Tchaikovsky filled the sweaty room of barres and mirrored walls as I plunged into battement fondu. Not to be confused with the sweet sensations of chocolate fondue, this ballet exercise requires killer calf strength and mental stamina. I became consumed by the visuals in the mirror, eyes watering as I questioned if my relevé was high enough, knee straight enough, plié deep enough. Those tears didn’t actually fall until weeks later, with no Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake to accompany...

End Facetime. Total time: 2 hours and 7 minutes. Such experiences are the epitome of the small higher-math community at my school. We’ve grown up together from Algebra II freshman year to Calculus III senior year. Students who perhaps would’ve never been friends suddenly found themselves growing close through the findings of Newton and Leibniz. The eagerness of these students to stay up for hours on Facetime just to help out with that one problem makes me smile. Yet, the...

If “small minds discuss people”, as Eleanor Roosevelt claimed, the English language sure isn’t supporting those “small-minded” thoughts we all, like it or not, do have. Growing up speaking Brazilian Portuguese, I always grow frustrated in English-speaking situations in wanting to describe somebody with that word too complex to translate into English, be it perua or sapeca. People-watching fanatics would get along great with the Brazilian Portuguese language, as it has many adjectives and nouns geared towards describing people. ...

When I work with children, be it babysitting or volunteering, I am in a position to be a mentor but often find myself learning more from these children than they learn from me. Carter, my favorite special needs child at Friendship Circle, is obsessed with Roman numerals. His excitement for each number converted to a numeral inspires me to be curious, no matter how irrelevant the topic may seem. Dante, a fireball of energy I regularly babysit, brings his all...

"Belinha, venha jantar!” was the highlight of my childhood day, being my Brazilian mother calling me down for dinner. Yet, an ordinary day of kindergarten turned that very phrase into a source of anxiety. I was peacefully munching on a typical Brazilian meal of rice, beans, and steak at lunch when a classmate glared down at me and exclaimed, "That looks yucky!” I outwardly giggled, but her silly words have carried with me. With my mother’s cuisine already dissed,...

I never expected the room I associate with Scantrons and textbooks to suddenly become a space for a dance performance. That day of AP US History, I performed a historical piece analyzing the life and legacy of Zumbi, an Afro-Brazilian hero of colonial Brazil. I intertwined speech with movement bringing a historical narrative to life. I felt empowered by creating a connection between my dance and academics for the first time, bringing two very separate worlds of my life together...

For the past year, I have been volunteering at Friendship Circle, a non-profit organization providing assistance to special needs individuals principally through a one-on-one buddy system. Meeting the parents of my various buddies, I have viewed how grateful they are to have a safe space to send their children to. However, through speaking with the mother of a girl I helped teach to ride a bike, I learned that although parents can find outlets for reliable care outside of the...

This solo, symbolizing an Indian snake charmer, was an exciting diversion away from the classical, Russian-based training I have received since six years old. As this style merging Indian culture, ballet, and contemporary was foreign to me, I found plentiful online inspiration to aid with employing my technique into displaying the focused, yearning emotion of trying to win over a snake. I drew inspiration from ballet stars Zakharova, Obraztsova, and Vishneva in their interpretation of Nikiya’s death, a solo...