Meet Archit, A.K.A. Future Elon Musk

If you read my blog from three weeks ago, you would recall that I interviewed my good friend Weisheng. He is an international student from China.

I deeply enjoyed learning a little more about him and his culture. That’s why for this week I have decided to explore the life of another friend of mine, Archit Javkhedkar. He is from Pune, which is a city in India.

I’ve gotten to know Archit pretty well over the past couple of months. I continue to be impressed by his charisma and wit. We met during the first week of school during orientation and, although we don’t have any classes together, we try to grab lunch every once in a while. I learned from this brief interview that there is so much more to Archit than most people would think.

Here’s a test: Imagine one of your good friends that you have made over the past couple of months. Do you know if they have any siblings, what they would do with 10 million dollars, or what they find most challenging here at Penn State? If anything, you probably know what their major is, their favorite place to get food in Redifer Commons, or how much they hate math. I implore you to ask more difficult questions and see what happens.

Archit is currently studying aerospace engineering. He has always been intrigued by the idea of space and he wants to contribute by making space travel possible for everyone.

As I said, he comes from Pune. It is a historically rich city populated by 3.4 million people and home to many big technology companies. It sits on a plateau along the Sahyadri mountain range. He went to an all boys, public, Jesuit high school, where he tells me a lot of mischief took place.

I wanted to learn a little more about his home than he was giving me,  so I asked, “If I came to visit you, where in your hometown would you take me? What would you show me?” He thought on it for a moment and then made his picks. He said he would take me to the old part of the city, which has remains from a time when the area was once ruled by a king. If we were feeling motivated, he would take me on a morning run in a place known as Arai, which has a small hill where peacocks roam. Then he said, if I was up for it, he would take me for, what I can only imagine, a life-changing ride on his moped.

I asked him if he had any talents that I’m not aware of. I’m always impressed by people’s talents. I become even more impressed by one’s humility, which comes when I learn about a secret talent. Let me tell you, Archit has many secret talents. He can speak four point five languages: English, Hindi, Marathi (father’s native language), Bengali (mom’s native language ) , and German (more specifically, 1/2 German). He is also a state level swimmer. And, if I were the judge, I would say aerospace engineering alone is a talent.

But Archit is human. In his free time he plays ping pong, binge-watches Netflix, and ventures downtown with friends like any normal person would do.

If you had ten million dollars what would you do?

Go for a world tour and, if I had any money left, probably buy a supercar

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Kenya, because I love wild life and I am a little bit of a wild life photographer.

In ten years, where would you like to be living and what would you like to be doing?

Hopefully I’ll be living here in the U.S. working for some space company, maybe SpaceX.

If you had to choose just one word to describe yourself, what word would you choose?

Adventurous. I love going out and meeting new people, doing something that I’ve never done and taking on new challenges. If I wasn’t adventurous I wouldn’t have traveled the 7,908 miles to get here.

As you can probably tell, I learned a lot more about Archit today. I learned about his ambition and his adventurous side. I also learned that I need to go to India and get a ride on his moped.