Jia's Blog

 Recently, I have noticed a spike in vaping and smoking levels among teens; whether it's at school or on social media, there is an undeniable increase. Not only does this harm your health, but it also hurts the environment, which harms others. With roughly 1.3 million disposables being thrown away, the impact on our environment is becoming more evident.  Vapes are meant to be recycled, but most people must be aware of this. As a result, there is e-waste, plastic pollution, and hazardous waste. Lithium, which is found in vapes, is hard to manufacture. When disposed of incorrectly, we lose precious nonrenewable material, but lithium can also contaminate our waste streams, water, and soil and cause catastrophic fires due to its chemicals.  Plastic pollution: the plastic used in vapes never fully decomposes; instead, it turns into microplastics, which will continue to pollute our environment.  Electronic waste: Vape vaporizers contain a circuit board, which includes plastics, lithium-i

  At my first swim meet after being out of commission, I was scared; the anxiety had been building up for a few days now. What if I didn’t do well, or what if I failed? All the questions were running through my mind. After breaking my foot for two months, I lost all progress I had made in swim. Two years of hard work went down the drain thanks to one injury. But I was determined not to let this stop me. I tried working out my upper body while taking advantage of my new free time by finishing 400 volunteer hours and getting a higher SAT score. After obtaining the clear to go back to practice in November, I tried to ease back into swimming slowly, but it was hard; I was still in pain and going to physical therapy. It also didn’t help that I had finals during that time. As winter break approached, I started training more regularly despite the physical challenges I was facing. Even though I had trained for around a month, I still wasn’t confident in my skills. I knew I had to give it my al

November: the month full of celebration and gratitude.  The month started with me creating a new bulletin board to represent the theme of gratitude.  While researching for my bulletin board, I learned that practicing gratitude enhances mental resistance. Even though we may not think about it daily, we all have something we are thankful for, such as basic necessities like food and water.  I wanted to center the board around being thankful for simple things since that's overlooked the most. After discussing ideas with my counselor and getting the green light, I searched for materials I could use. Cutting up some printouts with words for things to be grateful for would be best for this bulletin board.  I made the board minimalistic to correlate with the idea that you don't have to do much to show gratitude. Then, with my friend, we started laying out the materials and taking down the previous one. To make the board a little more fun, we added some pink construction paper -the colo

October is Mental Health Awareness Month!  Mental health is an important part of overall health and well-being, especially for young people. Mental health conditions can affect anyone, but they are more common among adolescents and young adults. I was recently asked by the counselor to come up with ideas for a mental health awareness bulletin board for my school. I was excited about the opportunity to use my creativity to raise awareness of such an important issue. After reading about mental health and researching what captures teens' attention, I presented a few ideas to the school counselors. After they selected one they all agreed upon I was able to start this process. First, I needed to find resources to bring the bulletin board to life. I love retail therapy so I have a good eye for supplies that are cute and budget-friendly. After sifting through a few pages on Michaels.com and Amazon.com, I found everything I needed to create the board. I also needed more hands to help, so a