Q. Who are the members of your family: parents, siblings and pets?

A. My mom; my stepdad; my sister, Pandora, a junior at Emmaus and my brother, Declan, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, are all in my immediate family, but I am also very close with my stepbrothers, Stefan and Jacob, who are both out of college, my maternal grandmother and my stepgrandfather, Steve, and my other stepgrandfather (my stepdad’s father). My dad and stepmom, Angela and stepbrother, Brooks, live in Florida and I’m close to them as well. I also have two cats, Potato and Manny and two Pomeranians, Pepper and Baxter.

Q. What do you most enjoy about being a senior at Emmaus High School?

A. I love being a senior because I feel like I know so many people at school; I never walked down the hallway without seeing at least one friendly face. One of my favorite parts of being a senior is seeing how different Emmaus is now compared to when I first started here as a ninth grader and seeing how much we’ve all matured since we started at EHS.

Q. What is your favorite subject? Why?

A. This is such a hard question because I love every subject at school. This year, especially, my classes are full of students and teachers who care deeply about the subjects, which makes for a really incredible learning experience. However, I especially enjoy my AP literature class because Mr. Gavin makes literature very accessible and I have found that literature teaches so much about life. I also really enjoy both of my AP social studies classes (AP psychology and AP economics) because I love to learn about the world and how our actions affect others. In prior years, I have also enjoyed my AP language and composition class and my AP European and World History classes.

Q. Have you received any special awards or recognition?

A. In school, I have earned the Academic Excellence Award every year and Principal’s Honor Roll every marking period. I’ve also earned awards for Passion for Science, Social Studies, Science Fair and History Day. I am also in National Honor Society, the French National Honor Society and the International Thespian Society. Outside of school, I have been named a semifinalist in the 2020 Coca-Cola scholarship competition. I placed first in regional and state competitions for National History Day and earned firsts at the regional and state levels for Lehigh Valley and Delaware Valley Science Fairs and the Pennsylvania Junior Academy for Science. I received a Worldwide Plays Festival award, which led to an off-Broadway reading of my play with professional actors in New York City. I was also admitted to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Global and International Studies this past summer and my Jewish youth organization, BBYO, is recognizing me for my five years of service.

Q. What are your favorite extracurricular activities?

A. I am very involved in the EHS community and beyond and I love everything that I do! I am a student director and vice president for the theater department, through which I have made many of my closest friends and fondest high school memories. During my sophomore year, I started the department’s outreach program, and we raised over $5,500 for BroadwayCares Equity Fights AIDS. Since then, we’ve raised over $5,000 each year for a range of charities and foundations. I also have been involved with the Model United Nations Club and varsity debate team for all four years. I am president of Science Fair Club and vice president of National History Day Club. Outside of EHS, I am very active in BBYO, where I am Chapter N’siah (president) and where I have held leadership roles at the regional and international levels. Through BBYO, I have received scholarships to travel as a global ambassador to various European countries (including Kyiv, Ukraine and Bellaria, Italy). I have led various outreach initiatives for the Jewish Community Center of Krakow, Poland, which is making great strides in rebuilding Jewish life and culture in Poland since World War II and the Soviet era. Finally, I’ve also served on the East Penn School District Comprehensive Planning Committee to help draft and implement the civic learning curriculum for the district.

Q. What is your next goal after high school?

A. Many people do not know this about me, but I love to read and write plays. I have been writing plays since I first learned how to write, performing them with my sister for our family. I will be attending Wesleyan University next fall and I hope that I will be able to write a play that will be produced there, something that has been a dream of mine ever since I learned that Wesleyan alumnus and Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda produced his musical “In the Heights” while he was an undergraduate at Wesleyan. In addition to playwriting and creative writing generally, I hope to study global studies and confront the problems contributing to climate change and global commodity chains.

Q. What do you consider your biggest challenge to date?

A. I think my biggest personal challenge has been confronting my role as a contributor to the problems resulting from the global supply chain. As a student at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Global and International Studies, I learned how nearly all of our cheap “fast fashion” is first produced in developing countries by laborers in sweatshops and then discarded in massive landfills in these same developing countries. For now, I have decided to do what I can to raise awareness about the real costs associated with fast fashion while shifting my own patronage to ethical fashion brands that support fair wages and environmental sustainability, but this is an issue I hope to tackle more directly both during and following college.

Q. For what would you like to be remembered?

A. I want to be remembered for making my peers laugh and for always being helpful. I know that when I leave EHS, I will continue to help people and my goal, ultimately, is to work in the nonprofit sector. I hope my classmates, friends and the faculty at EHS will remember me as someone who is fair-minded, open and friendly to everyone and who has a passion for outreach. I also hope people remember me as someone with a good sense of humor.

Q. Whom do you admire? Why?

A. I have many role models who have helped me get where I am today and to develop into the person I have become and that I am becoming. My mom has always been a mentor of mine; she is very intelligent and she cares a lot about the people who are close to her, and she does so much for me all the time. I really admire how much she cares for others and how she is so supportive of me and my siblings. Apart from my entire close-knit family, I also admire Elie Weisel. I think his writing is beautiful and makes understanding the tragedies of the Holocaust more comprehensible, without jeopardizing its seriousness and weight. I believe his works belong on everyone’s reading “bucket list” and I see him as a mentor for how to live my life as a Jewish person, and as someone who has taught me what strong writing can accomplish.

Q. Do you have any advice for your peers?

A. I hope all of my peers remember to treat everyone they meet with kindness since we can never know what someone else is going through. I also hope that my peers remember not to take life too seriously and to always “go with the flow,” remembering not to remain stuck in the past.