Take me there. What's going on? So it's funny. I was actually homeschooled

all the way through grade 12. So my mom was my teacher. I didn't step foot into a classroom meaningfully until college, which, well, actually, given that this is grade 12, I started to do some community college classes that year. So, I was driving up to Northern Virginia and taking just a couple core style classes to get familiar with what it's going to be like when I go to college. These classes were mostly math. I was on the track to start an engineering degree in, you know, in my freshman year of college. And so I wanted to make sure that I had the college level, you know, intro math work out of the way. And that was, yeah, that was my initial sort of introduction to the college world and classwork and having somebody teach me that was not my mom. As funny as that sounds. The reality of it is I actually did not really have a teacher for most of my coursework growing up because my mom, I'm actually one of nine kids. And so my mom, she homeschooled all of us all the way through grade 12. And so by the time you've got like multiple kids that are at different grade levels, you got to focus on the youngest ones so that they're, you know, grokking the most important stuff. And you got to teach the older ones to teach themselves. And so that was kind of how how i did things i just used a textbook and um dug in read what i could skimmed it and then i would i would usually start at the problem set and so i'd go to the problems at the end of the chapter and like start reverse engineering them try to figure out based on um you know right answers what the concepts were and i would just do that a bunch of times. That was kind of my approach to learning all the way through college was using the textbook, not so much relying on in-class lectures, more so on the principles that I can kind of do on my own time. Like, where do you fall in the pack of your siblings? I am the second oldest. So, I have six sisters, two brothers. I'm the oldest boy and the second overall. And

so you, like you're doing this, you are being schooled, but you're, I'm assuming you're almost like the teacher too, in a way. Yeah.

I mean, in a sense, my mom definitely relied on us to, to help out here and there, but she did a pretty unbelievable job just keeping people moving. So I really didn't spend too much time. I mean, I was definitely babysitting and holding down the fort pretty often given that I'm home anyway. Um, but beyond that, you know, most of us were, were taught to kind of do things independently when it came to coursework. And then my mom would, uh, she'd have grading sessions with each of us. So she'd go through everything that we had done that week, make sure we're on track, make sure we kind of understand the concepts. Some of us did better than others. You know, there was definitely a fair bit of exploitation of the rules. And siblings. Oh yeah. And siblings, no doubt. And

so then you finish, like you finish year 17, 18 at the time. Well, I guess you went to university a little bit earlier, community college, but you, you decide to go into engineering and like, how did that come

about? to a career. My dad, he's the type of guy, he's done several different things. And he started out as a master home builder. So he had a construction company, he built houses and apartment complexes in California, he was a carpenter, and then he became a police officer. When I was kind of in high school, he was at that point in the FBI, and became a SWAT team leader and was doing a lot of international travel for narcotics and weapons of mass destruction. And obviously the early 2000s were fairly crazy for a variety of reasons, but he spent a good chunk of that decade traveling in the Middle East. I kind of learned from him that careers are not something you necessarily have to commit to forever. It's something that, you know, he showed that you can basically do anything you want, as long as you're willing to put in the work. And so I hadn't really given much thought to it. I was just like, I'll figure it out. And the one thing that was consistent was I loved machines. I was utterly obsessed with cars and motorcycles and four wheelers, like throughout my teenage years, and I'd had them like wallpapered all over the place, and spent tons of hours just researching both projects that I could do. And then, you know, the pinnacle of automotive engineering. And I actually became pretty obsessed with Tesla in the like pre-college days. I thought that electric cars were like the coolest thing ever. And so it became clear to me that the only thing I actually care about is these machines. And if I ever wanted to work with those, I would have to be an engineer. So it was basically that was the transition was just, I like building stuff. I particularly like cars and motorcycles and automotive engineering is the way to get into that. So it was kind of a no brainer. I mean, I don't even remember the moment when I decided that engineering is what I was going to pursue. It was just at some point it became obvious that I had to submit an application. And I just obviously applied for engineering because there was no second choice. So, yeah, it's kind of funny to think back on it. I really don't remember even talking to my parents about it. It was just like, yeah, that's what I got to do.