My parents have always told me: to be successful in life, you have to help others succeed first. I did not understand the logic until I started volunteering as a Summer Stride Leader in 8th grade. My daily tasks included helping families fill out applications, leading kids to spin a wheel for prizes with each hour of reading, and helping seniors with troubleshooting technology. What’s so nice about volunteering is that each family I saw, I can directly relate with their feelings, their needs, and their appreciation when they saw me help them with patience and respect. Also, I volunteered at the food bank. While training my upper body strength, I get to help communities without sufficient food for their families. At my high school’s academy, I was involved in 3D printing composite models to help underclassmen learn geometry in a tactile and visual way. Furthermore, I was involved in the construction of the Tiny House, the mission was to find homeless animals a cozy place to stay. Not only was I doing something positive, I learned many skills, such as operating power tools, framing, and lots of applicable real life math. In college, my professors made a Discord server for students to help each other with homework questions and understanding difficult concepts. I was consistently and actively participating in any way I can, answering every question thoroughly while explaining in an easy-to-understand manner. As a first year student, my programming knowledge is limited. However, I would say about 50% of my understanding in computer concepts came from helping others understand. It reworked my way of thinking, connected dots with prior knowledge, and forced me to do research. As a result, towards the end of the semester, I was able to create a Discord bot that helps new investors with different financial indicators. Growing up in a family that often relied on support from the community, I take pride in helping others whenever possible. Experiencing numerous smiles and heartfelt expressions of gratitude, I've set a personal mission to help my community succeed, as it brings a sense of fulfillment and positivity to my own life. In the future, as a computer science major, I plan to offer free tech repair services, troubleshoot software problems, and develop programs communities desperately need. To find these programs, I will be an open-minded person, volunteering in different fields to gain experience. Through this experience, I can gain insight on what and how to develop. A big part of being a leader is giving up my last piece of bread to someone in greater need even though I am starving. I learned this from my parents, who sacrificed everything they had, to give a better future to me. My parents are my role model, and I aspire to extend their values to the rest of the world.

When I was in 8th grade, I was volunteering as a computer technician, helping elderly people troubleshoot tablets and laptops. I struggled a lot. I didn't know how to resolve many of the pop-up errors, determining if it was a hardware or software malfunction or simply a faulty setting. However, I am so glad my supervisor was invested in our approach to solving the problem, not just finding the solution. I would have my own, functional laptop that I can search the internet for and watch tutorials on how to fix a particular issue. The improvement in my problem-solving skills wasn't the only upside. Seeing the elderly patiently sit through my step-by-step process, watching as I troubleshoot the problem, and then seeing their appreciative smiles and gratitude at the end inspired me to major in computer science. My long-term goal as a computer science student is to absorb knowledge like a sponge. Be it front-end or back-end development, cybersecurity, machine learning, or computer hardware, I want to learn it. I will be taking advantage of every opportunity, such as clubs and internships, and if there aren't any, I will be working on personal projects. For example, over the summer, I read books on Python programming language, completed programming exercises, and figured out the logic behind different concepts. Through grit and determination, I was able to successfully create an alien invasion game, where the player has to use the arrow keys to move left and right while using the spacebar to shoot bullets at aliens that are moving around the screen, with each level progressively getting harder while keeping track of score and health. After my first semester at San Diego State University learning Java, I am currently building a Discord bot that extracts real-time data from the stock market in the form of a JSON file through Polygon.io's API. My goal with this project is to eventually implement more accurate data from Yahoo Finance to create visual representations of the data with a great UI/UX experience on Discord similar to MidJourney. Furthermore, I will be learning web development to promote my discord bot to reach more users and, of course, implement more error-handling code to make fixing runtime errors easier. I am also working part-time at an insurance company. My goal in every job is to perform my best work for the time I am there, which means I am a very efficient person. I am someone who looks for methods to speed up a process, figuring out solutions to inefficiencies. One inefficiency I noticed while working there, was the fact that I had to create hundreds of folders for different name insured, while each folder had a similar naming structure. My goal in the future is to create a website that will accept an Excel spreadsheet from the user, read the spreadsheet, and convert it to folders for Windows and Mac OS, with the folder already labeled. Furthermore, my boss told me that the company had been hacked a couple of times, so I decided to expand my knowledge in cybersecurity by joining the Cyber Defense Team. To see new horizons, one must leave the shores behind. I am someone who will always challenge myself with new projects and find new ways to make someone’s life better.

Education is a big opportunity, and therefore, requires big goals. I am a computer science student at San Diego State University with an intention of attending graduate school. Goals are like a flight of stairs, taking one small step at a time. Working towards my dream of being the first in my family to graduate with a bachelors, first with masters, and eventually Ph.D, I am a sponge in all my classes, absorbing all the information and being open-minded to every opportunity. In the first semester of college, I have consistently networked with my peers, attended professor office hours, and seeked internship opportunities. In addition, I am currently working on a financial technology project that aims to use artificial intelligence to make educated guesses on the buy, hold, or sell status of a particular stock based on status quo, the company’s financials, uncertainty, and various other factors. Education is about challenging yourself and achieving milestones. This means exploring your interests, enrolling in challenging classes, and being comfortable in the uncomfort of being unique. In the upcoming spring semester, I will be part of the Cyber Defense and Mechatronics team, enrolling in 20 units of rigorous classes, and taking the initiative to work on a coding project for my company. Before I graduate, I will make sure to leave a positive impact on both my peers and professors, seize every available opportunity, and engage in experiences that I can share with the world. To explore new horizons, one must be brave to leave the shores behind. This means exploring careers completely unrelated to your major, challenging the status quo thinking and coming up with original, creative ideas, and understanding technology is evolving every second and requires consistent, lifelong learning. It means having the discipline to work on yourself even when you don’t feel like it, inspiring others to see the joy in learning, and to never settle for ordinary, going the extra step for extraordinary. My career goal is not about the destination, it is about the journey. I wish for the journey to be a rollercoaster, with ups and downs, highs and lows, fear and joy, and of course, failures and success. A straight rollercoaster ride is simply too boring for me. Like a rollercoaster, my career is aimed at making people smile and scream with joy. After you finish a good ride, you will most likely remember and share it with friends and family. I want my career to leave a long-lasting, positive legacy on the people I inspired along the way.

I didn't speak English. I had a GPA of 1.8. I am from a low-income, immigrant household. No, let me rephrase that. I had the opportunity to learn English. I had the opportunity to be educated. I had the motivation to continue what I started. My family did not understand English. No problem, I became an interpreter by learning English and Chinese. I am now trilingual, able to have conversational talks in Spanish. Because my English was terrible, my grades did not keep up. I had trouble making friends as I couldn't communicate well. I had trouble understanding word problems on exams. I took extra long doing homework, and received heart-wrenching feedbacks during parent-teacher conferences. No problem, this inability became a source of motivation. Before I spend 2 hours on homework, now I spend 4. Before I read books for 1 hour, now I read books for 10. I graduated top 5% of my high school with 39 college credits. Yesterday I couldn't afford a notebook, but today, I can. I accomplished this by creating opportunities for myself. From gaining work experience through 100+ hours of community service, to developing my interpersonal communication skills at Sprouts Farmers Market, my technical skills at the Manufacturing Production Technology Academy, and my professional skills at CID Insurance Programs. Each milestone has it's own set of challenges, each challenge represents an additional tool I have under my belt, and that belt will eventually have all the resources I need to build my dream. I am a computer science major at San Diego State University, and my goal is to become someone you can trust who can reliably and safely accomplish a task, like a pilot. Someone who is precise and expert in what they do, like an engineer. Someone that gives you feelings of warmth and support through their actions and simile, like our parents. As for profession, I am open-minded on the journey life takes me. I am open to learning anything new, as every experience contributes to a dot, in an ever complex connect-the-dots masterpiece. If I had to choose to rebirth in a rich or poor household, I would choose the latter. My unfair advantage is my optimistic approach at solving problems. I see every challenge as an opportunity to learn something new, making me stronger, emotionally and intellectually, day after day. I aspire to extend the benefits of technology to all parts of the world. My dream is a world where technology ensures equal access to all the opportunities that were available to me as I grew up.