“I was learning from students that are agricultural and environmental science students at Stanford,” she said. “They come from all over the place and have different perspectives on everything, and it’s just really interesting to listen to while doing mundane tasks like weeding.”

Novitskaya grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and often visited countryside farms with her family. Moving to California showed her the importance of agriculture as a system.

“A lot of people didn’t realize how important it is here because a lot of people are focused on tech and not really on a more traditional or not-as-fancy sort of profession,” Novitskaya said. “But I think it’s really important.”

Over the years, Novitskaya has explored various perspectives on agriculture through volunteering, going abroad, and traveling with her family. Last summer, as part of a Council on International Educational Exchange program focused on climate change, she learned how Costa Rican people battle climate change through agriculture in Monteverde, Costa Rica.

“Seeing different farms of different countries, (I saw that) other countries are able to do (agriculture) sustainably,” she said. “So can we, but we aren’t really pushing towards that. I want to focus on the sustainable side of it and help other farmers make better choices that are more environmentally friendly.”

Through majoring in agricultural science at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Novitskaya hopes to learn more about the agricultural system in the U.S. and abroad.

“As people live in more urban areas, it’s harder to get fresh food and food deserts are a big problem,” she said. “Being able to assist people with getting fresh produce in a more environmentally friendly way would be really cool.”

Since then, Kang has explored classical music as a soloist, chamber musician with Young Chamber Musicians and orchestra musician in the California Youth Symphony and National Youth Orchestra. She treasures musical modes of expression and the ways they can help her community.

“(Music) is a time to be in a safe outlet by yourself,” Kang said. “You just get absorbed into it. And there’s so much you can do with music — performing, volunteering and teaching.”

Apart from music, Kang has been fascinated by the brain since she first learned about neuroscience in seventh grade. In high school, she explored intersections between music and neuroscience.

“I was in a Stanford camp freshman year, and we basically learned about new modern inventions regarding neuroscience and Alzheimer’s,” she said. “It was my first experience researching, and I did a lot  of research regarding the two.”

Kang has also taught music to students with autism at her church and the Academy of Music and Arts for Special Education. She is interested in understanding music’s role in neurological treatment.

“Playing music can help patients regain movement quickly, and I think that it’s very interesting,” she said. “Music activates both hemispheres of the brain. It’s like a mega vitamin — no  other activity does that, and that alone opens a lot of doors.”

During her next four years at Stanford University, Kang hopes to double major in music and neuroscience.

“I want to research how to diagnose patients with music,” she said. “There’s this artist I’ve been researching who is unique because he has Alzheimer’s and his artwork had shown symptoms of dementia. There’s so many different signs art can show and I want to keep researching about it.”

“I started working in the darkroom — I was in there for four months straight, alone, just printing pictures of plants,” she said. “And that’s when I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

The following summer, Tacy enrolled in a summer program at the Parsons School of Design in New York, where she worked on thematic projects and her portfolio.

“The series I made at Parsons was about growing up lesbian in the Catholic Church,” she said. “Growing up religious and leaving religion are themes I like to focus on, and make me passionate about creating work that focuses on marginalized communities — especially ones I’m part of.”

Tacy’s art at Gunn has evolved as she has explored diverse mediums and techniques.

“I started mainly doing film, and I also really loved black-and-white photography,” she said. “But then I switched to digital to do my portfolio. While I still really like film, I like that with digital, I can play around with colors.”

Tacy attributes some of her best photography-related memories to photography teacher Marie Durquet.

“She’s always been really encouraging to me to pursue my passions,” she said. “I think she’s defnitely a big inspiration for independence and being an artist later in life. She showed me that I can make a career out of this, and that I can be very fulfilled by being in the arts world.”

For the next four years, Tacy will continue following her passion in the photography and imaging program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

“I want to carry out a thesis for a long period of time and do one big series dedicated to something I really care about,” she said. “I’m also excited to meet different people, and artists and professors that can inspire me in ways I haven’t experienced before.”

All teenagers have their indulgences, and beginning in ninth grade, mine were “Misery,” “Pet Sematary” (no, it’s not misspelled), “The Shining” and all the rest. King’s books aren’t trashy by any means — far be it from me to insult the king of horror — but they were assuredly outside of my comfort zone. I’m by no means a thrill-seeker or a gore-lover, and I’ve often wondered what drove me to read about a psychotic clown in Maine, or a haunted hotel in the Colorado Rockies.

What I settled on was this: King’s books were perfect for me not because they were bloody, but because they provided a childish refuge. In ninth and 10th grade, I struggled to face the fact that I, and everyone around me, was evolving, perhaps beyond recognition. When I looked around me, I saw my friends eager to move on, grow up and be independent, and King’s books gave me space to cling to the familiar. His kid protagonists face unimaginable atrocities, but the solution is, in King’s words, to “remember the simplest thing of all — how it is to be children, secure in belief and thus afraid of the dark.” Defeating evil isn’t a matter of being the smartest or the most successful; rather, it’s an exercise in belief, maybe even in the suspension of disbelief.

So I took comfort in belief. Happy in my own sphere of comfort, I stuck with what I knew and avoided what I didn’t: driving, spending time with new people, trying new activities. I would go to school, go to basketball, come home, play piano, do homework, repeat. Monotonous, but predictable; static, but dependable.

Beginning in junior year, though, I started to realize that shying away from change was not going to work. It was one thing to look at my elementary- and middle-school years with nostalgia, and another to stay mired in them, and I was tending toward the latter. And so I tried something new: I exchanged King for new authors, traded basketball for journalism and found new friends to add to the old. I felt a pit of anxiety in my stomach every time I pivoted, but each small step felt like a battle won against
my own fear of change.

It was only after I had begun to let go a little that I realized I had misunderstood King’s work. Being “secure in belief” didn’t mean taking refuge in it — it meant harnessing that childish awe, curiosity and empathy into adulthood. Growing up doesn’t entail abandoning childhood, but it also doesn’t mean regressing into it. My friends weren’t leaving behind their old exploits, but changing them into something new.

A few weeks ago, I picked up “It” from my bookshelf and — ignoring the clown’s garish smile on the front cover — thumbed through it again. The 1,100-page tome is, in the end, an ode to childhood, but it’s also a story of how we heal from and remake our childhoods as adults. After all, we are all still growing into our own stories, expanding and unfurling. Who knows what comes next?

What began as an activity to pass the time slowly evolved into a part of Poot’s routine beginning sophomore year. She transitioned from at-home training to a gym-going regimen, focusing on different muscle groups each day and always ending her workouts on the stepmill.

“At the beginning, when I would go to the gym, I would be nervous and think, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to use this,’” she said. “(But I eventually realized that) no one is really focused on you.”

For Poot, the benefts of working out extend beyond the gym.

“I used to compare myself a lot with people on Instagram,” she said. “But since I started (going to) the gym and everything, I feel more confdent about myself. … I just like trying to do better every day and focus on what I can do and what I cannot.”

Beyond high school, Poot plans to continue her strength training through competing in body-building competitions. Moreover, as a frst-generation college student, she plans on majoring in psychology — an interest she found through taking Advanced Placement Psychology at Gunn — at San Jose State University.

“(Personality-wise), I like to listen to people — I’m more of a listener,” Poot said. “Every time that my friends want to talk about something, I’m always there for them to talk, and it kind of made me realize that maybe I have good-quality traits to become a psychologist.”

Poot hopes to pair her psychology studies with her love of training to become a clinical sports psychologist.

“I’m excited to work with different athletes and try to help them with their physical performance,” Poot wrote in an email. “I feel like a lot of what makes a good athlete perform better is the way they think or react to challenges, so I’m looking forward to helping them to reach their full potential.”

“Move over, Hamilton,” she joked. “I can write essays.”

Such dedication is a hallmark of Ravi’s writing process, which has evolved alongside her literary tastes. Over the years, she has moved from “karaoke writing” imitating canonical authors to poetic, philosophical and psychological explorations influenced by contemporary authors of color. 

Ravi’s first forays into literature began with Henry James and Jane Austen. Since middle school, however, she’s been drawn to experimental poetry and prose from writers like Korean American poet Franny Choi.

Work like Choi’s filters into Ravi’s writing: In a sophomore-year Advanced Authentic Research project, she explored how Jane Austen’s literary techniques connect to evolving understandings of empathy in cognitive science. Drawn to activist writing, she’s worked with organizations like the Palo Alto Humane Society. While often abstract, her work is still rooted in her environment.

“I wanted to name what feels wrong about the ways that we assign value to human life in (Silicon Valley’s) culture and the ways that we decide what is worth fighting for and what isn’t,” she said. 

Ravi also appreciates literary collaboration, quoting others liberally in her essays. She’s worked with mentorship organizations connecting young poets to mentors, and, over the years, cold-emailed dozens of authors and poets she admires for online meetings.

“When I love someone’s writing, I will jump off a bridge for them,” she said. “So when I’m on the page, I’m not there alone — I’m there with so many people that I love.”

With Scholastic Writing Award medals and a published book under her belt, Ravi will attend a liberal arts college this fall to study neuroscience and English. 

“I want to learn the language of the academy and learn that exclusive language, and then know how it works so that I can subvert it,” she said. “I want to be someone who knows the language, but then uses it the way it’s not supposed to be.”

Abu-Dayeh found her path to engineering through her parents’ and older sister’s encouragement.

“I was always interested in Legos and all these circuit kits that my parent would buy me, so I knew I wanted to do something (in) engineering,” Abu-Dayeh said. “Then, my dad kind of put me on the path because he knew that I like to do all these things.”

Over the past few years, Abu-Dayeh has overcome loneliness in male-dominated STEM classes and thrived despite the gender gap.

“I’ve learned a lot from (the struggles) that I can just kind of go past them,” she said. “They affect me, but they don’t af-
fect me as much as they did (in the past). I plan on learning from these challenges and experiences so I can use them in the future.”

From her experiences, Abu-Dayeh, who is president of Gunn’s Women in STEM Club, wanted to help other girls feel welcome in their fields. As a result, she reached out to other girls to help them discover the benefits of a STEM career.

“It takes a lot of time and energy to decide what you want to do in your life, and having no clear path is really stressful,” she said. “I just wanted to guide people, especially girls in STEM in high school.”

With the start of her college career, Abu-Dayeh is excited to use her experiences and skill set to continue fostering community.

“I’ll apply the skills that I’ve made while in high school and being a woman in STEM to my jobs, and create that support system and create that community no matter where I go,” she said.

Chi’s badminton journey hasn’t always been smooth. The sport began to lose its luster in middle school as competition and pressure rose, up to the point where he almost wanted to quit. Eventually, though, he found his rhythm.

“Before getting to high school, the junior tournaments are very competitive, and you start to question yourself,” he said. “But (I learned) to trust in my own abilities.”

Badminton has helped Chi grow beyond increased physical skill and endurance, as competing with a team has taught him collaboration.

“I’ve learned how to communicate and interact with my peers, and listen to their unique perspectives,” he said. “(In badminton,) you have to understand your partner better and develop a strategy that suits both of your strengths.”

Chi plans to continue playing badminton on the University of California, Berkeley, team. While he’s been able to balance badminton and academics thus far, he believes college will prove to be a greater challenge. Still, even if it’s through casual play, Chi looks forward to diving deeper into one of his favorite aspects of the sport: community.

“I think it will be less rigorous because I will focus on forming connections instead of competing for personal glory,” he said. “(I’m excited to) meet new people on the team from diverse studies, locations and interests.”

At Berkeley, Chi plans to major in data science, an interest he’s fostered through computer science classes at Gunn.

“I believe data science is the future and opens up many new possibilities,” he said.

“It’s special because the creatures have adapted to deal with the sun (during low tide) but also being fully submerged when it’s high tide,” she said. “It’s like sampling ocean life.”

Li’s fascination with tidepools fed a passion for marine biology, as well as organism-level branches of biology (such as birds and trees) and microbiology. These interests have since made their way into her gardening and cooking endeavors.

Tomatoes and sunflowers are staples in her garden, and she has even grown juicy spiky cucumbers that can’t be found in supermarkets. To optimize her produce, Li has used her knowledge of  N-P-K — nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium — ratios in fertilizer.

Inside the kitchen, Li cooks the plants she gardens, using butternut squash in bread one year when she harvested too much. From biology, she knew that butternut squash comprised mostly water and some carbohydrates. From cooking, she knew about “tangzhong,” a mixture of boiling water and flour that pregelatinizes starch in the flour for a moist final product.

“So I was like, ‘OK, well, squash has starch like flour, and it’s mostly water,’” she said. “If I cut the steamed squash, and then I use that in place of tangzhong in bread or baked goods, that in theory should keep the bread similarly moist. And so I did that (and) it was really similar to milk bread.”

Li’s cooking and gardening adventures have developed in conjunction with her curiosity in biology in what she describes as a positive feedback loop. Though Li isn’t sure how her pursuit of biology will look in college and beyond, she hopes for exposure to new flavors of biology.

“Biology is the study of life and living things, and as a living thing, it’s just really cool to try to understand how we work,” she said.