I became a Joyce Ivy Summer Scholar in 2015, and I was honored to have been chosen for the scholarship. But I was not able to attend a summer pre-college last summer (instead, I was biking across the country to speak out about China’s persecution of Falun Gong). I was pretty distraught at not being able to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity given to me, but despite that, the Joyce Ivy Foundation assured me that I “will always be a Joyce Ivy Summer Scholar.”
That struck me and stuck with me. So half a year later, I found myself applying for and becoming a Joyce Ivy Fellow. I wasn’t able to attend a pre-college on behalf of Joyce Ivy, but I’ve still found my place.
I live in Troy, Michigan (sorry, it’s not in Greece). I’m currently a junior attending Troy High School (creative name, isn’t it? Our city’s other high school’s called Athens). According to Holland’s personality theories, I’m most interested in the conventional (structure and organization), the artistic (independent and creative), and the realistic (practical and hands-on) things. So it makes sense that the two activities that suck up most of my time are robotics and art. While functioning as design lead for FRC team 226, the Hammerheads (it’s hammer time!), I obviously have to employ the conventional rules of physics to design a robot and the realistic skills of engineering to build it. While working on art, realistic and artistic techniques merge as I apply paint or pencil or charcoal or whatever other medium to my paper. It seems, however, that conventional and artistic are complete opposites – just as engineering and art are.
I think not. It’s quite like the Chinese theory of yin and yang – as polar opposites, they not only balance each other out, but also complement each other. It’s my goal to be independent and creative and flexible, while still maintaining some semblance of structure and organization. And I hope to continue that into the future – I’m planning to double major in either engineering or computer science and fine arts.
But really, it’s not just me. I have so many friends who are talented in an academic subject and still maintaining mad skills in another extracurricular field. And many think that only one can win out – often, it’s the academic subject, because that’s what’s concrete, and that’s what’s important. And my goal is to break open that limiting factor. Maybe in a bit, we’ll have some more of the English types who also like to play sports, or scientists who also do music. It’ll be an interesting thing to see.
That aside, I also revel in my Chinese heritage. While most ABC’s (American-born Chinese) in my area scream and run away from the idea of studying Chinese, I embrace it, along with its friends, culture, and history, warmly. My favorite show is Shenyun, a traditional Chinese dance company, and I enjoy practicing erhu, which can pull off both the most joyful and haunting melodies with just two strings. The tale of the butterfly lovers still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and I’ll never get tired of all the different recreations of Mulan. I love watching Chinese period drama. They’re epic, so no judgement.
But all my interests – they’re a part of myself. And I think Joyce Ivy does a great job with helping girls discover themselves through all the different opportunities they it provides – pre-college, the blog, a community of girls who share common interests. I have to say, it’s pretty great being a Joyce Ivy Fellow.
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