There are many things that I am passionate about in engineering. That's why when choosing a major, it was so difficult to choose a specialized branch or field. So when I chose my major at Penn state, I decided to go into the Multidisciplinary Engineering Design degree. It encapsulates everything I love about the engineering degree as the degree covers electrical, computer, robotics and mechanical engineering design. As a kid, I was fascinated with robotic systems and mechanical devices. The act of fully mechanical devices were so intriguing as a kid that I had the habit of taking apart broken or unused things in my dads garage to see how they worked. And my highschool offered amazing classes and even a robotics team that I happily joined when it first started in 2017. The reason why I am so passionate about engineering is that it teaches smart technical people how to properly apply their knowledge to help invent or improve existing systems. There are so many ways to go about a problem that it makes each solution unique. Its a unique and different learning experience for the students working on the project, and in the end, you can always learn so much more. Even in the field, technology is improving at an exponential rate meaning that the learning never stops beyond the desk. Finally, another important part of engineering was making a name for myself in my family. I am the first in my family to go to college and I want to make my parents proud.

This quote speaks worlds to me, as I experience the drastic social behavior of people in online games vs. their real world attitude. I play an online game called Overwatch, and needless to say, the people who play this game are relentlessly rude. In the game, we call this behavior toxic. If you have a couple of bad games with reputable names in the gaming scene word spreads around that you, and I quote, "Horrible at the game, your parents don't love you, and that you should uninstall immediately." Now, you can still be good at the game but receive this kind of backlash. This is because the players in overwatch play what I believe to be, an advanced or effective manner of psychological taunting. An example would be open match chat abuse. When a game starts up you can see the names of the players in the game on the maps splash screen. Some players will pick out specific players they deem "bad" and say in the match chat for everyone to see: "We have (player name) gg (good game)". This demoralizes the person called out and it can ruin how they play during that game, effectively amplifying the toxic nature of overwatch. In contrast however, I actually met one of these toxic players at my place of work. I was working at target of 2021, and I was helping this customer in the electronics section when I recognized his voice. It was awfully familiar to someone I would play against in Overwatch. They were very kind and were even trying to strike up conversation with me when we had to wait for someone to check on inventory for a game they wanted for the nintendo switch. Eventually, we were talking game systems and he mentioned that he plays on Xbox and he mainly plays overwatch. When I asked him what his battletag was (online name for the game) I fully intended it to be the person I was thinking of. Sure enough, it was him! I shared my battletag and he was surprised to say the least. He's heard all of these things about me, untrue things that I was a larger bodied person, worked a horrible job, and that I was a very mean person. After we found the game he was looking for, we chatted for a bit after. We threw banter and whole hearted jokes. After this encounter, we had met up on overwatch and played a couple rounds together. In-game, it seemed that he had reverted to one of those toxic players that plagued the servers. But he held out for me, even when we lost or I was playing wrong he didn't call me out. This difference was striking to me. Before meeting him in real life, he too would call me things that I wish not to share in this essay. But after our interaction, we became friends and still play to this day. Even when he is on the opposite team, we're good sports about it and play fair. I believe that the social effect of online video games has degraded a person's sense of morality. Even to the extremes of acting out in public, even when the cause is not related to the online game but a bottled up emotion that was accidentally let out. Online gaming has dulled a lot of people's control on their feelings and attitude, especially in real life social norms.