Hi, I’m Ali, a first generation Iranian-American. I am currently a undergraduate student pursuing a Civil Engineering degree with a minor in Computer Science. Here is my story.
As a young kid, I excelled in math and science. I remember in middle school when we would have time tests in math class; these time tests would consist of 50+ addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems. The goal of the time tests were to get as many questions as you can right before time was up. Well, not to toot my own horn, but I was very good at these time tests. A couple of my friends and I would race to see who would finish the time tests first. Of course, I would usually win. To this day, I still think of math problems as a game I’m trying to beat. Throughout my academic years, I never really enjoyed science. I made proficient grades, but I was never fascinated with the different sciences. In fact, I strongly disliked learning about everything besides space. This stigma carried throughout my high school and collegiate years.
Like most kids, I didn’t think realistically about what I wanted to do when I grew up. I was in love with sports, specifically basketball, so I wanted to be a basketball player. The summer going into my freshman year of high school, I was forced to think realistically for the first time. At my high school, there were a lot of interesting electives that students could choose from. Some chose cooking, others chose to do an art or photography class, but I “chose” a class called “Intro to Engineering”. I put chose in quotations because my father signed me up for that class without consulting with me much, knowing that I liked math. I wasn’t happy with him for a few weeks, but as the class went on, I began to really enjoy the critical and abstract thinking that came with the course. Once we started using AutoCad, I was hooked. After that semester, I took a engineering class every semester during my high school years until my last semester senior year.
This background led me to a Lab Assistant position at a local college civil engineering lab during my sophomore and junior years of high school.