There is no shortage of activities that Vivek Mehta has taken part in. During his time on 66659A, one of LHS’s robotics teams, Mehta led the team to qualify for the VEX Robotics World Championships for three years straight. In addition to his duties as a VEX captain, Mehta is the secretary for the Class of 2025 Class Council, the president of the National Honor Society, and participated in two research projects. 

Mehta believes that his desire to take part in ambitious projects and activities can be traced back to his drive to explore big questions. “I love questioning things. I think a lot of discoveries have come from asking questions about things that people took for granted. And this idea of being comfortable with uncomfortableness is really important to me,” Mehta said.

Mehta’s curiosity in asking uncomfortable questions was what prompted him to become involved in a research project on student perspectives on ChatGPT. After deciding to go deeper into a classroom assignment on the topic, he co-led a collaborative research paper about the opinions of students on ChatGPT with guidance from his sophomore-year English teacher, Alexa Muse. 

This was not his only research project; for his 2024 science fair project, Mehta and a peer crafted a research paper on the potential ways to minimize the cost of a vocal disorder test using audio analysis. Both papers were ultimately granted prestigious awards.

For students who hope to explore new fields, Mehta strongly supports the idea of taking small steps, whether it is spontaneously choosing to run for class council, sticking around for a club, or something in between.

 “I think a lot of people think about trying to plan everything out for their future. It’s really good to reach these end goals. It’s also good to start working, [to] start taking those little steps, because those little steps will be what eventually leads you to make these bigger changes,” Mehta said. 

Regarding juggling all of those responsibilities, Mehta believes that spending a little bit of time to set up your workspace goes a long way in handling the workload.

“It might be just preparing, opening up some spreadsheets and forms, getting started, and drafting some emails, and then work keeps going. So it’s a snowball thing,” Mehta said.

Starting in the fall of 2025, Mehta will attend Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. 

“I envision studying a variety of fields together with computer science, because it’s this balance of different ideas and computation that is such a powerful tool right now…it drives so much innovation in our rapidly changing world,” Mehta said. 

Mehta believes his community has played a huge role in his perseverance and success. His philosophy? That it’s vital to talk to everyone and make hardworking friends, so he can be constantly inspired to be the best version of himself. 

“I think that the human connection is vital. It’s quintessential in every single thing you’re going to do,” Mehta said.