When I first started searching for scholarships, I quickly realized how inaccessible and overwhelming the process can be. Major scholarship databases often promote the same highly competitive national awards to thousands of students, making it incredibly difficult to stand out. Meanwhile, local scholarships—often with fewer applicants and a higher chance of success—are buried, often impossible to find. Without a centralized way to find them, students are left sifting through countless sources, often missing out on valuable opportunities simply because they don’t know where to look.

This lack of accessibility creates a gap between students and funding that could make a real difference in their education. In fact, "it’s estimated that close to $100 million in scholarships go unclaimed each year. Typically, the money is not awarded due to lack of applicants." (SoFi Banking) Seeing this issue firsthand, I realized there was a need for a better solution—one that would streamline access to scholarships, especially for students looking beyond the ultra-competitive national awards.

When I first started managing Discord communities, I realized how limited existing utility bots were—especially for larger servers that needed enterprise-grade solutions. Most bots either lacked advanced features, had clunky interfaces, or were unreliable at scale. Community managers were forced to juggle multiple bots, each handling a specific task, creating inefficiencies and unnecessary complexity.

Rather than waiting for the perfect tool to appear, I decided to build my own. I founded Arigo, an all-in-one utility bot designed to handle everything from AI-powered support to advanced moderation and permissions management. My goal was to create a platform that wasn’t just another Discord bot, but a true enterprise solution for large-scale communities.

As a personal challenge to refine my object-oriented programming skills, I built a fully functional, dual-player Battleship game in Java. The game follows classic Battleship rules, where two players take turns guessing the coordinates of their opponent’s ships, aiming to sink them all first. I designed the game with a clean and structured architecture, implementing features like a grid-based board system, hit/miss tracking, and turn-based gameplay.

To ensure a smooth user experience, I incorporated real-time feedback, input validation, and a simple yet effective UI for easy navigation. The project reinforced my understanding of Java fundamentals, including data structures, encapsulation, and algorithmic logic, while also teaching me valuable lessons in debugging and optimizing game mechanics.