When I have free time, which is quite rare, I enjoy playing games and reading books.
Gaming: I do not have any computer and controller games, so I am limited to mobile games. I enjoy playing a game called The Battle Cats with cute feline creatures taking over the world. It’s a fun and strategic tower defense game where you build your own cat army and send it to battle.
Books: I enjoy reading novels by Dan Brown to learn about cultural and art history while enjoying a thrilling adventure to solve a mystery. Popular novels of his included The Da Vinci Code and Inferno. However, in the summer, I was very excited to learn about physics, so I read the Feynman Lectures which is now my favorite book because I am extremely surprised at the simple explanation for complex concepts.
Click here to read it!
My sending school, Westford Academy, offered a lot of extracurricular activities, and I joined 3 of them: Speech and Debate, Math Team, and Robotics. Out of these activities, my favorite is the Debate club. I enjoyed arguing for both viewpoints, learning more about social politics, and improving my speaking skills. Furthermore, I got quarterfinalist on my first competition which probably also contributed to my love for SAD. Unlike most clubs in WA, Speech and Debate had mentors who tutored and prepared me for upcoming events and competitions, so I’ve grown to enjoy the SAD community.
Click the image to go to the Instagram page of WA SAD!
During my time at Mass Academy, I have done 2 sessions of STEM Saturdays and a unique opportunity to educate 5th graders on forensic science. Mass Academy has a tradition of organizing a session to introduce many young kids to the wonders of science in the Worcester Public Library. I attended 2 of these sessions during the weekend when I helped to set up the materials needed for the children to perform interesting experiments. At the first event, we create a lava lamp station for the youths to learn about density and observe how liquids that repel each other would eventually separate into distinct layers. Then, at the second session, I helped the children through the procedure to extract strawberry DNA and taught them about the building blocks of life using this experiment. Overall, my experience with STEM Saturdays is overwhelmingly positive. Secondly, I had also helped organize a thorough lesson incorporating many hands-on experiments to teach elementary students about forensic science and the identification of evidence leading to the arrest of a suspect. I work with others to set up 2 different fingerprinting stations and a dilution station. The dilution station is used to tell the difference between multiple types of ink, as each type of ink interacts with water differently. The children enjoyed the lesson, and my group also enjoyed planning and teaching the subject, so it was a positive experience.
