You're So Pretty by Eliana

You're So Pretty by Eliana - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Smoke billowed from the most essential part of our experiment. Panic took control of our teachers and mentors. All eyes turned to follow the repulsive smell of burning hardware. A sickening feeling developed in my stomach.
During my junior year, I worked under the umbrella of program at our school called the International Space Station Program. Through the program, I had the opportunity to participate in the design and creation of an experiment that was to be tested on International Space Station. After weeks of brainstorming and testing, we decided to test vibration and vibration dampening in microgravity. We were divided into various teams: mechanical, electrical, research, etc.- I choose to work on the software team.
4 O’clock on a Tuesday evening and the sun has already found its niche behind a deep cloud. Coming down into the science lab, which closely resembles the inside of a poorly lit den, I find my seat behind the face of an ancient computer and press the power button. As the computer slowly wakes, I search the lab for my teacher. “Ah, Elie,” he says, upon catching sight of me. He gets up from his desk surrounded by robots and circuits to hand me the stimulus around which our project revolved- the microlab.
With pride, I take the microlab back to my little den and hook it up to the power outlet and the computer. Top plugin for the 5 Volt and bottom for computer connection. Simple enough. As a first time coder, I focus my efforts on perfecting a simple task: establishing a connection between the microlab and the software. Unfortunately, it is not as easy as pressing a button and watching the code magically play out. In reality, if you press the “run” button to run your code, you are generally greeted with a taunting error message. After a half hour feverish typing and impossible error messages, I helplessly returned the microlab to my teacher, unable to figure out why the connections failed.
The next day was a much anticipated transition- a move out of our den and into the new science wing. Glass walls opened the lab up to an unfamiliar light, colorful chairs speckled the the floors and our 15 pound desktops were replaced by shiney laptops. We set to work. Top plug in for the 5 Volt and bottom for computer connection. “Run”. We got a connection. The program was running. Absorbed in the fascinating process of the computer spitting out numbers, we failed to pay attention to the microlab, as it sat a foot away, breathing out smoke from its green circuit boards. Soon, our teacher’s feet scampered over and he tugged the power cable from the microlab. Once the smoke had cleared, he looked at us, back to the microlab, and back to us again. He could not figure out what had happened. The only thing that could’ve caused the frying of the circuit was an overabundance of charge supplied to the microlab. Suddenly, it clicked. The night before the 5 Volt cable had been lying next to the 14.5 Volt computer charger. I plugged it in wrong.
We spent the next six months in a routine of struggle. Now, instead of being able to test the effectiveness of our code on a regular basis, we were forced to share the only remaining microlab with the other project that was simultaneously working on a different experiment. It was a disaster. But we learned to adapt, and, after months of errors, salvaged a working experiment.
In my house we have a saying: “You’re so pretty.” Not the heart-warming, “you look nice today,” kind of pretty. Rather, this saying resurfaces whenever a family member makes a silly mistake that easily could’ve been avoided. On the night that I confessed my minor infraction with the microlab, my mother looked at me and said, “Honey, you’re drop dead gorgeous.”