Cathy Kim

If you asked me in middle school what I was good at, I probably wouldn't have been able to give you a confident answer. I was a student with good grades, played tennis moderately well, and played the flute in band. I had dipped my toes in several different fields and was a well-rounded student, but not exceptional in any one thing.

Flash forward to high school. When I got to high school, my favorite subjects soon became calculus and physics. I worked hard to make the top scores in my school but that wasn't enough for me. As a student constantly fascinated by the real-life applications of physics and calculus, I decided to join the robotics club at our school. My first year in robotics, as the only girl in a male-dominated field, I often felt that my ideas were overlooked or not taken seriously. I decided to push past this frustration and worked hard to emerge as the team leader. This year, I was able to form our school's first all-girls robotics team. After working to form my team and recruit members, my team is now composed of thirteen bright and driven girls. The initial forecast didn't look good for us as we held the least experience out of all of the teams. However, pushing past the presumption that we would be at a disadvantage, we have built an impressive robot that can undoubtedly squash the competition at any given setting and proudly took home first place at our most recent competition.

Being a well-rounded person is important, however, my aspirations in life has become more distinct. My interests in the hard sciences and math pointed me in the direction of engineering. In the future, I aspire to be a biomedical engineer that can incorporate robotics into developing new technology for the field of medicine.