Working in engineering has always been the dream because I love working at the cutting edge of technology. Its a love/hate the feeling when you finish a long project just to find that the sensors in it are already a generation old by now. Plus it's always nice to be able to say “It's only rocket science” when people ask about your projects.
However everything isn't always cupcakes and rainbows when working on this sort of projects, so it's very important to be able to bounce back after a failure. Like when my school's TARC rocket absolutely lawn darted straight into a river and had its entire flight computer and tubing destroyed on impact. But believe it or not, with some backup parts and late night construction (and some top notch leadership ;) ) we were back at it the next week.
My 4 years at Cupertino High School I led my team's shift from dumb unguided and gruelingly manufactured rockets to smart actively controlled rockets. Starting at CHS no one on the team knew how to even assemble a rocket motor but by my 3rd year, under my leadership we made everything from custom flight computer PCBs to functional airbrake systems capable of steering our rocket to an apogee with an accuracy in centimeters. Best part of it all though has to be all the people I met along the way, all the folks I mentored, and the impact made on the generation that came after me, creating a base for them to build on.
But I do more than just high school rocketry! I also have work experience at FruityChutes, a Silicon Valley parachute manufacturer specializing in parachutes and launchers for rocketry and UAV platforms (drones, robotaxis, fixed wing craft, that sort of thing). At FruityChutes I was responsible for assembling parachutes and parachute launcher systems as well as performing quality assurance tasks on a wide variety of products.
