confident I could play well in. I started scoring against some of the people they matched me against, and it felt amazing. I realized I should have been doing this for much longer and shouldn’t have been so scared to fail. It’s a lesson I’ve learned, and I’ve grown to accept my mistakes and find solutions, instead of calling it quits. Being afraid of failure is my biggest failure. My dad tells me, "It's better to try and fail than to not try at all. If you aren't failing sometimes, you probably aren't doing much." All of this has been a specific example of my internal struggle. Between 1st grade and my Junior year, I had to slowly grow out of the habit of not wanting to do things out of my comfort zone.

Minecraft has always been a major part of my life. I've been playing it since 2012, and everything about it has kept it in my top 5 games since. The survival aspect is amazing. You have to make sure that you have a safe space to defend yourself against the nightly roaming monsters. The progression through the different dimensions is exciting. The nether is a burnt hellscape, and the End looks exactly as it is named. For me, however, nothing can beat the building. It's an incredible creative freedom given to you with the endless shapes and colors. It doesn't matter that it's confined to a cubed universe. If you were to look up anything and put 'Minecraft' next to it, there is almost a guarantee that you will find a masterpiece of exactly that. Just recently, I watched a man build our entire galaxy (not to scale), and it is absolutely beautiful. He found a way to paint with light, quite literally. Minecraft is a canvas in its own way, providing an incredibly unique medium for people to express their ideas. Things I have built include a flying steampunk airship, a dwarven kingdom on the side of a mountain, and a custom village with handbuilt trees and bushes. If there was a way I could attach images to this essay, it would further prove the possibilities of the Minecraft world. Most people who play the game don't take it quite as seriously. They enjoy having a simple house, just enough to keep the zombies and skeletons at bay. They like the rush that comes with finding diamonds, which is a staple of Minecraft as well. But once all of that is over, those same people will find no more reason to play, and log off for months. As for me, I create new things to do. All of those building projects that I've described were a way for me to express my creativity, and it gave me the most drive to play the game. Minecraft building is an art form that few take full advantage of.