Early into my freshman year of high school, I realized my interest in dismantling electronics and looking at the little pieces that made them work. With the extra time I had after school and my homework assignments, I started a project to make my own radio transmitter. I chose it out of all the other things that came to mind: timers, radios, soundboards. I wanted to see what it was like to be the person on the other side of that static.

My journey began when I opened a dented and broken VCR player, those black and silver rectangular boxes that take VHS tapes. Which, If you’re anything like my family, you probably have a collection of old Disney movies on. I found that it was crowded with little parts called resistors, diodes, capacitors, transistors, stuff that I learned from reading The Art of Electronics and watching youtubers, similar to AddOhms, for hours. I scouted out an orange disk capacitor first, squinting at the faded print on each until I found one with 103. The instructions for these pieces were the schematics I had scribbled onto notebook paper, studying the images of radio transmitters others had posted on Reddit. It was a network of graphite lines and arrows, the 103 capacitor being two that ran perpendicular, showing how to control the flow of electricity. Now I just need a soldering iron.

“Ricky, do you still have that iron you used to fix the car’s wires?” I asked my brother eagerly, expecting him to pull out a pen sized one like I had seen in the videos and books.

“Yeah, there's one in a black case in the garage,” he said, proceeding to show me the way before pulling out a dusty soldering gun with Wall Lenk stamped on the side and a coil of solder. 

My hands struggled to wrap around the grip as I ran it back to my room, dragging its cord on the hardwood. I plugged the gun in and was sprinkled with scorching metal beads when I tried to heat up a strand of solder. That wasn’t going to stop me. I leaned in to that VCR, touching the metal legs of the parts I needed and plucking them out. My hands shook and my back was strained when I finished. The transmitter fit in my palm, with a 9v Duracell and a shiny copper coil sticking out of it. I plugged my phone in and played some Radiohead for the occasion, scrolling my brothers handheld Sony radio back and forth on FM until it came through.

“Come listen to this!” I yelled from the desk in my room.

He glanced at my creation and left, along with my other brothers. I stayed with a smile plastered on, until I picked it up and snapped the battery’s cord. I went straight to soldering it back on.

Never before have I been so intrigued by an activity in my leisure time, researching and teaching myself for the enjoyment. I feel as though I realized how I learn things best in my pursuit of tinkering with electronics, finding the autodidact in me. No matter the circumstance, whether it be responsibilities at home or the demands of high school academics, I hold true to my interest and continue to do so. Just because I can’t spend my whole day figuring out how to program an integrated circuit like I could during the summer, doesn’t mean I can just drop what I have put so much time into. 

I’ve learned that you have to take something apart before you can understand it, whether it be the lessons at school or a broken VCR player. I want to start new projects. I want to acquire new tools. I want to keep teaching myself how the things around me work.