![“[Building nerf blasters] became this outlet of creativity for me that hasn't been matched by anything else. The process [of] making a build complete to your desire is such a painstakingly difficult process, but I've had to learn from [the skills needed from] soldering to proper painting. There's so many different options for everything, if you think about it, it exists. The best part is [that] if it doesn't exist, you can build it yourself," Ishaan Parate said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/DSC_8149-900x604.jpg)
![“When I came into high school, I was ready to be a follower. But DECA was a game changer for me. It helped me overcome my fear of public speaking, and it's played such a major role in who I've become today. To be able to successfully lead a chapter of 150 students, an officer team and be one of the upperclassmen I once really admired is something I'm [really] proud of,” Anvitha Tummala ('21) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2021-07-25-at-9.50.05-AM-900x594.png)
![“I think getting up in the morning and having a sense of purpose [is exciting]. I think without a certain amount of drive, life is kind of obsolete and mundane, and I think having that every single day is what makes each day unique and kind of makes life exciting,” Neymika Jain (12) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Screen-Shot-2017-06-03-at-4.54.16-PM.png)
![“My slogan is ‘slow feet, don’t eat, and I’m hungry.’ You need to run fast to get where you are–you aren't going to get those championships if you aren't fast,” Angel Cervantes (12) said. “I want to do well in school on my tests and in track and win championships for my team. I live by that, [and] I can do that anywhere: in the classroom or on the field.”](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DSC5146-900x601.jpg)
![“[Volleyball has] taught me how to fall correctly, and another thing it taught is that you don’t have to be the best at something to be good at it. If you just hit the ball in a smart way, then it still scores points and you’re good at it. You could be a background player and still make a much bigger impact on the team than you would think,” Anya Gert (’20) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AnnaGert_JinTuan_HoHPhotoEdited-600x900.jpeg)
![“I'm not nearly there yet, but [my confidence has] definitely been getting better since I was pretty shy and timid coming into Harker my freshman year. I know that there's a lot of people that are really confident in what they do, and I really admire them. Everyone's so driven and that has really pushed me to kind of try to find my own place in high school and be more confident,” Alyssa Huang (’20) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AlyssaHuang_EmilyChen_HoHPhoto-900x749.jpeg)
On October 20th, 2011, students participated in Infection Day, an all-school game organized by the Global Empowerment Outreach (GEO) club.
GEO has been working to raise money and awareness for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization all week through various activites including Vow of Silence, in which students ask friends, teachers and family to sponsor them to be silent for an entire school day. GEO members also sold sports bags and Halloween candygrams after school.
“Each advisory was put up against a ‘partner’ advisory,” GEO member Cherry Xie (12) wrote. She was unable to talk because she was participating in the Vow of Silence.
“Infected” advisories wore monster stickers to show that they carried the “disease” and were given small red stickers with which to infect their partner advisory.
Their partner advisor was uncontaminated, but did not have a vaccination against the disease. Students would try to infect members of their partner advisory by putting red stickers on them.
Each grade was infected with a different disease: freshmen had the FLU, sophomores had Meningitis A, juniors had yellow fever and seniors had Hepatitis B. The game had a competitive edge too: students tried to infect everyone in their target advisory as fast as they could to be the first in their grade to complete the challenge.
“We looked at the list of people in our target advisory and divided up who would infect who based on who saw the people during their classes, or during lunch.” Shivani Chandrashekaran (10) said.
Some advisories used different ways to make sure they infected their target advisory, such as waiting outside the door to ambush the students as they left advisory.
“It was a good example [of how quickly diseases spread] because to account for the fact that only certain people could spread it, but there were still a lot of people who could spread it[…]; it made it very realistic.” Sapna Suresh (10) said.
Other students felt less enthusiastic about the game’s execution.
“There was very little preparation,” Kushal Ranjan (12) said. “I couldn’t find two people who actually agreed on the rules.”
The Infection Day game, as well as the other GEO activites are intended to help raise money for vaccinations for children in third world countries. Through this schoolwide activity, GEO aims to give students a sense of perspective in the seriousness of disease spread and the need for vaccinations.
