I’m fluent in English, I understand a large chunk of German, and I even speak a little Czech. I’ve seen emotions described in paintings and I’m no stranger to love. Jimi Hendrix is amazing and his music goes far beyond sound, and you don’t need to be able to read music to know that. Yet despite all these languages, the spoken languages and those of feelings and love and music, there is one language that trumps the rest: The beautiful language of numbers.I’ve known the importance of numbers my whole life, but only after experiencing how incapable words are of describing the world around me did I face this realization. Growing up, I faced difficulty expressing the ever-increasing complexity of my emotions with words. At the same time, I was learning how to manipulate numbers to solve a breadth of problems. As I entered college, I knew the only path that would make me happy was the path to becoming an engineer.Currently I’m a junior in mechanical engineering at Colorado State University. My knowledge has far surpassed that of simple algebra and basic derivatives and extended into that of calculus, physics, and even chemistry. I love reading what the world has to tell me and, as my knowledge grows, writing what I want it to do.My internship of two summers at Los Alamos National Lab has allowed me the opportunity to grow even more as an engineer and discover certain qualities about myself which I never knew existed. Understanding all the steps that go into an experiment, from writing a LabView program all the way to designing a part in SolidWorks and integrating that part into the project, is an awesome process to be a part of. Seeing engineering problems through, both in class and on the job, is extremely satisfying, and I look forward to tackling the next big problem. I can’t wait to continue pursuing my goal of becoming a mechanical engineer, then a nuclear engineer, in the months and years to come.
