By Shawna Takaki | Staff Writer

A Kalani High School and Kapi’olani Community College student, Zitao Li is an 18-year-old student in dual enrollment. Due to finishing all of his high school requirements in his junior year, Li is now free to do as he wishes and is spending his senior year as a full-time Engineering student here.

“I did KCC dual credit for more challenging classes, and I tried to take dual-credit classes so I can get high-school credit and college credit,” said Li. “It’s very different from high school because you have to manage your time and you don’t have a high school teacher who is chasing your back. You have to do your work by yourself.”

He hopes to go to University of California Santa Cruz in the future with the major of Robotics Engineering. He was a member of his high school’s robotics team and did VEX IQ and FIRST Robotics Competitions.

Li plans on creating robots in the future.

“I can do a lot of stuff with robots because in the future, since robots are going to take over many jobs,” said Li. “And if I become a robotics engineer, I can create robots and not lose my job that easily.”