The Astronomical Engineer

Imagine being a little girl who was weirdly obsessed with the moon and night time. Any time you could, you would just look at it and admire it. You even named your blanket “Nighty Nighty”. One day your dad calls your mom to bring you outside and see the moon. Expecting to see a white rock in the sky, you see that it’s turned a reddish-brown! This interesting phenomenon, a lunar eclipse, wasn’t something I could see often, which kept a little girl like me hyperfixated for years ahead. I just had to shoot for the moon.

Throughout my time in school, I had trouble paying attention in class. Whenever I’d come home from school, all my attention would go to watching astronomy videos, specifically from YouTubers like Anton Petrov. This went on for years until quarantine hit during my junior year of high school. I took things a step further and started connecting what I learned to reality. Though the city is very light polluted, it’s not impossible to see some stars if you adjust your eyes to the dark. Being able to connect what I learned to real, tangible things I could see with my own eyes was another feeling. Realizing that every dot in the sky was a star just like our Sun but further away was very eye-opening. We really are just on a floating planet in the middle of nowhere.

I originally decided to pursue dentistry in college, but many of my friends kept mentioning that they felt I wasn’t as passionate about dentistry, and they were right. Being an engineer for a space agency connected with me more. The problem was, I wasn’t ever good at math. The best I was at the time was memorizing 121 digits of pi, and I did well in geometry. Eventually, I decided to do engineering because I figured I just had to try harder to make a real effort to achieve my dreams. I wasn’t able to change my major to engineering, but ironically I decided to major in math since the curriculum would help me graduate sooner and would establish a foundation, making it easier to learn engineering later.

For my classes, I thought that all I had to do was attend in person classes, take notes, and then all the information would just go in my head. However, after struggling with math for my whole life, I wasn’t going to automatically become good at it. It took great effort from me to keep up. I thought to myself a few times that I could just change my major to something easier so I could graduate with better grades. However, getting good grades means nothing when I’m not happy about what I’m doing. I wasn’t happy when I struggled with math, but I knew that continuing to push through would bring me closer to my dreams.

At university, I felt lonely and homesick. To escape from struggling, I’d go on walks to the school’s nature preserve by myself to learn more constellations and tried teaching some new friends about them. I had to remind myself why I kept going. I joined my school’s astronomy club as a means to get closer, and was happy to see people who shared an interest like I did.

Eventually I signed up to be the publicist and historian of the club, before being offered the position of president for my senior year. Also during that time, I decided to take a step forward and start sharing astrophotos (photos of space or astronomical events) that I took across the university. I hoped that whoever saw my photos would be inspired and admire space as much as I do. I also joined a robotics organization during my senior year, where we learned how to design and build battle robots to fight each other. I had absolutely no engineering experience, but I tried it out anyway because it was a good learning experience for my future and provided me with essential engineering skills.

The Artistic Engineer

Before I learned to write, I picked up a pencil and started drawing to express myself. One of my earliest drawings was based on the night when I saw the refraction of a setting crescent moon while in my dad’s car, but the drawing has unfortunately been lost to time. I wanted to remember that cool moment, so I drew a 2-D car with that moon on a piece of paper. My family and I laugh about it to this day because I only drew myself and my dad in the car. Since my mom was next to my dad in the drawing, she wasn’t visible.

Growing up, I kept drawing things that told the stories of whatever I imagined. The style I used changed depending on what I was fixated on at the time. For example, when I was obsessed with My Little Pony, I kept drawing characters and scenes from the show. Instead of going to art school, I critiqued myself throughout the years on how to improve. When YouTube became more popular, I started watching animation and speedpaint channels. I was so intrigued by the art they made that I asked my mom for a dedicated drawing tablet. After getting it, I kept drawing using different softwares and experimented with different styles. I drew my own characters that I imagined and made the background very space-like, since I enjoy astronomy a lot.

Besides digital art, I also oil paint landscapes and sketch my characters. Realism and portraits are not my style; instead, my creativity really shows when I paint celestial bodies. One of my best pieces is “Totality (8th of April)”, which is a collage based on the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. I had this day marked on my calendar for 8 years and was extremely motivated to see it. That day was one of the happiest days of my life, so I wanted to preserve it through my painting.

A Different Perspective to Engineering

My goal is to someday work at a space agency like NASA. As mentioned before, I am extremely passionate about astronomy, which is shown in my artworks. People are usually either “left-brained” and good at math, engineering, and science, or they’re “right-brained” and are intuitive and creative. I tend to be more right-brained since I was always naturally good at art, which makes me struggle at grasping engineering and math. But similarly to engineers, I’m good at solving problems. I like to apply my creativity to think of my own solution instead of using logic and analytics. I’m hoping that my artistic skills and creativity can help bring a different perspective to engineers. Engineering may be a bit unnatural to me, but I’m very motivated to learn new things that I’m not used to and open everyone’s mind to the point of view of someone who thinks differently than them.

After graduating with a bachelor’s in math, I applied to LaGuardia to do mechanical engineering. I was honestly a little worried to start here because it almost felt like I was going back to square one. So far though, it’s been a month, and I’ve had a very good experience here. The workers are super helpful and have so many resources that they ensure you take advantage of. I’ve been open to talking to so many new people, which has helped me come out of my shell and improve. At times, I still struggle to keep up with my classes here, but I have so much support to keep me going and do better. I’m very excited to say that I’m finally accelerating on my journey to shoot for the stars.