I was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1997. In 2015, I graduated from Needham B. Broughton High School
as a North Carolina Governor's Scholar and Presidential Scholar after being a four-year letter winner on the swim team and being a captain of that team for my last two
years. I was recruited to study and swim at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA and began my
time there in the Fall of 2015. At first, in this new environment, I had trouble finding the motivation
to excel in my studies while balancing swimming on top of my studies. However, a few weeks into my first
computer science class in the fall of my sophomore year, I knew that I had found something I was passionate
about. The power that was at my fingertips was impressive; in just a few keystrokes I could manipulate and
analyze huge sets of data with ease. Furthermmore, I was thrilled with how surprisingly creative the
programming process is. I have always enjoyed creating and building things and since there are so many
different ways to decompose and solve a problem, I discovered that building a program is not so different
from building a table or composing a watercolor.
College Career
Coming in to Washington and Lee, I was intent on majoring in Physics in order to become an engineer.
While I appreciated the academic challenge that these courses presented, I was not passionate about the subject matter.
I pivoted to Computer Science because I wanted to continue to practice the problem-solving skills
which originally drew me to Physics but I was also fascinated with the power that computers can
put to use.
The Classics component of my major happened almost by accident. I had taken Latin throughout high school
and thus was able to skip the first two semesters and start out with an intermediate course focusing on
prose. I jumped on this because it allowed me to finish my language graduation requirement a year early.
The next semester, I took a course taught by Professor Michael Laughy and I was hooked. I knew that I wanted
to continue learning about this topic and hopefully contribute to it one day.
High School
During my sophomore year of high school, I signed up for an automotive technology class mainly to fill
my credit hour requirement, but I was also curious about how a car generates kinetic energy at the
press of a pedal. Throughout the course of the class, I found myself becoming more interested in the
systems at work inside the modern car and how they interact with one another. by the end of the year,
I had decided that I wanted not only to continue my education in the shop, but that I would also take
Honors Physics to explore the underlying physical principles.
Hobbies
Swimming has allowed me to hone my work ethic and develop character traits such as leadership,
teamwork and discipline. As a team mate, I have been expected to fill a role on the team to
help us achieve something together that none of us would be able to achieve alone. Fulfilling
this role requires a commitment of more than 20 hours a week to grueling practices,
fast-paced meets and most importantly building relationships outside of the pool.
In addition to being a member of the team, I have held a number of leadership positions across
these teams. As a captain of my high school team, I led our 400 yd Freestyle relay to break
a 26-year-old record at the NCHSAA 4A High School State Championship meet. On my club team,
I was tasked with the more arduous job of holding the team together in a turbulent time when
we were forced out of our long-time training facility by another team to whom we lost a
significant number of athletes. Now, as a Senior Leader for the Washington and Lee swim team,
I am joined with some of my classmates in planning recruitment activities, promoting goodwill
among team mates and generally serving as a buffer between the coaching staff and my team mates.
I picked up origami in my free time because I was fascinated by the way that a number of folds
completed in a certain order could yield a recognizable figure such as a crane or a star. I
like to think that this was my first introduction to an algorithmic way of thinking. Additionally,
since origami involves applying the folds described in a tutorial to a real piece of paper sitting
in front of you, it helps introduce you to thinking about how software and hardware work together.
