As application season approaches and upperclassmen start to apply for college, they begin to think more about their future. The realization that adulthood is just within reach is setting in, and students are wondering what exactly this next chapter of their lives will have in store for them. While everyone’s post-high school experience is different depending on what sort of path they want to pursue, the wisdom from the generations of West Alumni who had once experienced this same thing can be a great tool to help any student lead other students into adulthood.
Khushi Kapoor ’18 is no stranger to the stress of the unknown that lies after graduation. While Kapoor graduated from Iowa State University in 2022 and is now a Systems Engineer for Boeing’s Phantom Works division, she too faced the same question that many students are facing right now: what will my future hold?
Kapoor graduated with a degree in aerospace engineering and now works on prototypes for future military projects, most of which are currently highly classified.
“Unfortunately, I can’t really talk about what exactly I do, but these are the type of projects that will eventually be available to the public [in] 20 to 30 years potentially,” Kapoor said. “It’s a lot of experiment design, a lot of prototyping of just super, futuristic stuff. Customers will come to us and say, ‘Is this possible? Do you think we can do this?’ and then it’s our job to go out and see if we can make the engineering behind it actually happen.”
Like many students, Kapoor wasn’t exactly sure what she would be doing after graduation. She had an interest in aerospace engineering but didn’t know the direction that this field would take her.
“I think being super young and hearing the word ‘aerospace’, always made me super excited, but I never actually knew the depths of what the aerospace field can really go into,” Kapoor reflected. “[Aerospace] has such a wide array of things that you can be doing. I didn’t actually know this is what I’d be doing, but I think this is exactly where I want to be right now.”
Kapoor’s experience at West
Kapoor took a variety of Project Lead the Way classes, which are designed to give students a real-world, hands-on learning experience. Most of these courses also offer dual credit through Kirkwood Community College, allowing students to get a head start on their college degree while still attending high school. The classes that Kapoor took were the first place that she had the opportunity to explore what aerospace engineering was and the first place that she realized that her interest could turn into a career.
“I think West did a really really great job [preparing us for college] and I give a lot of credit to the classes I took at West especially. My junior year I took a class called [Aerospace Engineering] and I was always interested in that aerospace field but again, I had never had an actual class or even gone to a camp or anything that introduced me to it.” Kapoor said.
“[Aerospace Engineering] was the first class I took that actually [introduced me to aerospace engineering] and I was 100% sure after that class that that’s what I wanted to study in college. So I owe a lot of credit to West.”
In addition to Aerospace Engineering, Kapoor also took Principles of Engineering, another Project Lead the Way course. Similar to the way Aerospace Engineering helped Kapoor decide what she wanted to major in, Principles of Engineering allowed her to have a basic understanding of what she would continue to study in college. While Kapoor took classes specifically tailored to her future college major, she also took many AP classes that weren’t explicitly for aerospace engineering but ended up helping her in the long run, such as AP Computer Science.
“West has so many AP classes you can take and being able to take those and then going directly into college, getting credit for a lot of them, meant I could focus on taking classes that were more of my interest instead of taking a lot of Gen Eds because I got to use my AP credit. That was really crucial [and something] that a lot of my classmates didn’t get to do.”
Outside of the classroom, Kapoor’s experiences in clubs and other activities helped her to ease into the environment of both college and her future job at Boeing. She was involved in many leadership roles, including president of Student Senate, now known as Student Government, volleyball and orchestra. Kapoor was also involved in the West High Trobotix club and carried the lessons and skills she learned all the way to Boeing.
“I was the team captain of our robotics club for four years and my freshman year was the first year the team ever existed. Starting that up [I got to learn] what it took to lead a team and work with different types of people, and learn that especially in engineering, there’s a lot of different personalities,” Kapoor said, reflecting on her time on the robotics club.
“That’s translated perfectly through all of my projects in school, through all of my internships and now my job. I can still see those same types of people that we had on our team in high school. So that’s really cool to see, and I think it was cool to get that experience before going to college.”
Kapoor’s advice
As Kapoor has continued on to higher education and now a prestigious career, she has had time to reflect on how her years at West helped her to get there. Additionally, she has reflected on what things current Trojans can do while still attending West to help them reach their goals in college and their future careers. The first piece of advice she has is to participate in Kirkwood internships and other programs.
“I think [participating] would be a really, really good thing for students that want to go into engineering or just in general to take advantage of, especially because a lot of companies will come to career fairs your freshman year of college, and they’ll look at your resume, and for a lot of students, there’s not much on there because you just started college,” Kapoor said.
“I think taking advantage of that internship program would be super awesome because the majority of your peers coming into freshman year aren’t going to have that experience. So if you’re trying to get experience right away with jobs and internships, I think that would be a really good way to like set yourself apart and get industry experience working with companies and stuff like that.”
In addition, Kapoor also recommends that students branch out and try as many things as they can during their time at West, similar to the way she did. Although she notes that this may seem cliche, she also notes the importance of branching out in order to understand and experience different people, cultures, activities and mindsets.
“Experiment as much as you want, your years in high school are setting you up really for the rest of your life, so try whatever you want. I did so many things and a lot of them I don’t do in my day-to-day but a lot of them have obviously shaped who I am today. Try not to keep yourself in a certain boundary, I played an instrument but I also played a sport, but I was also on the robotics team. ” Kapoor said.
While she recommends that students try as many activities and classes as possible, she also recognizes that taking some time for yourself is also an important part of high school and something that she wishes she did more of.
“You also need to take a break and not work that hard. I think high school is also supposed to be about like finding yourself internally and understanding how you are as a person and I think I definitely could have used more time for myself instead of always being busy with like the million things I was doing,” Kapoor said.
Kapoor’s experience at West both introduced and prepared her for her future engineering career. She got hands-on experience that helped her make an easy decision when it came to her college major, and was involved in many activities that taught her important skills that she still applies today. Her success reflects West’s unique learning environment and acts as motivation for students who are wondering where the walls of West High will eventually take them.
