My High School Career by Thomas

My High School Career by Thomas - August 2013 Scholarship Essay

Middle school is when a person finds who they want to be from actor to businessman to zookeeper. It is where I figured out what I wanted to do in my further education. In middle school I fell in love with science and math. This revelation has shaped my entire high school career. Spring of eighth grade I got an acceptance letter from the STEM program at South River High School. STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and was a perfect fit for what I wanted my high school experience to be. The STEM program uses a problem based learning approach to teaching. This means that most of the assignments we were given were real life problems and we would try and solve these either alone or in a team. In ninth grade I took a Principles of Engineering class where we had to design and create a marble sorter. We had to use Fischertechniks, which are like legos, and an optic eye to create a device that would sort three different color marbles. It was rewarding to design, build and program the different pieces and to test the device. Last year a local business came to me and my partners and challenged us to resolve a problem they had at their facility.  My group was approached by Arlington Outdoor Education Center and was asked to create an iPhone application that they could use for the tours they gave their students and visitors. They were very pleased with our app and are using it still today. The emphasis that STEM provides has allowed me to grow as a student in the areas I enjoy. I was able to take classes like Digital Electronics and Introduction to Engineering Design, where we used Computer Added Design to build products. Senior year I am taking two college level science courses, one college level math class and two engineering courses plus two more college level courses, Literature and US History. STEM has opened doors that probably would never have been opened to me if I was in a regular high school program. For example, this summer I interned at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in the robotics lab for my STEM internship. I designed a C++ computer program that would help to trouble shoot their prosthetic limb. My high school STEM experience has given me the opportunity to learn where I want to focus my college studies as well as my future career.