eRes Course Resources

“Mom, there is a customer who wants an egg-roll,” I say. “Can’t you see I’m busy, charge it if you want to!” mom yells back. I was nine-years old, and never handled a cash register before. Timidly I examined the buttons on the cash register and found the one labeled “egg-roll”; pressing the button the screen flashed “$1.10.” The customer paid with two dollars and I returned ninety cents. My mom was born in Guangzhou, China and my dad was born in Hong Kong. Due to life circumstances, both of them immigrated to Venezuela and there they met, on the other side of the world. Later on they moved to Puerto Rico, where me and my brother where born. Originally my dad went to Puerto Rico with some friends to start a plastic bag factory. After the factory was closed, my dad took over a Chinese restaurant. Every day after school, I will go to the restaurant and spent all day there until closing time to go back home with my parents. Eventually I was able to start helping in the restaurant and ended up being the cashier of the business. Since then, I was the cashier of the restaurant for the next 8 years. Working next to my parents since a very young age and being exposed to the real world made me understood the value of money and the hardship people faced everyday in order to feed their family. Even though my brother and I were born in Puerto Rico, we are “Asian” and a minority in a Latino country. We were the only Asian students of our classes. Usually children get their parents to help them with their homework; this was not the case in my family. My parents’ early migration caused them to abandoned school in order to work; therefore a lack of educational background was present. Additionally, my mom speaks no English and is barely fluent in Spanish. Dad was able to help, but was often too busy working. I was left to be the one who helped my younger brother with his homework. During my High School years, I knew I wanted to study in the States. I understood the importance of extracurricular activities and through different clubs and organizations I found several passions. To my biggest discovery Oratory became one of them. I participated in Spanish Oratory competitions and surprised many people being the only Asian participant and went from 12th place in the first year to 2nd place in my last year of competition. Discovering passions for volunteering and art, made me to start considering my future or at least what I wanted to study in college. I started looking for summer programs opportunities in the United States. I was rejected to the first program I applied. Even though I was really upset I later on learned that some things happen for a reason. I ended up being accepted in an Engineering program at the University of California, Berkeley. Trough the LEAD SEI (Leadership, Education, and Development Summer Engineering Institute) program, I worked with an organization called “Engineers Without Borders” (EWB). My project in the program was to use the simplicity of engineering to create new configurations that will improve a wind turbine already created by EWB for people in Guatemala. The process of development of the configurations made me realized I want to be an engineer who will aid society by solving problems that will improve its quality of life. Before this program I had little idea on what I wanted my major to be. I then re-applied for this program for the next summer and applied to an Engineering program in Puerto Rico for the purpose of comparison. Fortunately after these programs I was able to figure out that I wanted to major in Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE). Being accepted at the University of Michigan in the College of Engineering was one of the biggest surprises I had in life. I will be pursuing my degree of IOE but meanwhile I will be working on a sustainability project for third world countries. I am currently a member of “Woven Wind” which is part of “Bluelab” at the University of Michigan. The project I am working on is a small scaled wind turbine designed for a village in Guatemala with one of the purpose being that the people in Guatemala will be able to reproduce it with their own products such as their textiles for the blades. As a future engineer, I would like to keep working on different sustainability projects especially designed for third world countries.