Class of 2027 · Sun Prairie, WI
Student. Athlete. Innovator. Lifelong learner.
Some of my favorite memories are staying up late with my dad, chasing one Wikipedia rabbit hole into the next, because bedtime was never really for sleeping, it was for discovering something new.
That same curiosity is what got me into figuring out how I actually learn best, from using the Pomodoro Method to just paying attention to how my own brain works, because I love learning how to learn just as much as what I'm learning.
Even when I tore my ACL, I ended up more curious than upset, wanting to understand what was actually happening in my own body, and that same mindset is what I want to bring into college: discovering new interests, staying positive, and pushing myself to learn as much as I possibly can.
I really love learning about all kinds of different topics and finding ways to connect them. I like trying new things and pushing myself to really understand a subject.
I was double rostered freshman year and eventually earned a spot on the varsity starting roster. An injury ended up taking me out of the sport, but I still love it just as much. It taught me to stay resilient, keep improving myself, and have a growth mindset no matter what comes my way.
I started discus my sophomore year and made it to state that same year. My PR is 129 feet 6 inches. I hit a lot of plateaus along the way, but I learned to keep persisting and put in extra hours of practice to get better.
I started this group because I wanted to help my community and share God's light with others, and it has since grown to over 40 people. Everything we do is completely free, because our only reward is being able to spread Christ's love. We do small things with great love, serving the elderly, the disabled, people in recovery, and families facing hardship through tasks like weeding, organizing, window washing, mowing, and shoveling.
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A 3D animated cup-shuffle game I taught myself in Blender, built from scratch with no AI and taking a couple months to finalize. I made white and blue versions to match our school colors, built to play on the Ashley Field Stadium video board during games for my ACCEL Marketing Academy project.
I'm headed to UW-Madison next year, where being in the top 5% of my class gave me direct admission into any UW system school. Even with every option open to me, UW-Madison has always been the school I've wanted to go to.
I have a lot of interests. I love psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience, along with kinesiology, nutrition, and marketing. I'm drawn to anything about the brain because I love learning about behavior, why it happens, and what it actually looks like physically. I also love kinesiology and nutrition because I love learning the science behind what makes the body work, how it moves, and why. Marketing pulls me in too because it taps into my creative side and lets me use strategy in a different way. A lot of my classes and activities end up touching these same interests, whether it's AP Psychology, AP 3D Art Studio, or the marketing academy.
Success to me means continuously learning, pushing myself, helping others, and bringing together multiple parts of my interests, like creativity, math, and philosophical thinking, into whatever I end up doing. I want a career where I never stop growing, where I'm challenged to think in new ways, and where I can use what I know to make things better for the people around me. Whether that ends up looking like research, counseling, marketing, or something I haven't even discovered yet, I know it will pull from everything I've loved learning so far.
Building this site taught me a lot about the process behind actually making a website. I used Claude Code, an AI coding assistant that runs right in the terminal, to write and edit all the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, describing what I wanted and reviewing every change before it went live. I used GitHub to save and track every version of the site, so every update gets committed and pushed there before it goes anywhere else. The actual site files are hosted on AWS, stored in an S3 bucket and served through CloudFront, with Terraform managing that infrastructure and Homebrew for installing the tools I needed along the way. I learned the correct way to use each one.
I learned that building it this way keeps my work safe since it's effective, and it's always saved so I can go back and see exactly what I did. Shoutout to my parents for helping me get the resources to make this possible and for being a huge supporter for me.
I liked being able to customize my website exactly how I wanted, and I decided to add a mascot because it's something I like and it shows my personality. I'm proud of myself for retaining everything I learned, and I might end up using this knowledge again in the future.