The first two people that have influenced my love of STEM and my pursuit of a STEM-focused career are my parents. Even when I was much younger, they would always encourage me to both exceed expectations set by everyone around me and to continue learning about things that interest me, even if they aren't always what's being taught in school. This encouragement continued throughout my life with constant educational nourishment, with trivia, documentaries, and eventually, in high school, helping me take extra classes that I found interesting over the summer, like Forensic Science. The second thing that pushed me into a STEM focus was when we were introduced to magnet programs in the 8th grade, and the presenters were biased about female students enrolling in the engineering-focused path. This clear dismissal cemented my going through with enrolling in my current STEM classes. The next person to influence me in STEM is my engineering teacher at Lassiter. He is a great teacher and can make the most boring, time-consuming, and tedious parts of the class easy to get through and interesting because of his personal experiences with the topic and how much he wants the students in his class to learn and do well. Each year in engineering has a different focus, like Introduction to Engineering, The Principles of Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and Capstone Research. I think the time I decided what I wanted to study was at the beginning of my junior year engineering class, Aerospace Engineering. After hearing about what my teacher did in this field as a Navy Pilot, creating and testing airfoils in addition to other hands-on assignments in class, and diving deep into the history and technology behind the Aerospace Engineering field, I kept going home and doing extra research to come back with more questions to continue with discussions like I had never done in any of my classes before which lead me to the quite obvious choice at this point to continue with something that I love to learn. The final person to influence my decision to pursue STEM in college and as a career was my junior-year math teacher. Talking to her and hearing about the long winding path she took to become a math teacher and getting her advice on how I should choose a major, not because it's the best in general but because it's the best for me and my future.

In my junior year, I took an aerospace engineering course and instantly found my niche. As a long-term project in this class, we simulated airfoils until we were happy with the virtual results. Then we printed out stencils on paper, glued them onto metal sheets, and cut them out. Once we had our metal stencils, we used a hot wire to cut that shape out of a piece of foam, forming our airfoils. Using a wind tunnel, we tested the aerodynamic forces on them and compiled the data to establish who had created the best airfoil. After the actual assignment was finished, we competed in an unofficial competition to create the thinnest or weirdest-looking airfoils with remaining materials. In addition to the always interesting class discussions, the activities we did were what cemented my passion for engineering. After hearing about what my teacher did in this field as a Navy Pilot and diving deep into the history and technology behind the Aerospace Engineering field, I kept going home and doing extra research to come back with more questions to continue with discussions like I had never done in any of my classes before which lead me to the quite obvious choice at this point to continue with something that I love to learn.