Earlier versions of me.

There are some nights when I lie in bed. Everything around me is calm and quiet, but everything inside of me is flying around at impossible speeds.

This was the first and most powerful unbreakable law that I was ever told.

I sat through that seminar as a high school junior and suddenly, that unbreakable law from my childhood was called into question.

For the first time in my life, I had truly given myself permission to be extraordinary.

I sent a capsule carrying 2 cameras into near-space with a weather balloon.

I did all of this, and when college decision letters came out, I was rejected from 7 of the 8 schools that I applied to.

I announced my own information session on the school announcements several times and got permission to use the auditorium. … About 70 or 80 students and even a few parents arrived to hear me talk. A few days later, I was accepted to USC’s engineering program.

At last, I am awake and, finally, I can sleep soundly.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” – Marianne Williamson

My passion is helping people. Throughout my life, I have also enjoyed building creative solutions to problems or starting random projects for fun. In the classroom, my favorite and best subjects have always been mathematics and physics. As a third grader, I had already set my mind on becoming an inventor. As I got older, I realized that an inventor is actually just another name for an engineer and that’s where I am today, honing skills that will allow me to create technology that can better lives on a potentially huge scale.

I am grateful for where I am today and know many people who are not as fortunate as I am, but I think it is vital to understanding who I am, my motivations, and what I wish to achieve. Both of my parents came to the US as dirt poor teenage immigrants. They are extremely hard workers and each started their own businesses, a Chinese fast food restaurant and a salon. Each spent about 70-90 hours a week working for much of my childhood. I am the oldest of 5 children and I took on a parental role at home from an early age. My parents, who never had the opportunity to go to college, show me a huge amount of respect and trust me to make good decisions. I’ve grown up close enough to the poverty line to get free or reduced lunches for most of my life. I didn’t go to a great high school. It wasn’t terrible compared to my peers back home but relative to students at USC, it was.

By helping to raise my siblings, I attained much of my self-confidence early on and used this to help even more people around me. I’ve entered situation after situation in which I started off being seen as “the weak” and end up helping the group as “the strong”. I’m here, at a great University, now and I eagerly learn so that I can again catch up to the best. Once again, I am “the weak” with a sparser technical background than many of my talented peers but try giving me a chance and I may surprise you.