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 just always loved making things fly — whether it was with cardboard foam, flying remotely (or) building drones,” he said. “Freshman year, I was designing, building and programming all these things on my own. You can solve problems with this stuff — it’s the aerospace industry.”

The innovation of the aerospace industry fascinates Jain.

“I’m (always) excited to see what’s going on,” he said. “(And) within aerospace, I want to stay at the cutting edge of space technology: how to put humanity further and further into space, putting people on Mars or putting autonomous robots that can make decisions for themselves light years away.”

At Gunn, Jain has constructed drones and other mechanizations, testing them in flight. One of these projects involved building a drone that could help survey wildfires for firefighters.

“I started (this project) after the 2020 wildfires and worked on it for a couple summers,” Jain said. “I’ve been working with firefighters from Menlo Park and Mountain View to build a drone affordable to the fire department, and it was through projects like this that got me interested in the professional side of aerospace engineering.”

Jain’s experience with drones helped him to land an internship at the Lockheed Martin Space Sciences and Instrumentation Center, where he works to track solar flares and their evolution. Eventually, Jain also hopes to work in the policy side of aerospace engineering. 

“I want to also be guiding where we dedicate resources and regulate more of them to the space industry,” he said. “With the large emergence of private sectors and less government, it will be critical in how to regulate these companies and people in the aerospace industry.”

Next year, Jain will study aerospace engineering and potentially business at the University of California, Berkeley. 

“I will continue working — apart from coursework — in rocketry teams (and) scientific-related research, perhaps at Lockheed and NASA,” he said. 

For generations, photography focused on singular images’ potential to spark imagination an encourage interpretation. With the rise of smartphones, however, it has become a way to document every aspect of one’s daily life and curate a public image. Everyone is able to share specific pictures and snippets of their lives with a larger audience, creating a public persona that conceals less appealing aspects of their lives. Like false information, curated images of people’s “perfect” lives spread quickly on the internet. Therefore, to the wider community, excessive photography can lead to harmful self-comparison and inhibit one’s ability to create memories. People should take photos carefully and artfully to truly treasure and capture moments.

Some argue that frequent photos provide visuals for people to reminiscence on. For example, parents often take pictures to record their children’s early years. However, if they focus solely on filming everything, they cannot fully absorb the moment. Pulling out one’s phone entails pulling away from reality, and thus missing out on the experience.

Researchers have also found that taking too many pictures affects a person’s ability to create and store memories. University of California, Irvine psychological science professor Elizabeth Loftus has conducted studies showing that excessive photograpy undermines people’s memory.

At Fairfield University, psychology professor Linda Henkel found similar results in a 2014 experiment involving undergraduate college students. Henkel took the students to the university’s Bellarmine Museum of Art and asked them to take photos of certain objects while solely observing others. The next day, students were asked to recall attributes of the objects that they had seen. The study found that taking pictures decreased a person’s ability to remember details because they became reliant on their cameras. This lack of elaborate and emotional processing hurt their memory retention.

Rather than relying on a picture to capture memories, students should take in their surroundings and absorb the details of emotion and sensation. Yes, perhaps take a few pictures with friends from camp whom you’ll never see again, but don’t forget that every second passed is a second lost. Take pictures with special meaning to reclaim the intimate art of photography.

“I thought the cake game was hard,” Zhou said. “(But) it was a great and constant stream of tasks with no room for vacation.”

Today, Zhou enjoys various games, especially Valorant and The Witness, a single-player game with over 500 puzzles. Zhou appreciates Valorant’s capacity to explore the various characters.

“(In Valorant,) I can be the cool assassin I’ve always wanted to be,” he said. “I love to play Neon, (and) my friends call me Dr. Thunderfinger.”

The Witness, also colorful, involves mazes and methodical combinations of rules and
symbols.

“It is (mostly) about perspective and philosophy,” he said. “This is the greatest recommendation to people who enjoy intelligence — it is the quintessential puzzle game.”

For freshman Cassandra Mission, this simple question — posed by a friend in third grade — opened a whole new world. After installing the game, she was entranced.

Mission continues to enjoy gaming on Roblox, an online platform offering a variety of user-created games, because of its
multiplayer features. Two games that Mission has completed with her friends are The Mimic and Apeirophobia. The Mimic is a survival horror game that has two main stories, while Apeirophobia involves solving puzzles while facing dangers.

“Overall, it’s a fun experience because there’s also times where you can just goof around with friends,” Mission said. “(And Apeirophobia) is a fun experience because we thought the game was very well made and the details are good.”

However, Mission balances her gaming life and school life with a system that works well for her.

“I usually tell myself, once I get home, that if I get my work done, I could have the rest of my time to play games for as long as I’d like,” she said. “It’s actually very useful.”

Cheerleading’s complex choreographies can stir worries about stumbles, memory blanks and potential errors. Freshman Kaila Chen calms her pregame nerves by listening to her favorite songs.

It can get stressful at times, and everyone has nerves,” Chen said. “So (music) is a good way to take one’s mind off of worries.”

Chen noted that music has helped the cheer team change the way they approach their performances.

“(Music) brings us together by basically taking our minds off of what may happen in the future and promotes communication,” she said. “Usually our minds are clouded with thoughts about what may go wrong or what if one of us makes an error, so by playing music, it kind of shifts our mindsets. Instead of being worried, we become excited to promote our school spirit.”

The team also relies upon music when choreographing. According to Chen, these tunes keep the cheerleaders united in their goals.

“It definitely brings everyone together and prepares us for what’s ahead,” she said. “Without music to motivate us, it’s quite difficult to find something to push us forward.”

Although Chen does not create a specific playlist for pregame listening, she shuffles her liked songs: 21 Savage’s “Runnin,” Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” and other rap songs that energize her.

Sophomore Hannah Casale: Soccer

Sophomore Hannah Casale enjoys listening to music while warming up for soccer matches. As she jogs, stretches and does various passing drills with her teammates, she listens to songs like Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.”

“I really (only listen to music) during soccer season,” she said. “It just pumps me up, in case I’m tired, or (I listen) to have more fun.”

Casale prefers songs that are easy to run to, and she has a pregame music playlist that she shares with her team. These shared songs have allowed for moments of team bonding.

“We argue over music that we like and dislike,” Casale said. “The arguing (was) a good way to break the ice for me (because) when I just joined the team, it was mainly upperclassmen.”

Junior Sidhant Lochan: Wrestling

Lightly jogging around the wrestling room, junior Sidhant Lochan stretches with headphones on. Tapping his phone, he sees the screen light up with the album cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees.”

By listening to music, Lochan mentally prepares himself for his matches.

“Pregame songs are either to get you really hyped up, or to get you relaxed and cancel out the nerves,” he said. “I think a lot of sports need that crazy hype in their head to get the adrenaline pumping, but for wrestling, it’s more about keeping a cool head and controlling the match in all the ways that you can.”

Lochan specifically listens to “Money Trees” because the song’s mellower and softer tones, compared to Lamar’s other works, calms him.

“While I’m listening, I try to block out all my inner distractions and just visualize the match in my mind,” he said. “It gets me in the zone because for me, it gets me calm but also ready for the upcoming match.”

Other than “Money Trees,” Lochan switches things up by listening to Benson Boone’s “GHOST TOWN,” David Kushner’s “Daylight” and Bastille’s “Oblivion.”

Senior James Ford: Basketball

“One thousand on my feet, stacks spreaded on my seat / Ten thousand on my eyes.” With Travis Scott’s “MY EYES” playing through his earbuds, senior James Ford enters the basketball court to warm up for the game, ball in hand as he begins dribbling exercises.

Music helps Ford enter his “game mindset,” and he chooses from an array of upbeat tunes that energize him for the game — specifically rap and hip-hop songs.

“I don’t have a particular song I listen to, pregame,” he said. “(Instead), I usually listen to a playlist.” Ford updates his pregame playlist often, adding new music that he knows will keep him focused.

Ford also listens to Future, Kanye West and Young Thug, whose songs’ uplifting beats mentally prepare him for basketball games. His favorite tracks include Young Thug’s “Check” and Future’s “Solo.”