The balcony behind Nichols is often empty, silent aside from the roaring of the freeway. To Aliesa Bahri (12), it’s an island of tranquility in the bustling school, where she can relax and reflect on herself.

“Watching the highway, seeing everyone with things to do and places to be, makes all my problems seem small because it reminds me of all the incredible things that are waiting out there,” she said.

From walking a mile across Washington, D.C. as an eighth grader to bungee jumping in Costa Rica, Aliesa find joy in spontaneity. But despite her love for adventure, she also sees the importance of being prepared: planning has helped her maintain control over her life.

“I would say that whenever there’s something that comes up that I’m afraid about, I just think, what can I do to prepare for this the best, and if there isn’t a way to prepare at all, I just have to believe in my capacity to recover from whatever mistakes I make,” Aliesa said. “That is the thing that has always calmed me down.”

Jai Bahri (10), one of Aliesa’s four brothers, praised her work ethic and independent spirit.

“She’s very self-motivated and hardworking,” he said. “She tries to do things by herself. Even when our parents try to help her, she will make sure that she does it. Actually, if they interfere, she tells them off, so she’s very independent that way. She doesn’t take help from anyone, but I think that’s actually a good thing in her. That enables her to find an intrinsic drive to actually do things.”

But Aliesa hasn’t always had confidence in her abilities. After joining Harker in kindergarten, Aliesa found herself in the lowest levels of her classes throughout lower and middle school. However, upon reaching high school, she realized that she had the opportunity to change.

“I always felt like there was this intellectual boundary between me and the rest of my peers that I couldn’t surpass because I was intrinsically intellectually inferior,” Aliesa said. “I never gave the material that I learned in class the chance to appeal to me. I never strove to surpass my limitations because I felt like, ‘This is who I am; I can’t get better; it’s just genetically impossible.’”

The barrier she had always seen between her and others continued to exist even into high school.

“When I got to high school, I was trying to get into these honors classes because I felt that by being in these higher level classes, I would be validated,” she said. “It was really difficult my freshman year to meet the requirements, but I did, and I moved up in all my classes. When I got there, that barrier that I felt between me and everyone else was still there, and I couldn’t get rid of it. It was only when I started to ignore it and to stop comparing myself to other people, which I had been doing unintentionally, and to focus on who I am and what I wanted did that barrier disappear completely. Only by trying not to tackle it did I actually let it disappear.”

Damon Halback, Aliesa’s AP US History and Modern International Affairs teacher, supported her by encouraging her to share her activism with her classmates. Occasionally, he even excused her from class when she needed to conference call with the state senator’s staff.

“She’s able to leverage what she learns in school and leverage that to try and make actual changes for people,” Halback said. “One of her strengths is that she sees the power to make a change even though she’s still so young, and that’s a really unique way of acting on what you’ve learned.”

Despite the weight of the issues she usually tackles, Aliesa also sees merit in more minor contributions towards the common good.

“Even if it’s really small, like a really tiny act of compassion, that’s all I want to be in the minds of others,” she said. “It’s nothing super huge; it’s more just holding the door open for someone or giving someone a piece of friendly advice or bringing someone a drink from Starbucks when you know they’re having a really bad day. It’s just small ways of making other people’s lives better, and I think that that’s something everyone practices; I mean, it’s human nature to be compassionate to other people, but I think compassion can also be a habit. When you make certain traits a habit in your life, you finally understand their significance.”