In high school, I spent much of my time volunteering in the World Languages Department, specifically with Spanish. I had a number of tasks each daygrading, printing, and digitizing older, typewritten documentsbut the most engaging aspect by far was the informal tutoring. It was very much a two-way learning process. And whether I had to provide brief clarification or sit down with a student for a full period, the end result was always the same: the students and I generally left knowing more about the subject than we did before talking. It wasn't until my first year of college that I also began assisting some of my friends with their math courses. As I'd had little to no experience tutoring math, I didn't know how much help I could be, but struggling through problems with them proved useful.

What I'm looking for in my career is exactly the same as what I looked for in a university: something where I could work and learn as a civil engineer, that would also allow me to continue to use the less practical, more artistic side of my brain. Visual arts and foreign languages have been an enormous part of my life so far, and ideally, I'd be able to incorporate them into my future jobs. Currently, I plan to specialize in transportation engineering at Columbia University. Having already spent a year in the nation's largest city, I feel I'll better to be able to use my knowledge and skillset to help improve whichever urban setting I end up in.

When I'm not busy doing schoolwork, I try my best to get off campus and explore New York or simply sit down and draw a portrait of one of my idols. Even though those activities in themselves may be stressful at times, they're a nice break from the dense readings and problem sets. Other possibilities include either learning new foreign languages such as Arabic or self-immersing to retain my fluency of Spanish and Portuguese.

In general, there's something rewarding about seeing my role, no matter how small, in others' progress. One of the most important things I've learned is that it's not necessary to know every single detail about a certain subject, because no one really does. What is exceedingly important, however, is the ability to work around what we don't know.