Joining robotics opened many doors for Karthik Sundaram (12). It aided him in his path towards discovering his passion, making new friends and eventually finding volunteer work in a similar field.

Karthik developed an interest in robotics after his parents encouraged him to participate in the club as an extracurricular activity during his sophomore year.

“As I stayed there, I began to enjoy it more, and I could actually make friends with not only people in my grade but also the upperclassmen that were there,” he said.

While building a robot takes weeks of hard work, diligence and skill, Karthik enjoys watching his progress develop into a finished product.

“One thing that is important to me when I do something is to actually be able to see if it gets results, so I like starting from nothing and over time seeing the robot get built to the finished product,” he said. “We actually keep a time-lapse of it, which is something I enjoy watching when it’s done.”

His desire to become more involved in robotics lead him to his current position as the head of the electrical subteam of the club.

“Before, I worked under the vice president, and I would do various jobs and help build the robot,” he said. “Now, I have to not only do that but also manage people, which is something I enjoy doing.”

Karthik takes his interest in the STEM fields to his volunteer work at science museums, in which he monitors and interacts the children who visit the museum.

“I remember one time a helped a boy build a parachute,” he said. “I helped him for a day and he didn’t talk much, but I could see that he was actually learning and growing from it. By pure coincidence, two weeks later, that same family came back, and the parents didn’t recognize me, but I knew the child did because he immediately came back to me even though I was kind of out of view and asked for my help again.”

Despite his busy schedule, Karthik believes a key aspect to enjoying what he does is by incorporating humor in his everyday life. He records his puns in a public document, currently standing at two pages long.
“In most situations, I can find something humorous and create [something] to say about it,” he said. “The biggest thing I like in humor is often with puns and wordplay– the more smarter humor than just slapstick, where people are actually being clever in what they’re doing.”