Have you seen the senior with the green-blue dip dyed hair? That is Sarah Gonzales. Most of the time, you can find her in the robotics lab because ever since 8th grade, Sarah Gonzalez’s (12) life has been all about robotics. She joined Harker, as well as its Robotics program, in freshman year. After being accepted into Harker, she moved to the Bay Area in her freshman year from Los Angeles. In 9th grade, she was on the Harker Robotics team, but in sophomore year, she decided to start her own team.

“I moved here for the school because it’s a really good science school, and it’s what I want to go into,” Sarah said. “It also allowed me to choose my classes very early on, take a lot of electives and things that I enjoyed, something that I wouldn’t necessarily have had the opportunity to do at another high school.”

Sarah decided to start her own robotics team in order to offer the opportunity to do robotics to students whose school did not have a robotics program. When she first started, she had 10 kids from two schools and she now has 20 members from 8 different schools.

“I really enjoy meeting new people from around the world and hearing the different experiences they have with robotics and with science and how they choose to apply it in their lives, “ Sarah said.

She not only learned more about robotics from being in the program, but Sarah has also learned life skills.

“I think I learned just general problem solving,” she said. “A lot of people get really stuck when they hit a wall or don’t know the exact solution, and I think robotics has really helped me with analyzing what’s going wrong and trying other paths.”

Planning to major in biomedical engineering, Sarah applied to engineering colleges. She was considering Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Stanford and John Hopkins University and decided to attend MIT in the fall.

“I specifically want to go into prosthesis design because I think it’s really cool being able to give something back that a person has lost,” she said.

Sarah spends most of her time in robotics, where she had also made many friends.

“Sarah is uniquely passionate and committed to the things that she takes interest in,” Andrew Tierno (12), a friend of Sarah, said. “If you look at the amount of work and time and pretty much everything that she dedicates, especially to our robotics program, you’d be blown away. There are very few people, if any, that could achieve the same kind of things that Sarah has and that’s something that should be applauded.”

Aside from her passion for Robotics and science, Sarah also plays school and club water polo. She is a hole set player, but has also played many other positions, like goalie. Sarah joined the Harker water polo team in her freshman year and played for the last four years. Although she does not plan to play in college, she hopes to continue club water polo outside of school.

“I think water polo, freshman year, it was the very first I got into, before we started school. It really taught me how to have a good team dynamic, all the girls really love spending time with each other,” Sarah said. “I think having the ability to come together with the team so so closely and bond, is something that’s really important in life because any field you go into you will be interacting with other people.”

Robotics and water polo have both been essential parts of Sarah’s life and she hopes to continue doing what she is passionate about no matter where life takes her.
“I think [pausing] before you give up on something immediately – just because something is hard doesn’t mean it will stay impossible forever, and if you just take a beat to think about what’s going on, you can see that maybe you can get through it,” she said.