I like breaking things. Not in the normal sense, but more to understand them, and to learn more about them. As a child, some of my earliest memories include taking apart a video game system that my parents bought, or dismantling an action figure only to put it together by having the feet as arms and the arms as the legs. But I also enjoy building things. My favorite toys as a child were Legos because I enjoyed putting them together in interesting ways. The best ones were those without an instruction manual: the ones which came in a giant bucket, where the sky’s the limit for what I could build.
Coming into college, I knew that the best choice for my major was engineering. With engineering, you are able to learn about both sides of the coin: both to break larger problems down to smaller components and to take a simple solution to solve a larger problem. A great example of this is a manufacturing class I took here at UCLA. We had to design a working project from start to finish, which incorporated using computers to design the project and machines to create the parts. Our project was a simple paper press to engrave papers with a symbol. Doing small projects reminds me of my childhood dream of understanding how the world works and to be able to make inventions of my own.
As I reach the end of my college career, I have come to question some of the choices I have made along the way. “Did I pick the right school? Did I pick the right major? Do I know what I really want?” I frequently ask myself these questions and the greatest lesson I have taken away from college is to never stop learning. From my initial passions of learning and understanding, I have developed the drive to always better myself: to learn, achieve, and experience more in life. As I reach certain goals and develop new ones along the way, I have found that the journey and the process of reaching our dreams is more important than the result. The most important thing is to continue to learn and grow.
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