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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."
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