It feels like ever since I could talk I have been designing and building anything and everything I could get my hands on. At five years old, my family moved to Colorado and downsized houses, leaving me to live in the same room as my brother. To make this work (and live out any five-year-old's dream) my father and I built a homemade bunk bed. I remember learning how to identify healthy wood, how to measure and plan to cut it, how to make the cuts, and how to assemble the product. I took what I learned from this project and have used it to solve issues around the house ever since (it also caused a few issues, which was an unfortunate yet effective way to learn what not to do). As I progressed through school, I became a better and better problem solver and learned more skills that would help the design process. I remember learning basic geometry in elementary school and being super interested because I knew this would finally allow me to draw successful designs. I drew a design for a new kitchen table during my 7th-grade year that I later edited upon and used to create my family's current kitchen table. The more math I learned, the better my designs became, so I began to love math, as it was the tool I was using to progress so rapidly. When it finally became time to think about what I would do after high school I questioned if college was worth it. Was it worth the debt I would incur just to have a degree, or would I rather go to trade school and end with a similar outcome? My English teacher helped me find the answer to this question, he allowed me to write an essay on this topic and research the pros and cons of my decision. As I dove deeper and deeper into my research my original question began to fade. It became blatantly clear that my interest was in designing and building solutions to new problems. As I narrowed my focus towards this idea I decided that if college were the choice for me, I would be a mechanical engineer. I had a love for it and a love for the math and science it would dig so deep into. On the other hand, I was researching trades that didn't quite "click" for me. I was researching welding, car manufacturing, carpentry, and plumbing, but when it came down to it, I found the answer was clear, I have such a passion for mechanical engineering that I was willing to sacrifice a higher time commitment, more effort, more money, whatever it took to live and do what I love. I am now looking back on this decision as a mere sophomore in college and am so proud of the way everything turned out. During my freshmen year, I learned to design, build, and code projects that would really solve problems. My final project in my engineering class was a pulse oximeter watch that would measure and alert rock climbers of the dangers of high altitude sickness to keep them safe on the mountain or warn them if they need to descend. This project had many struggles to overcome, but I loved the whole process and believe that I will forever love the process of overcoming the never-ending hurdles that will be thrown my way.

It feels like ever since I could talk I have been designing and building anything I could get my hands on. At five years old, my family moved to Colorado and downsized houses, leaving me to live in the same room as my brother. To make this work (and live out any five-year-old's dream) my father and I built a homemade bunk bed. I remember learning to identify healthy wood, to measure and plan to cut it, to make the cuts, and to assemble the product. I took what I learned from this project and have used it to solve issues around the house ever since (it also caused a few issues, which was an unfortunate, yet effective way to learn what not to do). When it became time to think about what I would do after high school, I questioned if college was worth it. Was it worth the debt I would incur just to have a degree, or would I rather go to trade school and end with a similar outcome? My English teacher helped me find the answer to this question. He allowed me to write an essay on this topic and research the pros and cons of my decision. As I dove deeper into my research, it became blatantly clear that my interest was in designing and building solutions to new problems, and if college were the choice for me, I would be a mechanical engineer. On the other hand, I was researching trades like welding, car manufacturing, carpentry, and plumbing, but nothing quite "clicked". The answer was clear. I had such a passion for mechanical engineering that I was willing to sacrifice a higher time commitment, more effort, more money, and whatever else it took to do what I love. It was here that I had to take a step back and realize that it wasn't just my sacrifice that mattered. I was willing to sacrifice all of these things, but I knew if I ended up taking the college route my parents would want to help pay for my schooling. My decision was no longer about my sacrifices, but the financial sacrifice I would be putting on my parents, who I knew would dig themselves a hole just to help me go to college and pursue my dreams. Before making up my mind, I sat down and had a conversation with them and it was clear they wanted me to pursue my best future and become an engineer. I then expressed that I wanted to do it on my own financially, which was immediately turned down. This led me to make the most important promise of my life, "I won't stop until I can retire you." I promise to pay their love back tenfold. I am now a mere sophomore in college and am so proud of the way everything turned out. During my freshmen year, I learned to design, build, and code projects that would solve real problems. My final project in my engineering class was a pulse oximeter watch that measures and alerts rock climbers of the dangers of high altitude sickness to keep them safe on the mountain or warn them to descend. This project had many struggles to overcome, but I loved the whole process and believe that I will forever love the process of overcoming the never-ending hurdles that will be thrown my way. This scholarship is just one way to overcome the financial hurdle my parents are facing and another push to help kickstart my career, where I will become the best engineer I can be.

I entered my senior year regional wrestling tournament with one goal, to make the state tournament, the only issue was that I was the last seed. Ever since I was ten I had gone to watch the state wrestling tournament held in the stadium where our professional basketball and hockey teams play. It was always special to watch my teammates share the floor with them, but by the time I was a senior, I still hadn't made it to the state tournament myself. My one goal that year was to make it to the tournament. My senior season ended up consisting of wrestling 5 matches before suffering what would normally be a season-ending injury, I tore the labrum in my shoulder. This did indeed put me out for over a month of no wrestling, but I wasn't going to let my senior season end so poorly so I started watching film, wrestling at about 25% to keep healthy, and doing tons of sprints for cardio, to be able to go all out at regionals. As the season came to a close I had lost the ranking I had gotten in my few matches that season and my coach told me that I would need to show a record of at least 15 matches for seeding at regionals. This meant that my record went from 4-1 to 4-11. I was seeded last in the region and my first match would be against the one seed. When I walked on the mat for my first match nobody expected anything of me. My own team was looking toward the loser's bracket. But I had different plans, with twenty seconds left in the third period, I was up 7-5, and all I had to do was stall, but I tried to hip into my opponent's shot and pin him there. That turned out to be what he did to me, I was pinned with 6 seconds left. After my first match, the whole bracket could tell I was not the 4-11 wrestler they had thought. I finished my second match in 32 seconds. During my third match, I could tell that as good of shape as sprinting can get you in, it is nothing like wrestling cardio. I held off and won the match by two. I was now wrestling for third, win here and go to states. About twenty seconds into the match I had the kid (from where I was) flat on his back for a good while, but the ref wouldn't call the match. I ended up losing 10-9. At this point, my whole body was hurting. I had wrestled all out for almost 20 minutes and my body was not accustomed to it. I was praying that the kid I beat earlier won his match and I wouldn't have to wrestle for true fourth, but this was not the case. I was completely worn out heading into the last match of the night and the final decider of my dream to wrestle at states. I was up 4-3 nearing the end of the match and I suplexed my opponent, which I quickly discovered was illegal and he would get a point, leading us to overtime. Within a few seconds, I was pushed to the edge of the circle and went for an edge-of-the-mat throw that ended up sealing the deal to the state tournament. With a torn labrum and not wrestling nearly all season, I had proven the whole region wrong. It was finally my turn to share the stadium floor with all of those I had admired before me.

It feels like ever since I could talk I have been designing and building anything and everything I could get my hands on. At five years old, my family moved to Colorado and downsized houses, leaving me to live in the same room as my brother. To make this work (and live out any five-year-old's dream) my father and I built a homemade bunk bed. I remember learning how to identify healthy wood, how to measure and plan to cut it, how to make the cuts, and how to assemble the product. I took what I learned from this project and have used it to solve issues around the house ever since (it also caused a few issues, which was an unfortunate yet effective way to learn what not to do). As I progressed through school, I became a better and better problem solver and learned more skills that would help the design process. I remember learning basic geometry in elementary school and being super interested because I knew this would finally allow me to draw successful designs. I drew a design for a new kitchen table during my 7th-grade year that I later edited upon and used to create my family's current kitchen table. The more math I learned, the better my designs became, so I began to love math, as it was the tool I was using to progress so rapidly. When it finally became time to think about what I would do after high school I questioned if college was worth it. Was it worth the debt I would incur just to have a degree, or would I rather go to trade school and end with a similar outcome? My English teacher helped me find the answer to this question, he allowed me to write an essay on this topic and research the pros and cons of my decision. As I dove deeper and deeper into my research my original question began to fade. It became blatantly clear that my interest was in designing and building solutions to new problems. As I narrowed my focus towards this idea I decided that if college were the choice for me, I would be a mechanical engineer. I had a love for it and a love for the math and science it would dig so deep into. On the other hand, I was researching trades that didn't quite "click" for me. I was researching welding, car manufacturing, carpentry, and plumbing, but when it came down to it, I found the answer was clear, I have such a passion for mechanical engineering that I was willing to sacrifice a higher time commitment, more effort, more money, whatever it took to live and do what I love. I am now looking back on this decision as a mere sophomore in college and am so proud of the way everything turned out. During my freshmen year, I learned to design, build, and code projects that would really solve problems. My final project in my engineering class was a pulse oximeter watch that would measure and alert rock climbers of the dangers of high altitude sickness to keep them safe on the mountain or warn them if they need to descend. This project had many struggles to overcome, but I loved the whole process and believe that I will forever love the process of overcoming the never-ending hurdles that will be thrown my way.

I entered college with a plan to become a mechanical engineer. To do this I was required to take one computer science class, which I decided to do during my first semester. As I struggled through the beginning of the course I began to fall in love with the problem-solving process and started to really understand how to code. By mid-semester, I was excelling. I started thinking about switching to a computer science degree but wanted to see what more engineering had to offer. I am currently in my second semester of college and am enrolled in an engineering projects course where I am part of a group designing a pulse oximeter watch to alert rock climbers that might be in danger of certain altitude sicknesses such as HAPE. As we started the project I immediately took the lead with coding and found myself enjoying the process just like my first-semester computer science class. Because of this, I have decided that computer science is the right choice for me. My dream job is working for a robotics company and coding software for robots. I discovered this dream when I toured one of the Lockheed Martin buildings last summer but did not know it was my dream quite yet. The entire building was taken up by one big robot with the sole purpose of imitating space missions and satellite accuracy. When I talked with the engineer that made the robot he told me that he asked what percent failure he could have with the camera and robot arm accuracy, the response was zero percent. The robot can identify and grab objects with accuracy to the thousandths of an inch. I only recently realized why this was so interesting to me, I was intrigued by the coding and software of the robot. It blew my mind that someone could code something so perfect and I want to be able to replicate this perfection one day. It is hard to say that I am more deserving of something compared to so many amazing individuals who already have such a deep understanding of the realm of computer science, but what I believe I have above everyone else is the work ethic to be the best. As I took computer science, I was told much too frequently that the class was impossible to pass without prior knowledge of coding. I was told this by people who dropped the class (40% of the class dropped) and by people who had coded before that were struggling, but I had no previous knowledge of how to code and was excelling. I believe this was due to my love for the work and the amount of effort I was putting forth. Towards the beginning of the course, I was struggling so I decided to read the entire textbook and as soon as I started putting forth the time and effort, I began to excel. I have the motivation to excel and will always try my hardest to do so.

In the year 2018, my father came home every day talking about his massage appointment with Mike Cimbura. Mike was a category 2 cyclist before being diagnosed with ALS (a fatal degenerative disease), but he was as lively and entertaining as someone with ALS could be. I always heard stories about how Mike made some funny joke or how he was doing, but I finally had the privilege to meet him when he dared to do something spectacular. On June 15, the Death Ride Tour began. Mike was in no condition to ride a bike, he had completely lost his ability to move, talk, and even swallow on his own. Even through all this, nothing would stop him from doing the three-day, 235 mile bike ride over 5 mountain passes, in fact, it was the motivator... one last ride. Mike was strapped into a cart attached to the front of a bike and was to be pushed along the whole ride. It was the happiest a man that could not smile could possibly look. It was truly inspiring to watch the whole cycling community come together to make this possible. From the organizers of the ride to Zach to other cyclists who had no idea Mike was going to be there and helping out in any way possible. The event was beautiful, and the community is truly one of a kind. Mike passed away in March of the next year, so in his honor, my dad, brother and I all decided to do the Death Ride Tour. Jumping forward to current day, I am still in love with cycling. I go on bike rides at least once a week as it is a super fun way to learn about the new area I am living in. Some dangers go along with this though. In September I decided on a bike ride through Boulder Valley to Estes. It seems that I had too much trust in the roads and did not plan my trip well enough. The ride was beautiful until the bike lane, with no warning, turned into a four-inch wide lane. I hoped the lane would open back up, but it continued for miles until the road was bordered by a cliff. At this point, I recognized it was too dangerous to go on with this tiny lane, next to a cliff, with cars whizzing past. I decided to turn back, but as I looked to the other side of the road I discovered there was no bike lane. It felt like a trap. I had to call my brother in Boulder and have him drive about 40 minutes to come pick me up. After this experience, I learned that I need to scout my routes better, but this experience should not be completely up to the cyclist. It is imperative that there are roadside warnings for bikers about such situations. A sign about narrowing bike lanes when there are no other road options would have been enough. But this does not go far enough, cars drive in such a way that is extremely unsafe for most cyclists and I believe it should be taught in every driver's ed class that road cyclists should be given room. It is entirely unsafe for cars to be whizzing past cyclists at such a close distance. Too many people are dying. Change must happen now before any more of this community dies. During my time home from college, I will be talking with local driver's ed locations about educating their students on how to drive safely around road cyclists.

The Earth is dying. Scientists are predicting that the point of no return for the Earth due to greenhouse gases could be as soon as 2035. It is imperative that everyone does their part to reduce their carbon footprint. Decreasing your carbon footprint is something that you must think about daily. I try to follow the model of the ideal person living in the modern era. Every night the ideal person charges their electronics to completion and unplugs them before going to sleep. This may sound different than most everyone's nightly routine, charging your electronics throughout the night, also known as pulling from an electric outlet for an extended period. On average it takes two hours to fully charge a phone, and the average person sleeps for 7 hours. This means that their electronics are being plugged in for an extra five hours every night, or an extra 76 days per year... per electronic device being plugged in. This is the cardinal sin of carbon emissions for the everyday person. The main thing to understand is that we are humans. We are not the ideal person. So sometimes you may need to charge your phone overnight, but there are other things you can control. The ideal person turns the lights out when they leave the room. The ideal person recycles their paper, their clothes, their containers and food waste. The ideal person takes shorter showers in order to reduce the amount of hot water used. The ideal person takes the stairs instead of the elevator and their bike instead of their car. The ideal person does a full load of laundry and closes their window when using the AC or heat. These are not things that everyone can do, but by doing just a few of these things, your carbon footprint is greatly decreased. So you ask what it is that I do to decrease my carbon footprint. I follow the model of the ideal person to the best of my ability by recognizing that I can make a difference in all facets of my life. I follow all of the rules I listed above whenever possible and make a commitment to do so. A prime example of this was the decision to leave my car at home when I left for college. This made it so that I have to walk or longboard or bike to class, which are all carbon-free alternatives to transportation. I believe that I am making a difference by doing these things, and not just because m carbon footprint is lower, but because I am setting an example for others on how to decrease their carbon footprint. I have given many presentations about decreasing your carbon footprint while I have been away at college, which is how I came up with the model of the ideal person. As I say to my audience, I urge you to be just one percent closer to the ideal person.

I am currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. This requires many science classes, which require the prerequisite of calculus classes. Ever since I was young I have been interested in a plethora of sciences, and in order to understand them, I had to understand the math behind their discoveries. As I have continued through my academic life, this has only become more important and I have begun to love the process and love math itself. This semester I am enrolled in calculus 2, physics, chemistry, and engineering lab. In all of these classes, I am required to use math, but physics especially requires calculus, all the way down to the most basic level. Physics, I have found corresponds to calculus 1 and 2 beautifully. One of the first things taught in every physics class is kinematics. Kinematics is the study of motion, and one of the most important things to know about motion is that the derivative of position is velocity, and the derivative of velocity is acceleration, which can then be derived into jerk. Newton's Laws and forces are another very important topic within physics, which he discovered through the use of calculus, specifically derivatives and integrals. If I did not know calculus, I would have a very difficult time understanding physics, which is something I have a deep interest in and desire to learn. In my engineering lab, I am seeing just how important coding, physics, and other classes derived from calculus are to designing and making a product. I am extremely thankful for the tools that calculus provides me with in order to fully understand the science and be able to do the engineering that I love.

Math has been and always will be the basis of science. Ever since I was young I have been interested in a plethora of sciences, and in order to understand them, I had to understand the math behind their discoveries. As I have continued through my academic life, this has only become more important. I am currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. This requires many science classes, which require the prerequisite of calculus classes. This semester I am enrolled in calculus 2, physics, chemistry, and engineering lab. In all of these classes, I am required to use math, but physics especially requires calculus, all the way down to the most basic level. Last semester I took a computer science class to learn how to code. I did not think this would require calculus or even math to be done, but as my calculus and computer science courses went on, I began discovering many similarities. They were both teaching similar topics at the same time and I don't think this was done by coincidence, in fact, it most definitely was not. In computer science, as we learned about arrays and vectors and their indices, we were subsequently learning about summations and their indices. Later on, we learned about using u-substitution and other functions to solve problems, and at the same time, we learned about creating functions to call in our code. I found myself having a deeper understanding of how to code every time the topic was covered in calculus. This current semester I am taking physics, which I have found corresponds to calculus 1 and 2 beautifully. One of the first things taught in every physics class is kinematics. Kinematics is the study of motion, and one of the most important things to know about motion is that the derivative of position is velocity, and the derivative of velocity is acceleration, which can then be derived into jerk. Newton's Laws and forces are another very important topic within physics, which he discovered through the use of calculus, specifically derivatives and integrals. If I did not have the knowledge of calculus, I would have a very difficult time understanding physics, which is something I have a deep interest in and desire to learn. In my engineering lab, I am seeing just how important coding, physics, and other classes derived from calculus are to designing and making a product. I am extremely thankful for the tools that calculus provides me with in order to fully understand the science and be able to do the engineering that I love.

Cold, hard, failure. I had just lost my ticket to the state wrestling tournament and there was no one to blame expcet for myself. That is simultaneosly my favorite part about this sport and the thing I hate the most. My successes are thanks to me, and my failures are also thanks to me. After reflecting on this failure, I put it behind me and looked forward to what I had to do to make the state tournament the next year. I decided that I would have to keep wrestling in the off-season and keep up my work out schedule to become the best version of me for the tournament. Here I am, 11 months later. I have broken through the rankings and am expected to qualify for the state tournament in one month. Finally, my hard work will be rewarded, and there will be no one to thank except for me, I am the one that made this happen. I will take this experience into my quickly approaching colllege career by not blaming someone else for my failures and working on what I need to do to be better. Other people can be helpful to rely on, but the best victories are the ones you make for yourself.