Nearly all Harker students have the Harker Bell Schedule bookmarked on their browsers, but do you know who helped develop the website? Arthur Jakobsson (12) has dedicated hours of his time to perfect this tool and maximize its accessibility. As an active member of HarkerDev, Arthur has worked on numerous projects to improve student and faculty life.

“I joined [HarkerDev] initially because I love programming. When I joined at the very end of freshman year, the team was still relatively small,” Arthur said. “My first project was working on the already-made course planner, and I’ve been a part of it ever since.”

This experience motivated Arthur to pioneer his own project called the bus schedule, an opportunity for him to combine his passion for computer science with his desire to improve the community. Though yet to be released, this bus schedule would manage all bus systems and provide students with an easily accessible resource to find all the information they need regarding busses. 

“It was a rather rocky start – I thought of the idea because I take the bus to school everyday and it was difficult to learn about the information. Once or twice, I missed the bus because I wasn’t aware of changes to the schedule,” Arthur said. “Last year I started working with Dawson [Chen (11)] and Aryav [Bharali (11)] and that worked a lot better, and things started moving along. When the bus schedule is released, I hope that it has a lasting impact.”

Arthur’s passion for programming also led him to join Harker Robotics in his freshman year, and since then, he has taken on a larger role in leadership. Serving as the Technical President this year, he manages the electrical, mechanical, software and design teams and integrates each individual subteam to produce the robot. 

“Since my freshman year, I’ve always enjoyed building a robot. Initially, I went in thinking I would join programming, but then I fell in love with the mechanical side and have been working on that ever since,” Arthur said.

During his sophomore year, Arthur, along with Hari Bhimaraju (12), played a major role in reviving the media team.

“Hari and I helped revive operations and since then, media has done really well – it somewhat took off after my sophomore year,” Arthur said. “I wanted a part in leadership to be able to have a say in the club, and media was an opportunity to do that … Because I wanted to do a good job in media, I decided to really take on the role as opposed to just sitting there. It ended up being a lot of fun.”

Arthur’s dedication to robotics is recognized by many, including his close friend Chloe Affaki (12). After meeting Arthur through shared classes and robotics, Chloe grew especially close with him during robotics competitions. Because Chloe and Arthur both work on the mechanical subteam in robotics, they often worked together in the pit at competitions, and Chloe cherishes the memories they’ve created during that time spent together.

“I really like it when Arthur and I have overlapping pit slots, because then we get to work together on the robot in competition,” Chloe said. “And if there’s not much to do then we can walk around and look at other robots all around. It’s really fun.”

In both HarkerDev and robotics, Arthur has dealt with setbacks where other members of the team have not put forth full effort, but these challenges have helped him learn to work as a team.

“There’s definitely been struggles, dealing with difficult people who work less or work more, but robotics has really helped me work with more people,” Arthur said. “To some extent, it’s always been people above me who didn’t do their fair share, and that often meant my friends and I did more work and tried to help out more.”

Arthur’s work ethic ties into his academic life as well. Upper school computer science teacher Susan King, who taught Arthur in his sophomore year, values his aptitude for teamwork in a classroom setting.

“A trait that I saw in him was his willingness to work with other people. He brought that same kind of joy towards students that he brought towards life, and he was just willing to see the good in other people,” King said. “He was willing to work alongside another person, not to dominate them or to be subservient but to work together with another person.”

Whether he is supporting the robotics community or leaning in to help friends, Arthur’s easy-going and agreeable personality makes him dependable. Close friend Kristin Tong (12) appreciates how Arthur will always prioritize helping others even when he is busy with his own work.

“He’s always willing to help others. Some friends always say they’re busy, but he’ll always take his time to help you with other subjects or proofread an essay, which is really nice,” Kristin said.

As a way to destress from his busy school life, Arthur often practices photography or rides his bike around his neighborhood. Since junior year, Arthur has maintained a photography Instagram account, as he appreciates the peace that photography brings into his daily schedule.

“I really love photography, especially wildlife photography … [Recently,] I haven’t been able to get outside as much, but it was just fun to create last year,” Arthur said. “In my sophomore year, I did something related to photography and robotics – I led media and created the videos. That was a lot of fun and that’s what drew me into videography and photography.”