Searching For Green

Then is finally happened I exceeded what my mom was able to teach me and longed to be around others my same age. So I enrolled in public school for 8^th grade. What a shock that was, here I was a skinny little kid going into a school where I knew only one person. But a quickly made friends and excelled in the honors classes. But many of us were still bored and used our free time to create fantasy world in role playing games during recess. This also marked a time period were I created two separate groups of friends, the looser crowd I surfed with after school and the geeks I hung out with in class and during school. Being able to blend in and accept and be accepted by either group seemed easy to me at the time but was instrumental in my attitude toward accepting people as they are and finding the unique qualities that each person has.

After a year in public schools I was ready to go it alone again and pulled out of the public school system for another two years. Then during what would have been my Sophomore year one of my best friends joined a new Solar racing club at the school. They had a grant to build a solar car and race against other local high schools. I participated a little but was restricted from doing many things because I wasn’t a full time student. The group went on the win the local race and traveled to Australia for the world solar challenge placing first in the high school category.

So junior year I enrolled in school so I could participate fully in this solar car program. We set about securing funds to build a brand new vehicle based on the learning’s of the first. We managed to secure a grant from the Bank of America in exchange for being part of a commercial for their entry into the State of Hawaii. Through the guidance of some amazing people like Budd Steinhilber, Bill Woerner, and Bill McKown I became the team leader and helped organize a team of all volunteer students in designing and building a second generation solar vehicle. I was consumed by the project and spent every waking moment thinking about ways to go further and make it better. Then we were shocked to be excluded for the US tour de sol race because the director of the department of energy had made a decision that only colleges would be allowed to participate. Felling that we were ready for that event and more we embarked on the planning for a first time every cross continental journey that would take us from the west coast to the east coast on Solar power alone.

After months of preparation seven students and three advisors departed Long Beach California on what was to become a 3421 mile journey across the country taking 51 days to reach the coast of Delaware marking the first time that a High school sola car had traveled across the country from coast to coast. This trip hardened me to leadership and made me think on my feet constantly. The advisors constantly pushed me as the student lead to make decisions that would affect the safety of morale of the others. I learned I enjoyed leading by helping others, by jumping in and being the first one to do the hard work and motivating and inspiring the rest to give it everything they had too.

That trip also marked the end of my high school experience and I returned from Delaware tired and ready for a break before heading off to college. I choose to take a year off and recharge my batteries, while trying to figure out what I wanted to study in college. Upon returning to Hawaii Budd Steinhilber pulled me aside and asked what I wanted to do, stuck I answered Electrical engineering. He showed me his portfolio and introduced me the field of Industrial Design. This was what I had been looking for and knew then and there that I needed to go to a school that I could study it at.