As an African American undergraduate pursuing an education at Northern Illinois University and pursuing a bachelor's in computer science; to achieve a captivating career goal. During my early years of my childhood, I was always fascinated by technology. Being raised around technology from a young age being that of consoles, desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. I can remember at the young age of 11 I had a computer science class which taught the basics of coding, problem solving skills, and tinkering with solutions. One day during class there happened to be a day called "Robot Day". What happens on Robot Day is a person who comes into the class from a tech organization and teaches young children how to program a small robot with an app. With the app you can tinker with the movement speed of the robot, actions, change the color of the LED eyes, and more! When first introduced to it created a spark in my heart for the love of computer programming in a sense. But to go back to the story on Robot Day it consists of making groups of 3-4 people. The overall goal is to see which group developed the robot more advanced than the other groups. Now of course for my group I chose my friends, but they weren't as fascinated, nor as interested as I was, but that never stopped my interest in getting the job done. From the moment of opening the programming app I was captivated tinkering with the movement of the robot, the LED eyes color switching, voice commands, and more. But I wanted to dive deeper. I wanted to see beyond what was just showing on the surface. This may sound cliche, but I decided to ask myself "You know what, what can I do to make this robot move differently, emit words or sounds that weren't on the basic manual, and change the LED eyes to colors that weren't available?" The "what if" questions pushed me to find solutions beyond the boundaries that were given to me. I initiated a thought of modifying the default scripts into being more advanced to start. I started with the LED eyes to make a specific color that I wanted. I thought to use the hex code of a non-default color that wasn’t suggested and surprisingly it worked! Then, moving on to the movement of the robot I created a script using basic human movement in simple terms to make the small robot human-like movement rather than robotic-like, and lastly, with voice commands I just use google translate to simply change the language of the robot to Mandarin. With this our group showcased it in front of the class and in the end ended up as the first-place winners and I could say I was truly proud of my creativity, problem solving skills, and tinkering; to push myself and my peers in the end to win.

Growing up in the south side of Chicago, Illinois I've learned one thing and that one thing is to be ambitious to achieve success. Hello, my name is Keion Walker. I have attended one of the most rigorous academic high schools in Chicago being that of Lindblom Math and Science Academy and I plan on pursuing a bachelor's in computer science at Northern Illinois University. One of the main topics that were often conversated within classrooms during my high school years were students' mental health. What I've intake mostly from those conversations were students being stressed out from class assignments, homework, and finals. To even things outside of academics being that of job related, relationships, sports, college, and surprisingly enough the future. Again, the future one thing my English teacher told the class is "Applying something to the future is by living in the present." Which stuck with me. I was beginning to understand my fear of the future, which is to apply myself now, so in the end my future self doesn't have to. One of the things mental health wise that I struggle with poorly is my anxiety which stems from overthinking a lot of things being that of my choices. I've been self-reflecting and, so I asked myself why do I overthink in the first place? I've been recently beginning to realize it stemmed from my confidence within myself not having the mindset to believe I have the ability to succeed. But over the last 4 years I've developed more and more as a person to apply the things I've learned to my peers by aiding them in a position I was once in. Whether that's with anxiety, overthinking, social skills, consistency, and even discipline. I believe those concepts are what keeps us as people to apply ourselves in life in general. With that I'll be applying myself to my intended career field of computer science by being consistent with studies, going to job events, networking with like-minded peers, and more. So now my pursuit towards goals has completely been driven based on mindset towards them. Being that of consistency, discipline, and just trying hard, trying my best in present time and learning how to get out of my head and living in the moment which has vastly expanded my view of life. And to live by the quote that was once said, "Applying something to the future is by living in the present."

As an African American undergraduate pursuing an education at Northern Illinois University and pursuing a bachelors in computer science ; to achieve a captivating career goal. During my early years of my childhood I was always fascinated by technology. Being raised around technology from a young age being that of consoles, desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. I can remember at the young age of 11 I had a computer science class which taught the basics of coding, problem solving skills, and tinkering with solutions. One day during class there happened to be a day called "Robot Day". What happens on Robot Day is a person who comes into the class from a tech organization and teaches young children how to program a small robot with an app. With the app you can tinker with the movement speed of the robot, actions, change the color of the LED eyes, and more! When first introduced to it created a spark in my heart for the love of computer programming in a sense. But to go back to the story on Robot Day it consists of making groups of 3-4 people. The overall goal is to see which group developed the robot more advanced than the other groups. Now of course for my group I chose my friends, but they weren't as fascinated, nor as interested as I was, but that never stopped my interest in getting the job done. From the moment of opening the programming app I was captivated tinkering with the movement of the robot, the LED eyes color switching, voice commands, and more. But I wanted to dive deeper. I wanted to see beyond what was just showing on the surface. This may sound cliche, but I decided to ask myself "You know what, what can I do to make this robot move differently, emit words or sounds that weren't on the basic manual, and change the LED eyes to colors that weren't available?" The "what if" questions pushed me to find solutions beyond the boundaries that were given to me. I initiated a thought of modifying the default scripts into being more advanced to start. I started with the LED eyes to make a specific color that I wanted. I thought to use the hex code of a non-default color that wasn’t suggested and surprisingly it worked! Then, moving on to the movement of the robot I created a script using basic human movement in simple terms to make the small robot human-like movement rather than robotic-like, and lastly, with voice commands I just use google translate to simply change the language of the robot to Mandarin. With this our group showcased it in front of the class and in the end ended up as the first place winners and I could say I was truly proud of my creativity, problem solving skills, and tinkering; to push myself and my peers in the end to win.

During my early years of my childhood I was always fascinated by technology. Being raised around technology from a young age being that of consoles, desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. I can remember at the young age of 11 I had a computer science class which taught the basics of coding, problem solving skills, and tinkering with solutions. One day during class there happened to be a day called "Robot Day". What happens on Robot Day is a person who comes into the class from a tech organization and teaches young children how to program a small robot with an app. With the app you can tinker with the movement speed of the robot, actions, change the color of the LED eyes, and more! When first introduced to it created a spark in my heart for the love of computer programming in a sense. But to go back to the story on Robot Day it consists of making groups of 3-4 people. The overall goal is to see which group developed the robot more advanced than the other groups. Now of course for my group I chose my friends, but they weren't as fascinated, nor as interested as I was, but that never stopped my interest in getting the job done. From the moment of opening the programming app I was captivated tinkering with the movement of the robot, the LED eyes color switching, voice commands, and more. But I wanted to dive deeper. I wanted to see beyond what was just showing on the surface. This may sound cliche, but I decided to ask myself "You know what, what can I do to make this robot move differently, emit words or sounds that weren't on the basic manual, and change the LED eyes to colors that weren't available?" The "what if" questions pushed me to find solutions beyond the boundaries that were given to me. I initiated a thought of modifying the default scripts into being more advanced to start. I started with the LED eyes to make a specific color that I wanted. I thought to use the hex code of a non-default color that wasn’t suggested and surprisingly it worked! Then, moving on to the movement of the robot I created a script using basic human movement in simple terms to make the small robot human-like movement rather than robotic-like, and lastly, with voice commands I just use google translate to simply change the language of the robot to Mandarin. With this our group showcased it in front of the class and in the end ended up as the first place winners and I could say I was truly proud of my creativity, problem solving skills, and tinkering; to push myself and my peers in the end to win.

Greetings, my name is Keion Walker. Here's a post self-reflection of my personal experience with high school, career seeking, and social issue findings, and what I’ve considerably learned from them. In the summer of 2021, I departed from Muchin High School and transferred to Lindblom Math and Science Academy. Being that Lindblom is one of the top high schools in Chicago, Illinois, I was nervous to start my tenure at the prestigious academic, and quite rigorous institution. During my first semester I experienced anxiety and felt out of place in an environment that I felt I was not prepared for. Being the new kid, along with taking an AP course, I was in a state of weariness. I had repeatedly failed quizzes and found myself unmotivated. The loss of motivation accelerated the internal negative self-talk. With one of my hobbies being that of reading, it was not until I read “Atomic Habits” that I could start small and build items into larger frameworks. With these efforts I was able to celebrate small wins by studying more, using the resources provided by my school and family, connecting with my teachers on areas of concerns, and instantly saw an improvement in grades. From the experience of being apathetic academically, I’ve set short goals to achieve during the school year. I enrolled in extra-curricular activities, maintained healthier mental health, and invested time into an aspiring profession within the field of computer science/information technology. One step of fulfilling the first goal, I signed up for cross country. I struggled in the beginning with my endurance and with the pace. Using the method of celebrating small wins, I practiced on weekends with teammates and leveling my stance for the right pace. With these updates, I was able to do the work necessary to improve my running time. I did not feel defeated as I did the work with determination and discipline. When it comes to maintaining a healthy mental state is by practicing discipline to focus on my needs rather than my wants, self-reflecting on bad habits and focusing on turning them into good habits. By understanding that it takes one step at a time to achieve a disciplinary mindset even with failure but with failure it makes you who you are, I’ve realized I’ve needed to fail to succeed. Over the last three years, I have retained this mentality of celebrating the small wins. Even though there are times of struggle, I’ve always remembered to stay the course. As I am now entering freshman year in college, I am reflecting on the path that got me through and my next steps. With college only a month away, I have decided to major in computer science. I am aware that I need grit to succeed within the heights of success. Studying classes for my certificates and gradually learning within the field to bring an opportunity to succeed within a career of computer science. Wanting to give my intake on how I’m currently taking the steps to impact a social issue being that of artificial intelligence (AI). I would consider AI being a social issue because of bias and discrimination whether that’s racially, socially, or financially, and with misinformation and manipulation being that with AI-generated content. With taking the steps to begin with the field of computer science I’ll have the opportunity to address known issues with AI, and with social media to bring a good light to the concept of AI.