“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
Hello! How do you do?
Welcome to my ePortfolio! My name is Max Graf, and I have just moved here to Oregon about three years ago. I am currently studying mechanical engineering with a minor in physics here at Lane Community College. I have actually been away from school for quite a while but I am here to stay to finish up my degree and move on to my career in science and engineering.
During my hiatus from school, I did a lot of soul searching in my early 20’s. I started by backing up a 75 liter backpack and heading to Europe for a couple of months. This trip led to a chain of humanitarian missions but we will get into those in a bit. At the time I was much too restless for college and I needed to get out of the bubble that was Southern California. While in Europe I experienced many different culture shocks with three of my closest friends ranging from Spain, up through France to Amsterdam. Then over to Germany curving down over Switzerland and wrapping up the adventure in Italy.
This lapse of time away from home immersed in other cultures and “really living like the people do” that was our motto the whole trip. Really opened my eyes to a bigger world outside of the U.S. and allowed me to gain some perspective of the world and how it worked.
I got inspired by the world and the human side of of our society and the connections we are capable of making. After getting back, I started as a leader for a high school ministry. During my four years of service there we took students on mission trips around the world, we built houses for single mothers in Mexico on the Baja peninsula, cared for the homeless in skid row of Los Angeles CA, built homes and provided educational skills training in Swaziland South Africa, and I even got to be apart of an extension project for an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
As I went through my travels, I realized we as a species need more than our current society can provide, and that new technologies must be developed to move us forward. Having that realization I decided it was time to go back to school and get my degree in engineering to help humanity push forward to the horizon.
Hobbies
I do a number of fun things outside of school, a few of them are mountain biking and rock climbing. I used to live in Jackson, Wyoming a lifetime ago before Southern California and I would ride all over the place as well as hike every mountain I could. It was not until I moved to California that I got into Rock Climbing; a good buddy of mine introduced me to it and I’ve been climbing ever since.
I also Like to do some amateur tinkering, I have been doing it ever since I was a kid. It’s where my passion for engineering came from and once I get my degree it will turn from an amateur hobby to a professional career. When I was in the third grade I build a fully functioning robot one meter tall. When I was in preschool I met an astronaut by the name of Buzz Aldrin, meeting him sparked my fascination with science and engineering. I hope one day I can climb to the heights he did then go beyond.
space and Engineering Perspective 