Summer in Place: What A Wonderful Time

Q: What have you been doing this summer?

A: I haven’t been doing much. I think that all students, especially right now with COVID. I’ve been getting myself involved in a lot of volunteer and non-profit activities, since we can’t travel and do other things we might as well get ourselves involved in the community and do all these little hobbies you previously didn’t have time for. I’ve been doing a lot of housework as well, just cleaning up everything [...] I’ve been doing journalism stuff for Sunnyvale MS, helping them get their publication off the ground. My friends and I created Tutor Zone, which is tutoring for underprivileged students as well as students that are coming from other countries who may not know English as well, so it’s multilingual tutoring. I’ve been studying for the SAT too, so much fun.

Q: What do you do for fun?

A: In the first part of the year I was doing everything like watching movies, playing Minecraft, playing every game imaginable. But now it sounds good, playing video games, but in reality, it eventually gets boring and monotonous. I’ve been walking my dogs a lot to change things up, but that’s also gotten boring when you take the same 3 walks every time.

Q: You just finished sophomore year, what’s your overall impression of your time at MV? The classes, the vibe?

A: There’s no vibe at Monta Vista, it’s Monta Vista [...] There’s a sense of urgency at MV, everything’s pretty much like hurry up and get this done so you can move on to the next AP course. There’s no time ever to sit back and think oh this is high school, like what a wonderful time to be alive. Now of course is the one time I don’t want to think about that, but I get time to. I like parts of MV, some of my teachers have been okay. Some more than others. I guess it’s good.

Q: Volleyball season got cut short, how do you feel about that?

A: Thank god conditioning is over. I wasn’t disappointed because our team wasn’t as good as previous seasons so next year technically we get to defend our CCS title. The season got cut short, we weren’t as good, the team wasn’t gelling, so I would say we got bailed out. It’s better just to reset.