“Before entering high school, the future was vague and something I didn’t need to worry about. But, the more you talk with other people—their goals, their aspirations—you start to realize what your own aspirations are. You start to plan ahead. I want to go into architecture. It was always just kind of an interest, more than an actual career choice, but now I actually do want to go to school to study it. 

Before, I thought high school was kind of its own league and everything would be different: the people, the teachers, just the way that everything’s done. I realized, though, that it’s just middle school part two because it’s the same people you went to school with before. My brother is four years older than me and I remember seeing him go through high school. I had this expectation that I was going to experience high school the same as how my brother experienced it, but it’s always different for every person.

I talk to my parents a lot, and they’ve always been very supportive and helpful. When I’m feeling bummed out about grades or anything, they’re someone that I can talk to. They give me good advice and tell me to push through it. Friends are good for advice, but in the Bay Area and especially Irvington, students are often overachievers and looking out solely for themselves, so having people that genuinely care for you means a lot. Having someone who you’re really close to and can be realistic with you is really impactful. 

Talking, studying, and sharing things with other people really helped me through all my classes. It’s also taught me to not rely on people too much, but to know how and when to ask for help, and to help others. I think I’ve gotten used to more challenging things, like AP classes. Once you have a hard AP class, the other ones kind of seem easy in comparison.

If I could go back, I would definitely take everything a bit more seriously. I remember sophomore year, I kind of slacked off a lot. Still, I’d recommend going easy on yourself. I feel like that’s a big thing that a lot of students don’t really talk about: going hard on yourself can make you perform worse. If you get a bad grade, you’re going to get in your head about it, and then you’re going to do bad on the next test, because you keep thinking to yourself, ‘I’m going to do bad.’ It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. I didn’t go to homecoming in my sophomore or junior year, and I think I kind of missed out in that regard. Even though it didn’t seem that appealing at the time, I really should’ve had fun with it. To the underclassmen: make things easier for yourself, be smart about things, and try to have as much fun as you can.”