Spring of Junior year was probably the most stressful time of mine at school. I had spent the last three months preparing for the spring musical, my first lead role where I had to sing and act. As well as that, I was fighting to keep my grades up, something that I had been fixated on practically for years. I was at the lowest I’d ever been mentally, partially due to being on the wrong medicine for fighting a combination of OCD/ADHD. My family was aware of my OCD for a long time, but because my school was quick to push me academically, I became fixated and paranoid about my grades and keeping them at perfect A’s (while taking multiple AP classes). Because so much of my school was based around high achievement, my habit of overworking was encouraged by the system. It didn’t take until my grades fell, and I had an incident with self harm that made me step back and evaluate. I stopped going to school for three weeks and was enrolled in a partial inpatient program in New Hampshire. I spent 5 or so hours a day there learning coping skills and participating in group therapy with people of a variety of different stories, and hearing about their daily life made me realize that there was so much more going on around me than just school. The most useful thing I got out of this experience was a referral to my doctors for new medication from my program counselor. She was very sympathetic towards my situation and fought for me to get the resources I needed. Luckily I was able to make up all my finals and end the year off well. I look at where I am now, spring of Senior year, just about a year away from when I went to a partial in-patient, and feel like a completely different person. My meds are helping me manage my emotions, and something like the school play does not feel as all consuming as it did last year, which seems like a very big step forward from constantly being fixated on it. I try to take time for myself by making time during my day to read, make bracelets, or watch tv (as weird as it sounds), because I wasn’t doing any of those things before. I don’t think in these huge all-or-nothing, future oriented ways. I just focus on the task at hand and ask myself what I need to accomplish for one day only. This change in perspective has helped me navigate my senior year, and hopefully put me in a better place for when I go to college.

Music has played a huge part in my life. I am a fifth generation musician on my mother’s side, and my mother is a pianist/vocalist & Professor at Berklee College of Music. She has been guiding me in my songwriting and performance related endeavors for years, and has always been supportive of me pursuing music. The first time I sang in public I was four years old, and I have been playing piano since I was five. I have been singing as part of my church since I was eight or nine. I was in the Grace Chapel children’s choir, as well as singing with my mother in the services in both their Lexington and East Lexington campuses. I also sing with my mom at my current church in Beverly on occasion. This past October I finished a three song EP that was recorded this past August. I chose three songs I had written at various points during my high school career. I feel they are a good representation of the varying styles I’ve worked on as a songwriter. I’ve always thought of songwriting as a different way to tell a story. I write short stories in my free time and some of those stories end up with a musical representation in one of my songs. However, if I were to choose a career outside of music I would be a writer. Often characters from my friend’s and I’s stories speak to me and I feel inspired to write songs about them. I write short stories for fun outside of school (when I have the time to do so). My goal as a musician is to get a formal education in music composition to be able to learn jazz theory as well as traditional theory in order to help improve my songs. I would also like training in how to use music production software to my advantage to produce from home. Career wise, I would like to be able to make money off of my own songs, but I am also open to collaborating with other artists who might be able to provide song concepts, and help turn those ideas into songs or even larger compositions such as musicals, or collaborate in mediums like game soundtracks. The video attached below is a musical expression of me pushing through my struggles with anxiety and learning to accept parts of myself, while diverting critical thoughts.