I was singing in the shower when the door suddenly flew open. My mother burst in, excitedly talking about a new piano piece and what an amazing opportunity it could be. I blurted out “yes,” and two days later, I was at my piano lesson hearing the terrifying details of what I’d actually agreed to. I had to learn an eight-minute piece, which would normally take me two months with hours of daily practice, in only five weeks, two of which were during finals at school. And I was going to perform it, Étude No. 17, in front of its composer, the Philip Glass, at a public concert!
When I listened to the piece, my fears melted away. It was beautiful, complex, and elegant. There were clashing time signatures, a surprising and brilliant major-key section, and the cliffhanger—my God—the cliffhanger! Despite the short timeframe, I was far from discouraged. Emotion would be the driving force of my performance; I was hooked.
The following summer, on the first day of my robotics internship, I was sitting with my boss as he pulled up the websites for two software packages that I had never seen before.
“All you need to automate our camera unit-tests are Jenkins and Docker,” he explained. As I read through the documentation, the gravity of the project hit me: I needed to learn two completely new software packages, one of which used a coding-language I’d never even heard of, to design an entire automation pipeline from scratch. Adrenaline rushed through me as I realized this would actually be a fun challenge. I had been given an objective, the path to which would be designed and built on a vision I did not yet have. I smiled at the possibilities.
Something happens when I’m pursuing a creative activity. My brain locks itself into a bunker, free of clocks, phones, and snack breaks. I’d sit at the piano and struggle to sight-read through the étude for hours until I could play it from memory, eventually moving onto refining the emotion. At my internship, I’d start working a problem before lunch, and when my code finally came together, my co-workers would be packing to go home.
I’ve been losing myself in my creativity since I was little: four-year-old me sitting down to play the piano keys that I’d strained to reach my whole life; traveling the outer rim of the galaxy in a spaceship (made of leftover cardboard); designing a logo in second grade for my very own small business (a secret agency); building a LEGO robot gauntlet on the living room floor; composing electronic music; designing album covers; filming, writing, costume-designing, directing, and editing a short film in just three days. Creativity has always been a way for me to communicate most authentically.
Technology and the arts may seem like different realms, but to me, they’re the perfect outlets for my inspiration. I feel very lucky to have two passions; they’ve brought me joy and have driven me to face challenges I otherwise might have believed impossible.
Despite the butterflies, I nailed the performance in front of Philip Glass himself, and the work I gave my boss became the foundation for an entirely new automation process at his company. But these rewards are merely the “cherry on top”; the milkshake itself is the journey from the inconceivable to the tangible—that’s what nourishes me. I’ve continually thrown myself at tasks that seemed insurmountable at first, only to come out with a greater sense of possibility. I can't even imagine the scope of opportunities available in college—and I can't wait to learn everything I can get my hands on. The world is brimming with yet unsolvable problems, from sequencing the human genome with custom hardware to better predicting natural disasters. Although I don't know exactly where or when, my dream is to one day reframe the impossible.