Steven Bunting

While I was at Nysmith, I was involved in Chess Club, Math Olympiad, and Study Buddies. Most of my time outside of school though was dedicated to Odyssey of the Mind. My team was the first official Nysmith team, set up by Coach Li. I was involved from 5th grade through 8th grade. We went to the World Finals in 7th and 8th grades.

After Nysmith I went to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), where I was involved in winter track, one of the many tutoring programs, and the senior computer team. From TJ, I went to Carnegie Mellon University to study Computer Science. I’ve been a teaching assistant for the past 4 semesters for 15-122 Principles of Imperative Computation (the second CS course on the major track) where I’m in charge of teaching roughly 30 students alone twice every week.

The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I was a teaching assistant for the summer school session of computer science at TJ. The following 3 summers I spent as a summer research assistant at MITRE, a government contractor located in Virginia. My project the first year involved video bandwidth for unmanned aerial systems. My project the following 2 years involved simulating a Commercial off-the-shelf robotic arm. Following that, I’ve spent the past 2 summers at Bloomberg LP in New York working as a software engineer developing data analysis tools.

I think the main things that have stuck with me since Nysmith is to always ask questions. Learning wasn’t just talking at the students, it was exploring a topic by asking and answering questions to try to gain a deeper understanding. I’ve kept this up since leaving, and have found it to be a useful tool both academically and in life. At Nysmith, questions were encouraged and explored, even if they led down the “wrong” path, or weren’t directly related. The teachers were always happy to sit down and answer any questions you had about a topic.

I think the most useful advice I can give is to keep up connections with peers even after graduating. It’s remarkable, looking back, on how many amazing opportunities the other students in my class have had. Just this summer I actually ran into one of my old Nysmith classmates on the roof of my friend’s apartment in New York City, after not seeing him for years.