What Makes Us Go by Garrett

What Makes Us Go by Garrett - September 2017 Scholarship Essay

During my time as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I spent as much time maturing and discovering my own interests as I did learning in my classes. While there I changed majors halfway through my college career and as a result I spent a few semesters testing the waters and learning about what interested me. The list is extensive, but a few worth mentioning were classes like Javanese Gamelan (Indonesian court symphony music), The Politics of Water, Econometrics of Forestry, and The Study of Radiohead.

However, the elective and the class, period, that had the greatest impact on my educational goals was Energy and Society. This class, taught by the wonderful and energetic Professor Dan Kammen, focused on energy and how it drove our world from every aspect. He lectured about the more well-known issues like the dangers of over-dependence on conventional fuels (oil, coal, and nuclear energy) that support the modern Western world, but he also spoke about how the more basic sources of energy affect the rest of the world. One of my favorite topics was biomass-powered stoves. Wherever people in the world do not have access to gas or electric means of cooking food, they use wood, grass, etc. to prepare their food. Although this is an ancient means of cooking food and is a common cultural preference in many places of the world, indoor air pollution from biomass stoves is one of the leading causes of death in the developing world. Neither I nor any of my friends in the class with me had ever heard about this issue, which was as incredibly common as it seemed incredibly easy to prevent, and my interest in energy issues started to grow.

While Energy and Society dealt with every gambit of energy issues, it also dealt with every method possible used to tackle these issues. Professor Kammen worked through these problems through humaniterian aid, through resource use lifetime analysis, and through quantitative engineering analysis. Until then, I was never interested in using math and physics to solve problems, but this class showed me that to be able to completely combat issues like indoor air pollution and other energy problems a qualitative and quantitative understanding are both vital. This is what sparked my interest in engineering.

I earned my Bachelor's degree in Conservation and Resource Studies with a focus in Alternative Energy from UC Berkeley in 2015 and have since worked in the alternative energy field as a test engineer working on biomass-powered generators and pursued a Master's degree in air quality engineering, although I did not continue with the program after one year. I am currently taking classes at De Anza Community College with the intent of earning a second bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and I hope to return to the alternative energy field. Although a variety of electives influenced me to pursue engineering, Energy and Society was not only the most influential elective but the most influential class that sent me on my current path.