Since I was three, my summers have pretty much revolved around rafting. Every year without fail, my family gets a group of friends together and plans a trip down rivers like the Snake, Salmon, and Colorado. These trips are my favorite part of the year–spending hot Idaho summers down on the cool river, cooking dutch-oven cakes each night, and ripping through rapids each day. Growing up with this tradition taught me how special these places are, and my parents made sure that I understood the importance of taking care of them. We lived by the mantra: “Leave it better than you found it.”
As I got older, I started to see how my childhood experiences connected to larger water and environmental issues. Our world is experiencing water challenges that are pressing and increasing every day. Inadequate access to water, the inability to sanitize it, and the harmful effects that correlate with these barriers are realities in so many parts of the world.
These are the issues that led me to pursue an environmental engineering major at USC. I’m eager to work on new technologies and systems that make water accessible and sustainable for everyone–whether that’s improving desalination, finding smarter ways to divert water flow to scare areas, or rethinking wastewater treatment. Everybody deserves to experience our world’s natural waterways, and I hope to work towards accomplishing this goal.
I chose USC because it’s a community where people are genuinely excited to tackle these problems together. With climate change’s increasing impacts, I want to become an environmental engineer to protect humans, habitats, and the world. I’m excited to collaborate with other students and different disciplines to get us closer to a world where humans live in symbiosis with the environment.
