FUHSD students continue their learning through various summer programs
By Sagnik Chowdhury, Abha Dash, Arjun Dhruv, Gauri Manoj, Aashna Patel and Jiya Singh
As a student for the School of New York Times, Lynbrook junior Maple Leung and her friends set a goal to try a new food everyday in New York City, eventually stumbling on a restaurant in Chinatown that served 蜜汁合桃虾, a Cantonese dish of glazed shrimp with walnuts and broccoli. Hunting for these little restaurants, which in her opinion, were incomparable to the food in the Bay Area, and exploring the city became the highlight of her trip to New York.
Leung’s course, Introduction to Human Rights, consisted of daily classes with various guest lecturers. In preparation for….. She got the opportunity to visit the United Nations Headquarters and the New York Commision for Human Rights.
“From day one, make sure you spend as much time as possible outside and not be stuck in your dorm,” Leung said. “It’s really cool to learn how to be independent and navigate through a city, but the course is only two weeks and that’s really not enough time to fully explore New York.”
Photos courtesy of Maple Leung | Used with permission
Photos by Jeevith Chanveer | Used with permission
MVHS senior Jeevith Chanveer attended California Association of Directors of Activities at University of Santa Barbara, a camp focusing on building leadership skills for high school ASB, in early July. Chanveer’s favorite parts of the trip were getting to know students from schools across California, participating in various activities including the “speaker series, where professional speakers share inspirational messages, CADA commissions where students gather in groups to do leadership building games, such as making videos, rallies and dances.
“Overall, I think CADA was one of the best experiences of my life and I am so glad I went,” Chanveer said.
For Lynbrook junior Harry Chiu, the strong scent of manure from the cow farms outside his dorm slightly tainted his experience at COSMOS, a mathematics and science summer program located at UC Davis. Besides the odor, crowded showers and small dorms, however, working in the physics cluster and listening to daily lectures taught him to appreciate school and learning a lot more.
“I think I learned that I’m a much bigger nerd than I realized. I thought i was just at a school of nerds, you know, but then outside of Lynbrook, I'm actually a nerd,” said Chiu.
Photos courtesy of Harry Chiu | Used with permission
Aspiring to pursue a career in medicine, CHS senior Rohan Tirumala attended the six-week Young Scholars at UC Davis summer program. Throughout his research, Tirumala edited the DNA sequence of tomatoes to allow them to germinate at any time of the year, increasing the production of crops and creating tomatoes with identical DNA.
“I got a look into how exactly research is conducted in a college level facility, and that's something that I would want to do in the future,” Tirumala said. “We were basically expected to figure everything out by ourselves. I think that'll help me, especially going into senior year [by], being more organized and figuring out what exactly needs to be done.”
Photo courtesy of Rohan Tirumala| Used with permission
Photos by Anika Agarwal | Used with permission
An abstract duck sculpture with human feet was MVHS senior Anika Agarwal’s favorite project she created at California State Summer School of the Arts at California Institute of the Arts. Since Agarwal does not plan on studying art in the future, she appreciates getting to experience what college life for an artist looks like, specifically majoring in painting and minoring in sculpture.
“I met a lot of new people and professional artists and got a lot of inspiration from them,” Agarwal said. “I’d say sculpture was the most fun for me because I've never sculpted before, so everything was very new and cool.”
Having first been introduced to the field of architecture through building sets in his high school drama department, MVHS senior Aaron Chang furthered his passion by going to UC Berkeley’s Architecture program for the summer. Chang previously made miniature models of famous structures such as Ferris wheels and the Eiffel Tower using materials from CORI, a local technology infrastructure business.
“I loved my time at Berkeley because I was able to take classes in what I was actually interested in. It’s not a subject you can typically study in school. I made so many friends with the people in my group, and it was especially good that we were all from the Bay Area.”
Photos courtesy of Aaron Chang | Used with permission