Etch 'N Sketch Soul by Faith Inello People say life is like a race but I don’t think it’s like a race at all. If it was like a race, we would all be running toward the same thing and not everyone has the same goal. Some people aren’t even running. Some don’t have to. If you must use a tautology like that of life being a race, it really comes down to you racing yourself and every possible version of your life to see which version gets to the end first. Yet, that doesn’t do it justice. When one tool doesn’t work, you pick up another to do the job. What happens if you are weak in the same place you want to be strong? Sometimes my mind refuses to work, it refuses to budge, it decides to knot itself in loops and repeat the phrases that broke it over and over again. Lose your ability to read right from wrong, here from then, past from present And you’re pushed back before the beautiful destruction, through it, under it, into the before and the after where nothing makes sense. The words you read before mean nothing now, you can read them over and over again but they’ve been burned away, fiction and reality, molten hot and stuck together just out of reach, just close enough for you to feel the excruciating heat, but never near enough to grasp. The cool honey that used to fill the cracks in your facade has been replaced with erasable ink, pretty and impermanent, holding long enough to fool everyone into thinking you dot every “I” in your signature with a heart instead of a question mark. The cold twitch of eyelids fluttering in a dark room, unsure of where the exits are, if there even are any, unsure of whether or not one wrong move will result in further disability, further pain and loss. The pixels that make up the numbers that make up the minutes I’ve spent putting off my homework move in time to my heart beating while my thoughts lag behind. Someone told me once that my pain won’t change the later at night it gets. Sometimes I try to connect the dots of my past, trace back the lines and erase the colors that led to this decision and this life and this path. Redefine passion, redefine love, forget trauma and abandonment. What would it look like to return to nothing and start from scratch? I reject the etch and sketch framework, the stains left behind by the hooks and turns my destiny makes on paper, the smudges of betrayal and failure. I reject the lyrics, the siren song luring me closer and closer to the edge, throwing myself far from the abyss, Instead confining myself to the familiar, Letting the voices lull me into certain success and certain destruction in the same musical slur. I reject it, but I swallow it anyways like the good daughter, good student, good liar that I am. If I rewrote my own story, I would be my own god. And that’s why I have no choice but to submit.

I sit cross-legged on the floor, simultaneously writing a eulogy and playing the piano. Jotting down my favorite anecdotes and music notes, I try to find a way to sum up a life in a finite number of words. The piano is loaded with papers that are covered in measures that are filled with notes. I look for the harmony and fall short, additionally stumped on what adjectives characterize my grandmother best. The soundtrack scratches for a moment as my fingers search for the resolution in life, in death, at the end of a melody. I am by no means an instrumental aficionado, yet I go back again and again to augment the movement of my fingers. Pure passion, the crescendo driving my desire to love and keep loving, despite grief, produces the resolve necessary to continue working, loving, becoming better. Nostalgia overtakes me in this final pursuit of meaning. My thoughts spiral into polyrhythms and midnight sighs and goosebumps spreading down my back as I lie on the beach behind my house. I let the memory of the ocean breeze carry me away like those George Michael songs my grandmother played on long rides home from the theater. Staccato thoughts turn to rests. The room goes quiet. I’ve found my words for the eulogy. I write them in the middle of my sheet music, and the harmony comes in the form of dulcet moments in the arms of the ones I love, laughter filling our ears. The scene comes to a pause, a breath, and I sit back to let the music play, finally listening to what I’ve created. It sounds like the beginning of one’s story, rather than the end. It sounds like home.

Giving back instills a sense of community and hope that I think is essential for personal and interrelational growth. During my time with Zhenique Israelian's LMHC, I learned about and provided various skills required in the field of psychotherapy. I learned how to interpret neuropsychological reports, brain scans, behavioral reports, treatment plans, progress reports, and recommendations from various providers. In addition, I learned more about a life-changing treatment called EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I learned about the origins of this modality and its various uses for calming the nervous system quickly, and eventually, I advocated for use of EMDR practice in schools for elementary-aged children and young adults. At the Dexter Southfield Community Service Club, our mission is to impact local businesses and organizations through school-wide volunteering opportunities. This year, I organized a blood drive through American Red Cross to address the high demand for blood resulting from pandemic shortages. Additionally, I advocated for donations to our annual Food Drive for Rose’s Bounty in West Roxbury, an organization that distributes food to a number of local communities. Finally, I'm in the process of leading a toy drive for Toys for Tots through an advisory community at my school. SoWa Open Market is Boston's largest celebration of local art, food, and music, running every Sunday, May to October. I attended SoWa Sundays for years as a child and jumped on the first opportunity to impact others through volunteering there. In my time working there, I managed how many people entered and exited the market (per the current COVID-19 restrictions of the time), set up vendor booths, and filmed promotional material. I provided information and assistance to hundreds of marketgoers a day in a fast-paced environment alongside people from a range of different cultural backgrounds.

I think we need more female journalists focusing on how to empower women in the workplace. I personally wrote an article last year on boss mentality. I am including an excerpt from that article as an example of the work I hope to produce and see produced by other aspiring journalists: Embodying boss mentality means that you know your worth, and you're confident in that, regardless of a society that may have different ideals. You know what you are capable of and what your limits are, harnessing the power that comes with being a woman and using it to thrive in any environment. One way to embrace your womanhood, personally and professionally, is through antifragility. This mindset is key in one’s growth, to go from someone who is held back by setbacks, to someone who actually benefits from them. Antifragility means that not only do you bounce back quickly from chaos and disappointment, you thrive from failure. Self-pity just perpetuates a lack of control; if you are in power over your own life, you can always choose how to react and what you do next. When you work hard and something doesn’t go your way, you can have the same input and same results, just by working towards a different output. You can work on this mindset by participating in a community-driven feedback culture where we emphasize consistent positive feedback loops and hold ourselves and others accountable in a way that facilitates consistent growth over time. Many young women working in a male-dominated environment are afraid to speak up and ask for help or guidance for fear of being judged. If you prioritize working in a female-driven company, this is no longer a problem, but most of us aren’t working in female-run businesses where the women far outnumber the male employees. Yet. If you are the smartest person, let alone woman, in the room, pick a new room. You’re not going to learn anything new there, so there is no point in staying. At the same time, competition and comparing yourself to others kills both productivity and any chance of good relationships with other women. That’s not to say women shouldn’t push each other to do their best, but gossip and pettiness never scored anyone the job offer or sealed the deal on a new friendship. I believe authenticity and honesty are core parts of any team, company, or community culture. Develop thick skin for the right reasons, and you’ll up your resilience game 10x. Passion motivates must motivate what we do. This is where a network of female leaders comes in; when you surround yourself with ambitious people, you can delegate the work to whoever will do each part best. This is important in any business environment, especially now when many women are working remotely. Most of us operate based on the assumptions that we are told when we are young girls and the mindsets that we develop as young adults. The generations before us learned that success means comfort. Screw comfortable; it’s just a nice way of saying that the majority of the world is striving for complacency. It is important to master the conventional as the foundation for your success, but if you resign yourself to the conventional, you will, unfortunately, remain as nothing more than mediocre. Many may mistake these traits for arrogance because "bold women" have historically been called bossy in a derogatory way. As more female journalists demonstrate how to find power in the facets that make us unique, girls will begin to understand their worth and act on their goals, authentically and authoritatively.

Being yourself is hard, especially as a junior in high school. Adolescents my age are constantly bombarded with the judgements of the ones around us, as well as society itself. The media portrays a certain image of the “quintessential teenage girl”; popular, perfect figure, perfect grades, perfect athlete, large friend circle, and an extensive romantic life to name a few characteristics. Teens, just like me, try desperately to achieve their dreams while being constantly bogged down by these depictions of who we are supposed to be, but I refuse to let anyone change me. I strive every day to be my own self, at my very best, all the time, regardless of all other influences. For as long as I can remember I have felt “different.” My unique personality and intellect have changed the way I form and go about relationships with other people. I experienced this at my old school many times due to my idiosyncratic ways and an unusual maturity. I know what it is like to be rejected for the very thing that makes someone themselves. There are more followers in this world than leaders, and teenage girls fight to fit into a mold set by the trendsetters, rather than stand out for what makes them unique. I have dealt with the consequences of refusing to do this all my life, largely in the form of bullying. I have been a self described “geek” for as long as I can remember. Instead of playing games at recess, I would do extra math pages for fun, or read books about superheroes, or write stories. I felt ostracized by my peers in many ways, most notably for my maturity, both emotional and intellectual. Though I realized they were probably acting out of their own insecurities, I felt their taunts and their exclusion all the same. It made me cold towards them; I knew saying nothing was better than retaliating back. I did not choose to be different, I only chose to embrace my differences. I was too young to realize that everyone was different; some people simply shed the things that make them special in order to increase others’ acceptance of them. No matter what bullying I endured, I did not let anyone persuade me to “become more normal.” I was happy to be curious about the world around me and grateful for the opportunity to learn, and I decided never again to even think about the possibility of stripping myself of such a joy in order to please others. I embrace everything that makes me unique through vulnerability and a dedication to personal excellence. I am completely transparent with my peers and I believe that everyone should feel comfortable being exactly who they are in any setting, without fear of judgement or rejection. I want to shine a light in the darkness of a hopeless world, encouraging others to break out of the destructive cycle of self-comparison. I can no longer sit idly by as teenagers continue to perpetuate discrimination against kids who go against the norm. I want to rid the stigma that causes teens to hide their gifts and the way they truly feel. By sharing my own story, I am offering them an opportunity to expose themselves in the same way and become more comfortable with being different and rejoicing in each other’s differences. This year in particular, I refuse to limit myself to someone else’s idea of who am, should be, or need to be. Society is a funny thing, where the standards for success and likability are getting increasingly higher and the possibility of realistically reaching them are decreasing exponentially. Our generation is expected to do well in all areas of life, while at the same time conforming to the world’s expectations for how we are to act and achieve such perfection. We are a generation of extremists, disregarding “good” and “ok” as we limit our lives to perfection or failure. I choose to measure my life by my own potential, not in comparison to others. I know what it means to be different and I am not afraid to communicate my “otherness” to the world. What makes a person themselves is not the degree of the things that make them special; it is their willingness to share these things with the ones around them. No one should be ashamed of who they are, and I vow to never forget who I am.

A year ago, I went through the motions of school without a second thought, my ambition simmering under the surface of my drive and compassion for others. I wanted to make a difference and I wanted to do it in the here in now, not ten years down the road after I had earned a degree. At the same time, I knew that I would have to develop skills in business and science research to be taken seriously by either community. I started looking into metabolomics and the scientific side of human behavior. No one was going to hand me the information; I had to learn how to read a research paper, synthesize the claims, and use the necessary software myself. I brought my research to events like MassChallenge and the MIT Neurotech conference to learn from adults with experience in scientific research; the impressions I made allowed me to further my research with mentors like Ed Boyden and Shreya Patel. In developing these new experiences, I began to see the relationship between effort and ability and figured out how to maximize my potential. I studied every day, vowing to read research papers during my one hour commute to school in an effort to stay up to date on the latest innovations in the science community. Ultimately, I presented this research to the Harvard Education Alumni and received the opportunity to present further as one of the youngest speakers invited to present at South by Southwest this coming March. I will be sharing my presentation virtually and speaking on my experience as a 15-year-old who is developing non-invasive treatment options for neurological conditions, based on my research in adverse childhood experiences, synaptic plasticity, and brain-computer-interface components. Using this research, I furthered my dream and founded a company, Axonaly, where I am working to develop a wearable mental health device and platform that helps people suffering from anxiety by alerting them of when their metabolite levels are rising and walking them through calming exercises before a panic attack can occur. I raised almost $40,000 in less than a year through pitch competitions and research grants, and plan to launch the product this June. In the coming months, I will continue to learn about neuroscience and develop my abilities in all areas of life. Over the course of the next few years, I will hopefully further my research as a student at Dexter Southfield and get into a college with extensive research opportunities for my ultimate goal of helping others better deal with mental illness through biomedical research and technology. The grant money would help me to continue working on Axonaly and make my dream of helping teens struggling with anxiety a reality. I hope to leave a legacy of innovation and the idea that you’re never too young to make a difference in the world if you love learning and you are consumed by a need to learn more.