At East Meck, there is a club or organization for everyone, but students who are interested in technology might consider joining the number one Technology Student Association (TSA) club in the state. TSA is mostly run by students.

“My favorite thing about TSA is that I was able to work with great people and the competitions are really fun,” sophomore Ruthie Bott said. “You learn a lot and it gives you a lot of opportunities. I competed in states and regionals. This year I only did regionals, and I did biotechnology [a NC STATE TSA event]. This year, the theme was marine biology, so we did a whole thing on Sannidhi fishing and a solution to it.”

TSA participates in North Carolina Technology Student Association (NC TSA) events, and there are many categories to enter in for competition. Some of the areas for competition include coding, music production, fashion design and even designing a board game.

TSA competes in two separate competitions: regionals at Appalachian State University and the state competition in Greensboro. National competitions vary from location to location depending on the year of the event.

“My favorite memory [at competition] I would say was setting up our poster this year or like working on it because we created a whole ocean background. We made grass for it and found all the information for it,” Bott said.

Sophomore Tyler Frankel recalled his favorite memory to be when he won second place. Although not all competitions are technology based, there are students like Frankel who would like to pursue a job in that field of work. TSA and its advisers, help guide student to better understand their options.

“I want to be a computer scientist engineer,” he said.

“It opened a door for me. I joined a thing that allowed me to see different jobs that were available in technology and what type of things you can do. I learned how to work with people,” Bott said.

“I actually joined my freshman year with my friends. My teacher told us about it and we were interested because I wanted to get into technology and wanted to learn more about it,” Frankel claims. “I like that they have a variety of different fields of interest, like tech bowl or you can do 3D modeling.”

This organization has been at East for four years now, and there are currently 21 students in the program, but they would definitely like to see those numbers go up. Students like sophomore and TSA Vice President Ashley Servia value their time with TSA because it provides them with unique experiences.

“It gives me good opportunities to branch out from what I usually do,” Servia said. “It’s just really fun and it’s a good opportunity to learn more about technology.”