On September 9th, the first day of school for Cohort B, I stepped into Fairfield Woods Middle School for the first time. When I walked into the building, with its tall skylight, with natural light shining onto the floor, then on me, I instantly felt uneasy. I began to think - starting a new school, during a pandemic, how hard would that be?

During the school year, I instantly felt like I was welcome and I felt like I was at home. I made some new friends, and had amazing teachers. 

While I loved 7th grade, 8th grade really made me into the person I am today. I met some of my closest friends to this day, and had even more amazing teachers! 8th grade was also the grade where I learned to love learning. Mr. Sajan, my Algebra I teacher, made me absolutely love math, and helped me understand why math is so cool. Architecture is also built on the principles of math, so now whenever I enter a building, it awes me how the building was literally created just with math equations applied to materials. Math can also be applied to more real-life things, such as golf. When I hit a golf ball, I’d imagine the axis of symmetry of the parabola of my golf ball when I hit it.

Ms. Bertrand, my English teacher, made me like English a lot more than I did before, as we had a Poetry unit mixed in with music. She showed us a video about popular music from the 2000s with end rhymes, personification, alliteration, and most of the songs she showed us were from my favorite bands! Incorporating my favorite music with poetry really got me thinking in a different way about a form of writing I felt tedious of, and helped me discover how different music has different elements of poetry, which I think is cool.

Now whenever I am curious about something, like how something works or why something is one way or another, I always take the time to search it up, because in middle school, I learned how to be curious!  Middle school taught me to realize that I love to learn, and that I should use and apply this learning that I’m very grateful for. Right now, and in the future.

From the moment we got off the plane and stepped out of the airport, the warmth hit me like I was stepping through an invisible wall. I instantly saw the neon signs flashing different hotel names, and the different colored buildings. In the distance, I saw The Luxor hotel, with its Egyptian pyramid shaped building, with a huge ray of what seemed like endless light, shining up into the evening sky from on top of the building. The huge backdrop of tall, desert mountains surrounding the city, made me think about how cool it was that this city was being nestled by even bigger areas of land. It was also interesting to be in a different part of the United States, as before this trip, I haven’t been farther west than Florida and Tennessee.

In the morning, I finally saw the area I was in with full view. The tall mountains, with light pastel colors, red rocks, and different kinds of plants I’ve never seen before, instantly had me in awe. I also saw many other different buildings, such as Caesars Palace, which literally looked like it was built using ancient Greek architecture! The architecture of the different buildings, mixed into the natural architecture of the earth around me, really struck me in awe.

As I went into the different hotels, I saw a different take on architecture and creativity. At Caesars Palace, the massive columns, paintings, and geometric shape of the buildings really got me picturing how Athens looks like, and how the Greeks created their buildings. These modern buildings included old elements of design, which really intrigued me.

And, since I was staying at Bally’s, I had easy access to The Paris hotel. Once I entered this hotel, I felt as if I was just transported into Europe. The architecture in this hotel exactly represented what old French architecture was, with pastel arches, and windows with small balconies. This backdrop was also mixing with the French looking street lights, lighting up the hotel and shops. The amount of statues and gargoyles surrounding the hotel also added to the theme. The blue ceiling with dabs of white simulating clouds on the main floor made me feel like I was taking a stroll down a street in France. All these tiny details really intrigued me.

Las Vegas was another place in my life to really look at architecture, and even nature, in a different perspective. This city helped me figure out what I want to pursue in the future.

When these two things come together in my mind, I think of how the world works. Without architecture and engineering, how would we live and be transported? We wouldn’t have big cities with high-rise superstructures, towering over little people in the streets. Without cars, trains, airplanes, and even elevators, our world would simply not work how it is right now. Cities wouldn’t exist, and life wouldn’t be as easy. A lot of us take architecture and engineering for granted, and I want to make it my mission to not.

I’ve been going to the Stamford Town Center ever since I was little. Whenever I walk into the massive ten story atrium, with its granite walls and big, flashy signs - I’m always in awe. On the first floor, when I look all the way up to the ceiling of the atrium, I see the skylights. They help let natural light into the mall, which almost makes the mall seem part of nature. When I peer into the skylights, I see the huge and white metal beam holding up the wall that the average eye can’t see without taking the time to notice, and it gets me curious on how engineering works with architecture to create works of art.

I also hear splashes and the continuous flow of water from the fountain, which fills the emptiness void I hear, since malls aren’t really that popular anymore.

Taking the elevators up and down too, watching everything in the mall blast by me with speed, gives me a panoramic view of the artistry that went into designing this mall.

The average person takes this unique artistry for granted. Without curiosity to ask how the world works, in this case how architecture and engineering work together, we’d have no big city skylines, no infrastructure, no ease of life. This has all come together for me, and I realize what I want to do with my life in the future - incorporating architecture and engineering to create beautiful buildings. Taking an interest and expanding on it can help the world.