ACS Periodic Table wallet card given to me by my AP Chemistry teacher.

After taking the AP Chemistry exam, my teacher for the course gave everyone in my class one of these cards. The two chemistry courses I took in high school were the most challenging and frustrating I had ever taken. Despite all this I found them to also be the most rewarding, and the AP class especially fostered my love for science. It wasn’t until I read this card, specifically “Proud To Be a Chemist”, that I realized I was or could be a scientist. To me, this card is a reminder of the hard work I put into this class and signifies my realization of wanting to be a scientist (and an engineer).

MATLAB textbook.

My artifact from the AU15 semester is my MATLAB textbook from my Fundamentals of Engineering class. Programming was something that I thought I would not understand and something I did not think I would like. As someone who is often nervous to try new things, MATLAB boosted my confidence. Over the semester, my proficiency grew. By the last few weeks of the semester, MATLAB had become the most enjoyable of my homework assignments, and I found that I could quickly and masterfully create code for a variety of applications. I even found I could easily help my friends debug and correct their own code. Now MATLAB makes sense to me, and it reminds me to have an open and excited opinion on trying new things.