As a kid who was only allowed thirty minutes of screen time everyday, Erik Boesen has defeated the odds to become what many teachers and students at Mason call tech savvy.

Computer science is not cut out for everyone, so when I asked what made Erik stick with the subject and what made it so special for him, first he cracked a joke and said it made good money, but later he revealed the truth.

“It is kind of hard to describe why I like it so much, there is a lot to learn. Of course that is true in a lot of fields, well take this for example, biology which is a cool field, there is a lot to learn about it, but there is not much that you can as a highschooler,” Boesen said. “I mean you can take a class of biology or do some labs, but besides that there is not much that you can do. Whereas in computer science you can program anything you want, you could be a high schooler, middle schooler and program something.”

Ever since Boesen was just a kid, his love for technology and computer science was consuming. It all started when he got into the Scratch Club, which was the beginning wheels to the computer science train that would lead many kids through high school. The Scratch Club was just composed of kids from the elementary school playing with the beginning components of computer programming.

Getting into the club was just a start for Boesen, who became intrigued and furthered his computer science learning on his own.

“I did the SCRATCH Club when I was in fourth grade…I liked that a lot. I read a book on Python which is a program that we now use on robotics when I was in fifth grade. I didn’t do that much of it till I was in seventh or eighth grade,” Boesen said.

While high school was a big step for Boesen and his career in computer science, some of his biggest accomplishments with the skill can be dated back to middle school. He talked to me about his website, which he said was pretty basic but for me would probably be impossible, and other little things that he is proud of.

When asking Boesen for some of his most rewarding self accomplishments, one of the first things that came to mind was his own personal website. In retrospect, he believes that the website was not as impressive as it seemed, because it was merely a picture and some text. However for me, just the thought of even attempting to make a website seemed impossible, which I had already told him several times.

Another big part of Boesen’s persona is being an important part of the robotics team. He told me how being on the robotics team has always been in the back of his mind ever since he saw them at the farmer’s market when he was just in second or third grade.

His interest evolved to finally becoming one of the only two freshmen on the robotics team last year. Boesen works on mostly the programming of the robot. They create an interface- which. yet again, I asked for him to explain- to make the robot move which is on a “much more deeper face than just using joysticks.”

While I voiced that the task sounded extremely difficult, Boesen explained to me that even he had not had much experience with the script they were using named, Python, but he had created many websites the summer before 9th grade which had a similar user interface.

Boesen, by the end of last year. had revamped much of the coding for the robot and now works with senior, Carter Fendley, to complete tasks such as move the robot automatically accompanied with other things.

Another extremely interesting thing that Boesen does in his free time is create apps. When I asked him what kind of apps he liked to make, he explained to me that he has been working on a couple social media apps. While I asked with excitement, “like MySpace,” he laughed as replied no, not exactly.

“Unlike Facebook and Twitter where people only follow people that agree with their views or only like things that agree with their views, Facebook will notice that and they will say well this guy likes this stuff or anything that agrees with certain views, so they might censor opposing views. So the goal of this social media is to not ever do that and try to give people boundless views of things of the actual content that is out there,” Boesen said.

While Boesen will probably lead our Robotics team to never ending World Championships and appearances, his possibilities in the future are endless. With the new age of technology, having people like Erik Boesen will change our perspectives and the world.