Whether it’s leading the FRC team to victory, playing music with his friends, or studying advanced physics, senior Max Colomer does it all. 

Colomer is the lead electrical engineer and captain of the PVIT program’s FRC team, a robotics team that designs and builds a robot to participate in competitions. As a captain, Colomer took on many new responsibilities this year and learned some valuable lessons. 

“[Leadership] was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I’ve learned to make decisions quickly when I’m speaking to people and to be confident in what I’m saying. This experience also taught me to look at the bigger picture outside of the small tasks that I’m doing. Now it’s easier to look at big things that I have to do in my life where I can map things out and organize them better,” Colomer said.

To unwind from the stress of his rigorous schedule, Colomer enjoys playing jazz with his friends. 

“I like being creative with what I play and exploring different melodies and rhythms. Playing with my friends in a small group and playing songs multiple times and trying out different things and seeing what sounds good is fun. It’s a way to express myself in a new way instead of talking,” Colomer said.

Colomer is most known for his passionate love for the study of physics. 

This love story began during his sophomore year when he was taking Physics 2, which was combined with Einstein Physics that year. 

“During my sophomore year, Einstein Physics was a class full of seniors doing a fourth year of physics. They would learn more advanced physics topics and make presentations on those topics. Although I didn’t understand all of the topics, I would connect some of them to what we were learning in Physics 2,” Colomer said. 

“That was really cool to me and sparked my interest that I wanted to do physics in college. Taking Einstein Physics this year has really helped me learn how to do things on my own since it’s a self-study class and it’s gotten me really excited to learn physics.”

All of these experiences have shaped Colomer into who he is today and he will continue studying physics at Yale University. 

Colomer’s biggest piece of advice for underclassmen is as follows. 

“Explore different interests that you have and ask more questions. Ask more questions to your teachers and people that are there to help you. There are a lot of things you can learn when you have the ability to ask better questions. I’ve learned to ask questions in class when I really don’t understand something and it helps you understand. Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you don’t understand something because people are there to help you.”