Q: Are you part of any clubs? If so, which ones and what do you do in each club?

A: I’m involved in a lot of clubs both at school and in my community. I’ve been involved in Speech and Debate since 7th grade and have competed at national competitions all across the US, which is super cool. I’m also a part of other public speaking related clubs such as Model UN, which I recently became an officer for. In the community, I really like volunteering and helping other people, and I actually just became Interact Service Club President. In Interact, we hold a lot of international projects, even during the pandemic, we have a lot of donation drives. For example, we’ve held drives for healthcare workers, healthcare products, and other similar things that we could obtain funds from. Additionally, I’m the executive admin. At a congressional campaign in my area and I’ve gotten to be involved in a lot of policy. Whether moderating different town hall meetings or being part of a force that’s capable of reducing water bills during the pandemic, which reflects my central idea of creating tangible impacts on other people. In addition, I first came to California when I was 10 and had a lot of language barriers, so speech and debate gave me confidence and improved my public speaking skills. Furthermore, I’ve learned and grown a lot from the political campaign I’ve been involved in through my work with political figures on a daily basis, getting involved in policy writing, and meetings with city council members. I joined the campaign about three months ago and worked on the Water Project, where I had to lead a project to stop rising water bills in my area. During the project, we emailed a lot of city leaders and officials and created a slideshow for the candidate that I was interning to present at different meetings. What’s super cool is that in the end, we were able to lower the water bills for this year by about 8 percent and I was able to have a tangible impact on thousands of people in my community. My work with that project motivates and inspires me to continue what I’m doing.

Q: Can you tell us about your non-profit: Make A Statement?

A: I co-founded a non profit called Make A Statement and was inspired by my background in public speaking and my experience in speech and debate. I really appreciate the Speech And Debate club for helping me improve my public speaking skills, but I do realize how hard it is to access that sort of education. I’ve had a lot of introverted friends who are afraid to speak in public, and given my background as an immigrant who had to build confidence when speaking publicly, I really wanted to change the lack of public speaking education that we have. I founded Make A Statement a year ago and held a free summer camp, had over 15 workshops, an invited professionals, such as the executive marketing director at poshmark, Mr. Steven Yeun, who spoke at one of our workshops about confidence building and public speaking, and we reached over 700 students from over 25 different countries. The idea of being able to help a kid who walked out of our program and knowing that they can speak with a little bit more confidence is really rewarding.

Q: Can you tell me about your experience working on a congressional campaign?

A: Currently, the campaign I’m involved with is a political candidate in California’s 18th district, and the project I did with the water rates was a part of that campaign. I started interning there about three months ago and last week, I was promoted to the position of executive administrator. Being involved with this program gave me a lot more insight into politics, which is a topic that I’ve always been interested in.

Q: What were some of your favorite high school memories?

A: To be honest, my high school year ended last march when covid started, so I only got like three quarters of actual high school. My favorite memory from that time was freshman homecoming because everything was so new to me and it was a huge leap from what middle school was like. I really enjoyed all the moments I had then before I had to start getting ready for AP tests and whatnot.

Q: What were some of the toughest high school memories you have?

A: The first time I was exposed to an honors class was the toughest memory that I have of high school. I took honors pre-calculus as a freshman, which was completely different from geometry and the other classes we had at the middle school. In addition, taking AP classes this year was tough to get used to, since it was a whole new level of difficulty.

Q: What were some of the hardest classes you had to take? And how did you handle them?

A: I’m taking 5 different AP’s this year, and for me, math and physics seem to be the most difficult since I’m not really much of a STEM person. I like chemistry but I don’t really like math, so it was one of the toughest classes for me to deal with. I practiced by doing a bunch of Free Response Questions, but other than that, there’s not much you can do to help prepare for the AP exam, which is coming in a month.

Q: What was your initial reaction to quarantine and the shift to remote learning?

A: Remote learning opened up a lot of new opportunities for me. For example, the internship that I did with the congressional campaign would normally be too far away for me to travel to and being remote made it much more convenient for me to work there. To add to that, Speech and Debate competitions were easier since we didn’t have to wake up early in the morning to travel to a competition or tournament. We also were able to attend competitions that we normally wouldn’t be able to attend in person. I do miss going to school, but overall, I think that it has been pretty rewarding for me.

Q: What was the easiest part of quarantine and remote learning?

A: The easiest part is that it’s a lot more convenient. Going to competitions are easier since you don’t have to physically travel there. You get to sleep in later and competitions end earlier.

Q: What was the hardest part of quarantine and remote learning?

A: The hardest part was getting used to being alone all the time. Starting to do everything myself and not being able to ask friends for help or working with each other really made it hard for me to work. Shifting the focus to myself was difficult since I wasn’t used to being alone all the time and couldn’t talk to as many people.

Q: What helped you stay calm and relaxed during the quarantine?

A: In the beginning, I re-watched all 21 movies in the marvel cinematic universe. I’m excited for the new black widow movie and plan to watch it when it comes out in the summer. Watching movies helped me cope with the quarantine and holding zoom parties with my friends made it more fun. If I was bored, I’d sometimes read a book or watch some tik toks while sitting on my couch.

Q: Do you have any advice on high school, quarantine, remote learning, or anything else?

A: If I could give advice to even myself from a year or two ago, I’d say to always be prepared and push yourself to learn new things. You never know when opportunities will come and when they do, try your best to hold on to it. Try everything so that you don’t regret not doing it later.

That’s all for today’s folks!! Thank you Emily for being here and sharing some insightful comments with the JAAT community!