A Reflection on Andover Business Club

This past week, I organized board turnovers for Andover Business Club, the club I founded in ninth grade. What struck me most was how much this club has grown and evolved during the last four years since its founding, and it's hard to believe the ABC's evolution wasn't something I'd noticed quite as saliently before. Perhaps this speaks to the nature of being so stuck in the moment that I hadn't really taken a step back, taken a bird's-eye view of the club, and seen the sweat and effort of the current board. 

When I reflected on this club, everything felt as it should be. Everything we possessed–a club blog, a prolific Instagram, an established email list of 300 people, and our Abbot Grant–felt "normal." It felt inherent in being a member of ABC, knowing that these tools existed, and I think I began to take these things for granted. That is, until board turnovers lead me to pass everything ABC owned to the Class of 2022. It suddenly reminded me of how this club began. 

It began four years ago in my second term of high school, standing alone with a poster board at the quietest Club Rally of the year. As a freshman, I had little idea how Club Rally worked. But I noticed how most club stands had at least two people manning them. It was predominantly upperclassmen at the stands, trying to sell their club to younger members. Freshman-me had little idea of this. I felt out of place as the youngest member of the school trying to sell their club idea to older students. Yet that's how ABC began. It began with an email list of 0 and a poster board in the corner of the Commons during winter Club Rally. 

During our first year, there were just 10 consistent members, all of whom I later nominated to the board. I was the only girl and the youngest member. It was during our first year that I began establishing the club blog to track our discussions each week. Year 2 was perhaps the most tumultuous. ABC grew from a discussion-based club to one that launched real ventures. We began with BluBoxes, an on-campus delivery service for toiletries, school supplies, and snacks (it was primarily snacks lol). We wanted to be the Amazon of Andover and sell these goods at cheaper prices than CVS. But ABC had $0 in startup funds. In fact, the BluBoxes funding came from one of our board member's personal pocket. 

That spring, I decided that personal funds weren't sustainable so I applied for an Abbot Grant. I remember writing the 5 page long application, filled head-to-toe with words. Then, one night, I dressed up in my best dress with a white cardigan to present Andover Business Club's idea–and why we needed funding–to the Abbot Grant committee. Merely in my second year at Andover, I had no idea that Abbot Grants were usually given to teachers to fund certain projects or for clubs to bring in speaker, but never for business ventures. I was also first on the list, being "Andover Business Club." I was surprised a few weeks later to receive news that I'd successfully harnessed $2000 for the club.

With ample funding for our ventures, an established email list, and growing membership to the club, Year 3 was about making Andover Business Club more inclusive and accessible. In fact, this goal is so imperative that it's something I told the new board to continue pursuing. ABC had already existed for 2 years, yet at the start of Year 3, I was still the only girl in the club. We heavily recruited underclassmen and girls that year. And by the start of Year 4, we had three girls readily involved. 

This year, ABC meet over Zoom meetings, so I was surprised when I saw many girls in the class of 2024 join the club. Now, having lead my last ABC meeting, I'm proud to say that almost 40% of the club consists of girls. 

ABC has evolved tremendously over the years. In fact, during Year 2, I thought the club wouldn't make it after the logistics of running ventures and doing discussions threatened to tear apart the club. But with the guidance of our club advisor, we managed to make it through. I'm tremendously proud of all this club has accomplished, and it was hard to see while I was leading ABC. I got so hung up on the logistics, finding new ways to grow the club, and retaining membership over Zoom that I couldn't see the big picture. I couldn't see how this club stood legitimately at square 0 four years ago. However, there's still room to grow. And this idea of inclusivity and accessibility remains important, as I've told the next board. It's not just gender and racial diversity that matters, but ABC also must be socioeconomically inclusive. Making the club low barrier to entry, picking accessible topics, and reaching out to students is so critical. But I have tremendous faith in the new board. They've inherited many great tools, such as our instagram, blog, email list, and Abbot Grant and they've worked together for at least two years already.

I'm grateful for Andover Business Club. It's a place where students have been encouraged to forge their leadership, organization, and communication skills, but more importantly, for me personally, ABC was a place where I made the most friends in high school. And for this I'm forever grateful. 

When I started paying attention to the world

Advising this week was quiet. I love advising because I'm close with the students in the group and with our advisor, but we're usually a lot more talkative. This past week, it was clear that everyone was still reconciling with what happened at the US Capitol just over a week ago. It's something that we couldn't, as a group, just put behind us at our first advising meeting of the year; it was an elephant in the room, something that we all felt needed to be addressed. Obviously, this event should never just be tossed under the bridge but it's something that, at least for me personally, began to take even greater significance the more time passed. Truly, the afternoon the riots began to take place, I wasn't even thinking clearly. The weight and implications of the event didn't register to me until at least the next day after some thoughtful processing. 

In advising, we began our discussion by talking about how the riots have become normalized in a way. This precisely explains why the news keeps repeating the line "this riot was not surprising." Considering how the president has rallied his supporters in the past, I agree with this statement. In fact, I keep coming back to the feeling of how blank my mind felt the night of the riots.  

Yet there's one thing that our advisor said that really stuck with me after the meeting. That we've probably only been paying attention to the world for just the last four to five years. And that struck me. I'm 18. Before I was 13, I agree that I wasn't very aware of the world. It strikes me that I only started paying attention to the news in seventh or eighth grade, a time when I hadn't yet started developing critical thinking skills. It strikes me that when I was just beginning to pay attention to world news, several crises culminated simultaneously. It's weird to think that this is the only America that I've known, whereas older generations have had a point of reference to compare today to. That older generations have witnessed better, and through critical thinking, can realize more easily that this is not normal. I suppose this makes it even more important for our generation to study history, social studies, and philosophy so that even if we didn't experience better, we can at least also feel the implications of what's happened. 

It's been a draining couple of months. The movement for racial justice, the election, the global pandemic, applying to college, and now an insurrection that threatens the freedom and democracy of our country, all within a year. But I'm still listening, learning, and trying to formulate my own opinions. Today, I believe the ability to evaluate what we're seeing, hearing, and being told, rather than just accepting everything as truth, is more important than ever. 

What happened at the US Capitol

What happened this past week at the United States Capitol has shaken the world. In classes, I was grateful that teachers began by opening up the floor to a discussion about the riot. In Leadership Training, we spent the day talking about the importance of creating spaces to support each other and have discussions about what we felt. 

I sit here today, still processing what happened. A precedent. Chaos. An insurrection. Something our Founding Fathers would find unthinkable. Something that threatened democracy throughout the entire world. I echo what the news, my peers, and my teachers have all said. This was a failed attack on American democracy. In fact, in October, I wrote a post about how the heart of the 2020 election was really democracy, one that put this very founding principle of this country on the line. 

I suppose it was innocent of me to assume that the current president would back down after losing the election, that he would peacefully cede power. I suppose it was innocent of me to assume that there would be a peaceful transition of power, because the truth is that nothing that happened on Wednesday was surprising. And the possibility of having a "peaceful transition of power," as the president finally said later this week, is impossible. That possibility flew out the window as soon as the rioters broke into the US Capitol. Perhaps the scariest part of it all is that Donald Trump has set a precedent for future violent transitions of power, blackening the prospects for democracy. 

All I remember is receiving a notification on Wednesday afternoon, January 6th, at around 2:15 PM. My parents had left the house, so I was alone. I clicked onto the WSJ to find an all-caps a massive headline about the riots at the US Capitol. When I clicked into the article, I found a huge page of live updates and news. Then I checked the NYTimes, in disbelief, and found the same situation. Then I turned on the TV to find that the entire world was already watching what was happening at the US Capitol. I find myself repeatedly writing US Capitol, not just Capitol, because this is something unthinkable in the United States of America, the founder of democracy. In fact, one of my friends from Brazil said that seeing this riot in the US terrified her because it solidified the rule of authoritarian leadership in other countries. 

However, the aspect of this riot that stood out to me immediately was the conspicuous, irrefutable display of white privilege at the US Capitol. I think Dr. Ibram Kendi, a professor at Boston University, summed it up perfectly.

I'm currently reading "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo outside of school. So many aspects of racism that I hadn't observed before became clear after reading DiAngelo. But nothing compares to seeing white supremacy written about in a book versus manifest in real life. This riot was about protecting white solidarity and supremacy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said:

"It has been an epiphany for the world to see that there are people in our country led by this president – for the moment – who have chosen their whiteness over democracy…That's what this is about."

It's scary to think about how Donald Trump has normalized racism. His platform has reignited the roots of racism that generations have worked to dismantle. On the flip side, this also speaks to the fact that the United States was never as anti-racist and progressive as we thought it to be, and that we have so much more work to do. 

Many thoughts are running through my head right now. Should we move remove Donald Trump? Yes because we need to show the world that no one is above the law. But would it simultaneously divide the country even further? I'm unsure. I'm horrified by what's played out in our country this past week. I'm utterly disgusted. But I'm not surprised. This isn't "un-American" as many people have said because masked behind America's claims to democracy are strong roots in racism.   

The Kite Runner

My winter break is coming to a close. While "break" hasn't felt normal, I was fortunate to be able to squeeze in some time to read in between crunching out my final college apps. 

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini was published in 2003 but I frankly had never heard of it until now. Hosseini crafts a haunting story, one about a friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant. The plot kept twisting throughout this book and there were often scenes that took me completely by surprise. Others I will never forget. Hosseini's employment of symbolism is particularly potent, everything from the kites to lies to the slingshots. The Kite Runner read quickly and I highly recommend it.

Whether I read nonfiction or fiction, I like to underline lines that stick out to me. I think of these underlined sentences as key ideas that I associate with the book, important themes, or simply well-written sentences that harness the beauty of language. When I revisit books I read a while back, this is also how I remember some of the key scenes that rest at the heart of the story. 

I want to share my favorite section from The Kite Runner. I underlined it at the beginning of the book, but as I quickly discovered, its meaning and significance seep through the entirety of the story. 

"There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft…When you kill a man, you steal a life…you steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness" (Hosseini, 17-18).

While I do agree with the narrator that perhaps this viewpoint of the world is a little bit black and white, this line nonetheless stuck with me. I've been thinking about it in a variety of contexts and depending on how I look at the situation, it could apply. This certainly does deviate from traditional examples of sin, like pride, greed, or envy but I think the narrator's father has quite an interesting way of looking at the world, shaped by his experiences and his sense of wrongdoings. 

The writing in The Kite Runner made me feel differently than other fictional books because it's based on historical events and because the emotions Hosseini describes are so human. Simultaneously, it's both a story and a novel that touches the roots of philosophy, begging questions like how to live or forgive. I loved this book so much and the story is definitely one I won't forget.