On home...

I grew up on a university campus in Ahmedabad, India, where my father teaches, and the result is someone who has never really known how to stop reading. Books, walls, cereal boxes: if it had words, I read it, and if it didn't, I drew on it, which explains the state of my bedroom walls (which are still covered in crayon and paint in some places). 

I was homeschooled before coming to Emma, and I have an older brother who is now in college. I spent enough of my childhood travelling that I can feel at home almost anywhere, and also have a deep suspicion of the question “where are you really from?”

Still no pets, which is a situation I think is temporary, and my parents think is permanent. 

 

On Emma…

The summer before high school applications, I read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I was completely moved by it, learned she went to an all-girls college, and thought, “I want to be just like her!” Though in hindsight, “I want to be just like her” is a sentence that lands very differently when the “her” happens to be Sylvia Plath. 

What makes Emma so special to me is how wonderful all my teachers are and how they constantly push me to be better. It’s still surprising to me how close everyone is, and how all the students know each other. Coming from halfway across the world, I landed somewhere that somehow felt like home, which I didn't expect and am still so grateful for.

 

On books, and everything…

Please don't make me choose what I'm most passionate about! I grew up in a house so full of books that the very concept of only picking a few felt absurd—so I didn't, and I never really stopped. I can talk for hours about the anatomy of the brain, and I can just as easily corner you about Gamal Abdel Nasser and post-colonialism in Egypt. I’ve never really understood why passion has to be singular. If you love something enough, you learn it. That's it; that’s the whole secret. If there’s such a thing as knowing enough, I haven’t hit it yet. So my answer is: love everything, in turns, with great enthusiasm.

 

On a favorite class so far…

European History with Mr. Lorino! I cannot even visualise falling asleep in his class, which is a sentence I have never said about anyone else. He’s entertaining and intelligent in a way that makes the subject almost secondary; what I liked most was how passionate he was about what he taught!

 

On Revels…

Revels!!! I was warned more than a hundred times about how loud it would be, and it was still louder than that. I’ve always loved plays, and nothing could have prepared me for how well the seniors performed this year.