Steven Lin, valedictorian at Atlantic High in Delray Beach, plans to major in mechanical engineering at the University of Florida. He would advise other high-achieving students to ’go for balance rather than striving for perfection’ and to ’give some time to yourself every day for leisure.’ Photo provided
By Faran Fagen
A water wheel generator, a mouse trap car and a water-bottle rocket are some of the mechanisms that highlight Steven Lin’s résumé as valedictorian of Atlantic High School in Delray Beach.
The generator from his senior year taught him the biggest lesson of all — teamwork.
“This was our first year designing a water wheel generator,” said Lin, 18. “None of my teammates had experience building one, so it wasn’t surprising that the prototype never performed as we expected. I believe the best thing we eventually came up with was to compartmentalize the tasks so that each of us specializes in certain components of the generator.”
Lin was responsible for designing the mechanical wheel. Eventually, the team’s collective effort contributed to a first-place finish in the Palm Beach SECME Olympiad. The acronym stands for Science, Engineering, Communications, Mathematics Enrichment.
Lin, of Boca Raton, has been a huge cog in the wheel at Atlantic over the past four years. In addition to SECME, of which he was president junior and senior years, he tutored underclassmen in math and physics, assisted in donating canned goods and cereal to food banks as a National Honor Society member, and led a top-three Brain Bowl team.
He learned to juggle activities from the moment he started his freshman year.
“If there were one piece of advice I would give, it would be to go for balance rather than striving for perfection,” said Lin, who notched a 3.97 unweighted grade point average to earn the valedictorian honor. “Apart from your academics and extracurriculars, you should give some time to yourself every day for leisure to avoid burnout.”
Lin filled his spare time outside of school with worthwhile activities. He was a volunteer at the Glades Road branch of the Palm Beach County library. In 10th grade, he amassed 60 volunteer hours in its summer lunch program, which provided free lunches to 100-plus kids.
In 11th grade, he earned 150 hours promoting literacy to younger kids, and organized and tidied up rows of bookshelves. He was involved in the entire book restructuring to fit with the needs of adolescents and young teens.
“My experience as a volunteer at the library during the summer was very rewarding,” Lin said. “Serving meals to children reminds me how much of a difference that comes from performing these small acts of kindness. The library doesn’t just serve as a place for literacy, but also offers support to those in the community.”
But the accomplishment of which Lin is most proud is the extended essay he wrote during the summer between junior and senior years, which was a requirement for the International Baccalaureate program at Atlantic.
He chose to write under the topic of physics, specifically methods to estimate the surface temperatures of selected exoplanets.
“This was my first exposure to writing a research paper, and I enjoyed the overall process,” Lin said. “Although I mainly struggled with the data collection, it became satisfying in the end, especially when the data aligned with my predictions.”
Lin credits his success to the support of his family — his mom, Minlan Zheng, father, Mingqiang Lin, and brother, Jackie Lin.
Lin plans to major in mechanical engineering at the University of Florida. He hopes to work in the aerospace industry after graduation, preferably with NASA.
“Designing and innovating on cutting-edge technology is something I would dream of working with, and I believe these advancements will be beneficial in addressing the challenges and global issues happening on the ground,” he said.
Lin, also proficient in Java and Python, already has experience with coding at a college campus. The Atlantic High coding team finished in the top 25% at the University of Central Florida High School Programming Tournament. The competition consisted of 80 teams from across Florida.
“Although our team didn’t make it on the podium, the experience taught me how to think critically, and I was able to apply my knowledge of programming at the time to solve realistic scenarios,” Lin said. “It was also the same year I was first exposed to learning a programming language, so I had so much to learn and improve on.”
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