Humans of DeSales
“For me, it’s all about winning. I might be unhappy when I lose, but it’s not going to affect me later. I guess you could say I have a good enough understanding of what mental toughness is and how to control it. Even though I said it’s all about winning, I really do sports for the fun of it. It helps relieve stress more than put it on.”
“I’ve always been a strange kid, I still am absolutely. I like that I am strange and it’s nice to be undefined and not a carbon copy of the person sitting next to me, it just adds to my character. I’m unique and there's always going to be people out there judging, but I’ve been able to live out my life here without being bothered by other people’s opinions. Drama was my entire life for awhile, and obviously there’s a lot of people there, so I love how there is so much community; always somewhere to fit or someone wanting to take you in as their friend. I feel like here at DeSales I’ve truly found my people. It’s scary to think that freshman year is almost over, and I only have 3 more years until I’m out on my own finding another group of ‘my people.”
“I have some caring friends. I’ve had a friend that I’m close with for eight whole years. Going onto nine. He is a good guy, I’ve talked to him about his issues you know. I have a new friend that is pretty cool, you know. We go to places sometimes. We play in the gym during lunch. I have met many good people that gave me great experiences. I have joined many new things. One of the things that I did was the world cultures dance. It’s pretty fun to be here, you know.”
“It was incredible. But I was intimidated to do it because it’s known for mainly girls to be apart of performing arts. I decided to get into it anyways though. The play we were doing happened to beMary Poppins, but we didn’t get to perform due to COVID. I’m happy we got to do it this year in highschool. It brought back memories of how my passion started. But I really enjoyed it because I got to put myself out there. Ever since I kept doing it even up to highschool it’s just been super fun and a super rewarding experience. I like doing theater because I can show another side of me that nobody else sees.”
“I don’t know what is significant about me. I like to be artistic, and I like to hangout with my friends. I also like to read, when I have a good book, that is the only time I like to read. I don’t find myself truly interesting. I hope one day I can make a difference in the world when I’m older, but right now I don’t know.”
“I used to spend hours and hours with my babysitter just watching music video after music video, trying to recreate the moves. Being African, I went to a lot of parties where dancing was a big part. I would have dance battles with different kids for money and food... As I grew older, I fell into K-pop, and that’s where my love for dancing grew. Just like when I was a kid, I sat there watching music video after music video, trying to recreate the moves... The scariest thing I’ve done has to be performing in front of people- whether it was during marching band or the World Cultures Assembly. When I was a kid and used to dance at parties, I didn’t pay much attention to what people thought or said. But growing up you start to pay more attention to it, and that made me only really dance behind closed doors. The fear of having that many eyes on me made me panic, so performing pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me face my fear.”
“So I have been officially published for short stories through a couple of competitions. My first novel is completely written, the cover is designed, we just have to figure everything inside the correct parameters. After that, we can upload it to Barnes & Noble’s website and it’ll be good to go. It’s gonna be called ‘Nightmares of 2070’ and it’s set in the United States in 2070. It’s about an internal war being fought in America, but they don’t really know who they’re fighting yet. The book follows the main character, Finn, and it follows his journey through this war. It’s also over 200 pages and it’s going to be part of a duology.”
“The injury killed me. I mean I haven’t played a full season yet because of injuries. It kills your love for the sport. Injuries are horrible, but you can always get something good out of it. For me, I found myself and spent a lot of time alone working to get back and eventually I did. I found peace in so many things during that time.”
“It’s like a craving, I guess. I love trying new things, because I get really bored when I don’t have anything to do for long periods of time, so I just kind of join random things just because I want to. So I joined drama and I joined golf because my friends came up to me and just said ‘you should join,’ and so I did. I found a lot of things I like just by going out and doing random stuff and trying new things. I'd say just try new things, because one thing I’ve tried to live by recently is to just have no regrets because it’s already happened, it’s in the past. There’s nothing you can do about it, but at the very least you’ve learned something from it. Just don’t have any regrets, try something new because you'll at least learn something from it. Even if you don’t love it or you don’t want to keep doing it, you will learn something from it.”
“Recently, I’ve been playing video games, I love listening to podcasts. One of the ones I’ve recently gotten into is called ‘War Alive’ and it’s like a dystopian story about the apocalypse and stuff. It's really interesting. Also, I’ve been making rings for my friends, working on jewelry stuff, planning for prom, and working.”
“Chocolate is nasty. Like all types of chocolate are nasty. And all forms too. Chocolate ice cream is bad. Chocolate candy is nasty. Cause like I feel like it’s bad enough that you already have to keep it at like, the perfect temperature. Like if you leave a chocolate bar in the car it’s gonna taste nasty when you get back. And like it’s gonna be melty and stuff. Laffy Taffy is my favorite candy, preferably like the pink or the yellow.”
“My mom got her car when she started driving in 2013. I was like ‘your car needs a name’ so I looked at the car and it had cat eyes so I was like ‘Britney’ because of Britney Spears. I was supposed to get the new car, but two weeks after I got my license, I reversed into a car behind me. I panicked, and the friend I was with told me to do a hit and run and just go. So that’s what I did. I zoomed out of there. Then I thought about St. Francis DeSales and I thought ‘I’m a criminal, I’m going to jail, I need to go back.’ I wrote a note with my number and left it on the car. I instantly regretted it but it started raining that night. I hoped that the paper disintegrated in the rain but it didn’t. They got the note and called me. It turns out that she was my kindergarten teacher, and they didn’t go to a mechanic on the street; they went to Roush Honda, the maker of the car. When the bill came out, I had to pay out of pocket.”
Annually The Quill has taken one issue to tell the stories of some of our students. We know that everyone has something to share about their life. Inspired by the blog and books called Humans of New York written by Brandon Stanton, The Quill presents our annual Humans of DeSales For more information on the Humans of New York series, visit www.humansofnewyork.com or follow @humansofny on Instagram and twitter Issue designed by Anna Schneider Everyone has a story
Owura Asamoah ava Manfresca jesus Flores Thomas Dougherty Tessa Bott Paa-awuah Forjoe AnMarie Trolli Aiden MAnn Loralei Barker Nick Jewett Cam White Diana Ayala Orellana