What are your interests for your career and how did you find your interests?

At the age of eight, I discovered the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety or IIHS. Their purpose is to test the safety of cars through simulating crash tests in the real world. I was amazed by the safety mechanisms in a car and I was fascinated by automotive safety and from a young age enjoyed innovation within the field. I would spend hours a day after school examining designs and structures of a car and how it would manipulate the outcome of a crash. I even played video games such as Beam MG drive that simulated car accidents. I became quite good at making predictions about how a car would perform in a safety test. When I was even younger I designed a blueprint for a roller coaster at the age of five. I was greatly interested in such engineering marvels, even if I was too young to understand how they worked.
My parents and teachers would be fascinated by my ability to comprehend such complex concepts in automotive engineering at such a young age. From a young age I decided that I wanted to become an engineer for the IIHS, or be a structural designer of cars. However, I also have interests in space. It is fascinating to me the daunting size of the universe. I imagine how future civilizations would look, millions of years in the future and what problems they would encounter. I ponder if humans were the only organic beings in the universe and if there are civilizations that we do not know of that are far more technologically advanced than we are. But with a universe so massive and such large distances between everything, it is simply impossible to determine. With these areas of interest, I thought I could perhaps become an astrophysicist.
I’ve spent years experimenting with what career I should embark on with the skills I have been given. For example, I volunteered at my local hospital to see if any field of medicine I enjoyed. I also had a leadership role in my high school robotics team. At the end of my journey, I am primarily interested in automotive engineering and astronomy. This is how I came upon mechanical engineering.
The greatest thing about mechanical engineering is its flexibility. I desired to be an automotive engineer, and a bachelor in mechanical engineering would teach me the skill I need to know to be a safety technician in my career. Furthermore, if I decide to pursue education past a bachelor’s level, I could become an astronomer.
Now in my senior year of high school as I write this, in the same cool weather my curious life-long journey started with, I hope to start a new chapter in my life. One containing a rich, fulfilling, meaningful career in the engineering field. And with this journey, I hope to pursue knowledge about the great depths of this universe.