My interest in engineering began before I had a name for it. It was in the satisfaction I got from taking something inefficient and improving it. Whether it was fixing a broken weedwacker or finding the ‘best’ way to build my character in a video game, I saw weak points and adjusted them. Even the smallest improvement was meaningful to me. My experience at Cristo Rey has shown me that this instinct of optimizing systems could also be applied to people, including myself.
I’ve always been very comfortable with math because it felt ‘right’. It was straightforward, unlike English. In my freshman year, I was looking at a whopping 14% compared to Algebra’s 100%. I was not incapable, I was just paralyzed by perfectionism. Call it analysis paralysis, but whatever it was, it kept me from taking that most important first step. And at this rate I was going to be in trouble if something didn’t change. The open-endedness of writing was like looking at a machine with too many moving parts. Where others saw freedom I saw multiple points of failure. My teacher Ms. Annika was the one who diagnosed my issue, and she told me something to the effect of “Just pick one and do it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be done”. She took this idea that I had already understood as a “first draft” and turned it into a “prototype”, which made more sense to me.
That experience changed how I see and help others. When I tutored my friend Angel in Physics, I didn’t see a lazy person but someone who was just miscalibrated (like I was). For me it was the analysis paralysis, but for Angel it was a poor foundation. He had missed a few key lessons of Algebra and as a result he did not have a solid foundation for physics. It was like trying to find balance on a mountain of compiled shakiness, almost impossible. Angel was very intelligent and naturally curious. He was interested in philosophical ideas, literature, and lore of stories. He understood the logic of physics but just did not have the ‘tools’ to apply it.
Because of the support from the teachers I received here, I’ve gained incredibly helpful insight on how I learn and how others do too. I now approach challenges in the same way I would approach a machine. A flaw doesn’t mean failure, so I approach with curiosity instead of frustration. When I coach my middle schoolers for volleyball, I don’t just look at whether we won or lost but where we struggled exactly. Do we need more practice with passing, serving, footwork? If something isn’t working, that just means it needs to be recalibrated to fit them. Engineering taught me how to improve machines, but Cristo Rey taught me how to optimize myself and invest in others.
