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Eric Somwaru

1,925

Bold Points

13x

Nominee

1x

Finalist

Bio

Hello, my name is Eric Somwaru. I'm currently an undergraduate Junior at The City College of New York, pursuing a Bachelor's in Computer Engineering. My future goals includes working at a technical company that will focus on helping people who need it and to make our community a safer and healthier place to live.

Education

CUNY City College

Bachelor's degree program
2019 - 2023
  • Majors:
    • Computer Engineering
  • GPA:
    3

Thomas Edison Career and Technical High School

High School
2015 - 2019
  • Majors:
    • Computer Engineering
  • GPA:
    3.8

Miscellaneous

  • Desired degree level:

    Bachelor's degree program

  • Graduate schools of interest:

  • Transfer schools of interest:

  • Majors of interest:

    • Computer Engineering
    • Computer Science
  • Not planning to go to medical school
  • Test scores:

    • 1320
      SAT
    • 1160
      PSAT

    Career

    • Dream career field:

      Information Technology and Services

    • Dream career goals:

      IT Security

    • Help Desk & Assistance

      ACA Auto Sales
      2019 – 20201 year

    Sports

    Ice Hockey

    Club
    2012 – 20164 years

    Awards

    • No

    Public services

    • Volunteering

      Rockaway Youth Task Force — Worked at the RYTF Urban Farm & Community Garden
      2017 – 2018

    Future Interests

    Volunteering

    Entrepreneurship

    AMPLIFY Diversity in Technology Scholarship
    Diversity in technology is important in our current generation and the near generations to come. The reason for this is because with new innovations, comes new discoveries, new upgrades, and newer solutions to many questions that were once deemed impossible. Without diversity in technology, our society would never have evolved to the point where we are now. We have discovered many cleaner and greener sources of energy, and have found ways to help people all across the world. When I become a professional out in the tech industry, I want to use my knowledge to help people. I want to create a world where we don't drain our current earth of the resources it has left. When people talk about the future of our planet, there are always two common opinions. It's either that our planet will become a desolate wasteland with no resources left or a world where our world is a lot more advanced, greener, and cleaner. One other goal that I hope to work on is a new operating system, that hopefully will combine the easy-to-use apple operating system, while also offering the customizability of what windows provide. However, as an operating system enthusiast, looking at the new Windows 11 proves that Microsoft is slowly approaching the easy accessibility route, and I think that working with Microsoft would be a way for me to envision a future where technology is a lot easier for others to understand. One of my bigger goals in life would be to revolutionize a country by bringing future technology to them. This country would be where my family comes from which is a place known as Guyana, located in South America. Guyana is a place that is known to be a very poor country. There is not much technology there or internet services, so revolutionizing Guyana would hopefully make it a better place, also allowing more people to have an education and training others to become IT Professionals and Engineers. Although this may sound like a very crazy idea, I believe that it may take a small team to simply go out there and make a change. This change may take a few years or even decades, but I believe that everyone around the world deserves to be caught up in the 20th century, to allow more people to socialize with others, and to introduce new ideas and benefit from the diversity of many others. Although these two goals seem very hard to achieve, I plan to slowly take my time to learn everything that I'd have to before I move out to Guyana and to influence and encourage others to also pick up my profession and spread my ideas.
    Bold Friendship Matters Scholarship
    Friendship to me is something that everyone needs. Whether it be your parents, a sibling, a cousin, everyone has a bond between each other and I consider that bond to be a level of friendship between others. When it comes to friendship for me, I consider friendship as one of the many life experiences that everyone needs. Friendship is a bond that allows many other people to support you on your journey through life, and in turn, you should be able to support them back. With friendship, you are able to experience many other things through their perspective of bringing you along with them. Without friends, who would you have to share your hobbies with, your activities, your thoughts, your emotions with? Friendship for me is something that should be treasured and is a bond that should never be broken. If I had one thing that I could tell to the many who read this, it's to treasure your friends and never lose sight of them, as they should never lose sight of you in turn.
    Bold Growth Mindset Scholarship
    When I had become ineligible for the excelsior scholarship, my mindset was probably in the worst condition than it ever has been in. I had gotten mild depression and had lost the motivation to want to do anything other than getting out of bed. However, once I realized that there were still many other opportunities out there for scholarships, I had started to regain some confidence, but not enough to stay in a healthy and growth mindset. This is when I started exercising, I started finding activities that I wanted to do, and I kept on continuously pre-occupying myself so that I would never focus on the negatives of my mindset, always looking for a way to outweigh the negatives so that I'd never had to worry about the stress of it. It isn't a lie to say that the stress isn't still there, but from doing these things, I was able to mitigate the severity of my stress and allow myself to be able to want to get proactive once again. I also started eating more healthy and I had asked many people around for advice on what to do, with much of it cheering me up and being quite helpful for me. Thanks to the many scholarship opportunities that are available to us students, I simply had to take some time to look around, because many students don't realize that these opportunities exist, and to seize these opportunities at the moment you see them.
    Bold Patience Matters Scholarship
    Being Patient comes with many benefits to life in general. Being patient in life allows us to take time to think our futures through. To make mistakes and take the time to understand why we messed up, and to take time to get stronger from those past mistakes. Being patient is important to me because it taught me that there was no need to rush on planning my entire life out. Life can sometimes be a very rocky path that takes time to navigate through and you need to be patient in order to be able to plan for missteps that may or may not happen in life. For me, being patient allowed me to refocus on what I wanted to do, and to recalibrate the steps needed to get to that point. This is why I plan on being more patient in the future as I also have the support of family and friends to do what I want in the future.
    Pro-Life Advocates Scholarship
    When it comes to the idea of pro-life, this is a subject that is highly debated in this day and age. This is because many women, who are subjected to rape or other crimes and end up getting pregnant from these events, end up going for an abortion due to the ability of not being able to care for said child, or wanting to. Although I do sympathize with these many victims, I still believe that life is a life. I believe that the reason why I think this way is because I used to be one who would explore forests and nature to just get away from stress and many other thoughts. While I was out there, I had seen a mother bird give life to a new baby bird as it had just hatched from its egg. When I had heard that baby bird first chirp, I had kept thinking, "what would've happened if that egg had never hatched?". It made me realize that if that baby bird had never hatched from its egg, it never would've seen the light of day. It would have never had an impact on the world. It would never have been able to spread its wings and fly around for a chance to live life for what it is. This can also be applied to children and humans in this case. If a child were to be aborted, that child would never have had the chance to see life for what it is, never being able to experience anything, which is why I believe that every organism should have the right to live on this planet. When I had experienced this, I started to spread this idea around to many friends and even some family members. Sometimes when meeting new people, I even tend to try to pull it up in conversations as a way to share my experiences with them, hopefully giving them another insight on this topic or even being able to change the way they feel about that topic. I was also thinking about joining pro-life rallies for supporting a cause like this. One idea that I had thought about when it comes to supporting pro-life is to pay the person who is having the child. This way they'd have a financial reason to keep the child or have an incentive for allowing that child to survive. They'd also be able to have their child and put them up for adoption, which is what I believe many families currently do in this day and age. In conclusion, I am an advocate for pro-life and I think that I will always be. When I grow up, I want to use the skills that I've gained from my university and make a change in the world. A world where every human has the ability to live in this day and age without worries.
    Bold Self-Care Scholarship
    When it comes to the topic of self-care, I physically and mentally take care of myself by doing exercise. My exercise routine usually consists of 3 repetitions of 20 curl-ups, followed by 3 repetitions of 15 push-ups. Sometimes I would also take a jog around my neighborhood, or as a replacement, run in place for half an hour. Usually when I exercise, a lot of doubts and stress on my mind tends to be relieved, allowing me to be more mentally stable. Exercise also helps me get fit the more I tend to repeat my routine. This impacts my life because I had recently entered a phase of depression where I was sleeping in much more, I had so many thoughts in my head where I just didn't have any motivation to want to do anything. After doing exercise, getting myself more active, and just wanting to always have something to do, it's kept me a lot more focused on things and it allowed for me to clear my head. Thank you again for this opportunity of allowing me to express who I once was and how I was able to fight past it.
    Undergraduate Minorities in STEM Scholarship
    My Career Goals currently consist of 2 main things. My first career goal is to become a professional in Computer Engineering or an IT Specialist. My second career goal is to use my skills as one of these professions to help the state of New York function more efficiently and safer. I plan to do this by joining the Metropolitan Transportation Authority as a Level 1 Computer Specialist and slowly work my way up to being a Level 4 specialist, further helping out in other tasks and providing the people of New York with more efficient times, and safer IT Security.
    SkipSchool Scholarship
    "If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered." Stephen Hawkings will always be one of my most favorite scientists in the world. This is because he was always exploring past the boundary of what was possible, teaching many others to break the fourth wall and see what's past it.
    Act Locally Scholarship
    A change that I want to see in my community specifically is a place that's more sanitary, clean, and a more beautiful environment. The reason I say this is because of the amount of litter and garbage that gets bundled up around New York, as well as the use of many non-natural foods that are served to the common people. What many don't realize, is that when garbage tends to build up, many blockades are created. This causes direct consequences, such as during rainfall, water is not able to enter the sewers, causing it to flood areas where there is more trash buildup. When flooding occurs, water can buildup to dangerous height levels, also sometimes causing basements to get flooded with the amount of water trying to go through the sewers. This creates a long chain of effect where a simple garbage buildup can lead to the endangerment of many lives, especially with how unaware people are of this. One other problem that I would like to address is the use of GMOs in our society. GMOs stands for Genetically Modified Organisms, simply meaning that many animals and plants that are used in our daily lives are not naturally created. These organisms are usually injected with chemicals that force them to produce more of a quantity, which is both morbid and unhealthy for the many Americans who continuously eat it without knowing where it originally came from. Many Americans who have seen the truth of this are usually mortified by the videos of this posted on the web, fighting for change, so I simply want to raise awareness for these types of subjects. Now you're probably wondering, how have I helped our society then? Well, let me talk about my experiences. During my first two summer jobs, I've applied under the RDRC (Rockaway Development & Revitalization Corporation). The RDRC gives summer internships to many students between the ages of 16-24 who are looking for ways to improve their community as well as getting paid for it on the side. With the RDRC, in the year of 2018, I've contributed to trash pickup for an entire 2 months, helping to clean up the major amounts of waste that is usually left around. As I was working to pick up waste, many people who walked by gave their appreciation to me as I gladly thanked them and got more motivated to continue picking up waste. My second job, which I applied for in the next year of 2019, I was deployed to the Rockaway Youth Task Force. The RYTF is devoted to monitoring the streets of Rockaway, helping their communities in many different ways. Some of these includes projects such as building, construction, engineering, and many other things. It's a great way for students to learn new skills as well as benefitting the community by helping out. For me, I was deployed to an urban farm which was also a community garden. When I worked there, I was assigned with weeding the fields, watering the plants, collecting chicken eggs, and every Saturday, we'd open up a small shop near the farm, in which we'd sell many of the fruits, vegetables, and our own custom made hot sauce from the peppers that we grew. Throughout both of these experiences, I gained a different perspective of our earth that I think everyone should see. I encourage anyone reading this essay to go out and make a positive change in our community, whether it be through a simple thing such as picking up waste, to contributing in bigger projects that would help the community for a longer timespan. Thank you once again for this opportunity to share my experiences.