If you told me even just four years ago that I’d be writing a column for “The Weekly,” I would’ve probably called you crazy. I’ve always been focused on technology, and the humanities never really appealed to me. But when I got a text asking me to write a column for the paper, I realized that it might just be a fun way to share my interest with the community. Two years – and quite a few missed deadlines later – here we are.
I’ve been at Parker since JK, and it has given me the opportunity to do many unique things. So I would consider myself pretty capable of giving advice on almost anything Parker. Well, maybe not pranks, but basically any other topic. Which is why I wanted to take the time in my final column for “The Weekly” to share my Parker experience and some advice to the younger classes.
When I said my focus has always been technology, I quite literally mean as long as I can remember. In Lower School, I couldn’t wait for the science fair to show off what I’d learned. Whether it was conductive Play Doh or taking 3D images with my Kinect from my Xbox 360, I was there with my tri-fold board trying to explain a concept that at the time, and somewhat still is, way above my head. But I was having the most fun I could.
Then my life shifted in fourth grade when I first taught myself Python. I could make whatever I wanted just by typing at my desk. The first project I remember vividly was my Colosseum project in Mr. McPharlin’s class. It used Telegram to send facts about the Ancient Roman arena. It was the first time I had people actually use the things I made, and it felt good.
In middle school, I began expanding my ability into web development.I started my biggest project at Parker: The Great Turtle Hiding Game, or GTHG. GTHG started out small, with a few middle schoolers hiding plastic turtles around the school, but now, it has grown so much. I took the time given to me by the pandemic to create a whole website for it and we had almost three-fourths of our grade participating in the pandemic game. Then, in High School, we had games with almost 50 players. It showed me how much a few kids can actually do by themselves at Parker.
Heading into ninth Grade, I began my second largest project: Skilldule. Boy, at the time I didn’t know what I was signing up for with all these cyclic schedules. At the time, I made it mainly for my friends just so that we’d be able to navigate our classes as freshmen. But then Mr. Carlsson heard about it and was nice enough to include it in his opening email. People who I never knew started using it. Going into freshman year – even at a place that you’ve been at for ten years already – can be intimidating, so it was super cool to see upperclassmen using my summer project in the halls during my first week.
It was also at this time that I decided to join FTC Robotics. For those of you who aren’t familiar, FTC starts their freshmen on a rookie team so you can learn as you go. Even though we had almost no idea what we were doing, it was a great way to have fun with my friends doing what I liked to do and even beating out the veteran team.
It was those veterans who I got to know that gave me a spot on their CTC slate the next year and allowed me to further develop my coding skills. Through CTC, I started the 50 Days of CTC, which consists of 50 legitimate events. CTC has also helped me bring some of the ideas I suggested in this very column. We successfully implemented dynamic TVs to display live information in place of the static slideshows that we had.
In tenth grade came PQWS, a geography-based trivia/challenge game. I still can’t believe that we got people to sign up to run around during their breaks, eating whole pizzas at 10 a.m., jumping into dumpsters, or asking to walk a random person’s dog all because a pink box on a site I made told them to.
So I guess this is all to say that the special thing about Parker is the change you can make in it, whether that’s getting people to run around the building looking for turtles, or getting people to run around the city completing challenges, or being allowed to implement real tools into the everyday lives of the people around me.
Parker has given me the opportunity to develop my skills with real world applications that can stand by themselves. The easiest way for me to find problems to solve with code was to look at my everyday life and see what impacted the people around me. I hope that now that my time here is coming to an end, people will still continue to use the solutions I’ve implemented and be able to add their own.
I want to thank everyone that has contributed to me not only finding my love of technology but my love to create and inspire change. I know I want to bring that same energy to Georgia Tech in the fall.
Go Colonels and Go Yellowjackets!