Hi! I’m Neena, and I am a senior at Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science. Previously I had gone to the high school in my hometown of Shrewsbury. I had been going to Shrewsbury public schools ever since I moved to Massachusetts in second grade. It was a big change going from a school with about 500 students in a grade to just 49. There will be a lot more challenges in the last two years of high school, but I look forward to facing them and growing as a person.
I’m from a family of four with my mother, father, and brother. My brother has already graduated and is currently working at Linkedin. He lives in California, so it’s just me and my parents at home. I do occasionally visit him, like last summer. He and his girlfriend took us to a castle winery, where this photo was taken.
I enjoy drawing and painting in my free time. I find art very relaxing and stress relieving after working for a while. I’ve done many watercolor paintings and graphite drawings and am willing to try more mediums. I take drawing classes every Saturday at the Viz Art Studio which is taught by Irina Parfenova. She is an amazing artist, and I’ve learned a lot from the 4 years I’ve been taking lessons with her. I’ve done a lot of competition pieces in her class. The classes focus on traditional mediums in the fine arts, but Irina is never afraid to dabble in new mediums.
I have been going to church for as long as I can remember, and I do a lot of volunteering with them. My parents are very religious, so I grew up with the church. It is a very welcoming community, and I go every Friday, for youth group, and every Sunday for the services. The church I go to is called the Christian Gospel Church of Worcester, and it is a primarily Chinese church. My family is Chinese, so we naturally gravitated to this church.
As mentioned earlier, I volunteer a lot with my church. We go to New Hampshire in July for a program called workcampNE. It is a Christian organization that helps people receive free home repairs. We have a week to work in crews and help the residents that we’ve been assigned to. It is a great experience to help someone in need while spending the time to get closer to God.
My church has been going to workcampNE for 4 years and I’ve been to 3 of those years. This year I was assigned to work on a deck and last year I worked on a ramp. Workcamp is not only a good religious experience, but also a good time to learn how to use different tools. I’ve gotten to try different power tools such as saws and drills. I would recommend workcampNE to anyone who wants to help another person over the summer.
This is the deck I built this summer.
Over the summer of junior year, I volunteered a summer program in the middle school of my town. Overall, it was a great time helping teachers run a class. I also learned new things like how to babysit and handle young children from one of the classes I helped in. I also helped in art classes which aligned with my interests. It was fun to be able to talk to the kids while teaching them things.
My church also runs a week program every summer for children. I help by guiding the kids through different activities in the morning which are more religious. Then, in the afternoon, I stay in one class as the kids transition between the different classes, and those are the more fun activities.