2026-27 Student Advisory Council

What are you most looking forward to as a member of the 2026-2027 Student Advisory Council?

I’m most looking forward to bringing the perspective of an arts student to conversations about AI development. I want to interact with other people who have the same concerns I do. I’m very much a “just because we can doesn’t mean we should” person, which I suppose is the Frankenstein philosophy in one sentence. I’m interested in seeing how far I’ll actually be able to go and how much of a difference my words can make in conversations that directly affect me. I acknowledge that, although I’m not the most knowledgeable person in the room about AI, I am still someone who is watching this technology change the way I learn, create, and think while I’m still figuring all of those things out myself. I want to see how far I can go with a backpack of ambition and curiosity.

What do you want to do after high school?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve thought about three paths I could take, and they are probably about as different from each other as they could possibly be.

I’m interested in medicine, as half the high school population would tell you, and have thought about pursuing a BS/MD program to become an anesthesiologist. Part of what interests me is the fact that it’s a field where technology can help with calculations, precision, and information, but there still has to be a person in the room who is dedicated to keeping another person safe. Imagine a robot taking over that job, and the last thing a patient sees before a scary operation is a stoic robot instead of a sympathetic person who understands. AI can crunch the numbers, but it can’t crunch a formula for empathy. No, never empathy.

I’ve also thought about becoming a lawyer. There is so much crime and injustice in the world that goes unpunished, and it genuinely irks me. I don’t like the idea of people having enormous power without being accountable for how they use it. I’m interested in law because I want to understand the systems that are supposed to protect people, and what we can do when those systems fail. I would’ve said, “I want to understand what happens when those systems fail,” but one look around the world already answers that not-so-hypothetical for me.

I’ve also worked with youth nonprofits, and I’ve become really interested in how the adults behind those organizations make everything come together. I like seeing people who normally have no say get opportunities actually to become leaders in environments that directly affect them.

So, I genuinely don’t know what I’ll be doing after high school. Maybe medicine. Maybe law. Maybe something I haven’t thought of yet. I think I’m okay with not knowing, as long as I keep finding things I care enough about to pursue.

What are you doing online when you feel happiest, most positive?

It’s not really that I’m already happy and then I go online. It’s that I’m online and something makes me happy. When you’re genuinely happy in the real world, you’re probably opening the camera app so you can remember the moment for later. You’re not necessarily sitting there looking for something to make you feel better, unless you’re doomscrolling. Which, I’m not judging at all! Doomscrolling can be very effective, once every hundred reels, that is.

When I’m online, I usually find things that make me happy. Sometimes it’s seeing someone finally face consequences for their destructive actions. Sometimes it’s a sneak peek trailer for a new show. And, embarrassingly, sometimes it’s checking my grades. No, my worth is not a number, but my future is. Every “A” I see is a band-aid over the wound in my heart that tells me I’m never enough. It tells me, “See? That wasn’t so bad,” even though I lost so much sleep over it.

Advice you’d give your 10-year old self about the internet:

I would tell myself that every strong stance I will ever take is probably not completely right. You have to sacrifice nuance to become absolute. The Internet makes it incredibly easy to take a complicated issue and turn it into a simple argument where one side is right, and the other side is wrong. It’s easy to find people who agree with you, especially when algorithms are constantly showing you more of what you already believe. But if you believe something strongly enough, you should also be willing to ask what comes with believing it.

Every position has consequences. Every argument has something it leaves out. Sometimes supporting one thing means having to think about the people affected by everything that comes with it, not just the part you agree with.

I’d tell myself not to be afraid of nuance. Don’t be afraid to say, “I believe this, but…” Don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t know enough yet. Don’t assume that understanding someone else’s argument means you agree with them, and don’t assume that disagreeing with someone means you have nothing to learn from them. Most importantly, I’d tell myself that changing your mind isn’t losing. Sometimes it means you finally learned enough to have a better opinion.