Charles Ihara is a rising high school senior at St. Margaret’s. He is also an Eagle Scout, an avid tennis player, and a member of The Margazine. Becoming an Eagle Scout requires years of hardwork and dedication, starting from Cub Scouts in 1st grade (this means that Charles has been a part of the Boy Scouts of America for 12 years!). For his Eagle Scout project, he built a shade structure for the Riley Wilderness Park which prevents their parking meter from overheating and breaking down during the hot summer months. He has been on the SMES Tennis team since freshman year, and he takes lessons outside of school. He also enjoys gardening, and he has been growing--among many other tropical plants--a banana tree for the last four years! Last year he was able to share the harvest with a few of his friends and family.
This summer, Charles has been busy researching for his college applications. He advises other students to “start early” and to tour colleges so that you can get a feel for the place. He says it is really helpful and meaningful to see a campus in-person. He says that the hardest class he ever took was AP Chemistry, but he said it helped prepare him for the difficult workload in future classes.
He would tell freshmen to consider others’ (parents, teachers, friends) advice, but to “listen to yourself the most” when making big decisions. While Charles has valued the advice of his older peers, he stresses that you should not let others’ advice discourage you from taking certain classes or doing certain activities, especially if there is something you really want to do. He also wants to remind freshmen that “there’s a lot that you do not see, that your classmates are doing on their own,” so, “even if someone just seems naturally smart, they may just have more background knowledge on the subject, or they may have put more time into studying it independently.” He says this to encourage students, to remind them that they are just as capable as their peers.
Most recently, Charles has been participating in the SMES UCI internship program in the Biomedical Engineering department. He is doing lab work with two other SMES students (Emma Chang and Aidan Momtaz) on fluorescent proteins. They meet 3 times a week (for about 8 weeks), from 3-6 PM to subculture, transfect, and analyze cells with plasmids coding for fluorescent proteins and biosensors. These biosensors utilize fluorescent molecules which can be excited with a laser, allowing them to observe molecular interactions that occur when the cell is migrating or experiencing stress. He has really enjoyed doing this research, and is thinking of pursuing a major in Biomedical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, or Agriculture.
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