Patrick Edwards

Just this past May I became a graduate of the Liberal Arts Magnet Program at Columbus High School in my home town of Columbus, Georgia. Throughout my entire time with this highly ranked program, there was a large emphasis on helping the surrounding community through service. Although the magnet program at Columbus High requires a minimum of 20 hours of service from every student each year that he/she attends the school (80 hours in four years), I managed a total over 370 hours from freshman to senior year. The majority of these hours have been spent working with groups from my church, Christ Community, in multiple occasions of volunteer work. These include being a junior camp counselor at the annual Kid’s Retreat, being a member of a small group that cleaned up a local impoverished neighborhood, and, most notably, being a part of a nine-member team that traveled to Kyustendil, Bulgaria for a ten-day mission trip to help children within the discriminated Roma population. Other local service projects that I have recently participated in include my work with Trees Columbus, Inc., a local non-profit that aims to promote the growth of trees in urban areas, the Thunder in the Valley Air Show, the Columbus Youth Soccer League, and Fore! Kids Columbus, a local non-profit program that encourages less fortunate children to take up the wonderful game of golf.

Other commitments that I have had to balance in high school include active membership in the five honor societies listed on my application, each requiring separate community service hours, being a member of the Columbus High boys’ varsity golf team, and running for and wining a class officer position as a sophomore and a junior. As a senior, I challenged myself further by getting a part-time job at my local public golf course to help raise money to attend Penn State. When I first started high school, I made it a personal goal of mine to graduate in the top ten percent of my class as well as to win a state championship with the school golf team. By devoting much of my time to studying, homework, and practice year-round all four years, I was proudly able to accomplish both.

The most accurate way that I can describe my passion for the field of architectural engineering is by telling the story of how my interest was first sparked. In fifth grade, my school’s DARE officer asked everyone in the class to stand up and say what they wanted to be when they grew up. Somehow, I had decided that I knew what architecture was and understood the concept of engineering enough to where I was interested by both but was not quite sold on either. Therefore, I just mixed the two names together, all the while not really knowing if it was a real profession. When I was finally old enough to care about architectural engineering again, I was able to research it and learn about the specifics of an architectural engineering degree as well as the differences it has with architecture and structural engineering degrees. As you might have guessed, an architectural engineer is a special type of building professional that is able to incorporate skills from the disciplines of architecture and engineering. The main distinction of architectural engineering can be summarized by the advantages that the degree presents to a building project: architectural engineers have a much more thorough knowledge of building systems and structural characteristics than architects, yet they have a more holistic approach to structural design than engineers. Because of this, I realized early in high school that architectural engineering was truly the degree that was going to get me the furthest in the work place and ultimately make me more successful. In turn, it will give me a better opportunity to travel to less fortunate areas around the world and manage building projects which has become a long-term goal of mine. Unfortunately, getting this degree presents more difficulty for me because it is not offered in Georgia.

The most important aspect of all of the work that I have done during my life, both for myself and my community, is that I have lived by this rule: no blood, sweat, or tear is worth the effort without a positive attitude and a resilient trust in God. It has taken strong faith in that rule to get me through to where I am today, and I am extremely grateful for all of the people and efforts that have helped me along the way. The four years that this letter covers have been the most important years of my life in regard to the rest of my life, and I hope that I am able to extend that importance to the next four years of my education by attending at Penn State.