As a high schooler in China, Miranda sets her sights on making an international impact on the world by volunteering for Global Youth Philanthropy, which is a non-profit organization based in America. She found the organization exceptionally intriguing because of the enthusiastic environment and the super supportive community. Additionally, GYP differs from other extracurriculars in China, where students have to pay for help. Miranda says these drive her to continue volunteering.
Besides GYP, Miranda is also part of the dance club at her school and likes dancing to jazz music as she feels it embodies modern culture. She is also a part of her school’s basketball team and is starting to take up photography as well. She is very interested in international universities, not just those in China. Miranda is actually applying to Vanderbilt, which is in Tennessee, and many other universities as well.
Miranda’s own magazine, Wavemaker, is on international universities, which helps Chinese students go to universities abroad. This feeds right into Miranda’s interests as well, which leads her to enjoy writing this magazine and have fun while creating it. Miranda also is an avid enjoyer of music: she loves the guitar as she likes its softness and soothing tone. She compares it to pop music and classical music, which makes her feel more formal.
Working in China, however, is not as smooth sailing for Miranda as you may think. Miranda also has to face many challenges while working for a non-profit organization based in America while living in China. Miranda many times has to wake up very early or stay up very late in order to make meetings with members of Global Youth Philanthropy due to time zone differences. Miranda also has to sacrifice a lot of her personal time to continue volunteering with GYP. She loved spending time with her grandmother, but now that happens less due to her being busy with volunteering and a multitude of other tasks. Handling all this stress led to Miranda getting into a new form of stress relief, meditation. She talks about how meditation calms her down and makes her heart feel more serene.
When asked about how her friends and family support her while volunteering for an American organization, Miranda talked about how her friends are always supportive of her and how she has friends in Beijing who help promote her projects. Their support means a lot to Miranda. Miranda’s family also does their best to support her, but they want her to be independent and do her work as best as she can.
Report by: Steven Miall – 10th grader at Boston Latin School
Kevin Wang – 9th grader at Boston Latin School