In search of a cool job title by Anthony

In search of a cool job title by Anthony - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

It was around the third or fourth month of first grade. They asked, "Alright everyone what do you want to be when you grow up?". Being the nervous child I was, I hadn't really figured any of this out yet, all I had really hoped for is that the job title would sound cool. When they came around to ask me, I quietly pointed toward my shirt which had a picture of a biplane sewn onto it, unknowing that airplane drivers are actually called pilots. Of course, the name pilot didn't quite suit the immensely cool job name I envisioned myself having, and I sat confused, thinking I had just made the wrong choice.

Luckily though, my first grade decision wasn't binding, or I'd be taking pilot lessons right about now. Some time later during third grade, my parents bought me these large hardcover booklets about sea life, from that point on I knew that being a marine biologist or even a dinosaur marine biologist was my destiny. Now that would've been a cool job title. My visions of marine biology held strong as I embraced a hobby of origami, with which I would fold paper making all sorts of ocean creatures: Crabs, sharks, lobsters, even little sea urchins.

As time went on I began to focus more on my studies in math and science throughout school. Always enjoying math, I began to think that my future career must certainly be rich in the interesting machinations of math. This led me down a path of engineering when I first entered high school, I thought it would be the perfect job, designing the future with math and science as I did with Legos when I was younger. Part of what inspired me so much towards engineering was a game I played called Kerbal Space Program, prompting you to create large rockets with power and communication systems and launch them towards other planets.

Throughout high school I expected that my path would be aerospace engineering, perhaps I could work towards the production of propulsion engine or satellite design. Despite all my ambitions however, my passions began to take a small shift. I joined my schools UIL Science team after having found my place in the realm of math and science, but I never expected for it to drive my interest in physics so strongly. All of a sudden I was exposed to all sorts of new phenomena, relativity, nuclear decay, electricity, magnetism, or even quantum physics. I had to learn the mathematics behind all these different phenomena to help our team win the UIL State Science competition, and my drive for competition was roaring. My thirst for the competition thrust physics into this new pedestal in my life. Now, I'm planning to enter the University of Texas at Austin to study physics, to which I've even thought about going into graduate school to do independent research in the future.

Throughout my humble beginnings simply hoping for a cool job title, I've discovered things that I can truly feel passionate about, things I can do to make a difference in the world, through science. Whether or not the title "Physicist" would've sounded cool to me back in first grade, I can assuredly say that I would've found the job itself to be wholeheartedly awesome.