I first entered Ten Plus as a camper, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, loud cheers, and the strange excitement of beginning high school. Somewhere between the activities, conversations and people I met, I got my own “spider bite.” Ten Plus gave me my first sense of belonging at my school and sparked a desire to become someone who could create that feeling for others.
After discovering my own place in a new community, I began paying closer attention to the people around me. CNNShine became my “friendly neighborhood,” where social responsibility grew from everyday awareness into meaningful action.
Music is usually something we turn up for ourselves: a louder chorus, a favorite song, a room filled with sound. With Aria Project, I began to see what could happen when we turned up the volume for something beyond ourselves.
Standing at the center of a career fair I built, I saw hundreds of students moving between booths, each representing a different possibility: Architecture, Data Science, Marketing, Law, Biotechnology, Computer Science, and more. With every conversation came another potential direction, another version of who they could become.
For a few minutes, our school stage became a meeting point between different worlds. Languages took new forms through costumes, music, and movement, each carrying a culture beyond the words we learned in class.
Spider-Man’s web stretches far beyond a single point, connecting places that would otherwise remain apart. I began to see my school community in a similar way: students graduate, pursue different paths, and build new lives, yet their experiences can still find their way back to those who come after them.
At the beginning of FLSS Olympics, I thought leadership meant being the person with the plan. With 400 house members to coordinate, however, I quickly learned that no captain could win anything alone.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” For me, that responsibility does not have to begin with extraordinary abilities. Sometimes, it begins with recognizing what we already have–time, resources, and a community–and choosing to share them.
