Writing: All my life, I wanted to make a change, and now I use my writing—articles, poems, and essays alike—to make my difference. Just like Operation Redwood opened my eyes to the importance of protecting nature and inspired me to use my talents in photography and writing, and my platform as a student leader, to fight for the environment, I hope my writing inspires others to make their impact.
Fun Fact: I recently published my first article, What Do Prospective Students Want from Campus Tours, on the CollegeXPress blog; as well as a poem detailing my outlook on the COVID-19 pandemic. See more examples of my writing here!
Photography: Through the camera on my iPhone XS, I love to capture the emotion, memories, and beauty in my everyday life. Someday, I hope to be able to learn more about the art of photography, a dream that is slowly becoming a reality as I learn techniques in photography through my Digital Imaging course, and eagerly await and the internship with a local photojournalist I have planned next summer. See examples of my work here!
Volunteering & Service-Learning: From an early age the idea of volunteerism was engrained into my being, as my aunt, mother, and I took our llamas all over Sarasota and Manatee Counties to do pet therapy for children with learning disabilities, college students during finals week, senior citizens, memory care patients, and many others. Helping people, making them happy or their days easier, brought me so much joy every time, and over time I developed a passion for volunteering and service-learning, futhered by my time in the SCF Honors Program. Since then, I've worked on various volunteering projects with my peers, such as the NSHSS Care Package Project and as a Volunteer at the Smithsonian's "Invader ID" project.
Coding: As a young 6th grade student, I was fascinated with the basic code we were briefly taught in my technology class, coming in at lunch to work on basic websites and games. Over the summer break of my junior year, I delved further into the world of coding, enrolling in a three-week Introduction to Front-End Coding course with SheCodes that culminated in a final project: my first landing page. While that wasn't a perfect project by any means, as I created it I fell more in love with coding and learned more about how I could use those skills in my everyday life as I advocate for the issues that I am passionate about, such as protecting the ocean and it's creatures. Later in the summer, I dove from working on websites (HTML, CSS, and Javascript) straight into programming small robots with the NSHSS Coding series, writing Arduino. In the future, I hope to be able to return to SheCodes and get my certification in Front-End coding, as well as learn more about Arduino and all other sorts of code.
Travelling: I got the travel bug from my mom--together in our small RV, we love to traverse the United States, stopping in small, unique towns, massive cities like St. Louis, and untouched forests alike to get out and explore. While most of my travels have been in the Southeast US, over my gap year we plan to go on a road trip to some of the most iconic parts of the country, as well as hopefully spend some time on my first trip out of the country, to Canada. In the future, I hope to be able to travel often, so that I can continue to grow the adventurous side of me, meet new people, and see the wonders of our world.
Content Creation, Graphic Design, etc.: In many of my clubs when I was younger, I was always the first to volunteer to create a flyer for an event, build the organization website, or design a post. In my junior year, I took a leap, moving from doing freelance volunteer work on a whim when I was younger to an official position as Social Media Coordinator at On the H.O.M.E. Front (check out @ontheh.o.m.e.front on Instagram for some examples of my work). As I created posts, stories, and captions and grew our following over the first few weeks, I realized that I truly loved doing this--designing things on my computer for each week had become a fun, creative activity for me. Since those initial first weeks, I've stepped more into this role, increasing the OTHF schedule from 2 to 3 posts per week, working on my own accounts, and designing stickers for my RedBubble shop in my free time. While I have no professional education (yet), over my gap year and my time at university I hope to be able to further my knowledge of graphic design and content creation.
Film: Recently, I was asked, as a Student Council member at NSHSS, to do a "Campus Takeover" on the NSHSS Instagram page to show everyone around my university, the State College of Florida (my takeover can be found here). As I ran around campus all day, filming interviews, recording myself, and editing my work before posting, I discovered that I loved the camera, both from behind it filming, in front as the one being recorded, and editing everything afterwards.
I have a lot of pets: one llama (Gold Rush), one alpaca (Chewy), one rabbit (Tuxedo), two turtles (Big Mac and Little Mac), one dog (Adam), and about a million different fish.
I love everything to do with the ocean--as a kid, I spent almost all my time either at the beach, swimming, looking at shells, and watching the various marine life, or at the local Mote Marine Aquarium and Marine Labratory. Next summer, I hope to be chosen as the high school intern at Mote Marine!
I started dual-enrollment (two courses/semester) at thirteen at the State College of Florida, and enrolled at the college full-time (five courses/semester) at fourteen.
My six favorite courses that I've taken throughout my high school and college career were (in no particular order): British Literature to 1790, World Literature II, Introduction to Literature, Digital Imaging for Non-Majors, Computer Information Systems, and Creative Writing.
I love learning languages. I took two and a half years of Mandarin Chinese throughout middle and high school, learned a bit of American Sign Language, and hope in the future to become fluent in Mandarin, Latin, Greek, and German.