David Larson

Background

About David Larson

The tech field first spoke to me in the fourth-grade, when my teacher let me camp out in his secluded office during class to program the robot for my school’s FIRST LEGO League team. While my young self initially just liked having access to a space off-limits to my classmates, I quickly began to love working on the bot. I refined my programming until my team’s robot was consistently able to conquer the challenges it faced. At the same time, I was involved in Odyssey of the Mind. In this program, participants are encouraged to take risks to solve open-ended problems and can be rewarded for exceptionally creative solutions, even if they may not work properly when presented. Experiences in both programs built my confidence to approach technological problems from both tried-and-true and unconventional perspectives. When given the choice between two paths, I usually (my family would argue “always”) take the one less traveled. For example, I received a full-ride National Merit Scholarship coming out of high school, but opted to abandon the benefits it provided. I found that the self-directed hands-on teaching style I learned from in the pandemic was a much better fit for me than the classroom learning my scholarship was providing. During my college career, I found that my database-related courses resonated with me. As such, I took lead on the database portion of my senior capstone project in which my team of five worked to create a new system for a growing small business. I developed the database for the entire system, including creating entity-relationship diagrams, designing reports and statements, and ensuring the finished database could transfer data to and from the website portion of the system. I am eager to continue to grow in this field.