One question that is always in the back of my mind as the seasons change is: what are we going to do about the environment? Already we can clearly see the effects of climate change by turning on the news. Hurricane season starts earlier each year with more ferocity; more fires are burning across the Western coast than in decades. This is just one of the reasons I want to pursue a degree in STEM. Working in STEM is about problem solving and taking the next step in technological advancement to make living in this world easier. I may not be responsible for the problems that affect our world now, but I do want to be part of the solution. As a future engineer, I can actually do something for the environment, because getting an engineering degree will give me the tools to start building the solution. Not everybody has that opportunity. I have been lucky thus far. I come from a family of multiple engineers, so I was exposed to the profession that encourages curious minds and hands. It is not unusual now, or when I was young, for me to be sitting my my dad in his workshop asking why he was doing something, like replacing brake pads, or how something worked, like a carburetor. My first interest in engineering started off with old cars and how they worked since it was common for me to go to car shows. Eventually attending car shows turned into air shows, and that's when my love for airplanes, how they worked, and flying started. One of my favorite planes is the Lockheed SR-71, an intelligence plane capable of flying over Mach 3. It looks so different from the regular commercial passenger jet, that I wanted to find out why it could still fly. Ever since learning the basics of wing design and aerodynamics, I’ve wanted to experiment with more effective plane designs. Looking through the history of planes, the variety of different designs over time is fascinating, but lately it seems like commercial airplane design has stagnated with very few new breakthroughs. Due to the apparent stagnation in the outer design of airplanes and the climate crisis, I decided that I wanted to solve a couple problems at once. My dream is to design a supersonic passenger airplane that will cut down on the time people spend in the air traveling and use less fuel, so not as many emissions are created through air travel. However, this is going to be a long process as not only do I need to design, build, and test the plane, it is likely I will have to advocate for airports to change or accommodate for an irregular airplane design. Once I established what I wanted to accomplish in the aerospace industry to myself, there is very little that will stop me from doing everything in my power to achieve my goal. Growing up in a competitive family that valued education so heavily has encouraged my drive to always complete what I said I would do. I want to be a part of the generation of STEM workers that leaves the Earth a better place than it is at the time I write this, which I hope my goal with contribute to.