Degrees: B.S. in Computer Science; Minor in Chinese
How did the Stamps Scholarship help shape your undergraduate experience?
The Stamps Scholarship enabled me to travel extensively throughout East Asian and solidified my aspirations to seek military and public service opportunities there. I was able to spend four weeks travelling and studying through Japan, seeing historical attractions and studying at various universities to understand its past and present. Throughout my month in Japan, I saw the importance of the US-Japan alliance and the importance of that relationship in the context of a dynamically reshaping East Asia. I have been inspired to strengthen that alliance through selecting my first tour to be aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, the only aircraft carrier forward deployed to the Seventh Fleet, homeported in Yokosuka, Japan.
Additionally, I was blessed to attend two Stamps Scholars National Conventions, in 2015 and in 2017. There, I found a community and diversity of like-minded intellectuals and motivated scholars who offered different and enriching additions to my service academy education. I came to live, understand, and bridge the civil-military gap between myself and Stamps Scholars at civilian universities. I came to understand different priorities, like international development and public health, similarly pressing issues that are less discussed in security and defense circles. I found myself welcomed to a community of people dedicated to fighting the world’s fight.
Tell us a piece of wisdom you’ve learned over the past four years.
I have come to embrace the diversity that constitutes our American fabric. I grew up in an insular San Francisco Bay Area, an immigrant community and liberal enclave. When I moved across the country to join the military in Annapolis, Maryland, I encountered a culture shock that deeply shook my values, but I have come to acquire an appreciation for the diversity of upbringings and views that enrich and empower our American experience.
Who has had the greatest impact on you throughout your college career and how so?
Senior Chief Ryan Washa, our 28th Company Senior Enlisted Leader
In my senior year at the Naval Academy, Senior Chief Washa became The Club’s (28th Company) Senior Enlisted Leader. During this year, when I assumed leadership billets at the Naval Academy and within the Brigade of Midshipmen, he truly took the time to teach, discuss, and exemplify the art and craft of leadership. He came in early and left late, so that he would always be available to his people. He always placed the mission of the Academy and the Navy foremost – and helped us understand military leadership in the context of that mission. Throughout my first semester, he came to understand the compassion and faith from which I came from, and helped me contextualize that within the demands of military leadership. When I struggled with holding a squad member accountable, he walked me through understanding my people and developing them to a higher goal of the naval mission than simple desires and wants. When I struggled as a platoon commander to approve special requests and work with my squad leaders, he provided opportunities to live out my choices and listened to me talk through my dilemmas. He applied a quiet pressure that influenced me to seek the challenge of leadership, embrace its struggle, and come out just a tad bit wiser.
What’s your favorite Stamps Scholar memory?
Stamps Scholar National Convention 2015 – the Scholar Soiree. During the heart-to-heart conversation I had with fellow scholars there, I came to understand my heart of compassion, my spirit of intellectual curiosity, and my beautiful struggle to make sense of it all at the Naval Academy. I came back, doubly broken and refreshed, to jump back into military training. I came back, reflective of how the Naval Academy had challenged me and changed me. Through conversations with people deeply different from the Naval Academy, I came to identify with my Academy, my Navy, and my military service.
What comes next?
I will be studying for a MS Management Science and Engineering degree at Stanford University. I will be a research assistant with the Preventive Defense Project there. After I graduate, I will report to my first tour of duty aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, flagship of the Carrier Strike Group Five.
Please share your favorite inspirational quote.
“For those of us who by force of circumstance actually live the pluri-cultural life as it entails Islam and the West, I have long felt that a special intellectual and moral responsibility attaches to what we do as scholars and intellectuals. Certainly I think it is incumbent upon us to complicate and/or dismantle the reductive formulae and the abstract but potent kind of thought that leads the mind away from concrete human history and experience and into the realms of ideological fiction, metaphysical confrontation, and collective passion. Our role is to widen the field of discussion, not to set limits in accord with the prevailing authority. Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.” – Edward Said