Senior Spotlight: Diana Lysova (12-3)

If you could offer advice to your ninth grade self, what would it be?

I would tell her to stop being so stupid all the time. In 9th grade I didn’t think about anything. I was kind of an airhead. I was just focused on having fun, which is fine, but I’d tell her to try harder and to get a little smarter.

What is the most valuable lesson you have learned in your time here?

To not treat life like a competition. I feel like everyone here is super competitive but if you really focus on yourself and your own growth, it makes school a lot easier.

Is there anything you wish would have been different about your high school experience?

Honestly, other than my own behavior at a certain moment, not really. I had a really good high school experience. Even though COVID cut my sophomore year short, I feel like I also grew a lot.

Tell us a bit about your work outside of school and how that experience impacted you?

I used to work at ACME (which was awful) and now I work at a Russian company that does children’s birthday parties. In my free time, I get to be Cinderella or Elsa or really any princess that children would want to see at their birthday. I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone and been creative with it. My job is mostly Russian-based, as in we mostly serve the Russian speaking community in Philadelphia. So it has also caused my language skills to become a lot better. I never really liked children before I started working there, but I’ve matured in this job because I’ve matured in who I am and the way I speak to others. Also, the costumes are really fun to put on.

What are you most looking forward to about college?

I’m most looking forward to doing the thing that I’ve been thinking about since 7th grade. I have a lot of stress regarding college, ever since middle school. It's not just the stress that middle schoolers feel, like the ‘what’ll happen if I don’t get into Harvard?’ because I never fooled myself like that. It was more like the struggle of being an immigrant from immigrant parents and being first generation to go to college. And also having a way to pay for it. It has been a cause of significant stress in my life since I was young. But, now that it's finally here I’m just ready to face it. I’ve prepared myself a lot for whatever that may entail.

What’s something on your bucket list?

I would like to be in love. It's a major goal of mine. It's not at the top of the list but I would like to be in love.

If you could time travel, where and when would you go?

I would go to a My Chemical Romance concert in 2004 right when they released Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. That was their prime. I would also see Queen. I would go see a lot of things that are conspiracy theories. I would see if Shakespeare was really gay or if that was just a myth. I would see the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. I would go to the Swan Lake premier.

What album/song represents your life right now?

Pure Heroine by Lorde.

Tell us a joke.

A man walks into a zoo, but there's only one dog in it.

It's a shih tzu.