“How do you express yourself?” is an elusive question, often eliciting long-winded answers about artistic outlets or the creative process.

But Aadi Ghildiyal’s (12) response to “How do you express yourself?” says it all: “Loudly, I guess.”

“If you’re in the lunchroom, she talks really loudly, she laughs really loudly, and she does everything loudly, basically,” her friend Helen Yang (11) said. “She has no problem talking to strangers. The first time I met her was in a summer math course, which is not a conventional way to make friends because its a summer course and taking math. But then she always finds a way to connect with every single other person. Like with me at the time, it was anime, and with other people, it was general struggles over homework and things like that. In general, her whole vibe is really friendly.”

Aadi’s vivacious personality manifests itself in her animated gestures.

“She interacts very physically with the world,” her friend Alexandra Michael (12) said. “So if she’s excited about something, she’ll make a lot of physical movements because she has a very gesture-based personality. People tend to think of her as not particularly invested in the world, she comes off as a more living in the moment sort of person but she also tends to be very passionate about the things she believes in. So she can also get into intense discussions very easily when she’s discussing matters like social justice or characters in books, or novels, or other media that she enjoys because she feels very strongly about the world and the things she experiences.”

Aadi’s self-described “bluntness” helps her navigate through life, allowing her to speak her mind with a touch of self-deprecating humor.

“I value my hard work over anything else,” she said. “I don’t particularly think I have any talents that carry me through. So all the stuff that I’ve achieved so far is just because I just kept on persevering and kept doing stuff even if it sucked, or even if the circumstances were really annoying. Also, my brother is on the autistic spectrum — he is mildly autistic — so my parents kind of had to focus more attention on him, so I’ve also become more independent as a result of that.”

Her “brutal honesty” and gives her confidence.

“I think in order to do everything to your fullest ability, you have to come to terms with yourself and be proud about yourself,” Aadi said. “I think the confidence to be able to do whatever you want and not being so affected by like what other people are saying will help you throughout life.”

Unlike many other people who have a very specific expectation of how they want to be viewed, Aadi doesn’t want her image to be confined to one box. She wants to be seen differently by different people, and by that measure she has succeeded. While Alexandra views her as a bubbly person who grew into a more responsible person, Uttara Saha (12) views her as an introverted girl who turned out to be fun.

“Even though we have been friends for so long, there is always something new to discover, especially with our changing interests and what we want to do in the future,” Uttara said. “[Our interactions are] mostly crazy because we’re all into various TV shows.”

Besides those TV shows, she focuses much of her time on archery. She finds that the sport helps her clear her thoughts.

“I do a lot of introspection, and more introspective it is, the more negative, so I don’t like that about myself,” Aadi said. “But it all goes away when I do archery. My mind becomes completely blank and I’m not thinking about anything. When I’m doing archery, the only thing I’m thinking about is, ‘Okay, I have to do my form right, I have to do this right,’ and it’s very systematic, and my mind gets very focused instead of being all over the place. So I guess it’s really valuable to balancing me as a person.”

While Aadi takes pride in her successes, she also hopes to embrace a growth mindset.

“As long as you’re better than yesterday, you’ll be okay,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you haven’t made general accomplishments or you haven’t cured cancer in a day, but as long as long as you’re better than yesterday then things will be fine.”