Personal Statement
I come from a strict Nigerian household, and I am fortunate to have a family that upholds high standards of excellence. My education was bolstered by both the amazing teachers I had growing up and the steady supply of books from the school libraries. Sixth grade signified my first glimpse into who I would be for the rest of my life: a huge nerd. I recognized my love for learning after my intense effort won me all but one gold medals at the Dallas Lone Star Challenge (the primary school version of Academic Decathlon). Though I didn't know the term at the time, I am an epistemophile, one who has a love of knowledge. That thirst for gaining knowledge and getting better at things touched everything I did forever, whether it was percussion and digital music production, art and graphic design, gaming and game design psychology, writing, teaching and instructional design—everything, and especially everything related to the arts. I may be a computer scientist, but even that too is an expression of design and creation (combined with my love of logic and problem-solving). I used to hate the idea of dancing, but even that couldn't withstand my desire to learn and challenge myself—in college, I took up Latin dance and ended up making the performance team for my college's Latin dance organization!
My high school’s STEM Academy program helped me find close friends who strengthened my mind and skillsets. The classes in robotics, engineering, and computer science helped build my interest in tech and ultimately drove me to choose Computer Science as my major in college, just barely winning over my equally strong interest in choosing the Visualization major (the art minor and game design & development minor would ultimately make up for that).
The force underpinning my life is an unshakable resolve for self-betterment. Since high school, I have come a long way in becoming the type of person I could admire—the type that does not look at their feet—the type that others actually approach for advice. In college, I took my desire to help others to the next level, creating huge group chats for classes and ultimately spending hundreds of hours helping thousands of students over the years (several of which were one-on-one tutoring or help sessions), which is exactly as insane as it sounds. I also enjoyed roles as a Student Assistant and eventually Undergraduate Teaching Assistant. When I eventually reached the second half of my Master's program and didn't have as many intensive STEM classes, I just began filling that void by helping people online using sites like Stack Overflow instead. It was not until the age of 24 that I finally learned how I was able to pour so much undivided attention into every passion that I picked up or why I had the desire to spend such inhuman amounts of effort figuring out how to teach others as well as myself: I have been unknowingly taking advantage of autism and sharpening my metacognition skills for as long as I can remember.
Currently, my career combines both my passions for art and computer science: I am a front-end engineer, which allows me to utilize my coding, graphic design, game design, and instructional design skills in various ways. My PhD research project (which started all the way back in my undergraduate senior year) intersects software engineering with instructional design: The work-in-progress library WebChalk Animate is a web animation framework that supports the development of engaging, highly interactive instructional materials. It is supposed to support even novice developers while also offering advanced capabitilies. Though it is still under development, I have already used it to create complex algorithm visualizations, and I even used it alone to create the slideshow presentation for my Master's thesis defense (which I justified by explaining to my advisor that it would help demonstrate the power of the tool, but admittedly... I just wanted to flex). Currently, I am studying instructional design theory in preparation for the next phase of the project/research, and I am working towards turning WebChalk Animate into a tool that anyone can use to create presentations that leverage the power of web technology and learning design.
I strive to push others onto their paths of improvement, regardless of their starting points. If I become skilled enough in design and psychology to help guide people—if I can keep touching the lives of others in ways that drive them to keep pushing when they thought they could not—then I will know that I have achieved my purpose in life.