Interests

My passion for the Chinese language is long standing and important. From a young age, my parents encouraged my learning of the language, surrounding me with Chinese influences so that I might take to the language easier. Once in elementary school, Chinese culture was lightly taught at school and I was hooked. In middle school, language study could be chosen, and I chose Chinese. Being fully immersed in the Chinese language learning process since then, I have experienced Chinese teachers from different regions, with different accents and vocabulary, different approaches to teaching, and I have enjoyed and benefited from the differences. With the rising importance of China and the Chinese people, my hard work and skill is seeming more and more beneficial by the day.

Another area which I was influenced by since I was young, Computer Science is one of my greatest passions. Surrounded by phones, Youtube, and video games, I am part of the digital generation. As a young child, my curiosity and dreams of becoming an inventor (after taking apart a pen in math class) drove me to try to understand further how these systems worked. From then on, I did as much as I could to pursue this curiosity. I joined the local library's robotics team, the school's robotics team, and the iLab, my school's after-school environment where I could learn, join competitions in any area of STEM, and converse with kids who shared my passion.