If Gateway alumnus Ian Hamilton could give current high school students one piece of advice it would be to not be afraid of failure. “College is challenging and there will be times of inevitable struggle, but it’s all part of the process. Don’t be afraid. During those moments you have the opportunity to learn about yourself and grow and I’d say that’s the best part of college.”
When Ian graduated from Gateway in 2010 he attended UC Santa Cruz, and later graduated in December 2014 with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Computer Engineering. He is currently an engineer in the Quality Assurance Department at SurveyMonkey, an online survey development cloud-based software company in San Mateo.
While Ian has always had strong math and science skills, qualities needed for engineering, the most important thing he learned from Gateway is how to relate to those who are different from him. “I didn’t realize until college how lucky I was to be surrounded by so many different people, ideas, and backgrounds at Gateway. Being surrounded by such diversity gave me humility and an open mind philosophy when interacting with others who may have different ideas than you,” according to Ian.
He has many positive memories from Gateway, especially those that include his core group of friends who he is still close with, but the one memory that sticks out to him the most is Mr. Woolgar’s bottle rocket project. “Our team was one of the few teams to keep our egg intact and I’ll always associate the sciences with feelings of pride and excitement.”