Humans of DV: Week 3
Aria Khalique, Vivian Kuang, Daniela Wise-Rojas, and Megan Dhillon
This week on Humans of DV: a spelling bee champion, a percussionist, a boba aficionado and a cross-country runner. Stay tuned every Saturday for a new installation of this feature and make sure to catch last week’s profiles here if you missed them.
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“I love finding new words to describe everyday things.”
Shrinidi Gopal “I started going to spelling bees in third grade, but I never really did well until fifth grade because I wasn’t really as serious about it. When I started placing first in local competitions, that’s how I knew I had the ability to do well. I got seventh in the national spelling bee in 2017. My family and friends motivated me. but mainly it was me telling myself that I could do...
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“It’s been a process of always pushing myself to be better.”
Ginger Lau “I’m in a drum corps group called the Blue Devils and I’m also in a group called Tri-City Percussion. I’ve always just been really passionate about music and I also really wanted to march, but there isn’t something available at Dougherty to do that, so I found an opportunity outside [of school] and I’ve been doing it ever since. It shows me a lot about the world because going to...
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“To my younger self: ‘Why do you like boba so much?'”
Stephanie Swee “You know how at those Vietnamese restaurants, they have smoothies and stuff? My dad introduced those to me; everytime I go to a Vietnamese restaurant, I would order those. When my brother started having T4, [I asked him,] 'Hey, can I get some of those? Because they look so good!' I got the smoothies at first, then when T4 opened in San Ramon [near Safeway], I was like 'Oh, it’s...
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“Getting to choose my own ‘clown shoes’ … I felt amazing.”
Jackson Colla “I was going to do water polo with my friends but then I learned that it’s a varsity sport, and I had no experience. So on the day of tryouts, I just decided to skip it. The next day my dad was disappointed so he told me to try out for another sport. I tried out for cross-country but I don’t think the coach was expecting anything from me at first. But then I made the team on ...
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