A passion for spreading my ideas
It all began with a passion. A passion for spreading my ideas. A wanting to pour my skills and interests into a career I can put my all into and enjoy every minute. A desire not many other African Americans push for. A yearning to do what I love and make my name be known for it.
The vision of this passion has existed for as long as I can remember. You may be thinking: What sparked this passion from such a young age? Well, being the firstborn, I only had my parents to aspire from. That is until I met technology. I was around age 4 when I could faintly recall being fascinated by how TVs worked, how they broadcast people who were so far away, so quickly. I can vividly remember my first time using a computer. Whether I was playing the classic Polar Bowler game, messing with MP3s with Windows Media Player, watching tutorials and entertainment on YouTube, even journaling and experimenting with Office 2000, there was something about the sheer scope of what you could do with tech that has always intrigued me. I love receiving new tech, from my first PC to my first flip phone to game consoles, to eventually, a smartphone. I’ve always enjoyed tinkering and seeing how much I could do with them. This gave me an edge over almost everyone when it came to operating tech. By the time I entered 5th grade and middle school, I was often the go-to person for my parents and others when it came to troubleshooting and doing new things with tech. In those same years, I took computer classes throughout in which I consistently impressed. I had participated in flyer, Office, problem-solving, and web search competitions in which I’d often win. I perceived this enjoyment and skill as if it were as big of a talent, if not bigger, than my 10-year soccer career, but that’s another thing.
This all leads to my biggest drive in what I achieved with my tech knowledge. In my 7th-grade year, after being in the Science Olympiad, Odyssey of the Mind, Honor Society, and Math League, I wanted to use what I learned from those clubs to try something big. I learned leadership, critical thinking skills, creativity, cooperation, and perseverance through them, which are all essential virtues I live by now. It pushed me to start video editing and game design, which sparked my software ventures. This started to become the focus of my interest in tech. First, presenting the game design idea in particular to my parents wasn’t the easiest as it required quite a bit of money, and they weren’t sure if they’d get much return from it. That didn’t put me down as I kept pushing it until they decided to give me a shot. I immediately installed Unreal Engine 4 and got straight to work, watching tutorials and tinkering with what the software can do. The project I created, “Vengeance,” was a semi-open world game in which the main character, Mitchell, and four other supporting characters go through the hardships of college while struggling with the murder of Mitchell’s dad, amongst an influx of trust and relationship issues. I put up a forum and went around my school for help but ended up getting very little. Only about five of my school friends and two forum people helped.
The script, models, voice clips, code, pictures, and forum I still have to this day, but the project itself, abandoned. This failure became a crucial learning experience as the skills it took, the ones I’ve gained, and my past will forever stick with me. I’m strongly determined to try again very soon. So you must have guessed it: I have a keen interest in the tech field, and this is what gave me the passion. Ambition, perseverance, self-belief, love: these things sparked that passion.