High School: Milwaukie Academy of the Arts

Career Aspirations: Chef, Content Creator [Not Clickbait]

Leadership and Legacy:

I have always been interested in cooking, whether it be making vegetable soup with my mom as a little kid, baking an apple pie with the fall apples from my front yard, or flipping pancakes with my little sister. I think that cooking and food bring people closer together, and being as isolated as families have been over the past couple of years, I thought it even more important to express my love for this art form and educate others.

For my Leadership and Legacy project, I recorded and am currently producing a podcast series interviewing different chefs around the Portland metro area. I was originally planning on writing a cookbook but things fell through and I had to look at different options. After doing some research, a podcast series seemed like a great compromise because I could learn about many different perspectives, opinions, and stories through that format as well as get familiarity with the editing and recording process of creating online content. It was great fun talking to all the chefs that were willing to put up with my crash-course interview, which was certainly not the most mainstream. Since I had to move around from place to place, my setup had to be easily transportable, and it ended up consisting of a small pc hooked up with a recording software known as Audacity, a temperamental mic that seemed to have varying audio quality depending on the day and some scribbled out notes and scripts sprawled across the table.

I learned a lot about each of these chefs and I truly owe each of them a ton. I would also like to give a shout-out to Julie Merry, who helped me navigate the earlier stages of my project and was willing to be my first interviewee. My mentor relationships were confusing at best, I seemed to bounce around from person to person depending on their workload and/or commitment to my project, but Julie always seemed to be the closest thing that I could get to a “mentor”, and though it was unconventional, she supported me in this project a great deal.

Favorite Memory:

Obviously there are way too many memories over my past seven years at this school to pick one in particular as my ‘favorite’, but there is one that stands out off the top of my head.

It was a crisp evening, and I was rushing out of the car and sprinting to the building as I was already six minutes late. The sun was setting over the field of old Mt. Pleasant, and I just remember sitting there for a moment and listening to the last few chirps of the birds overhead. While I was racing through the halls, I remember running into Chanda and talking to her for a bit. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I do recall whatever it was calming my nerves a little. We both walked into the music room together, and when we got there pretty much the entire school was jam-packed in every nook and cranny. I sat next to Thomas and he still had that cute Hufflepuff tie on, I remember him being very proud of that thing. All the students stood up and Chanda led us into that beautiful gym, with our families glowing in the soft candle-like light as we walked down the aisle. The Raven class sat on the side of the gym for a while, watching all the other well-rehearsed performances of the 2018 Marylhurst Winter Concert. Everything about that night just seemed so… magical to me as the kid I was back then. There was nothing else that I had to think about during those few hours of celebration, there was no need to. All I had to think about was our class piece, and the warm embrace of the audience.

The true essence of the Marylhurst spirit in my eyes.

Advice for Younger Students:

Stay true to yourself, and make sure that you are always expressing your opinions, ideas, perspectives…etc. Middle school should be a safe space for those sorts of conversations, and no one can take that away from you.