Background

I first got involved in Scouting when I was in elementary school. A third grader. Essentially, I don't remember living a single day where I wasn't a part of this community. And finally, I have reached the end of my journey as a Boy Scout with this achievement. But I suppose the real journey is still yet to begin. All the skills and knowledge I have gained are meant to carry forward into the next chapter.

The Project

My Eagle Scout project was building a near forty-foot long fence over at Deer Hollow Farm in Cupertino. I spent months planning every detail, from blueprinting the new fence to coordinating work shifts with volunteers. The hardest part? Convincing local officials to trust a teenager with such a large task. Turns out, detailed blueprints and a 40-page proposal help. So does not messing up during presentations.

The Process

Research isn't glamorous. It's a lot of staring at data at 2am wondering if you messed up somewhere. It's running the same analysis seventeen times because one decimal point looks suspicious. It's reading scientific papers that make your brain hurt. But when something finally clicks? When your hypothesis actually works? I don't know how to put it. To me it feels like what I imagine it would have felt like to those old scientists stumbling upon some crazy discovery like DNA being a double helix or something. That's why I spent my junior year knee-deep in computational biology instead of, you know, having a normal teenage life.

What I Learned

Beyond the science itself, I learned how to fail productively. Most experiments don't work the first time. Or the tenth. You adjust, try again, and eventually something sticks. Also learned that sleep is optional (don't tell my parents I said that). My presenting and designing skills have also strengthened from conference preparations.

Experience

Right now I'm interning at Stanford's T-cell Lymphoma lab, which still feels unreal to say out loud. My job is building analysis pipelines for DNA sequencing data using Python and R. Basically, I take massive sequencing files and filter out things based on certain parameters to find the reads that actually matter. It's a lot of problem-solving and debugging. Sometimes a script breaks and I have to figure out why. Sometimes the data does something weird and I have to adapt. I'm also part of Stanford's neuroscience journal club, where we read recent scientific papers and hear from actual scientists about their work. It's equal parts fascinating and humbling. These researchers are doing incredible things, and I'm just trying to keep up and absorb as much as I can.

The Experience

Standing in front of actual scientists and college researchers to explain your work is thrilling and terrifying at the same time. You rehearse your presentation a million times, then someone asks a question you didn't prepare for and you just have to roll with it. The best part? Meeting other students doing incredible research. We're all just teenagers trying to sound smart while internally panicking. Also your feet will definitely hurt.

Presentations

Why I Wrote It

Standardized tests are weird. They don't measure how smart you are, they measure how well you can take standardized tests. Once I figured out the patterns and strategies, the tests became way less scary. I wanted to share that with other students who were stressing like I was. Writing a book as a high schooler was wild. I'd write chapters between homework assignments, edit during lunch, and format pages at midnight. My English teacher thought I was procrastinating on essays. (I was, but I was also writing a book, so it cancels out, right?)

What's In It

Time management tricks, test-taking strategies, ways to stay calm under pressure, and the mental prep that nobody talks about. Also some jokes because test prep books are usually boring. Available on Amazon if you want to check it out!