High School Adventures
UPLIFT Christian Club
Until it unfortunately faded out during the pandemic, Alhambra High School had a small but thriving Christian student organization. We would have weekly lunches followed by brief worship and prayer sessions. I met up with a few UPLIFT alumni during college, which was a great encouragement.
Alhambra High School Robotics Club
After the COVID-19 pandemic, my high school’s robotics club shut down. I pushed to restart it over the quarantine in my junior year, and when we returned to campus the following year we were able to build some small robots with VEX hardware. For example, our advisor led the design of an “earthquake machine” pictured below.
What I’m most proud of is the remote-control “tennis ball picker-upper” robot I designed. A major challenge was figuring out the right spacing and inclination for the ramp and dual conveyor belts, since I had to work around the strict geometries of a limited number of parts. It was a great creative challenge through which I learned how to be much more resourceful, and ultimately I think it’s characterized my approach to solving engineering problems to this day.
Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement Club
My high school’s science and engineering club hosted several teams to compete in TARC, The American Rocketry Challenge. In this national competition, students design, build, and fly rockets to reach altitude and flight duration goals, somewhere around 800 ft and 42 s, respectively, while safely carrying a payload of one or several eggs. Pictured below is Boomstick Mk1 (formerly Eagle I), including its diagram and flight simulations in OpenRocket Simulator, which we drop-tested and launched using an F-class motor in my senior year. A major challenge was designing a protective carriage for the eggs, representing astronauts, as it was critical that we ensure our “egg-stronauts” could survive the parachute deployments before the launch.
 - _Boomstick_ mk1.webp)
Outside of participating in TARC each year it was hosted at MESA, I attended the club’s hands-on STEM challenges, such as building balsawood bridges and toothpick towers. One year, I designed and built the legs of the balsawood bridge below for a civil structures competition, asynchronously during COVID-19.
 - Civil Structures strength test.webp)
Alumni Meetups
My high school friends and I have made an effort to hang out at least once almost every time we’re on break from college. Besides revisiting the not-so-old “old days” by playing Minecraft modpacks and competitive multiplayer, we’ve done things like mini-golfing, KBBQ, and hiking at Paradise Falls in California!
