Hi! I’m Navin Rai. I have one younger brother, who is 16. I am from the Bay Area, San Ramon to be specific. I grew up in Castro Valley, which is right next to San Ramon, and moved there when I was 10. I have family in both Sacramento and England, who I regularly visit. I am also a British Citizen as of about a year ago, and plan to move there after college. I enjoy swimming, playing video games, and playing the piano. I’ve been playing the piano for about 13 years, and even though my practice is sporadic at best, I do enjoy it.

My favorite subjects in high school were math and engineering, so I decided my major would be mechanical engineering, with a minor in math. I don’t enjoy writing, or English subjects in general, because I prefer to think in an objective manner, rather than the subjective style of evaluation in writing classes. For the majority of high school, I was interested in computer science, until I took an engineering class in my senior year. There, I realized that while I did have an interest in computer science, engineering was where my passion was.

I’ve always enjoyed building and tinkering, but by far my favorite project was my computer. I built my computer in 2016, and while I didn’t fully understand what I was doing, I enjoyed the process thoroughly. I plan to build more in the future, however computers are very expensive to build. I’m also interested in building laptops, but they are harder to build than computers due to their compact size, so I’ve decided to hold off until I have more experience in the field. Overall, I’m ready to see where USD will bring me, and am looking forward to my years here!