Making the most of challenges

Ciao! My name is Pablo, I’m a Chicano from Chicago, and am now a Junior in Electrical Engineering. 

Just like everyone else, I’m still adjusting to online learning. This summer, I started learning Italian, and took up an ECE course so that I could continue to develop some discipline for e-learning, and I enjoyed every minute of interaction I had with my classmates and my professors. 

I love swimming, making music, and stringing words together until they make sense! I’m a part of the Marching Illini Baritone section, I am a member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), the Morrill Engineering Program (MEP), and I do a little bit of undergraduate research with the Bioacoustics Research Laboratory (BRL). 

This upcoming fall, everyone’s going to need a motivation and morale booster every now and then. I want everyone to remember that we are all giving up a little bit of our normal. One of my biggest role models is John F. Kennedy, and in his speech at Rice Stadium in 1962 he said: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” Everything we do at the Grainger College of Engineering is hard, seemingly impossible at times, and when we get to the other side, we call it innovation.

I hope you all still take some “first day of school” pictures, that you show up and make an impression for our virtual career fair, and that you form meaningful relationships with others. Whether it be with your classmates while you’re trying to figure out a homework problem, your professors when you log into office hours, or with other students in an RSO you’re interested in. 

Buena suerte! Go Illini!
-Pablo