Hi there! My name is Will Sheehan, and I’m a freshman at Duke. While I’m currently undecided, I plan on studying electrical and computer engineering and possibly double majoring in computer science. I grew up on Maui, Hawaii, but now live with my mom in Austin, Texas. I spend my summers and winters with my dad Will Sheehan by the oceanback on Maui surfing, dirt biking, hiking and more. I like to think that spending so much time in the outdoors has given me a deep appreciation for nature, and in return a fiery passion for sciences like physics and chemistry.

The summer before  junior year I traveled to Beijing, China to live with a host family for a month. Having to speak their language nearly the whole time, I turned to journaling in order to empty my thoughts. They effortlessly spilled onto the page; it felt as if I couldn’t write fast enough, and that my ideas would flee before I could cement them in ink.

I soon found a new love for personal writing. The next summer I interned for a company named ShakaCode, and while I learned the ins and outs of applying Ruby on Rails to website development I blogged about my experience. As soon as school started, my old calculus teacher approached me, saying how he had read my blogWill Sheehan riding a dirt bike and loved my style of writing as well as what I had to say. That year in advanced calculus he had our class use blogs as a way to track our progress in whatever project or research we were pursuing.

Attempting to communicate complex, specialized information is an intriguing challenge that I find satisfying to complete. I have developed this skill not only through my blogging experience but also through tutoring in math the past couple years. While I do plan on pursuing computer science, I am still entirely open to a career in scientific research. Discovering something new has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember.

Will Sheehan on a cliffI hope that as a part of the Duke Research Blog I get to share new, important findings with our community as I further my own understanding along the way. I see this as a learning opportunity for both myself and those around me, and hope that Duke takes an interest in all that I have to say about the cool stuff they might not normally know about!

Post by Will Sheehan