I had always been good at math, so when I was placed into Integrated 2 as a freshman, it wasn’t surprising. I was one of three freshmen in a class full of older students that I didn’t know, which terrified me. My math teacher, Mr. K, was immediately one of my favorite teachers and I found out he was the advisor for a school club that met every Monday during lunch. It was called Interact Club. To me, as a brand new freshman in high school, at the end of COVID, and trying to find people like me, it sounded a lot like a math club. Math teacher, Interact, that’s a logical conclusion, right? So I went to a meeting and discovered that I was wrong; Interact was a community service club. The club was a majority of seniors, some juniors, one or two sophomores, and me, the only freshman. Again, I was terrified, but I also wanted to impress these upperclassmen that I looked up to. And they had pizza once a month. So, I went to almost every single Interact club meeting that year and I loved it. It was also simpler than I thought it would be. To impact and be involved in my community, all I had to do was show up once a week for thirty minutes and simply start planning something. With success in my latest venture, I enthusiastically joined the swim team, ready for a new challenge. I grew up swimming every chance I got, in the creek next to my house or at a pool in my dad's apartment complex, but I had never learned how to swim any of the specific strokes. I picked up the basics easily enough, met some of the most amazing people, and became known for doing a swan dive that I unintentionally did whenever I dived. I proved to myself that my body was capable of incredible physical feats, effectively getting rid of most of the negative body image issues I carried with me throughout middle school. With newfound confidence in my physical abilities, I decided to pick up mountain biking by joining the local Thunderbirds, and even though I’m not the fastest biker, I’ve loved the opportunity to be in nature and traverse up and down my local mountains. The people I met by joining the swim and the mountain biking team have been incredible role models for me as I’ve grown throughout my high school years and I will never forget how kind my coaches and teammates were as they accepted me into their lives. Looking back, I’ve noticed just how much I’ve modeled myself after the older girls and women from Interact, Thunderbirds, and Swim. As a senior, this is my third year as President of the Interact Club and we’ve done many incredible things from helping set up the Italian Heritage Festival to growing the reach of our Food Drive each year. By pushing past my fear I learned that trying new things can impact my life in unforeseen ways and leave me with valuable lessons and experiences that I will cherish for the rest of my life. In my plans for the future, I plan to contribute to the fields of math and science by getting my degree in Nursing, using it to travel the world and run my own clinic, further establishing a connection to my community that I’ve cultivated since starting high school.