Kathrine

Thank you for joining me today. To start, would you mind introducing yourself, your field of study, and how you would explain it to someone who's never heard of it before?

Wesley

Yeah, so I'm Wesley Chen. I'm a freshman at Caltech. Well, I guess I'm a sophomore now because we just graduated, or we just had graduation.

And I'm studying electrical engineering. And how I would describe that would, I think the best way to describe it would be to kind of look at products that electrical engineers build. So computers, your phones, those are all the sort of things that you're, that electrical engineers build, as well as power systems and many other things like communications.

Kathrine

So thinking back, was there a specific class, teacher, like project or camp that first sparked your interest in STEM?

Wesley

Yeah, so in ninth grade, I did a summer camp at Columbia, which was called Shape. And in that camp we did, I was part of the electrical engineering track. And that was where I first got my interest.

There we were building a bunch of different projects. And I just thought it was super cool, super fun. And I wanted to do more of it.

Yeah.

Kathrine

Well, can you walk me through how your interests developed from high school or college to your current field?

Wesley

Yeah. So since I did that summer camp, we got actually after that summer camp, they let us take like a little kit home. So I was just building various projects with that kit.

And that's kind of how my interest built. And then after that, I've looked for opportunities, for example, like research at Rutgers, which is nearby university, and other various summer camps. And yeah, so I also think there's a YouTuber called Ben Eater, who makes electronics projects online.

And I think watching those videos also helped develop my interest in electrical engineering as well.

Kathrine

So back to that kit that you received from the summer program, what kind of projects were you able to make with it?

Wesley

Yeah. So it was a little Arduino kit, if you know what that is. So an Arduino is, it's basically a mini computer, but you can connect wires and various things to it.

So one of the projects I made was a little speaker using that Arduino. I'm trying to think what else have I made. Mostly I've used the Arduino as like, not as a standalone project.

But for example, I made a small project with the Arduino that basically reads and writes to memory, or to a chip that holds some memory. So yeah.

Kathrine

Next, can you describe like the most memorable project or problem that you've worked on in general?

Wesley

Yeah. So going back to what I, the Ben Eater, which I mentioned before, so he does various electronics projects, but one of the ones he did was an 8-bit computer. So basically building a computer like they did in the 1970s or 1980s.

So basically I just recreated his project. And I think it was super fun opportunity to get to learn how computers work, like how this computer that I'm using to do this Zoom call on works. But yeah.

So that was probably the most memorable.

Kathrine

Is there anything that went wrong during the project or did it like go smoothly as you followed the tutorial?

Wesley

Oh yeah. Nothing goes, nothing works the first try ever. And there's a, I think like the biggest, the hardest thing about that was there were just so many wires and so many chips.

You might've accidentally put a wire in the wrong slot and then it just takes out hours to try to find where it is. You can look at, you can look at what your computer is doing and then try to explain to yourself why it's happening. And that might help you find where the wire, where your missing wire is, but just takes a long time to figure that out.

Yeah.

Kathrine

So what kind of experiences allowed you to have like the technical skill and knowledge to be able to make that project?

Wesley

I think the summer camp helped a little, but to be honest, I think just Ben Eater, his video explanations are super neat. Pretty much just from those, I was able to figure things out. Yeah.

Kathrine

That's really cool. So can you tell me about what you do in your favorite major related class?

Wesley

Yeah. So my favorite class that I took this past year was EE 13, which is, I think it's called electronics prototyping. What we did in that class is basically we took, we took a schematic that was provided to us and then we translated that to a PCB, which is the actual, like the PCB is a board that contains your actual electronics.

So we basically took his design from like the paper and actually built it and soldered all the components onto the board. And yeah, so I really liked that hands-on experience. And at the end of it, we got a kind of fun Simon Says game.

I don't know. I don't know. It might be called something different in other places, but it's like when you press the button, it like makes a sound and then you press the button and then it goes like do do and you have to go do do.

And then it goes like do do do. And then you have to go do. Yeah.

And probably seen that game before.

Kathrine

But yeah, I don't know if I've seen it personally. But next, like how much of your major would you say is like hands-on versus how much is on the computer?

Wesley

I think at Caltech, Caltech is like very, very much leans towards a theoretical side. So there's not many classes that are hands-on like E13, which I just described. But so I'd say it's about, well, in the freshman year, there's more hands-on classes.

I would say about like 50% of the W classes I took were hands-on. But I think like as you go more towards like sophomore, junior and senior year, more of the classes, maybe like 80% will be just through your computer or lecture notes and problem sets versus like hands-on projects.

Kathrine

So can you like elaborate on what like theoretical classes like means?

Wesley

Yeah. So I guess theoretical classes just means you're learning the learning like how to do circuit analysis or design a circuit, but you might not actually go and build the circuit like we did in E13. Yeah.

Kathrine

Oh, okay. So after entering your field, what has surprised you most about it?

Wesley

To be honest, I don't think there's much that surprised me. Maybe I think like looking again, I think YouTube has really inspired me a lot. And I think it's kind of incredible that there's so many like double electrical engineering or like technology related YouTubers out there.

And there's such a huge audience that they're able to reach. I think that's pretty cool.

Kathrine

Then in general, do you think there's anything that people misunderstand about electrical engineering?

Wesley

Not sure about that.

Kathrine

I think like, I guess, in my view, it would be like completely about like wiring and circuits. So is there like, is there any like misconceptions that you would want to correct?

Wesley

Yeah, I guess that like building circuits, like a computer or like a phone, I think is a big part. Maybe some part that people miss is the like the communication side, like radio, radio, Wi-Fi, that stuff all falls under EE. I think another people, another thing people don't think about is like medical devices.

So like MRI machines also fall under EE. Power systems as well, like the whole power grid is designed by electrical engineers. So yeah, I think most people that I think it is true that most people when they think of electrical engineering probably think of the circuit side.

But yeah, there are the there's the radio and power system side as in medical devices side as well.

Kathrine

So right now, is there like a field or a part of electrical engineering that particularly draws your interest?

Wesley

I'm still not decided on what exactly which part of electrical engineering I'd like to do. I think they're all pretty interesting to me so far. So yeah, still got still got three years to decide.

So we'll see.

Kathrine

Well, if you could go back, what advice would you give to your ninth grade self?

Wesley

I think just be confident, put yourself out there. I think also try to meet new people. Talk to all sorts of people.

It's really important to build connections and relationships with others.

Kathrine

Is there a project or a skill that you wish you had explored earlier?

Wesley

I think. Okay, actually, I want to go back and answer your previous question about like, what part of EE I want to do. So I really like music.

I've played violin for probably 11 years now, I guess. And so I part an aspect of EE that maybe I'd like to try to get into is building circuits or just designing things for like music hardware. So combining my interest in music and technology.

So I guess now to answer your new question, I guess that's a part that I would, I guess I would like to explore more. Yeah.

Kathrine

And what is one small step a student can take right now to explore your field?

Wesley

I think an Arduino is really helpful on the Arduino. Or if when you download the Arduino software, it comes with a whole bunch of simple projects and tutorials that you can follow. So if anyone's trying to get into electrical engineering, I would highly suggest an Arduino.

Kathrine

Are there any like clubs, competitions or online forums that are worth exploring?

Wesley

Ben Eater's YouTube channel, as I said earlier. Another good one is Jeff Gerling. He's more on the radio side things, but he also makes some really cool videos.

Other than that, I would just say, join your computer science club. I mean, most schools probably don't have any hardware clubs, but computer science is pretty similar to electrical engineering in many ways. So, yeah.

Kathrine

Okay. So that's all my questions. Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences.

And I really appreciate it.

Wesley

Yeah, of course.

Kathrine

Thank you.