KAI REHBINDER

           My goal is to study mechanical engineering in college and ultimately use my education to help solve sustainability issues. To achieve my goal I am going to attend a university to get my bachelors degree in mechanical engineering. Many engineering schools have other extracurricular clubs related to engineering. For example Cal. Poly has a Baja race team where the students get to design and build an offroad race machine. Engineering is one of those skills that requires more than just a basic understanding of numbers and formulas to excel at. Throughout my whole life I have been an engineer. When I was a kid I was constantly learning about how mechanical contraptions work. Most of the time by disassembling old electronics and toys. 

          The core reason I want to become an engineer is to help people. My goal isn’t just to land a secure job where I’ll spend the rest of my life working. I want to work towards something that benefits more people than just myself. I believe that engineering is a skill that has the potential to change the world. Weather that's via creating affordable clean energy or efficient modes of transportation is up to chance. Having the opportunity to create something that benefits everybody is the whole reason I want to be an engineer.

          As an aspiring engineer, mathematics is very important to me. Geometry was a class I was not initially looking forward to. I felt that I was going to be learning skills that simply weren’t relevant. However, after learning about trigonometry my view on this changed completely. I never realized how much could be done with simple mathematical concepts. I quickly started using what I had learned in geometry in my personal projects. When designing engine mounts for motorcycles the skills I have learned in geometry became invaluable. Moreover, when I was designing the motor mount for my electric motorcycle I was using the very equation I had been taught in that class.

          Speaking is something I have always been uncomfortable with. I am an introvert and as such, I don’t exercise my speaking skills very much. However, after the countless presentations, I have conducted at ACLC my speaking ability has improved exponentially. I can communicate ideas, and explain myself with relative ease now. This has also played a role in my personal life. Throughout highschool, I have bought, fixed and sold many motorcycles. When buying and selling motorcycles to people it's very important to ask the right questions and explain how and what I fixed. The difference between giving the buyer confidence that they are buying a solid machine and inspiring fear that it will explode minutes after they purchase it, is speaking. If I can show the person I am selling my motorcycle to, that I know what I am doing then I am making more than just a sale, but a future contact.

          Creative thinking is a skill that is important to every aspect of your life. To be a good engineer you must be creative. It's not always about creating the most straightforward solution to a problem. Sometimes thinking out of the box can lead to innovation. When I was building my electric dirt bike I wanted to do it for as cheap as I could while still having a fun end product. The way I achieved my goal was by reusing old components. For example, the motor I used was from an old floor burnisher. While others were spending upwards of $500 or even thousands on powerful electric motors I purchased a lightly used motor that retailers for $700 new for less than half that. I also employed the same tactic for my frame. While many people who have built electric dirt bikes before me all said to not cheap out on your motor I was able to cheap out and still get a fantastic motor.

         Problem-solving is another skill that is important, not just to an engineer, but to everyone. Being able to go from my car won’t start to identify the part that has failed, is not an easy task. This is also a problem I have encountered with almost every motorcycle I have fixed. Take for example the very first dirt bike I fixed. A 1978 XR75, going into this I had had almost zero background knowledge of motorcycles. After trying to get it started for upwards of ten minutes I realized something was wrong. I knew that an engine had to have three things to run, fuel + air, spark, and compression. I started with what was easiest to test if the spark plug was sparking. The spark plug in the top of the engine screws out, and if held against the cylinder while trying to start the bike you don’t see a spark in it you have a problem. I didn’t have spark so I looked through all of the electrics and surely enough the breaker points were bad so I replaced them. The bike still wouldn’t start, so next, I used a syringe to squirt small amounts of fuel in the intake, and sure enough, the engine roared into life.

         Decision making is a skill that takes experience to become good at. Like many of the previous skills and abilities mentioned I have had the opportunity to become well acquainted with them due to my interest in motorcycles. One way this has played a role in my motorcycle hobby is deciding what to replace. Many parts on a motorcycle have life spans meaning eventually they have to be replaced. Many of these wear components are expensive so deciding to replace them early can be costly. However if not replaced before they break, catastrophic failure can occur. Another example of this is when trying to fix an electrical system. On modern motorcycles, electrics are more complicated and some components are very hard to test for functionality. An example of this I have personally experienced is when trying to fix a 1986 XR20r. The part I needed to test required a tool I had to order (flywheel puller), however, if the part was broken I would also have to order that part (stator). Stators don’t often break and are not cheap to replace but everything else on the electric system seemed to be working. Deciding if I should order a new stator and the flywheel puller or just the flywheel puller, was the decision I was faced with. If I ordered both parts and the stator was broken, the bike would be fixed in time to test it on the trails the next weekend. If I just ordered the flywheel puller and the stator was salvageable I would save money and be able to test it the next weekend. However, if this wasn’t the case I would have to wait another week for the stator and not be able to ride that weekend, but I wouldn’t spend any excess money. In the end, I decided to order just the flywheel puller, as money was the biggest concern I had. The stator turned out to be unsalvageable, and I had to order a new one, however, I didn’t waste any money.

          Leadership is another skill ACLC puts a lot of value in. Leadership is not a skill that everyone gets to practice 100 percent of the time. So it's important to capitalize on leadership opportunities. While I never participated in the leadership group at ACLC I exercised my leadership ability through a couple of other means. At school when group projects are assigned and there is no clear leader, I step up to the best job I can. For group projects that involve a presentation, I will assign roles that are even in terms of the amount of work required. In my personal life, I also have to be a leader. On the weekends I have a friend assist me with the motorcycles, and projects I have going on. Typically there is a lot to do so being able to assign tasks is very helpful. I’ve learned that it's important not to micromanage because this decreases productivity. I’ve learned to have confidence that people will do tasks as best as they can. One prime example of this is when I was repairing the rear end of a jeep that had holes from rust. Several tasks needed to be completed, first patch the holes in the frame and bumper, second fabricate the metal struts to reinforce the frame, and third, weld the struts on the frame. I was the only one who could weld so naturally I assigned my friend the task of creating the struts. Initially, I was watching over him constantly to make sure he wasn’t ruining the parts and as a result, I wasn’t getting any welding done. Once I realized what I was doing, and I could see my friend was perfectly capable of doing everything I expected of him I stopped watching over him. After this the amount of work that got done was astonishing.

          ACLC puts a lot of emphasis on working as a member of a team. Like other skills, it's something I have become better at over time. Initially, the idea of working together with people you may or may not know very well is daunting. Over time I have developed a skill set that makes me an effective team member. One of these skills is communicating. Decision making is another skill that is mandatory for working as an effective team member. Deciding who’s going to be responsible for certain aspects of a project is critical. There have been countless projects at ACLC where I have had to participate in a team and in the end give a presentation to the rest of the class. After a while I got into the flow of working in a team, so to speak. Deciding who's responsible for which aspects of the project and who's going to present those parts. The most recent example of this is the CAM project for government. We are assigned teams and we get to choose any topic related to current-day America. Our group chose the death penalty. After deciding what roles we were each going to fill, we went to work. One person was responsible for interviews, the other responsible for presenting the arguments for and against the death penalty, and I was in charge of editing our video presentation.

          Technology has many incredible uses and being able to fully utilize it is paramount in our modern world. Technology-based on the internet can be used to do anything, from spreading awareness to conducting research and communicating with people. Due to the virus, we’ve had to conduct our classes exclusively online. Without the internet, this would have negatively impacted our learning. Thus being able to use programs such as Zoom and Discord to effectively communicate with others has become a very important skill. In addition to the internet things such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and 3D printing allow us to create things from almost nothing. They have allowed me personally to pursue my interests. One example of this was my freshman science fair project. My goal was to create a prototype, low cost, educational computer that could be used in poor parts of the world as a means of teaching. Thanks to tools like CAD and 3D printing I was able to take an idea that was in my head and create a real-world object. Since then I have only continued to learn and expand my ability to use CAD. This is the same software that companies use to design everything from bridges to car engines. As an aspiring engineer getting a headstart on the programs I will be using is great.

           Throughout my motorcycle buying and reselling career I have spent weeks troubleshooting various problems. Troubleshooting is a skill very similar to problem-solving. One prime example of troubleshooting I have gone through is fixing the electric system of a 1996 klx250. Originally a dirt bike someone had installed a headlight, brake light, indicators, and a horn to make it street legal. Unfortunately for me, the entire system wasn’t working. Simply buying and replacing parts until it worked wasn’t an option. However, eventually, I narrowed it down to a faulty on-off switch. The ability to troubleshoot also carries over to computers. I have always been very into building an understanding of how computers work. So naturally, I built my own desktop. However, eventually, I experienced a problem where the computer would not display anything. After reading guides online on how to diagnose what was cousin this problem I ended up removing and replacing old memory sticks. This solved my problem.