The idea for my current project came from a frustration I had while writing code. Every time I wanted to skip a song, I had to stop what I was doing, switch windows, open Spotify, and then get back to work. It sounds like a small thing, but it happened constantly, and it broke my focus every time. I looked around for a solution and could not find one that felt right. Apple's Dynamic Island handles this well on iPhone, giving you music controls in a small, minimal overlay without pulling you away from what you're doing. Windows has nothing like it. So I decided to build it. The project is a floating Spotify controller for Windows. The goal is a small widget that stays on your screen and gives you play, pause, skip, and track info without making you leave whatever you're working on. I am connecting to the Spotify API to pull live playback data, building an overlay window that sits on top of other applications, and working through the UI to make it feel clean and minimal rather than thrown together. The technical side involves figuring out the right framework for the overlay behavior, handling authentication with the Spotify API, and making the design feel like something that actually belongs on the desktop. Getting it to work and getting it to feel right are two separate problems. I am a junior at Penn State studying Computer Engineering. The program covers both hardware and software in depth. I have worked on thermistor circuits, written systems-level code in C, and debugged a Java game project that involved more edge cases than I expected going in. Those experiences taught me to stay patient when something does not work and to think through the full system before assuming the problem is where it looks like it is. The Spotify app draws on the same mindset, but it is the first project I chose entirely on my own, without a prompt or a grade attached to it. That distinction matters to me. What keeps pulling me toward technology is the fact that the gap between a problem and a working solution is crossable. It takes time and it takes patience, but it is not magic. You learn the tools, you understand the system, and you keep going when something breaks. Growing up in a small town in rural Pennsylvania without a lot of resources or connections in tech, I learned early that access to information and the willingness to use it go a long way. Long term, I want to build things that are useful in a direct, practical way. Not every piece of software has to be enormous. Some of the most valuable tools just remove a daily friction point. That is what this app is for me right now, and it is the kind of thinking I want to carry into a full career in technology.

For the first eight years of my life, it was just my mom and me in Morgantown, West Virginia. She was doing everything on her own, and I did not fully understand what that meant until I got older. What I understood as a kid was that things got handled. The bills got paid, food was on the table, and I got to school. I did not have a name for what that took. I just knew she figured it out. That experience shaped how I approach my own life more than anything else I can point to. Growing up without a lot of financial cushion, and watching my mom carry the weight of the household alone, taught me that you do not wait for things to get easier. You just work with what you have. That is not something I learned in a classroom. I absorbed it from watching her. When it came time for college, I had no one in my family who had been through it before. No guidance on financial aid, no one to tell me what to expect, no built-in safety net if things did not work out. I chose Computer Engineering at Penn State, one of the harder programs offered there, and I have maintained a 3.2 GPA. Some semesters have been tight financially. This summer I am enrolled in two courses to stay on track and I am actively applying for scholarships to cover the cost because my family does not have the flexibility to help with summer tuition. Every step of this has been something I figured out on my own. That mindset came directly from watching my mom do the same. For community service, I spent four years as a basketball scorekeeper for elementary school kids in James Creek, Pennsylvania, logging around 50 hours total. I liked being in that gym. The kids were just there to play, and having someone track the game and keep things fair made a difference in how seriously they took it. It was small, but it felt like showing up for something that mattered to the people in the room. Long term, I want to give back in a way that fits what I am building skills in. I am studying Computer Engineering because I want to build things that actually help people. That does not have to be abstract. Software that makes a process easier, a tool that saves someone time, a project that a student from a small town can look at and think this person made something real. I also want to be the kind of person who makes it easier for others who are figuring things out on their own the way I did. Whether that is pointing someone toward a resource, answering a question nobody thought to ask, or just showing that you can come from a single-parent household in a small town and still build a career doing something you care about. My mom made it work without a roadmap. That is what I am trying to do too.

What gives me an edge is a combination of things that are hard to separate from each other: being first-generation, being low income, and being in one of the harder engineering programs at Penn State while maintaining a 3.2 GPA. Nobody in my family had gone to college before me. That meant figuring out financial aid on my own, picking a major without any guidance, and learning how to navigate a university with no roadmap. There were semesters where I genuinely was not sure how I was going to cover the next bill. Every semester, I make it work because I have to. There is no fallback. I am a junior studying Computer Engineering at Penn State. The program covers both hardware and software in depth, and it is demanding. I have worked through thermistor circuits, systems-level programming, and projects that required real debugging patience. A 3.2 GPA in that environment is not something I take for granted. It represents a lot of late nights and a lot of grinding through material that did not come easy. This summer, I am enrolled in two courses to stay on track and I am also building a side project from scratch: a floating Spotify controller app for Windows. The idea is simple but the execution takes real work. I want to build something that actually lives on your desktop and gives you music controls without pulling you away from what you are doing. I chose to work on it because I wanted to, not because it was assigned. That kind of self-directed work is something I think matters in engineering. What makes me different from a lot of other applicants is that I am not just trying to get through school. I am doing it without support systems that many students have and still pushing forward in meaningful ways. I do not come from money. I did not have anyone explain how this works. I figured it out. And I am still here, still building, still moving. This scholarship would directly help me cover my summer tuition and keep that momentum going. Every dollar I can get through scholarships is a dollar I do not have to borrow, and that matters a lot for someone in my situation.

Being the first in my family to go to college means a lot of things, but mostly it means I've had to figure a lot out on my own. There was no one in my house who had been through this before. No one who knew what FAFSA deadlines actually mattered, or how to pick a major, or what a credit hour was. I learned as I went, and I made mistakes along the way. But I also got really good at finding information, asking the right questions, and not giving up when something didn't make sense on the first pass. I'm now a junior at Penn State studying Computer Engineering with a 3.2 GPA. Getting here wasn't straightforward. I come from a small town in Pennsylvania, James Creek, and my family doesn't have a lot of financial flexibility. Every semester involves figuring out how to make it work. This summer, I'm enrolled in two courses to stay on track, and funding them is a real challenge. There is no backup plan. Figuring it out is the only option, and I've gotten pretty comfortable with that. What I've found is that being first-gen makes you resourceful in ways you don't fully appreciate until later. I've learned to advocate for myself, to seek out resources, and to take my education seriously in a way that feels personal. Nobody handed me a roadmap. I'm making one. In terms of what I'm pursuing in college, Computer Engineering was a deliberate choice. I wanted a major with real technical depth, one that would give me the tools to understand and build systems at a fundamental level. The coursework covers both hardware and software, and getting into that overlap is where I find the most traction. I've worked on thermistor circuits, written systems-level code, and debugged problems that took more patience than they had any right to require. That process, the trial and error and the slow grind toward something that works, is what keeps me engaged. Long-term, I want to build technology that solves real problems. I'm drawn to software that works simply and elegantly, things that make life a little easier without making you think too hard about them. This summer I'm working on a side project, a floating Spotify controller app, because I wanted to see if I could build something clean and useful from scratch. That is the kind of engineering I want to spend my career doing. This scholarship would make a direct difference in my ability to stay on track and keep moving. I don't take that lightly.

For the first eight years of my life, it was just my mom and me. We were in Morgantown, West Virginia, and she was doing everything on her own. She worked, kept the house running, made sure I got to school, handled every decision without anyone to split the weight with. I didn't fully understand what that looked like until I got older and started grasping what it actually takes to run a household alone. The answer is more than most people realize unless they've seen it from the inside. She never let it show in a way that made me feel like a problem. That's the part I come back to most. She had every reason to be overwhelmed, and she probably was, but she didn't take it out on me. She just kept going. When I was eight, my stepfather Paul came into our lives. He isn't my biological father, and he didn't have to do anything for me. He chose to. He treats me like his own and always has. What stands out about him isn't anything dramatic. It's that he's consistent. He doesn't talk a lot about hard work or responsibility. He just handles things. When I needed my first car, he helped make it happen. No announcement, no big moment. He just took care of it because it needed to be taken care of. Growing up around both of them taught me something that I think only comes from watching it in real life. You learn what it looks like when people show up, not because circumstances are perfect but because that's just what they do. I didn't have a name for that when I was a kid. I just knew that things got handled, and that it had something to do with the people around me. I'm a junior at Penn State now, studying Computer Engineering and carrying a 3.2 GPA. I'm the first in my family to go to college. This summer I'm enrolled in two courses to stay on track, and I'm building a side project, a Spotify controller app, just because I want to see if I can. None of that feels disconnected from where I came from. My mom spent eight years showing me that hard things are manageable if you just keep moving. Paul showed me that being dependable matters more than being impressive. I carry both of those things with me. The best way I know how to honor them is to not waste the opportunity they worked to give me. This scholarship would help make sure I can keep going.

For most of my time at Penn State, I've been running on empty and pretending I wasn't. I'm a first-generation Computer Engineering student from a small town in rural Pennsylvania. Nobody in my family had gone to college before me, so I figured everything out on my own. Financial aid deadlines, picking a major, understanding how tuition works. All of it. And underneath all that came a kind of stress that never fully settled. Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind that just makes you tired without being able to say exactly why. Some semesters I'd sit down to study and my brain would start looping. Not on the material but on everything surrounding it. Whether I could cover the next bill. Whether I was actually cut out for this program or just got lucky getting in. Whether the gap I felt between me and other students was real or something I was imagining. That kind of noise builds slowly. You don't notice how heavy it's gotten until you're already carrying too much of it. For a while my approach was to just push through. That usually meant staying up too late, falling behind, and then cramming to catch up. It wasn't really a system. It just delayed things falling apart. Eventually I had to accept that ignoring my mental state wasn't a strategy. When I wasn't taking care of myself, the work suffered too. Learning that sounds obvious, but actually changing how I operated took a lot longer than I'd like to admit. What helped most was finding something to work on that I actually chose. This summer I'm building a floating Spotify controller app, something small and minimal that lets you control your music without leaving whatever you're working on. No big reason it had to be this specific thing. I just want to build it. And having a project like that, one that exists because I want it to and not because it was assigned, does something for my headspace that I can't fully explain. When I'm in that mode, the background noise gets quiet. I still have hard stretches. I think that's just how it goes. But I've gotten a lot better at recognizing when I'm actually struggling instead of pretending I'm fine and grinding through it until something breaks. Reading about what this scholarship honors made me think about how often mental health gets reduced to its worst moments. There's a version of it that doesn't look like a crisis, it just looks like someone who's exhausted, stretched thin, barely keeping up. That's a lot of students. It matters that this scholarship sees them too.

I didn't know anything was wrong for a long time. I thought the way I experienced things was just how it worked for everyone. In high school, I would sit down to study and just not be able to. Not in a "I don't feel like it" way. More like I would read the same paragraph five times and it still wouldn't stick. I would stay up until 2am on assignments that probably should have taken forty-five minutes. I thought I was just bad at managing my time, or lazy, or not as smart as I needed to be. I didn't talk to anyone about it because I didn't have the words for it, and honestly, growing up in rural Pennsylvania, mental health wasn't something people talked about out loud. Getting to Penn State made things harder before they got better. I went from someone who had just figured out how to survive high school to being in a rigorous engineering program with no one at home who had done any of this before. My family couldn't tell me if what I was feeling was normal because none of them had been here. The anxiety got louder. There were stretches where I genuinely didn't know how I was going to get through the semester. At some point I stopped trying to white-knuckle my way through everything and started actually looking at what was happening. I built systems around the gaps: routines, time-blocking, removing distractions. It helped, but I still felt like I was working twice as hard as everyone else just to stay level. This year, I finally got diagnosed with ADHD. I was twenty years old. I had spent most of my life thinking I was the problem, that I just needed to try harder or focus better or be different somehow, and it turned out there was an actual reason things worked the way they did for me. That moment of understanding something about yourself that you had been fighting against for years is hard to describe. It wasn't an excuse. It was just finally knowing what I was dealing with. It changed how I relate to other people too. I'm more likely now to assume that someone struggling isn't just being dramatic, because I spent years thinking that about myself. I'm in Computer Engineering because I want to build things that actually help people, and a lot of software fails people because it assumes everyone is operating at full capacity all the time. Knowing personally what it feels like when things are harder than they should be has shaped what I want to build and why. I still have hard stretches. I don't think that fully goes away. But I've gotten a lot better at not letting it convince me to stop.

I lost my biological father when I was three years old. I don't have any real memories of him, not his voice, not his face, not a single moment I can actually hold onto. For years it was just me and my mom, and she gave everything she had to make sure I didn't feel that absence more than I had to. But there are things a kid notices growing up, little moments where you look around and realize something is missing. I learned to live with that feeling pretty early on. When I was around eight, my mom started seeing someone named Paul. I was suspicious at first, the way a kid naturally is when a stranger starts showing up at your house. I'd already spent years without a father figure and I wasn't sure I needed one at that point. I wasn't exactly rolling out the welcome mat. But Paul was patient. He didn't try to force anything or act like he was going to immediately fill a role that had been empty my whole life. He just showed up, consistently, and over time I stopped being suspicious and started paying attention to who he actually was. What I saw was someone who genuinely cared about my mom and about me, even though he had no obligation to either of us. There are a lot of things Paul has done for me over the years, but one memory sticks out. When I was old enough to drive, Paul helped me get my first car. It wasn't anything special, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It was the kind of car that gets you from point A to point B and not much else. But that wasn't the point. The point was that he saw what I needed and did something about it without being asked. There's no blood between us, no legal requirement, nothing tying him to me except the choice he made to be there. I think about that a lot. What Paul has taught me is harder to put into words than a single memory. He's shown me what it looks like to be a good man, not by lecturing me about it, but just by being one. He works hard, takes care of his family, and does things for other people without making a big deal out of it. He treats my mom well. He's been present for things that actually matter. Growing up watching that has shaped who I want to be more than anything else. I'm a Computer Engineering student at Penn State now, and I think about the path I'm on a lot. None of it happens without the people who showed up for me. My mom sacrificed more than I'll probably ever fully understand. And Paul, a man with no blood relation to me, chose to step into a role he didn't have to and fill it with more love and consistency than most people manage with their own kids. I don't share a last name with Paul. We have no blood in common. But he is, without question, my father figure and one of the most important people in my life. I don't know if I'll ever be quite the man he is. But I'm going to spend my whole life trying.

I spend a lot of time at my desk with music going in the background, and every time I want to skip a song I have to stop what I'm doing, go down to the taskbar, open Spotify, and then find my way back to whatever I was working on. It's a small thing, but it breaks your focus every time. And when you're deep in a problem, getting pulled out of that focus is really frustrating. That's the problem I'm planning to build a solution for this summer. The idea is a lightweight app that lives at the top of your screen, kind of like the Dynamic Island on newer iPhones. It gives you full Spotify control right there without ever leaving your window. Skip, pause, choose a song, see what's playing. The whole thing would be compact, minimal, and actually nice to look at. A lot of utility apps like this exist, but most of them are clunky or ugly. I want to build something that feels like it belongs on your screen, not something you tolerate because it works. I'm a Computer Engineering student at Penn State and I've been coding since before college, mostly teaching myself. I built Pong in Java to see if I could, then Monopoly because I wanted to handle more complex logic. Both were projects I gave myself because I got bored and curious. That's kind of how I work. I see something that bothers me or that I think could be better, and then I start figuring out how to fix it. Growing up in James Creek, PA, I didn't have a lot of people around me who were building things or starting companies. Most people didn't talk about that as something you could actually do. Being first-generation in college already felt like a stretch. But the more I code and the more I build, the more I realize that entrepreneurship is really just problem solving with a product at the end. And problem solving is something I've been doing my whole life out of necessity. I don't have a business plan or investors. I have a laptop, a summer, and an idea that solves a real problem I have every day. That feels like a good enough place to start. I have the skills, I have the motivation, and I have a clear problem worth solving. That feels like the best foundation I could ask for.

The red light wouldn't turn on. For two hours, I sat hunched over a breadboard, running through every possibility — wrong resistor value, faulty connection, miscalculated voltage drop. My thermistor circuit was supposed to be simple: sense the temperature, trigger the right LED. Below freezing? Red light. Above freezing? Yellow. But the circuit had other ideas. That moment — equal parts frustration and determination — is where I feel most alive as an engineer. I'm Luke Johnston, a Computer Engineering student at Penn State University, and I've always been drawn to the intersection of logic and the physical world. My path into engineering didn't start in a well-equipped lab or a competitive robotics program. It started in James Creek, Pennsylvania, a small rural community where resources were limited but curiosity wasn't. As a first-generation, low-income college student, I learned early on that problem-solving isn't just an academic skill — it's a survival skill. The thermistor project changed the way I think about engineering. When I finally identified the issue — a resistor value that was slightly off, causing insufficient current to trigger the LED — the fix took seconds. But the troubleshooting process took hours of methodical thinking, component by component, assumption by assumption. That process taught me something I've carried into every project since: creativity isn't about knowing the answer. It's about being willing to sit with the problem long enough for the answer to surface. Outside of coursework, I've channeled that same curiosity into coding. I've built two fully functional games in Java — a recreation of the classic Pong and a digital version of Monopoly, complete with game logic, property management, and player mechanics. These projects were entirely self-driven, born out of a simple question: can I build that? Each one pushed me to think through problems creatively, debug relentlessly, and find elegant solutions to complex logic challenges. What drives me isn't just building things — it's building things that matter. Growing up in a rural community, I've seen firsthand how technology gaps can limit opportunity. Families without access to reliable tech support, students without the tools they need, communities that fall behind simply because innovation hasn't reached them yet. I want to change that. My goal is to use Computer Engineering to develop practical, accessible technology solutions — tools that work for people in places like James Creek, not just for people in Silicon Valley. The thermistor was a small circuit in a college lab. But to me, it represented something bigger: the idea that with enough patience, enough curiosity, and enough willingness to troubleshoot, almost any problem has a solution. That belief is what motivates me every day as an engineer, and it's the lens through which I want to make my impact on the world.