When it’s through her earbuds or through her speakers, Uttara Saha (12) loves to blast the music. She listens to a jumble of genres, the stream of sound interrupted only by an occasional “turn down the music!” from her parents.

“I literally listen to everything,” Uttara said. “People are like, ‘What’s your favorite genre?’ or ‘What kind of music do you listen to?’ and I’m like, ‘Among others, K-pop.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re one of those?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m actually not one of those.’ Because I listen to hardcore rap, EDM, House, among other things. I even listen to country.”

Just like her taste in music, Uttara is an eclectic mix of interests — crafting, audio books and her cat being among the top few.

“If I have time, I’ll go to the crafts store and I’ll just buy a whole bunch of random stuff and make a project, and I’m just like, ‘hey, let’s do something fun!’” she said. “It’s kind of like a, ‘I want to make something,’ as vague as that sounds, but kind of like in a building way.”

Her renewed interest in crafts stems from an epiphany she had several years ago.

“Being at Harker so long, there’s been a lot of ups-and-downs,” she said. “The first half of high school, I had this giant pre-mid-life crisis. So like, ‘what is the point of this? Do I even like school?’ Or like what I want to do, blah-blah-blah. Because I was in a bunch of hard classes, and they were just drowning me. But, I don’t know, I just saw the brighter side of things, and you just have to push through it. And it helps that I got a cat, and that made things better. Now I’m a little more optimistic.”

Armed with this mindset, Uttar rediscovered her creative side. She didn’t take structured art classes, instead choosing to take up projects on a whim. One day, she decided to build a “totally random” project for her cat.

“We had a cardboard box, and I was just like, ‘I kind of want to do something with it.’” Uttara said. “So I cut it into all these random pieces, and I basically made this house that my cat could sit in if she wanted to. So I occasionally find her just in it. Hopefully I can make more things. Because you know how you can go to some crafts stores and you can buy those models where you can make a building? I’ve always wanted to do one of those.”

That phrase, “I’ve always wanted to do one of those,” motivated many of Uttara’s actions throughout high school. For example, she decided to become a volunteer camp counselor after remembering how fun it was to be a camper herself.

“I grew up at this YMCA summer camp, and so I saw like, ‘Oh, the counselors are so cool, they have like the best job,’ and so I started training to be one of them, and I spent two summers doing it, and I got a whole lot of community service hours,” she said. “But honestly, I don’t really care about that hours, because if you volunteer there, you get to go on all the fun field trips and everything and just hang out, because the kids don’t care who you are.”

And Uttara is learning to adopt that attitude herself.

“For a while, I got so wrapped up in what other people thought of me, and my performance in school — like grades or how social I was and that kind of thing — but eventually, I just realized it doesn’t matter because all you’re really doing is trying to make your own way,” she said. “You just have to care about what you want and how to get there.”

Uttara’s friend Anastasia Cheplyansky (12) admires her for this change in perspective.

“I’ve seen her grow into a much more confident and positive person, especially through the high school years,” Anastasia said. “She’s grown so much, and it’s really inspiring to watch her grow and pursue what she wants. You can have such serious moments with her but also some relaxed moments too. And you just enjoy yourself with her all the time.”

Aadi Ghildiyal (12), described Uttara as “mature” beyond her years, yet at the same time, surprisingly goofy.

“Ever since fourth grade, she’s always been the adult figure in the group,” Aadi said. “And she’s always given us motherly advice and all that stuff. She’s very much like the mom-friend. She keeps us all in line and that stuff. She’s definitely mature. You have to get to know her, and then her sense of humor comes out. And like, she’s just as weird as the rest of us, and that’s saying something. So she’s a very secretively hilarious person.”

According to Aadi, this aspect of Uttara’s personality takes everyone by surprise.

“We watch Vines a lot in my group, obviously. There’s a group of four of us — it’s me, her, Aislinn [Coveney (12)], and Karen [Bauschlicher (12)],” Aadi said. “So there’s just like three of us usually quoting Vines, but occasionally, like out of the blue, when there’s like silence, Uttara will just quote a Vine, and we’ll all double-over laughing because all the Vines she chooses to quote are just so out-of-context and out-of-character. And we always doubt that she has that side to her, then she always does something like that that reaffirms that she is indeed part of the group.”