My name is Robert Miller, and I was born in the resort town of Chelan, Washington, but quickly moved to Montana where I continued to grow up.  My childhood consisted of bike rides to the river with my brothers, fixing anything that didn’t work, camping, fishing, and hiking, anything close to nature really.  And although I still enjoy being outside, fixing things has become slightly more than a hobby.  I fixed things like riding lawnmowers, and motorcycles, atvs, go karts, but I also worked on and programmed computers, handled household repairs, and kept a chainsaw running and wood pile stocked.  When I was growing up, I didn’t have much money, as my grandmother was left to take care of me when my father went to prison.  So all my life I would get things from second hand stores, people I knew, and the garbage and fix up the not so useful, and get some use out of it.  I spent my first year of school in Washington, and the next eight years at Clinton Elementary near Missoula.  At Hellgate High in Missoula, I took many shop classes like: small engines, welding, etc. And for a senior project, I changed a small rotor-tiller motor over to run on compressed air.  The project included a research paper on a Frenchman named Guy Negre who built a six stroke that ran on compressed air.  My version was little more than a glorified air tool, but the subject of the project is right where my interests lie.  After high school, I went to the College of Technology in Missoula and studied recreational power equipment-small engines basically.  Here I excelled and was in my element.  Every day we had to use our hands, and learned by seeing and experiencing.  I also worked in West Yellowstone, on a fleet of some 260 snowmobiles and was permitted to ride the rentals for free on my days off.  The experience taught me a lot about the responsibilities of an engineer, and how they aren’t limited to just getting the machine to function.  There are many other things to keep in mind, namely that someone down the road will have to not only use the machine, but someone has to work on whatever it is that has been built.  And to me, if that is easier, the machine is better.  It seems simple, but until you’ve worked on a newer snowmobile, or car for that matter, the simplicity in someone’s design remains obscured, but beautiful.  I am an undergraduate here at Tech, seeking a general engineering degree.  I currently work in a computerized machine shop set up by Dr. Richard Donovan.  There, I am learning about how to efficiently make a desired part from a piece of material, using the computer to put together a 3-d model of a part on a computer and post that program to a machine friendly program.  With these skills, any person could make anything imaginable.  The sky isn’t even close to the limit, so I’ll keep learning, and growing everyday, and someday be making my own dreams come true.