 Hello, my name is Reese Keller. I graduated from Highline in 2019 and I took mostly math and physics there. And I transferred to Seattle University to study applied math and physics. And now I'm going to a PhD program in computational neuroscience and machine learning at Carnegie Mellon. I ended up choosing the field of neuroscience in STEM just because I became really interested in how the brain works and how we make decisions, how we reason, how information flows in our brain. All these questions that center around like thinking about the brain in a computational way. I think the most attractive aspect is just of the field of neuroscience that is so new. Neuroscience has become really inspired in the last 50 years and is a really amazing melting pot of so many different fields like physics, computer science, math, statistics, cognitive sciences. It really is just a great interdisciplinary subject. If you're hesitating to join STEM or try getting into the fields of STEM, I would say you have to go for it. Even if it looks scary, there are movies out there and stigmas that physics and math are really hard. Science is really hard. You have to be some sort of genius. But none of those are really true, right? It's just like any other subject. If you like it, you'll put in the work, you'll enjoy it, and you'll succeed. And if you don't like it, you'll know. But the only way you'll know either of those things is if you try it. So you have to put yourself out there. You have to try it and see for yourself if something that you want to try to do and become successful. Because if you want to be successful, you definitely will. I think everyone has that potential. Highline really supported me in a lot of ways, especially in the way just the class environment. Highline has small classes, and that is a really special situation to be in. My teachers knew how to push me in ways that I didn't know I needed to be pushed, and you had to challenge me when I thought I knew the material. So it was really a privileged experience. A lot of people don't get to learn like that. And I was thankful to the teachers at Highline for having such a good pedagogy and attitude towards their students. Outside of class, I really like to tutor things I enjoy like math and physics, but also other things like writing and language. Just because tutoring in general is a really great way to express your passion for any subject and make sure you're understanding how to communicate what you're interested in with other people. But also on the giving end, it's just really important to uplift and encourage everybody to succeed in the things that they want to do. So if you're in a position where you can help somebody become a little bit more confident, help somebody become a little more excited about STEM or whatever it is you're helping them with, that can be really important and really powerful for them and for you. As far as when I was a student at Highline, I wish I had just known that I don't have to have it all figured out. I always thought, what am I going to do next? What am I going to do next? And I never really enjoyed the moment. And whether you're a running start student or you're an adult or you're switching your careers, Highline is not the end of your path. Highline is a stopping place, a really important one, but it's just a stopping place along some path of where you're going to end up. And that ending part is going to be good. It's going to be better than where you are. It's going to be better than where you've been because you're working hard. You're going to be successful. So just enjoy it and focus on that.