Starting on July 12, I entered a program called the Summer@USC. This four-week summer program provides high school students with courses that offer college credit at the University of Southern California, more commonly known as "USC". 

There were a great number of courses that I could choose from, and my choice was 3D Design and Prototyping. The first day of class, our teacher introduced the software that would be used during the four weeks of class. We were all very excited; the name of the software was Autodesk Maya.

First, we made Legos by hand, and then made them in Maya with the same scale so that when it was printed with a 3D printer, the Lego pieces were able to fit together. Before I attended the program at USC, I was very good at Autodesk 3Ds Max, another 3D-making software. This made the course easier for me; however, there turned out to be many differences between the two types of software, so I got confused easily.

Not only did we learn how to use Maya, but we also learned Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After-Effect. When the last week came, we were told to make a model for our final project. The project would be printed by a 3D printer and our grade would be based on both the model in the 3D environment and the actual model. The instructor mentioned that if the model contained one minor mistake, it would not be able to print. This scared all the students, including me. From 8AM in the morning to 8PM at night, we worked every day that week to prepare for the final project, checking every corner of our model to make sure there was not a single mistake. As a result, most of our models were successfully printed, and I was one of the fortunate students.

I really enjoyed the experience I had at USC, working with the other students, and I feel I now have acquired stronger time management and discipline skills to face my junior year. I also feel much more confident in my social skills after spending a full month interacting with fellow students that came from different backgrounds as me. Overall, I would highly recommend this program to high schoolers that are looking for the "college experience" and to earn college credit.