Lehigh University

I intend to major in mechanical engineering with a minor in entrepreneurship. I'm in the early stages of designing a portable optical machine to produce durable eyeglass frames through my non-profit. The resources and opportunities at Lehigh–from the Baker Institute to the Hatchery, LehighSiliconValley program, Interdisciplinary Research Institutes, and faculty mentorship–will help me make my optical device a reality.

At Lehigh's full-day VIEW program, I learned about the TE Capstone program that follows the IPD process created at Lehigh. This program offers the opportunity to work with an interdisciplinary team on real-world, industry-sponsored projects, such as medical devices or electric motor brakes, and allows students to put theory into practice.

In addition to academics, Lehigh offers many clubs that interest me, including Formula SAE and ASME. Fitness and competitive sports will always play a central role in my life, so I plan to join club soccer and golf.

Whispers and giggles in the dark. I step on a knee and climb up to the blue awnings above the elementary school playground. Lying flat on our backs with eyes pointed to the sky, we are eager for a glimpse of the twinkling lights above. Surrounded by my best friends, my squad, my people, my family-I never feel more at home. Free from the world below, nothing is off-limits. Our hopes, dreams, and fears are shared as the stars reflect off our eyes.

Other times I contemplate the stars in solitude. My mind quiets, the wheels stop churning, and I am alone with my thoughts. Staring up at the night sky filled with balls of burning gas, I realize those stars are a window into the past-millions of years ago. My brain immediately wanders to what Earth was like when those stars were still burning. Humans weren't roaming. The ideas I love to analyze were not yet conceived. The history books I love to read weren't written. Human history, our history, hadn't even started.

For that magical moment, lying there and gazing up at those stars, I can catch my breath. I escape from a world that only seems to get busier and more stressful every day. Looking up in wonder, I feel nothing but peace. Stargazing brings me joy.

Hirigana's grace, katakana's vigor, kanji's wisdom.

Hand-lettering these Japanese scripts in a Kyoto calligraphy class showed me typography's power to elicit emotion. I found thrilling nuance in the tiniest details, from the precision spacing of raised ink onto washi to the personality injected through stylized kamon. This glimpse sparked my obsession with how fonts can subconsciously shape our perceptions and decisions.

I started noticing typography's silent hand everywhere-in PowerPoint's default Calibri telegraphing monotony; in my favorite book covers' fluid hand-lettering whispering imagination. Diving into research papers and TED talks on font psychology, I learned how our split-second reactions to typefaces are informed by biases like the availability heuristic-judging a font's meaning by the ease of associating it with past experiences (hence why I feel like a 5-year-old when reading something in Comic Sans).

Soon I was conducting my own experiments, probing into how design choices engage audiences. While refining Codin's app interface, I was eager to iteratively A/B test not just layouts but subtle typographic elements-provoking amused head shakes from my team when I insisted on quantitatively evaluating the "spark joy" levels of various fonts. I also began leveraging typefaces to craft the narrative of my videos-using modern serifs to connote progress in how-to tutorials and whimsical scripts to evoke wanderlust in travelogues.

And now, the detective-like thrill of uncovering the hidden messages conveyed in the typefaces all around us-from highway billboards to restaurant menus-has trained my mind to find joy in the subtle details.

In climbing, if you're trying hard, you spend a lot more time falling down than actually going up; more time at the bottom looking up than at the top looking down. It's a sport that requires patience and perseverance, and where failure means you're pushing yourself. Apart from incredible physical strength, climbing requires technique and being able to quickly solve puzzles–reading routes. I suppose that is why I love it. Everything I do, I go full-throttle. Climbing pushes me to break down mental and physical barriers. I enjoy finding solutions to problems, putting the puzzle pieces together, reading the moves on a climb. I can work on something hard for weeks, months even, to finally see it come together perfectly. I read the route, try the beta, fall often, reevaluate, and try a different approach. The only way I get better is by trying routes so hard that I fall.

My great-grandpa's eyes twinkle as my 5-year-old self struggles to stir the giant pot of cioppino. Like this traditional seafood dish, I too am an Italian-American originating from California.

My very loud family crowds my house each holiday, relegating me to an air mattress, a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make. The rooms fill with stories and laughter as we down pizzelles and compete in a cutthroat cookie-decorating contest.

Likewise, my California beginnings, though brief, had a sizable impact on my life. I was a year old when we left, but California's adventurous culture is part of my identity, reinforced by annual trips to visit relatives. From hiking San Jacinto Peak, to days at Disneyland, where my grandparents and mom worked, each excursion left me giddily exhausted.

The true centerpiece of our get-togethers isn't the cioppino, but the stories and experiences that connect us as family.