Personal

I am Arianne Perez. I was born in the Philippines and when I was three, my family and I moved to the United States. I did a lot of moving around as a kid due to my dad's job. We went to Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Michigan, and I loved it because I got to experience different environments and meet all types of people.

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When I started middle school was when my family and I settled down in Georgia. It is here where I have learned so much about myself and have met amazing people. I have grown, I have stumbled. I have laughed, I have cried. But I always keep on going.

 

Education

High School

All my life, I have always had two paths I considered in terms of careers: STEM or the Arts. Engineering has always been an option since I loved math and science and my father and so many of my aunts and uncles are in some engineering field, but in high school it was not something I saw myself doing for the rest of my life. The arts, however, seemed fun, seemed like a challenge, and I was fairly good with the pen and paper. Not many people make it in the arts, or they struggle, but they make it happen if that is truly what they want. I was lucky in that I was able to explore architecture in my high school by taking it as an elective during my sophomore, junior and senior year. While I enjoyed it, it too was something I couldn't see myself doing as a career choice.

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During my senior year of high school, I had a gap in my schedule and decided to fill it with an art elective. As fate would have it, the only one available at that time slot was ceramics which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was proud with my work. One day, the class went to hear someone speak about fields that capitalized on the arts, in particular: Industrial Design. That was the first time I was exposed to it and thought that it was worth pursuing.

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Higher Education

I began my college experience at Georgia Tech in August 2015, studying Industrial Design where I had the pleasure of collaborating with peers and professionals, conducting research, doing rapid prototyping and model-making, learning new software programs including Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and ideating for both real and abstract problems using divergent and convergent thinking. My favorite projects were "Spike" and "Bee Chairful."

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I am forever grateful for the experiences and people people that I met, but I wanted to expand my skills in programming and create working prototypes.

 

In January 2017, I began pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering and refined my skills in programming and hardware design, using a variety of instruments including logic analyzers, function generators, and oscilloscopes. Along the way, I fell in love with Electromagnetics and Optics, focusing my electives in classes geared to these two subjects.

 

I also had some fun by joining clubs at Georgia Tech. I joined the Student Alumni Association (SAA), Atlanta Filipino Student Association (ATL FSA), GT Pride Alliance, and Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering (WECE) where I am currently co-social chair. 

I am currently studying Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech and I am set to graduate in May 2019.

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Leisure

I love watching movies and TV shows, especially ones of the sci-fi and action genre. Not only do they serve to entertain and are nice reprieves from what can be a mundane life, but they are also inspiring to me.

 

Science fiction has inspired me to pursue engineering in the hopes that one day, fiction can become a reality, and action movies and shows, especially ones about (super)heroes have inspired me to be more active and have a more positive outlook in life. There is just something about these genres that put positive energies into my life. One of my favorite quotes and one that I fall back to when I am in a slump or things aren't going my way comes from the movie X-Men: Days of Future Past.

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"Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn't mean they're lost forever."

--Charles Xavier

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Training

Along with my love for watching action and Superhero shows, is my love for real physical feats. American Ninja Warrior (and at one point the inevitable [zombie] apocalypse) has been my motivation for hitting the gym when staying healthy isn't enough. At the moment, I have set short term goals for completing Spartan Races. I have been actively training for slightly more than a year now and so far have completed one race!

 

Truth be told, I almost passed out afterwards and there have been times in the past year where all I wanted (and did) for some weeks was to eat and watch TV. However, I always come back to training and working out.

 

(I stumbled and lost my path, so to speak, but I am never lost forever!)

 

(And really, this applies to all aspects of life.)