Welcome!
Hi there! My name is Dryw, and welcome to my website! It mostly serves as a place for me to document my projects, but it might serve some other purposes in the future too. Feel free to explore around, there's a menu button in the top left corner!
About Me
Now, I know you've got one big question on your mind: "How do you pronounce your name?" Yeah, I get that a lot! It's pronounced the same as Drew, but it's a Welsh spelling. Not that I am Welsh, my mother just liked it, and I do too!
And that logo you see in the background - that's an artistic impression of my hair. It's quite curly, and it grows out into an afro. Ever since I was young, I've had this cycle of growing out my hair really long, then shaving it off and donating it. It's become a personal tradition of mine, and my hair has become part of my identity. So that's why I use it as my logo!
As for who I am, I think the easiest way to describe myself is a maker. I love to start new projects, learn new stuff, build new things, and share with the people around me. That last part is really important to me, because much of what I've learned stemmed from others sharing their own work. We're on the shoulders of giants after all, so I'll help put up scaffolding where I can!
I got into making stuff from a very young age. I really enjoyed building Lego sets, and eventually branched outwards to other interests including electronics, model airplanes, and robotics. I joined a FIRST Robotics club in 8th grade, which was arguably the best decision I've ever made. I learned so much so quickly, such as designing and constructing mechanical systems, integrating electronics, and writing code to make it all work. It's also really important to highlight the soft-skills I learned from that, such as teamwork, leadership, documentation, safety, and so much more. My team ended up going to the World Championships 2 out of the 5 years I was there, it was such an awesome experience!
That really opened the doors to a lot of opportunities for me. I got an engineering internship with FIRST right after I graduated, which was a lot of fun! I was also accepted into the Colorado School of Mines, where I completed my Bachelors in Engineering Physics and Masters in Electrical Engineering. During that time, I became a teaching assistant for a class on building circuits with Raspberry Pis, and the professor even trusted me to help create course material. That same professor offered me to join one of their research projects, which involved shooting lasers at asteroids for seismology.
After graduation, I took a trip to Europe for a couple months, because I'm interested in moving there at some point in my life. I was even convinced to blog about it, which is actually what prompted me to create this website; you can find the blog in the navigation tab above! Those moving plans are on hold for now for a few reasons, but I still intend to move once the time is right for me!
After that I started job hunting, and discovered that SparkFun Electronics was hiring for a product development engineer. I immediately applied and got hired a few weeks later! I've really enjoyed working there, I get to jump between all sorts of different projects, which really suits me!
I feel very fortunate to be where I am today, and am excited for what the future holds! And I don't think I would have gotten here without a bit of advice I got when I was young. I don't remember it exactly, and it's evolved since I first heard it, but it's something along the lines of this:
"You cannot control the opportunities presented to you, you just have to get lucky. But you can choose which opportunities you take. If you choose well, you can get yourself into luckier situations that present even better opportunities to you."
In my life, that's been pretty accurate. I was presented with the opportunity to join that robotics club, and I chose to do it. That lead to me being offered an internship and to attend a great engineering school, which I chose to do. Those lead to me being offered teaching and research assistant positions, followed by my first full time job as an engineer. All of which are opportunities that I chose, which lead to even more opportunities.
There's certainly a snowball effect there, so I've morphed that advice into this short saying: "The rich get richer." If you're rich in experiences, you can get into more lucky situations that present better opportunities for you to get even richer in experiences. But it's up to you to take those opportunities.
I hope that's helpful for someone! That's all I've got for this page, so please take a look through my Projects, that's where all the interesting stuff is!
And that logo you see in the background - that's an artistic impression of my hair. It's quite curly, and it grows out into an afro. Ever since I was young, I've had this cycle of growing out my hair really long, then shaving it off and donating it. It's become a personal tradition of mine, and my hair has become part of my identity. So that's why I use it as my logo!
As for who I am, I think the easiest way to describe myself is a maker. I love to start new projects, learn new stuff, build new things, and share with the people around me. That last part is really important to me, because much of what I've learned stemmed from others sharing their own work. We're on the shoulders of giants after all, so I'll help put up scaffolding where I can!
I got into making stuff from a very young age. I really enjoyed building Lego sets, and eventually branched outwards to other interests including electronics, model airplanes, and robotics. I joined a FIRST Robotics club in 8th grade, which was arguably the best decision I've ever made. I learned so much so quickly, such as designing and constructing mechanical systems, integrating electronics, and writing code to make it all work. It's also really important to highlight the soft-skills I learned from that, such as teamwork, leadership, documentation, safety, and so much more. My team ended up going to the World Championships 2 out of the 5 years I was there, it was such an awesome experience!
That really opened the doors to a lot of opportunities for me. I got an engineering internship with FIRST right after I graduated, which was a lot of fun! I was also accepted into the Colorado School of Mines, where I completed my Bachelors in Engineering Physics and Masters in Electrical Engineering. During that time, I became a teaching assistant for a class on building circuits with Raspberry Pis, and the professor even trusted me to help create course material. That same professor offered me to join one of their research projects, which involved shooting lasers at asteroids for seismology.
After graduation, I took a trip to Europe for a couple months, because I'm interested in moving there at some point in my life. I was even convinced to blog about it, which is actually what prompted me to create this website; you can find the blog in the navigation tab above! Those moving plans are on hold for now for a few reasons, but I still intend to move once the time is right for me!
After that I started job hunting, and discovered that SparkFun Electronics was hiring for a product development engineer. I immediately applied and got hired a few weeks later! I've really enjoyed working there, I get to jump between all sorts of different projects, which really suits me!
I feel very fortunate to be where I am today, and am excited for what the future holds! And I don't think I would have gotten here without a bit of advice I got when I was young. I don't remember it exactly, and it's evolved since I first heard it, but it's something along the lines of this:
"You cannot control the opportunities presented to you, you just have to get lucky. But you can choose which opportunities you take. If you choose well, you can get yourself into luckier situations that present even better opportunities to you."
In my life, that's been pretty accurate. I was presented with the opportunity to join that robotics club, and I chose to do it. That lead to me being offered an internship and to attend a great engineering school, which I chose to do. Those lead to me being offered teaching and research assistant positions, followed by my first full time job as an engineer. All of which are opportunities that I chose, which lead to even more opportunities.
There's certainly a snowball effect there, so I've morphed that advice into this short saying: "The rich get richer." If you're rich in experiences, you can get into more lucky situations that present better opportunities for you to get even richer in experiences. But it's up to you to take those opportunities.
I hope that's helpful for someone! That's all I've got for this page, so please take a look through my Projects, that's where all the interesting stuff is!