The deep gnarl of chainsaws. The cling-cling of hammers striking nails. In my world, this cacophony is commonplace.

For the first half of my life, my family owned and lived in a motel in Baraboo, Wisconsin that we were seeking to expand. Consequently, I grew up with my home, the motel, surrounded by excavators and concrete mixers, and after school, would frequently help my father in grouting floor tiles, rewiring light fixtures, and installing door frames. I was captivated by this spectacle of the motel evolving—sophisticating — as the construction unfolded.

Although the construction work became absent after moving to Illinois, the craft of building did not. My father—who is a repair mechanic—brings home unneeded spare parts or broken instruments that he collects from his workplace every week. I devote my weekends to dismantling these outdated and non-functioning electronics, curious to understand the intricate circuitry that once provided them with life. With the components I obtain from disassembly, I often attempt to build something new: a matrix alarm clock, remote-controlled miniature monster truck, and even a rudimentary CNC plotter.

At the beginning of high school, seeking to further my interest, I joined Science Olympiad, a competition through which I was able to learn more about circuitry, programming, and computer-aided manufacturing. Through the past four years on the team, I have spent hundreds of hours building robot arms, electric cars, air-cushion vehicles, and Rube Goldberg machines. For these, I developed extensive code to input data from sensors and potentiometers, and output it as movement through servomotors. I have won many national medals for what I have made in this competition.

Once I acquired a grasp of the practical aspects of electrical engineering and computer science with microcontrollers, I then sought to comprehend the theoretical aspects of these disciplines. After completing AP Physics C, multivariable calculus, and linear algebra in school, I am now taking a digital electronics class as well as computer science courses at my local community college.

This background of living—also working—on a construction site and spending my free time building contraptions is perhaps unusual for a skinny girl barely above five feet tall. But from it, I have developed an infatuation with making, with creating a design and having it evolve into a tangible object—something that I hope to continue doing for the rest of my life.

In the future, I plan on majoring in electrical engineering and computer science, seeking to study signal processing, electromagnetics, and computation structures in order to thoroughly understand the mechanics of microprocessors. During and beyond college, I hope to do research involving the improvement of central processing units as well as work at the forefront of technological innovation, at a company that specializes in creating computer hardware.

Last December, I was accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a dream that amazingly transformed into reality. A large proportion of what I have accomplished so far has been made possible through hard work and grit, as well as access to materials/equipment from the junk pile at my father’s workplace. However, accepting the opportunity to go to MIT, for my family, will require a lot more than that. Even with financial aid, attending MIT as of now seems somewhat unrealistic: with a scholarship, I hope to make this aspiration more attainable.