What activities are you involved in?
- CTA Architects
- Polish Castles Book Project
- Open Houses
- Lighthouse
- Makerspace
Why did you join these activities?
I joined some of them to help me with getting into a college, for fun and for future career options and opportunities.
What are the benefits of participating in these activities?
CTA Architects and Makerspace are the ones that matter the most for college and careers. Open houses and lighthouses help me get better and practice my presentation skills and the Polish Castles Book Project I did for fun and because it would help other people since they would have something to put on a resume.
How have you grown from participating in these activities?
All of the after-school activities have helped me. I got way better at my presentation skills, I got to learn how to use Rhinoceros and from learning Rhinoceros I got to learn AutoCad.
What skills do you still want to develop and how could participating in extracurricular activities help you with this development?
Although I learned a lot, there is still much more to learn. There is a lot to learn in AutoCad and for presentations I need to make eye contact with more people as I’m talking while still being able to focus.
What is one memorable experience that you have had from participating in these activities?
One memorable moment I made is there were a few where a bunch of us working on the first CTA Architects project would just talk and mess around but one time specifically near the beginning of the project stuck out to me. One time we found a foam and tossed it around and we were joking a lot. We didn’t mess around very often but when we did it was always a bonding moment and this made working on the CTA Architects feel even more special. I hope this happens with the project I will be working on this year because these moments are what made losing the seniors from them graduating hurt so much.
How do you balance your extracurriculars with your classwork?
To be able to get my after-school projects and school work done can be a challenge but I do stuff to make things easier for me. What I do is set days for me to work on classwork highly and days for me to work on after-school activities are already set so I know when to go to after-school. I make sure to take breaks sometimes too so that I don’t reach a burnout.
Aside from school, what do you enjoy doing?
Outside of school I love practicing kickboxing and jiu-jitsu. I practice Fridays-Sunday. The pain felt and the stress released from practicing kickboxing and jiu-jitsu helps me with classwork and after-school because the stress during it is way higher than the stress I feel during after-school and classwork. This causes the classwork and after-school work stress to not feel as bad which then encourages me to do the work.