Ezra Bird is a maker at heart: he even keeps a 3D printer and a soldering iron in his bedroom. While Ezra has launched wildly successful large-scale campaigns such as 3D printing face shields for his county, he is particularly ambitious about the mundane — daily journaling, meditating, seeking moments to smile, fail and above all learn. "What we think of as big accomplishments are just a result of all the hard work we put into the little things that happen every day." Read on...

Tell me a little bit about your journey to the Academy. What were you looking for in an undergraduate program?

In high school, I was frustrated by a curriculum that only seemed interested in preparing me for its own tests. My favorite classes were my advanced engineering classes — the only classes that gave me the tools to improve my projects. When it came time to look for a college, I knew I wanted something more. Many programs felt too tied down by archaic institutions. I discovered the Academy after describing to my mom what I was looking for in a program and searching the internet for different buzzwords, which was a very difficult task. After reading the short paragraph on the Academy’s website, it clicked: IYA was the program every other school was trying and failing to offer.

What are you most looking forward to in the Academy?

When I think of the Academy, the maker in me takes over. What gets me excited for next year is no longer being limited by the tools that I have in my room. Only having a self-funded 3D printer, a soldering iron and basic hand tools limited the scope of what I could make. The projects that I end up with are only a fraction of the ideas I’ve had. The rest are crammed into a nearly overflowing folder labeled “Not Yet.” 

What are three goals you want to accomplish during your time at the Academy and/or USC?

1) Snowboard out west
2) Start a business
3) Be miraculously provided $1,000,000 in seed funding 

Let’s say you were miraculously provided $1,000,000 in seed funding tomorrow. What would you create?

I would create the first psychedelic therapy center. As the stigma around mental health illnesses breaks down, we owe it to ourselves to look at new ways to address this widespread problem. Psychedelic-assisted therapy is seeing a resurgence as more states accept the medicinal benefits of drugs that were demonized in the past. The research conducted in the past about their efficacy only scratched the surface. The world needs a trailblazing company that will redefine the mental health industry.

What is a good piece of advice you've received that you plan to apply throughout college?

Everything is a matter of perspective — events are just that, events. The label you apply to any situation is entirely up to you.

What is your proudest achievement to date?

I’m most proud of 3D printing 20% of the face shields for my county at the beginning of lockdown. I started a crowdfunding campaign to buy more 3D printers to maximize output, worked with local officials, and figured out distribution. I never stopped to question myself. There was an opportunity to help, and instead of wondering whether it was “my responsibility,” I just went ahead and did it.

Describe one thing most people don’t know about you.

I record a summary of my day — and I have been doing so every day for the last year. I don’t have a plan for what I’m going to do with all of this data. But I already know that this has an easy and free benefit: every day becomes longer, and it forces me to think about what made each day different from the one before. I become more aware of how I spend my time, enabling me to reflect and refine my habits and behaviors.

What is one thing your parents taught you that you’d like to share?

“The worst thing someone can say is no.” It's pretty easy to convince yourself that you don’t need help. You can come up with a million reasons why you don’t deserve help, or think that it will be too awkward. So you decide not to ask. But it isn’t your decision to make —  it’s theirs — and you shouldn’t make it for them.

Out of the five traits of a Trojan, which trait best describes you?

“Ambition.” There are countless moments when I’ve taken a risk head-on, put in far too many late nights on a project or overcame wild obstacles to achieve something. But the moments themselves aren’t what make me ambitious; they’re a result of being ambitious every single day about the little things that add up over time. Being ambitious about the mundane is where it matters most: waking up and meditating every day, looking for opportunities to smile at the little things and allowing yourself to fail and learn from it. Those are the moments where ambition is paramount. What we think of as big accomplishments are just a result of all the hard work we put into the little things that happen every day.

What is one skill/thing that you learned during the COVID-19 pandemic?

What is your favorite app/website and why?

Spotify. According to my Spotify Wrapped, I spend nine hours a day listening to music.

If you could be any kitchen appliance, what would you be and why?

Kitchen scissors are a divisive topic: they’re either the best thing in the world to have, or they’re useless and take up valuable drawer space. But I’m a firm believer in the simplest solution being the best, and the simplicity that kitchen scissors offers is unparalleled in other appliances.

If you told me ten years ago that I would be carrying around a supercomputer in my pocket with a custom-tailored AI assistant, a means to connect with people around the world and a Library-of-Alexandria-tier source of information, I would think that you’d lost your mind. What makes me excited about the future is wondering about what crazy thing we're going to have in the next ten years. Extra-arm prosthetics? Hyper-realistic VR? Bioengineered floating aquatic mycelium that bolsters dying algae populations? Given that we’ve already made so much of the impossible possible, I’m unwilling to count anything else out.

Ezra Bird is a maker at heart: he even keeps a 3D printer and a soldering iron in his bedroom. One of his latest projects was 3D printing face shields for his county during the COVID-19 lockdown. Bird created a crowdfunding campaign in order to maximize his output and his reach to help the community stay safe during the pandemic.

FRESH Encounters: Ezra Bird