Empowerly

Student profile

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

Growing up as an American teenager in Southern California, I know what it means to be privileged. Being of Indian descent, I have seen what it means to be underprivileged. Ever since I was 3 years old, so short that I had to be placed in the front row of kids on stage, I have participated in the annual Archana fundraiser to support the goals of India Friends’ Association (IFA). Back then, I did not know why I was “singing” and falsely being complimented by all the parents in attendance. My hands hurt, being folded in prayer, and I was blinded by the seemingly endless camera flashes.

IFA, a non-profit organization, sends all proceeds raised through Archana to develop facilities and benefit India’s impoverished. I never believed that my singing locally at the Civic Arts Plaza could make a difference halfway across the world in some remote village in rural Punjab. At nine years old, I was exposed to the poverty that plagues India on a family trip to Mumbai. The image of a boy, the same age as me, with one arm amputated, banging on my car window, begging for a foreigner’s help still haunts me. I regret looking the other way.

Last summer, I returned to India after 7 years. The value of my on-stage antics still seemed implausible to me until I visited the Aruna Asif Ali Bhavan. Seeing impoverished children, with smiles stretching across their tender faces, receiving the right to an education, which was restricted to their parents due to caste, only made me appreciate IFA even more. Now, I understand why I sung back then and why I dance on stage now. The fact that my actions locally hold a global impact continues to inspire me everyday.

Since that trip, I become more involved with IFA, attending committee meetings surrounded by people more than twice my age, and starting a youth group to cook breakfast at a homeless shelter and fight the poverty that exists locally. Through IFA, I have found my voice, and I do not only use it to sing anymore.

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

We called ourselves the “Curry Squad”, and just a month later, we played our first gig at the local IFA India Festival. “Curry Squad” went on to play both Western and Bollywood music for two more years, and though multiple members are away at college, we make it a point to play together every holiday break.

Growing up in a household with an instrumentalist father and a vocalist sister, I was bound to fall in love with music. At a young age, I was exposed to my father’s I-Pod playlists, hearing everything from A.R. Rahman to Pink Floyd. Car rides to Hindustani classical vocal lessons consisted of my sister and I fighting over who chose the next song from an era we hadn’t even experienced. 

As I grew older and entered middle school, I became exposed to hip hop and rap music. There was something so intriguing about the way one could effortlessly play with words and make them into their own, and I became set on doing just that. My friends and I even tried to write verses after school, and I truly began to see how fun making music could be. 

Even though my father didn’t always understand or necessarily share my appreciation for rap music, I continued to listen. Suddenly, I began to develop an I-Pod playlist of my own. I still listened to the “classic ‘80s hits” section on my I-Pod, but now I played alongside some of my Phil Collins favorites on my blue hand-me-down drum set. After holding a few “jam sessions” with some close friends, I pitched the idea of starting a band.

Today,  I share the same passion for music I felt the first time I heard my dad’s playlists. Music allows me to create without boundaries, removing myself from the norm and expressing an area that is underdeveloped in the K-12 education system. My playlist grows by the day, and now, I cannot complete a homework assignment without my headphones in and my head bobbing away to my life’s soundtrack. As a piano player, a drummer, a singer, and one who hopes to learn to play every other known instrument, I truly love the sound of music.

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?  

At three years old, I played YMCA basketball, and alongside my teammates, I developed a penchant for sports. Now, I take part in various clubs to tackle issues and develop my interests. In both, I demonstrated my greatest talent: collaboration- an impact on others.

Whether it be through my involvement with IFA and other charity organizations, the journalism staff at my high school, my band, or my tennis team, collaboration has always been an integral part of my life. Throughout my time in high school, I have learned what it means to work together to create something special. I have learned what it means to be a leader and what it means to be a follower.

When I first arrived in high school, I was shy, having come over from a different school district. However, I quickly realized associating myself with those of different beliefs would mold me into the best version of myself.

Working with IFA, I embrace my role as part of the Youth Bollywood Team, challenging myself  to dance, even though the concept once seemed foreign to me. Four years ago, I never would have believed I’d become the group’s leader. As a part of She’s The First club, I helped my peers ensure an education for a young girl in Guatemala. As a part of the Journalism staff, I worked jointly on articles, holding myself and others accountable to the highest standards, to produce the best possible work. On the tennis team, I made sure I was always helping others, staying after practice to sharpen mine and others’ serve-and-volley skills. In the team’s upset of rival Westlake for the first time in nearly three decades, I saw the effect those extra hours had. As a senior, I am confident that my role in attracting new members as publicist of the Recycling club will ensure my community stays clean long after I’m gone.

Without a doubt, I can say that collaboration has transformed me from the person I was when I first stepped foot on campus, as a freshman. I can only hope it has transformed others as well. Collaboration, or bringing together people to complete a cause, is my greatest talent, and is one I will continue to develop throughout my life.

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom. 

In the world that we live in today, it is important to be able to voice your opinions unashamedly. Writing has given me that opportunity, and every day, I continue to be inspired by its ability to do just that. I was first truly introduced to writing when I attended the midnight screening of “Man of Steel” in 2013. Full of memorable moments and lines that stuck in my head days after I saw the movie, the film demonstrated the power of a well-written piece. A curious 13-year-old, I looked up the film’s official script as soon as it became available and read through the entire thing in one sitting, subsequently watching analysis videos online. 

I decided to create my own blog, writing movie reviews and providing criticism in the vein of the analysis videos I had binged previously. I continued to develop my website, writing about every film I saw in the theaters, but I wanted to reach an even larger audience. After sharpening my skills and building my résumé over a year with my blog, I applied for my school’s journalism staff. Upon being accepted, I took over the movie critic role for the newspaper, but also learned about the different forms writing could take depending on the topic being written about. I applied these skills to areas apart from film criticism, writing for a Philadelphia-based medical and social service organization’s monthly journal and becoming published in my local newspaper. With every piece I wrote, I improved my diction and tackled a different topic.

Doing some research on how I could gain some more expertise, I attended a class at UCLA this past summer and gained valuable insight on how one’s writing can always be improved, but also how writing can be used as an outlet to express opinions. It has since dawned upon me that writing was exactly that for me: an outlet. I hope to further this outlet at a UC campus by taking rhetoric classes and joining the newspaper staff. It is my goal that my writing inspires others the way the subject inspired me.