Christophe Gish and a classmate from La Jolla High, Sam Hum, walked into a room at UC Berkeley last month filled with 300 high school students. Gish sheepishly remembers the volleyball attire he was dressed in at the time, while Hum, a tennis player for the Vikings, was wearing board shorts. In contrast, everyone in the room they entered sported suits and dresses.
“It was scary. The first thing they said to us was, ‘Go change into your most formal attire,’” the center for the Viking football team laughs. “We each had only brought one suit.” It was an awkward start to a week-long camp in robotic engineering and other technology. “It warmed up from there,” Gish now says with a relieved smile
Returning to the Bay Area, where he lived with his family from birth to age 12, the 17-year-old junior at LJHS had seen the invitation to the opportunity in “Technology and Engineering,” sponsored by the National Youth Leadership Forum (NYLF), and jumped at the chance. He recruited Hum to go along with him –“I wasn’t going to something like that alone,” he says.
Gish, a life-long San Francisco Giants fan, chose robotic engineering because of its interest to him. He enjoys science in school. He took AP Biology as a sophomore. His father Robert is a medical doctor who has piqued Christophe’s interest in science since he was young. At the conference on the Cal campus, the younger Gish worked on a project throughout the week, interspersed with talks to the entire assembled group by UC Berkeley professors on nuclear fusion, biological engineering, and other areas that they specialize in.
In short, Christophe was pumped. Does he also want to be an M.D., like his dad? “That’s the biggest reason I went to the camp. In high school, you take a lot of (general) courses to get into college. But sometimes you just want to take a course in engineering, or some other specific area, but they don’t have them.” Though he has a lot more time ahead of him as a rising junior in high school, he wants to explore further what area of science or medicine he would like to enter.
An exciting experience was hearing the presentation on Cal’s nuclear fusion project. “The professor started out as a student. He created elements. He is related to the group that created the element Berkelium (number 97 on the Periodical Table of the Elements, named after Berkeley).
“That interested me that as a student, he was doing important scientific work right off the bat. He wasn’t just doing class assignments.”
Gish’s family lived in the city until moving to La Jolla five years ago. He still has relatives in Petaluma. A friend of his from school was attending the same NYLF seminar he attended in June during the last week of July.
He enjoys his San Francisco roots. “Oh, yeah, I love the Niners,” he says. “We have always been huge Giants fans since I was a little kid going to the park with my family.”
Last year he served as a “pull-up” player from the football junior varsity. That means he started and was the only center on the JV’s, while suiting up for varsity games as well to gain varsity exposure and to be available in the unlikely case he would be needed.
This summer, with official in-season workouts beginning Aug. 3, he is the projected starter at center for offensive coordinator Tyler Roach’s offense. He measures 6-foot 3-inch and weighs a little over 180 pounds. He is lifting weights and trying to bulk up, aiming to solidify an offensive line that includes big JoJo Russell, positioned at right tackle and weighing 280 pounds.
As his culminating project for his Eagle Scout award, Gish just completed the reconstruction of a new bridge in Florida Canyon in Balboa Park, replacing the previous one which was rotting out. To finish the job, he coordinated 18 young people, including Scouts from Troop 4 in La Jolla and friends who are not Scouts, plus five adults, while working with the ranger in the park, who was a great help.
“The process of becoming an Eagle Scout is huge,” he shares. “I started working toward it when I lived in San Francisco and was 11 years old. In the final project, you do financials, specs. You’re the organizer.” His team built a new structure 12 feet long, with a ramp leading up to it. He isn’t boastful, but proud, and rightfully so. It took nine hours during the hands-on construction to build the bridge.
The LJHS junior also plays volleyball. He looks to be a middle hitter-blocker on Dave Jones’ varsity next spring.
