Growing up in Northern California, redwood trees were a large part of my childhood. My parents used to take my sister and I on walks in a local forest where redwoods lined the walkways and birdsongs echoed around us. In fact, redwood trees became a staple in my life and for the longest time I didn’t even consider the fact that the species of tree could be in danger. I am lucky to have some redwood trees in my backyard, however in recent years I have been noticing how many trees have been being cut down for urban development within the area. Not only that, the California wildfires in 2020, exasperated by the effects of climate change, destroyed Big Basin Redwood Park. These magnificent trees are important to the California ecosystem and are something that I couldn’t bear to lose. My personal sustainability pledge is to continually search for alternatives to single-use items in my daily-life. As an avid baker, I have found that silicone baking sheets have been extremely useful in eliminating my waste. I have recently been in the process of eliminating the plastic bottles in my family’s kitchen and bathrooms in favor of bar-form toiletries. I am also continually working to educate myself in environmental science, policy, and justice. I know that there are a lot of areas and topics that I still don’t understand, but which are important.
In my first year of high school, I founded a student publication after realizing that the student body had no creative outlet or vessel for connection. As a want-to-be student journalist, I had no idea what was going to happen and had no idea what work we were going to publish. However, the first piece that I ever worked on hooked me for the next few years.
After finding that many students at my school were working on independent projects for their elective work, I decided to do a feature story covering three of the projects that students at my school were working on. Nervously, I typed up emails to request interviews and waited for responses. It didn’t take long before I got replies, all of them excited to talk to talk to me about the work they were doing. I spent the next few days sitting down with each student and discussing the work that they were doing. It was amazing to see the passion in their eyes as they explained their work and processed the questions that I asked them. And yet, it was also some of the most fun that I had ever had. It didn’t feel forced at all. Instead, it was more of a conversation where I was able to dive into their world for a little portion or time and grasp at the strings of what they had been tirelessly pouring their hearts into. When I finally sat down to write my article, I knew that it wasn’t a matter of reporting. It was a matter of telling their stories and presenting their passion to my community.
As I’ve continued to write throughout high school and college, this feeling of connection is the one thing that has kept me going. Just as I was able to connect with my interviewees on an individual level, I believe that storytelling is essential in bringing people together while also creating room for celebration or critique of instituted. Creativity feeds into this, acting as a vessel through which storytelling can occur. Additionally, it is creativity which makes a story intriguing and draws the audience into the piece so that reflection can occur. Growing up, I never considered myself to be the most creative person. It has taken me years to figure out what creativity means for me and how to nourish my creativity to a point where I feel comfortable sharing it with the world. Through this process, the one thing I have learned is that you’re never truly done discovering what your creativity is. Collaborating with The Creative Process is helping me further explore this through curiosity and learning how figures within different fields view the world. I get to be part of thoughtful conversations with people from diverse backgrounds while also developing thoughtful reflecting with fellow learners.
I am a staff writer for the student paper, The Scripps Voice. While I generally cover news stories, I have also written feature stories and in the future, I plan to contribute photos to the publication as well. In addition to my work with this publication, I have also been collaborating with one of my classmates to put together a small conversational podcast documenting our experiences as first-year students at Scripps College. We welcome guests onto the show to discuss different topics with us and recently have been trying to reach out to members of our school community who have experiences that we cannot speak towards. We plan to continue putting together this podcast throughout our time at the school and hope to build it up through the years. Lastly, photography and baking are tremendous creative outlets for me. While the pandemic has halted the number of photoshoots I go on and online school has limited the time I have available to bake, I hope that in the future I will be able to continue some of these. One of my favorite projects is called My Life in Cupcakes where I design, bake, and decorate cupcakes that are inspired by important people, events, and places in my life. It is a small project, but it brings me a lot of joy!
Ending Senior Year in Isolation – A photo essay I put together about one aspect of my experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.
