This is the 115th article in Bears Doing Big Things, a weekly column celebrating the stories of notable M-A alumni.
Through participating in a wide range of sports and clubs, and interning at various companies, Patrick Lee ’20 has made a conscious effort to explore and take advantage of the opportunities available to him.
Raised locally, Lee attended Las Lomitas Elementary and La Entrada Middle School. Lee played a variety of sports as a child. “My parents would constantly rotate me around sports throughout the years—I tried a little bit of everything. I did baseball, basketball, and lacrosse,” he said.
Later, at M-A, Lee’s teachers were an especially memorable aspect of his experience. Two of his favorites were Cindy Donaldson and Mark Leeper. “I think they were just really fun teachers to have, and the content of their courses were really interesting to me,” Lee said.
“I liked computers, so I liked computer science with Donaldson,” Lee said. “She also helped me a bunch outside of school and even after high school. I asked her for references a bunch. She’s been really available for anyone who needs help.”
Lee also enjoyed engineering with Leeper. “I think the process of engineering and learning about building things was also really interesting,” he said. “One of the things that I look back on really fondly was actually getting to design a catapult in his class and taking it from design, to completion, to actually testing it and seeing it work.”
Outside of the classroom, Lee competed on the boys wrestling team. “I enjoyed spending time with the other students who were doing wrestling, and going to wrestling meets,” he said.
“For meets, you had to leave at like five in the morning and you would get back at like six at night. That was a really memorable part of my time at M-A because it’s like you get on the bus, you’re all tired, and by the time you get back—because you’ve done a whole day of wrestling—you’re still exhausted,” Lee added.
Lee also participated in M-A’s Physics club, Math Club, and the Robotics Team. “I knew growing up I wanted to do something in STEM,” he said. “I knew a general area of what I wanted to pursue, and I figured I might as well try to cast as large of a net as possible to see what I like—and I think that’s generally something I try to do for most things in life. I want to have as many opportunities as possible, and I don’t really want to let any opportunity get away if I can.”
Uncertain what specific field to pursue, Lee’s path to majoring in Computer Science was by chance. “I was in a class for English and we were tasked with filling out the beginning of the UC applications, and I just randomly picked a major from the list. I didn’t have any really strong reasoning behind why I wanted to take software engineering.”
“Admittedly, like half of the schools I applied to, I actually applied for aerospace engineering. So it was kind of just a coin flip of whether or not I got into a school for aerospace engineering or for computer science,” Lee said. “I ultimately came out with computer science, but I definitely don’t regret the choice since then.”
After being admitted as a computer science major to UC Davis, Lee realized college was challenging in a different way than expected. “The classes felt really easy. I feel like the hard part was kind of pushing myself to do extracurricular activities or even just to go to class,” he said. “Honestly, the difficulty, rather than from the course content, was actually just from finding the willingness to do everything on your own, because there’s ultimately a lot less guidance given in college compared to high school,” Lee said.
Lee joined UC Davis’ Google Student Developer Club, UC Davis’ Hacker Hub—a club that put on mini hackathons for students—and participated in a few hackathons himself. “I wanted to do as much as possible early on, just so down the line I’d have that previous experience to build off of,” he said.
Lee enjoyed the social aspect of joining clubs. “I feel like it was the people I got to talk to and meet. Definitely talking with other students outside of classrooms was a lot easier to do, rather than just talking inside the classroom context. When you’re in a club, you have a different shared interest, beyond just academics, that is drawing you together,” he said.
In addition to his club participation, Lee assisted a professor with conducting research regarding computer security. “It feels kind of weird to say, ‘I have a paper published somewhere,’ because for me, it didn’t seem like something that anyone can really just do, but I found out that it’s not even that hard to participate in research and help a professor,” he said.
Lee’s career in software engineering began while he was still a student at UC Davis, interning at Coinbase, a platform for storing and exchanging cryptocurrency. “My career started during college, and I think that’s something people need to recognize about being proactive in your careers,” he said.
As an intern for Coinbase’s infrastructure security team during the summer of 2022, Lee gained both professional experience and valuable communication skills. “I think it was really cool seeing what it was like to work a ‘real’ kind of job, and getting to talk to the other interns and the actual full-time employees there,” he said. “The employees gave guidance on everything really, whether it was jobs, academics, or just life in general.”
Lee also interned for Mindbody in 2023, a fitness management software company. Following that experience, he returned to Coinbase as a full-time software engineer. “I think it is important to be trying early on to get as much experience as possible, and then using that as credentials on your resume to set you up for success later,” Lee said.
Lee’s career taught him that achieving professional success is only possible with tenacity and ambition. “To have a job, you have to put in the effort to get there. Talking with every other person I’ve worked with, they’ve all put forth effort outside of the classroom to facilitate their career or build a strong profile,” he said.
Lee’s advice to current M-A students: “Be proactive with what you do. If I went back to M-A, I probably would have done more extracurricular activities and just tried getting even more opportunities open to me. Also take pride and put forth effort into everything, whether or not it is kind of innocuous or unimportant. You shouldn’t just settle for just getting by.”
To those interested in software engineering: “Talk to professors. Professors are very smart. They know a lot. They definitely can have good advice for you, and can make sure you go to class. Meeting all different types of people—whether or not that can create an opportunity for you later or not—is really important.”
