About Me #2

I recently took the VIA Character Strengths assessment to identify my character strengths and personal qualities which are the strongest and weakest. With this information, I hopefully will be able to better improve my well being by focusing on character strengths I wish to refine. I intend for this post to be a benchmark or a gauge for future reference if I were to retake the VIA Character Strengths test again. My top five were curiosity, fairness, humor, lover of learning, and honesty. I really believe that all of these are quite reflective of who I understand myself to be. I participant in a lot of clubs for the experience, usually without any clear paths for self-gain. This is a combination of curiosity and love of learning as I’m willing to explore anything for the sake of just exploring. The possibility of learning a new skill or improving upon my skills is what drives me step out of my comfort zone. In combination with that, I tend to be extremely honest, specifically to myself but also to others. I often find myself being too honest to others, but I’m still working identifying when it’s the right time to be honest and not. Honestly is extremely important if anyone is trying to improve themselves. You have to first understand the problem before you can propose a solution. This is the same for self improvement, you must understand yourself before you can better yourself. Reflecting on my on personal interest and how all my opportunities came from older peers that took a chance to teach and mentor me, I try to be as fair as I possibility to everyone that I meet. I try not to assume anything of anyone and treat everyone with bias. And to balance it all out, I really enjoy humor. Whether it is, surrounding myself with a lot of funny people or just cracking jokes randomly, it makes the boring parts of my day more interesting and enjoyable for not just me, but also my friends. Being a fair and honest helps my humor, because I am extremely comfortable and accept my mistakes and failures allow me to make fun of myself.

About Me

Hello! My name is JT Yan and I am looking to major in Electrical Engineering. I am currently a member of Humanitarian Engineering Scholars. I spent quite a bit of time in high school making 15lb BattleBots, find a passion for the engineering process. After every competition, I love the fact that I can completely redesign my robot with the lessons I’ve learned and build an even better robot. I led a BattleBots club in the high school that helped others interested in making their own BattleBots and in my senior year, I was an engineer on my schools First Robotics Team. With my team, I’ve found a lot of joy helping people discover their personal love for engineering. It is to my realization that robotics clubs like mine help individuals gain an early experience to high schoolers to what engineering is like, but not everyone comes from a privileged community that’s supportive on spending hundreds of dollars per person to just build and break stuff. It’s my dream to one day deliver that experience to everyone.

Year in Review

[ “Year in Review”  is where you should reflect on the past year and show how you have evolved as a person and as a student.  You may want to focus on your growth in a particular area (as a leader, scholar, researcher, etc.) or you may want to talk about your overall experience over the past year.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

G.O.A.L.S.

Career

[“Career” is where you can collect information about your experiences and skills that will apply to your future career.  Like your resume, this is information that will evolve over time and should be continually updated.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Artifacts

This broken wheel was the only memento of my BattleBot that I brought with me to OSU. This last competition I attended was the AWT Northeast Ohio Regional RoboBots Competition in Spring of 2019. I usually compete at XtremeBots in Dayton, which has a significantly weaker scene, so this competition was extremely challenging. I was able to win two matches before getting absolutely obliterated. This broken wheel was apart of my 4WD system that I had designed to compensate for my weaker and lighter drive motors. This last and final match of my high school career saw both my left and right wheel guards quickly dissembled by the opponent. Not soon after, my exposed wheels became easy prey and I was immobilized and knocked out. This broken wheel reminds me of the process that I’ve grown to love. The engineering cycle, some call it, kept me busy after school and on the weekends as I learned so much building and rebuilding my robots. Some may see my elimination from the brackets at RoboBots as a failure, but I’ve come to love failure as it’s forecasts new a opportunity to learn new things.

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