Rio McGillvary's Portfolio

12th Grade Page

My Greatest Growth (Perseverance)


Throughout my time at STEM, I have experienced growth in perseverance. I started to apply and show more perseverance than I had previously. I have displayed my willingness to never give up. This will help me in the future if I work in cybersecurity, because when working on websites and testing them, I can’t just attempt to secure their network once then give up! I have to try multiple times, multiple different ways.

My first complete page of the storybook project. It shows the inside of a grey den which has two foxes sitting inside it.
In seventh grade, we had a group project making a book about health for kids. My first design did not match the style of my group member's illustrations, so I completely started over and drew it freehand this time. This shows perseverance because even though I was disappointed my original image went to waste, I completed the project instead of giving up at the first issue.

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A shiny rectangular humanoid blue robot with glasses on.
During my internship at the GRILL, I agreed to create a 3D model based on a design made by one of the other interns. So, I started in Blender, but it didn’t look like the design. Then, I tried TinkerCAD and kept trying different shapes until the design, and later the animation, looked proper. This shows perseverance because this was my first time 3D modelling based off a design, but I kept going and completed what I could before the end of my internship, even though it took many weeks.

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A slide from a slideshow showing a spring, the outer shell of a pen in two seperate pieces, the tip, the quill inside the pen, and the part you click to ready the pen all 3D modelled in screenshots.
When I was in eighth grade, I had to make a piece with three or more moving parts in Inventor. I chose to create a pen. This shows perseverance because even though I didn’t get all the pieces modeled and I was frustrated while using this confusing program that was still quite new to me, I still made most parts of the pen and continued even when I felt like giving up.

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Rio taking the picture along with a girl with black hair in a red hoodie with glasses, and another girl with cyan hair, wearing plaid, are sitting in front of computers with Rio. Rio is holding the phone that took the photo of the group. This was during the Silver rank CyberPatriots semi-finals in 2023.
The team I was in for CyberPatriots, consisting of Sarah Orlando, Cora Dunekacke, and I made it to the semifinals for silver rank in 10th grade. In one of the practice rounds that year, I accidentally deleted a vital file on my Linux virtual machine, which was disheartening, but we all still persevered through that year, despite our doubts, to make it to the semifinals!

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A certidicate that proves that Rio passed the test and is qualified to use a robotic arm.
In 11th grade, I had a robotics class where we had a robotic arm we worked with. I was slow to turn things in than others, especially because the small text on the pad was hard to read, and I couldn’t hold the switch on the back of the control pad properly because it was very sensitive. But I finally was able to get my certification to use the robot on my first try taking the exam because I persevered despite the worries I had.

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