I am a freshman engineering student studying Bioengineering with a track in Biomechanics. I am also an international exec lead for the club Engineers without Borders and have been a member since the beginning of my freshman year. We are doing two projects, one to Carijana, Bolivia and another project in Ococona, Nicaragua. The first project is building latrines for every family in the community and the ladder project is to bring a clean and reliable water supply to the community whether it is the dry or wet season. This club has been a major part of my freshman year and has grown me a lot as a student. I am also an out of state student from Connecticut and visiting Pitt was my first trip to Pennsylvania. Growing up in Connecticut I spent a lot of time playing sports, playing tuba in the marching band and hanging out at the beach.
I applied to the University of Pittsburgh in the middle of my senior year with no clue on where I wanted to go to school. Pitt was not number one on my list but once I visited in the spring and saw the Cathedral of Learning, Heinz Field, and the rest of Pittsburgh I knew that I wanted to go to school here. After visiting I applied to live in Forbes Hall, and I have been living there since August. I have spent my time studying, playing frisbee in front of Cathy and exploring every part of Pittsburgh that I can get to using the bus system and my own two feet.
I have been selected to go to China for this Plus3 rotation and I am extremely excited. One of the many things that I am excited about are the Terracotta Warriors. There are 8,000 warriors in military uniform buried near Emperor Qin’s tomb. This was to protect the Emperor in the afterlife. The Army is life size and there are soldiers, horses, and chariots all made of Terracotta. Each soldier has unique facial features and design. The craziest part of all of this is that the army was discovered in 1974 (over 2,000 years after burial) by local farmers outside of Chang’an. I hope to get many things out of this program. I hope to become more responsible due to the staff letting us roam free (to a certain degree) and make decisions for ourselves. Whether it is walking around the city or deciding to walk up the great wall we will have to make decisions for ourselves. Academically I hope to learn from the companies we visit and the people we meet. As a freshman in college I don’t know much about how businesses are ran and we can ask questions in order to learn about what they do to be more efficient and the way management is run.