Before Mass Academy, I was at Westborough High School. There, I did many clubs, but I was most involved in the Debate club, Chemistry Club, and Vision Club. Speech and Debate is one of my favorite activities, since me and my partner are able to travel different states and towns for different national tournaments. We made it to states and nationals last year as well (though they were virtual), and I am so excited for debate this year at Westborough! Chemistry Club is a lot like MACS, we do community outreach and Chemistry events for the elementary school. Vision Club at Westborough is a branch of the Harvard Global Vision initiative, and through the club we try to raise money for cataract and other eye surgeries in developing countries. In the 2 years I was Vice President, we raised over $3,000 and went to the international conference.
Here at Mass Academy, I currently participate in knitting and crochet club, biotech club, nature walks and birding, as well as journalism club, SLAM poetry, and MACS (Mass Academy Community Service). I also swam on my sending school's team and hope to do track my senior year at Westborough! In MACS I participate in the Monday night WRAP sessions, as well as a lot of community STEM outreach.
I love community service because it helps me feel connected to my town, and nearby towns, in my busy life. This summer, I was able to volunteer at The Community Harvest Project farm in Grafton. The farm functions as a community food source for low-income families, and the produce is given to the Worcester County food bank. This summer (and a past few summers) I was in charge of washing, cleaning, and packaging all of the produce, and also helping out at the flower festival. You can visit their website to learn more about the mission here.
I’ve been a volunteer for the Baypath Humane Society in Hopkinton, MA for about a month now. My job consists of taking photos of the animals for adoption, uploading them on the sight, and taking the dogs for walks once a week when I volunteer. I love meeting all of the dogs and cats every week, and meeting some of the new animals because they all have such different personalities. I also enjoy baking dog treats for their adoption events!
I also frequently volunteer at the public Library in Westborough. The program I volunteer through is called WAVE, which stands for Westborough Awesome Volunteer Experience. Some of the things I help with is planning meetings, updating the website and social media, as well as coming up with ideas and events the library could do. Click here to scroll through some of the events we do.
Mass Academy Community Service club (MACS) is a club dedicated to helping the Worcester community with STEM education and other organized events. What we do is that we volunteer at the Worcester Refugee Assistance Project (WRAP), and help the children learn English through lessons or present STEM lessons and activities as well. Another thing MACS does is STEM Saturdays, where we do STEM activities in local parks in Worcester and make locals in Worcester aware of Mass Academy as outreach. STEM Saturdays are usually every other Saturday in a month, and we also had an Earth day cleanup service this year. Lastly, a fun activity we had done in October was host a STEM booth during WPI alumni day, for any children visiting the campus with an alumni.
I currently volunteer with TutorScope, a remote free tutoring service for almost any subject. I started volunteering with TutorScope in May of 2020, and have amassed well over 300 hours just from tutoring! I tutor elementary math and English, as well as biology at a high school level. My favorite thing about being a tutor is to see the learning progress of some of my long-term students that I tutor for months.