CHAOS TO COHESION: a legacy left behind

Every movement was a dance with death. Amidst the disarray of tools that decorated the shelves and cabinets, a lone figure navigated through the engineering workshop. With every action deliberate, he carefully inspected the piece of metal that could cost him his life: the metal was sitting, dense and heavy in his palm, warm from the summer heat. His surroundings would melt away in a mix of color and light, and with a few vague pieces of advice echoing in his mind, The simple click of one button would change his life. With one final steady breath, the piece was secured in the machine, accompanied by a soft click of the glass door.

Beginning as a novice, Rocklin High School senior, Branden Esquivel, biggest fear was that the metal could fly out when things were moving fast. The consequence of error hung heavy over his head every time he worked the machines. Reminiscing about his adventures in the Rocklin High School’s engineering shop, from where he started to where he is now, he claims that his passion for machining was never “one moment of excitement. It was more like, you get a hint of something, and then you want to find out more about it.”

The CNC machines in RHS range in price from 40K to 120K, and all pose a significant threat to the operator, no matter how qualified. Often involving heavy and sharp objects moving at high speeds, the risk factors are endless. Fortunately, the first time Esquivel used this machine, he successfully completed his task with little to no idea what he was doing. However, Branden claims that, “each project comes with its own set of variables. And once you complete it, you have proven to yourself that all the variables have been handled. However, each new processor resets all those variables. So it’s a whole new thing that could go wrong. The only thing that transferred over from part to part is you now have more knowledge. And with each additional part you complete, you are minimizing yourself as a variable that could cause things to go wrong.”

Despite understanding the risks, Branden said, “I had this goal in mind of something that I wanted to complete, and I wasn’t going to stop until I had it completed. Even if it meant mistakes.”

Branden’s courage to trek into the unknown sparked a wave of change. He identified all the factors missing from his learning experience to make it available to hundreds of other students at RHS. “Ever since COVID, when our teacher left, the whole shop was just in disarray. Nothing was in a functional state…. So I worked with a couple of other people, and we worked to get the machines maintained. We just completely started over from the beginning. We reorganized everything. The whole system.”

Paving the way forward, Branden Esquivel leaves a legacy of inspiration and an everlasting impact on future generations of students at RHS. An invaluable member of the RHS community, his dedication, and hard work have not gone unnoticed. Though graduating this year, Branden’s impact will last years to come.

Branden’s determination to change the engineering shop facilitated his personal growth. Now a senior, he is working a parttime job in a field he loves, using the skills and techniques he learned in RHS. More importantly, his initiative to change the program has allowed students to reach for greater opportunities than ever before. Branden said, “[the most important goal he worked toward was] to be able to give people who are genuinely interested in engineering, to get them as much education as they can in the four years and so that they can go on..and do great engineering things.”

Navigating his way through the chaos of the pandemic, from balancing the block schedule to adapting to a new engineering teacher, Branden’s introduction to engineering was rocky. “My new engineering teacher was my digital art teacher, and then I told him I didn’t want to be in art, and I somehow managed my way into the [engineering] shop somehow…I saw the machines [in the shop] and didn’t know what they were and got intrigued and then followed that curiosity.” In addition to adapting to these new changes, Branden had to figure out how exactly he was going to follow his curiosity, stating “He [the new engineering teacher] new just as much as me starting out, so it was more so just an adventure of learning through other people and m own research. Ultimately, it was just a lot of stumbling through…making my way through my failures.”