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what got you through high school?
andie liu
Aaron Tsang
"I live near [the McClellan Ranch Preserve]. In my room, it gets really hot sometimes, and then I get really easily frustrated when it gets hot, especially when I'm doing something that's difficult like homework. So then I would go out and walk around [the preserve] to think about things and it let me calm down a little bit … Freshman year was OK for me and then sophomore year, things got a bit more difficult for me to handle, so I had to go out more to cool down … In sophomore year, I was reading a book that I really didn't like, [“Waiting for an Angel”]. It was really difficult for me to read and I was really bored by it and so I went out there and walked around a bit. I brought the book with me too, just in case I was taking too much time. I sort of just sat down there and I read there and it was actually pretty nice and it helped me get through the book."
Akshat Rohatgi
"Always having someone that you can rely on when you navigate something as troublesome or tricky as high school [has] benefited me a lot. Whenever I was stressed, whenever I needed someone to talk to, I knew that I always had my friends who had my back and if they weren't available I could always talk to my family, my parents or my brother. I think it just kind of feels nice knowing that if you need someone to talk to you, if you need to open up about something, being able to do that is really good … [For college applications,] I turned to my brother who is five years older than me, he's gone through the process, and just had so much wisdom, so much experience with it. He was really patient with me, and it was almost every day I was asking him questions … I'm glad I'm close with my brother because I was able to tell him a lot about what I was going to write — he was really supportive in proofreading my essays for example, but I think he was also my biggest fan throughout the entire process."
Lakshmi Talapaneni
"[Model UN] really helped me with speaking on the spot persuasively, because earlier I'd get nervous talking in front of a lot of people, and the idea of speaking with just ideas, not an actual speech, was crazy to me … It was a lot of work but it was something that I was interested in, and so it made my days relaxing … For my first competition, I went to Stanford Model UN and I got played by someone. They told me that they would give me [a spot in the list of people credited in the paper], and apparently everybody knows that that's not true, except for me. Iman [Malik] is an officer there so I went [to Stanford] and told Iman, ‘Oh, they told me that they're going to give me this spot. I'm so great, aren’t I?’ I thought she'd be like, ‘Wow, you're so great for getting that spot.’ And she was like, ‘Are you crazy? They're not going to give you anything. They're lying to you right now.’ And that memory is so fond to me because if she hadn't told me I would have been completely done for ... She had her own competition going, but she talked to me, she told me exactly who to go talk to and how to get out of the situation that I'd put myself in. It was just a memory where I thought I was doing so well and it took somebody close to me to tell me how it was going wrong, and I was really amazed that she was willing to help me so much because it took a lot of time out of her day and her own competition."
Michelle Wang
"I always think about how if I didn't spontaneously decide to pick up my dad's old camera during the summer of eighth grade, I really wouldn't have gotten to where I am today … I just love how photography has allowed me to bring about more positivity in my community because I primarily specialize in portrait photography. I'm always interacting with and meeting new people who hire me as a photographer to take their photos. And it's through these experiences where I'm able to really watch how my work can change people for the better. Every single person who I've taken photos of for the first time isn't always very comfortable in front of the camera, which is super understandable because I don't think anyone is 100% comfortable in front of the camera at first, but I've gotten really good at hyping up the model and making sure that they're as comfortable as possible because again, getting your photos taken can be pretty overwhelming at times. I think it's really cool how these people are now some of the most confident people I know today, after they've been able to see what photography can do for them."
Nicholas Yung
"I had a job where I got to coach kids for tennis, and that was something I always looked forward to because when I went there it kind of took my mind off of school and college apps and stuff like that … This one time [one of my students] came up to me and randomly said, ‘Eh, you're not funny.’ And I thought that was pretty funny. She just randomly came up to me and said that … This one time everyone was throwing balls at this one kid. And I was like, ‘Stop throwing balls at this kid.’ … The kids are pretty funny there, and I have to make sure they don't beat each other up, they're not goofing around or getting hurt. So that kind of distracts me, and also I talk to them a lot, so it's kind of like being around friends because I can talk to them about what video games they play or what other things to do besides tennis."
Sathvika Gopalasetty
"Everyone on soccer calls me Sirty — I don't really know how I got that nickname. And so when I explained my name to [an underclassman], it was hard to pronounce so I said, ‘It's dirty with an S,’ and she said she thought that was super iconic … [I like] the vibe when we're waiting in line to do the drill and we're kind of just talking about our day and relieving that stress and not thinking about our homework and our tests the next day. Also, recently we had senior night which was super cute and the juniors had us dress up as goats because ‘Greatest Of All Time.’ We got speeches … We were all super, super hyped and we have a lot of seniors on our team this year. We have 11, which is kind of crazy. Usually we have five, but we started and ended the game with only the seniors on the field because soccer has 11 people on the field, and we were all super, super excited and you could tell from the way we were playing."
Tiffany Chen
"I think you have a lot of pent up emotions [during] high stress periods of time, and just having something you can physically beat your stress [with] helped me feel more relaxed, and it gave me something to look forward to since I met a lot of my close friends through badminton. Recently we had our senior night for badminton [and] I was playing my last game with my doubles partner, Gayatri Raut. For each match, you play best out of three games. We played three games, and it was super fun because it was my last game of basically my entire badminton career. I [will] miss her as my doubles partner who is always hyping me up in a game and I feel like she showed me a lot of what sportsmanship is and also having a really good mentality of just enjoying the moment of playing badminton because among the two of us, I tend to get stressed out more about me playing bad or whatever, but [I’ll] really miss having her as my mentor. Sometimes, even in the game she would coach me like, ‘Oh you should hit to the back of the court, not the front.’ We would share our little inside jokes and we also have a handshake before we play every single game — it's the little moments that I think I'll really miss."
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