After all these years, Sameep Mangat (12) still has her Eeyore-themed pencil pouch.

“When my brother and I were younger, we would watch Disney movies together and that was the only thing that bonded us because we hated each other at that point,” she said. “He always called himself Tigger because he thought that Tigger embodied his personality and he thought it was super representative of his bounciness and his love of life and the fact that he gave hugs to people and that he was this really bright person. I wanted a way to fit into that story, so I assigned myself Eeyore just because at that time in my life, I liked to describe myself as being emotionally deep and sort of sad, but more reserved in that sense. We became Eeyore and Tigger and we called our life the Hundred Acre Story.”

Her older brother, Simar Mangat (‘13), remembered an idyllic “Disney moment” they shared.

“After a Cars themed drive in dinner, Sameep and I walked outside into a torrent of rain,” Simar said. “We looked at one another, locked arms, and danced down the street as we got soaked to our bone. Sameep’s the friend that’s always there for you, in times of laughter or joy, rain or sunshine, Disney World or real life.”

Sameep strives to empathize with others. While watching a slam poet perform “How to Succeed in Heartbreak,” she first heard the saying “Go to museums, realize other things have history too.”

“I think just that idea that we all possess backgrounds and histories and stories and memories is so profound to me just because something that I always like to do is find out people’s stories,” Sameep said. “I think that’s the most interesting thing to do, so hearing that in a poem, it resonated with me because I feel like history is something that’s so important to all of us.”

Last summer, Sameep volunteered at a home with teen mothers in Peru.

“There was this little girl, and she heard me singing, and she ran up, and she came to no one else, she was super shy, and she came up and sat in my lap and asked me ‘otra ves,’ which is ‘again,’” Sameep said. “And so until she fell asleep, I was just rocking her and singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,’ and every time I stopped, she asked me to repeat it, and at the end of that I remember her just looking up at me and smiling. I feel like that was a moment that I felt like I had succeeded in life.”

Even performing arts has become a way for Sameep to learn and understand others’ stories.

“I came to love [acting] because I think it’s so interesting when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes and you’re forced to empathize with this character that you just gotten to meet or know within the past month,” she said. “Forcing yourself to become that character is so eye-opening and so useful for daily life because you learn to interact with people, you learn to interact with yourself because you’re becoming a new person, so that was one reason I kept doing acting and singing.”

Sameep’s passion for writing and mental health awareness culminated in a book she wrote the summer after junior year: Being Enough.

“I am a teenager,” it begins. “I am sixteen years old. “I may have never worried about having enough, but I have always worried about being enough.” And so it launches into a narrative of woven anecdotes and definitions — ultimately starting conversations between teenagers and their parents.

As someone who escapes labels — writer, singer or actress are far too narrow — Sameep spends much of her time thinking about identity.

“I think that’s the coolest thing — to be rather than be defined,” she said.