Fellow Profile: Annabelle Pan, JIF '15


Hello! My name is Annabelle Pan, and I’m a senior at the Upper Arlington High School near Columbus, OH. My time outside school is divided between working in a lab, researching and practicing for debate, planning for my Science Olympiad team, tutoring, and (occasionally) community service. I’ve lived in the same town my entire life, and until receiving a Joyce Ivy scholarship I had never even considered going to a weeks-long camp further away from home than the local college (Ohio State).

Through JIF, I attended a course in Law and Philosophy at Harvard. The class itself was different from any class I had taken before. The desks were set up in a rectangle, with the professor sitting on one side of the rectangle and his students around him, which facilitated discussion. We students took up at least half of the class’s speaking time debating morals and ethical theories and how they applied in different hypotheticals and real court cases. I was surrounded by some of the most intelligent people I had ever met, including a junior who had already taken 14 AP classes (no exaggeration). My classmates often presented insanely eloquent and insightful and incredibly spontaneous analyses that blew me away––at moments it felt like I was watching and participating in one of Plato’s dialogues. Thanks to Joyce Ivy, not only did I get the opportunity to be learn from a Harvard professor, I got to be surrounded by the highest concentration of intellect I had ever been exposed to.

Outside of class, getting to explore Cambridge and Boston was a blast. Coming from a suburb, and liking peace and quiet, I didn’t expect to love the constantly bustling city scene. But I made loads of treasured memories and relationships in the city: hiding around a 3-story Urban Outfitters, laughing at ridiculous orders like Ramen noodle flavored bubble tea in a little shop in Chinatown, and tiptoeing in terror around the outside of our dorm, hunting for a hidden entrances to avoid being assassinated in a game of Asockination (if you get hit by a sock in the dorm you die).

The program at Harvard was a really fun and enjoyable experience, and I'll always be grateful to Joyce Ivy for helping me expand my boundaries.

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