Helping Yourself

At my school, I am taking a new, experimental class called Digital Multimedia and Global Citizenship (Dig Cit for short). The class centers around a Passion Project, in which students discover their passion and act on it in a way that is a benefit to the community or the world as a whole. Yesterday in class, to help each student discover their passion, we created a "heartbreak map" that shows our passions and what breaks our hearts about each passion. 

After completing my heartbreak map added below, I realized the out of my four passions listed (technology, soccer, music, and service), technology was clearly the most important me, as I had many more "heartbreaks" on that topic. 

I have been interested in computers and computer code ever since I learned to write programs on my graphing calculator in 6th grade. Since then, I have been constantly expanding my knowledge and experience in the computer science field (hoping to major in it in college) by attending Computer Engineering camps and iD Tech C++ Programming Camps at North Carolina State University over my past two summers. 

I also take a class called Technology Assistant in which I help troubleshoot iPad problems that students have with their school-issued iPads. Through my experiences in this class, I realized that I truly enjoy assisting students with software and hardware problems centered around network connections and damaged iPads. 

Obviously, I have a strong passion for technology. So strong that I want others to be interested as well. Everyday, I go home and spin stories to my parents of the unique and intricate problems I troubleshooted that day in "Tech class". I really want others to understand and care about how technology works at the same level that I do. Therefore, it really frustrates me when fellow students have an iPad problem, but do not attempt to fix it or bring the problem to the technology teacher or a Tech Assistant student. They just have apathy to fix the problem or would rather use a dysfunctional iPad rather than spending the 20 minutes it would take a tech student to diagnose and fix the problem.  

When a student ignores their problem, not only does their school work productivity decrease, but the reputation of the Technology department of the school decreases. The student body will start to distrust the technology program if there are a lot of students walking the halls and classrooms with defective iPads. 

Technology is my past and will be my future. I want to learn it, use it, and celebrate it throughout my life, including my high school career. Therefore, it really breaks my heart when students are too lazy to help themselves to the free tech support available in school, at all times of the day, filled with knowledgable people willing and passionate about fixing their problem.