so... i survived my 2 years in junior high. not so bad while i was in it, but looking back on it i can see why so many people feel like it's the worst place to be while growing up. hormones, fitting in, changing for p.e.... it can all be traumatizing. but i have to smile when i think about junior high, for 8th grade was the year of my first boyfriend. david. we were adorable, in our dancing-every-dance-together-but-never-even-kissing sort of way. went out for 4 months. i still have a white bear as a token of those affectionate times (though it came out of the breakup slightly battered). high school was a fun time, despite the horribly unhealthy workload of junior year. on the whole there are good memories. i had some amazing teachers, and i learned a lot. i met some wonderful people, made some great friends. i feel like i started becoming more of an individual, more of myself during my high school years. i mean, i readily admit i still was something of a follower... often dressed the same way as my friends... stayed relatively in the confines of what was expected of me. but i broke out in many ways as well. when i was a sophomore, 15 years old, i decided to become vegetarian. while it took me awhile to grow into and realize what being vegetarian meant to me, it was still an individual decision- none of my friends were vegetarian. i started developing opinions and started thinking for myself. i spent my entire junior year in love with a beautiful gay sophomore boy, though i (and probably he) didn't know he was gay at the time.

i learned that growing up in lafayette is pretty much like growing up with blinders on (first pointed out to me by one of my favorite teachers), and i started taking them off. getting a license exposed me to the entirely different world of berkeley and san francisco, and today i feel more at home in berkeley than in lafayette. one of the most important things that happened to me in high school (that happened to me ever, probably) was going to work as a counselor for a week at exploring new horizons outdoor school. those 5 days there opened my eyes, and i decided that it was what i wanted to do in life. i wanted to live in nature, taking kids out into the forest and to the ocean, and teaching them about this world they live in. experiential education. i've pretty much structured my life around that goal ever since. pretty soon college applications were upon me, and, without even visiting it first, i applied for early decision at swarthmore. i knew it was time for me to get out of california, to see more of this country i live in.

my senior portrait

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