Seeing others succeed around me has motivated me to get involved in my community as a tutor, band camp volunteer, and marching band section leader. Being able to teach those in the communities I am involved in is the ultimate source of joy for me. This allows me to facilitate the success of my students, and see the joy brimming from their faces after finding success from my teachings. Thus, bringing success to others is what drives me to get involved in my community. During my tenth-grade year, I was a founding member of the Peer Tutoring Club at my school, allowing me to influence change in the community of students with learning disorders. Through this club, I had the opportunity to tutor a student with autism and found that he learned most efficiently whenever I taught with diagrams and gave him frequent positive feedback. This allowed him to succeed in the physics class he had been struggling in and also taught him effective studying strategies that will contribute to his further success in academics. As a volunteer at The Fort Clarke Middle School Summer Band Camp, I used my seven years of experience in music theory and tuba playing to influence change in my community by helping young players improve as musicians. Each morning, I taught the advanced band students about articulation and dynamics. I would then leave to help the beginning band students, who, when I first met them, could not yet lift the tuba let alone play it. The camp concluded with a concert, where the students performed music for their families. After the performance, the sense of accomplishment radiating from each student inspired me to continue teaching young musicians and sharing my knowledge in this community. Teaching music at the Fort Clarke Summer Band Camp has carried over to how I bring change to the marching band community as the low brass section leader of my high school band. This past year, a new tuba player with autism joined the band. He had difficulty learning choreographed marching, but I took time out of my water breaks to review techniques with him. While others would have given up on this student, working with middle schoolers showed me that anybody has the potential to contribute to the band, regardless of the different ways in which they learn. Therefore, bringing success to young musicians in middle and high school with my teachings has allowed me to influence change in my community.

My interest in a degree in STEM comes from my long-standing passion for roller coasters, impressive structures meant to create high speeds using the principles of physics. This interest began after I rode a roller coaster made by Rocky Mountain Construction (RMC): an innovative company that reuses the materials from old, wooden coasters to construct much improved “hybrid coasters.” My first time riding one of RMC’s hybrid coasters was at Six Flags Over Georgia, and I was astonished by how smooth it felt despite its wooden structure. Unlike traditional wooden coasters, which are often uncomfortable and simple in terms of their design, RMC’s coasters provide a more polished experience by using steel tracks throughout their steep drops and complex inversions. After this experience, I became so intrigued by the designs of thrill rides that I began developing my own on a program called Planet Coaster. This software has allowed me to simulate impressive drops, inversions, and launches that have yet to be constructed in the real world. Moreover, learning about the general workings of roller coasters over the years has given me a deeper interest in the propulsion technologies and materials used in creating structures characterized by their speed and stability. As an eleventh grader, to obtain a greater understanding of roller coasters, along with the rest of the man-made world, I participated in a pre-college program called “Introduction to Engineering: Before any Engineering.” This course allowed me to work with programs such as Tinkercad and learn about the applications of Arduino boards in engineering. Moreover, I was provided with a full description of nearly every engineering field and was able to interact with many experienced professionals. Learning about the diverse real-world applications of STEM, I found that it perfectly suits my passion for structural design and high-speed objects. My interest in space travel has also influenced me to pursue a degree in a STEM field, specifically Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. This interest began after I attended Santa Fe College’s planetarium summer program where I explored the galaxy for two weeks and began to envision myself designing rockets for space travel. My interest in a STEM-related degree grew further after I spoke with a former drum major of my high school band. One day after marching band practice, he happened to be waiting in the band room. As I spoke with him, I found out that he was majoring in Aerospace Engineering and had participated in a study abroad program in the middle east where he conducted research on bacteria traveling in the air of the desert. Therefore, the opportunities available through STEM and the connections I have within it are what have inspired me to pursue a degree in this area.

As I finished washing my hands, the bathroom door swung open, revealing a group of ten-year-old boys, speaking a language I had no way of understanding, asking me questions I could not answer. The only sentence I knew was “Je ne parle pas Français'' (I do not speak French), but I found my mind blank and chose instead to flee from the unpleasant confrontation. Halfway to the door, one of the boys wrapped his hand around my wrist, clearly trying to meet the new kid at school. However, the puddles beneath my feet paired with my resolve to escape the suffocating space would not allow for such an exchange, with my head crashing into the grimy tile floor moments later. I returned to my feet and even in my dazed state could understand by the boys’ expressions that they were apologizing profusely. However, their unintelligible stream of words did little to comfort me, and as the purple bulge on my forehead grew, so did my distaste for all things French. What I truly resented about my situation was not the soreness of my head, but rather my inability to communicate in this foreign tongue. I felt like a toddler, stumbling over the simplest phrases. At the age of ten, however, this was a state of helplessness that I could not accept. The following morning, my mother dragged me through the streets of Paris until we were once again met by a pair of menacing steel doors that read “L'école Jenner.” As I stepped through the opening, all daylight vanished, and I began to climb the stairs to my classroom, debating at every step whether I should turn back. Despite this, I soon found myself facing the classroom door. As I reached for the doorknob, I felt my body being torn in two, with my courage and apprehension pulling in opposite directions. Ultimately, my determination prevailed, and I swung the door open, immediately walking into a wall of French words: “Bonjour Max, comment ça va?” (Good morning Max, how are you?). However, instead of struggling to understand my teacher, I responded “Ça va bien” (I’m doing well) without a second thought. As I sat at my desk, my nervousness faded, and I realized the gravity of what I had just accomplished: my first successful exchange of words in French. Pushing through mistakes in spoken French has directly carried over to how I approach other challenges. During my audition for the State Honor Band on tuba, I cracked a high note, but there was no time for stopping. I focused solely on the following beat, internally acknowledging my mistake but not regretting it for an instant. Despite the frustration of missing a note during a performance, pausing after every mistake only draws more attention to it and takes the focus away from what is played well. One of the basic principles of auditioning that I have learned is to never stop playing, regardless of the circumstances. Although my bandmates struggled with the idea of leaving mistakes uncorrected, this process came easy to me through my experience of learning French. If I had paused after every mistake I made while learning spoken French, I likely would have never finished a sentence and my ability to speak would not have improved to the same degree. Therefore, my experience learning a new language has been the greatest driving force in my life because of the valuable lessons this process taught me.