Malkiel Asher

In 8th grade, in our English class, we were given a task to go to bls.gov and find a career we wanted to specialize in. I knew I wanted to do something with computers and fixing things or creating new ones. So, when I put that information in, I got Computer Engineering. I was happy with the result and left it at that. Going on into High School, life became much better as I was put into a community of students that had the same background as me. That is, this school was dedicated for students who have been in the US for less than 4 years. One of the perks was that we could also take college classes alongside our normal coursework across the road at LaGuardia Community College.

While I was in 9th grade I spent a lot of time in the computer lab learning about all the different forms of software that let you express yourself through media, including Photoshop, Sony Vegas, and Audacity. One of the IT personnel noticed this and gave me a job as a teacher’s aide to help students, faculty, and staff in the school with mild software and hardware troubleshooting. On the side, I also took the role of producing and editing most of the media content for the school. These were things like filming and editing talent shows, designing printed monthly calendars with all the events on them along with several other things. I jumped at this opportunity and every year I got more and more responsibilities and learned more and more about how computers work. My supervisor was kind enough to let me dig into old PC towers and open them up to see what was inside and what was connected to what. This was when I knew no matter what I wanted to become an engineer. I wanted to build the next generation of technology.