Ever since I was a kid, my curiosity revolved around me asking the hows, whys, and whats of the world, I wanted to know how the world around us was constructed. Luckily, as a member of Gen Z, this information was readily available to me at the press of a button, more particularly the press of two buttons on my family’s TV remote that brought me to channel 71, the Discovery Channel.
It was on the Discovery Channel, that I… discovered that I like watching things get built and there were two distinct shows that did just that.
Mythbusters starred Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman, Grant Imahara (R.I.P.), Tory Belleci, and Kari Byron. On the show, they’d all come together to either prove or disprove myths which they would judge at the end of the episode using their own scoring system of Busted, Plausible, or Confirmed. They’d bring you through the of hypothesizing, prototyping, and testing, which then led to the grand finale where you got to see whether a myth was busted or even better yet if their janky contraption even worked.
HowStuffWorks was another Discovery Channel classic, and it complemented Mythbusters very well. While Mythbusters was pretty chaotic and there was more homegrown engineering done on the show, HowStuffWorks showed the other side of the coin and brought you into the factories of major companies across all industries. There were episodes done with automotive companies, aviation companies, and even more niche things like a firearms company. Through the show, I was able to gain some perspective and appreciation for things that I really only got to see the final product of.
My interest in how things worked continued on to YouTube where I discovered a channel called LinusTechTips when I first learned that you could build your own computer. Linus and his crew’s enthusiasm for technology was contagious and made me even more interested in technology than I already was. I remember writing in my freshman letter to my older self that one of my goals was to build my own computer. I achieved this goal in my junior year of high school and at the beginning of my senior year of high school, I remember going to my college counselor and asking her how I could merge my love for computers and technology with my love for learning how things are created, and that’s when she pointed me in the direction of computer engineering.
At the time I loved the idea because pursuing a degree in computer engineering meant that I would be able to double-dip in learning how to engineer my own software and hardware that I could present to the world. Since then, almost four years later, although I’ve fallen and got back up only to fall again many, many times, I can confidently say that I made the right decision to go on this wild ride that is computer engineering at UH Manoa.