Jack Jia (12) seems like a typical student, hanging out with friends and working on homework. Look closer and you’ll start to notice some oddities. Maybe you find your eyes drawn to his designer clothes or the cookie in his pasta or the yogurt on his pizza. He exudes an aura of humor that makes your lips quirk up into a smile and possesses the sort of joking personality that has him answering “what’s most notable about you” with “my eyes are extremely small.” He’s definitely what close friend Jack Hansen (12) describes as a “zany character.”

“[Jack] just does his own thing,” Hansen said. “And no one really knows what he’s doing. But apparently it makes sense to him. I think it’s cool that he doesn’t even think about it. He’s not worried about what it looks like to anyone else.”

Jack takes this attitude of doing what he wants as a motto to live by. He “embraces [his] selfishness and self-interest,” prioritizing his own comfort so that he can maintain his positive attitude.

“Everyone has their own sad stories or experiences,” Jack said. “But if you can still keep a positive mindset after all that, you’re back to your innocence. And then you’re easy to interact with and you feel good when you interact with [others].”

Richard Hu (12) first met Jack in freshman year as fellow members of the tennis team and really got to know each other over the course of a walk to practice in the rain. Richard’s first impression of Jack was a “nice, quiet kind of guy.”

“Once you start to get to know him better it’s like it’s like that first impression is completely wiped out,” Richard said. “For most of the time he’s really calm, [but] when he gets really excited about something he just kind of explodes. Once he gets really excited about something, [nothing can stop him].”

Although Richard describes him as “chaotically creative,” Jack considers a different view of human curiosity.

“I feel like it’s quite irresponsible actually,” he said. “You’re just looking at stuff. And then you just kind of leave. [It’s] always interesting, but then, you take a look at this new stuff, explore it and then you pack up and leave, you don’t do anything about it later on.”

This view of curiosity ensures that when Jack explores, he bears all the consequences. It adds the caveat onto his philosophy of “do what you want, but don’t let it impact others.” If that condition is fulfilled, there’s nothing he fears — except bugs.

When Jack first walked into English teacher Ohad Paran’s class, it was to the chanting of his name and high-fives from his classmates, Paran recalled fondly. And from that time Paran’s positive impression of Jack hasn’t changed. He described how Jack interacted with other students.

“There’s always somebody that needs to kind of grab [a table group] together and so he did that,” Paran said. He’s able to get people to follow him in a good way.”

Even though Jack is an open figure to his friends and family, he prefers to deal with his emotions alone, through a recently-gained appreciation of art, long bicycle rides or other such activities. He’s found that being private about this sort of thing works better for him, and tries to stay positive in front of others, because “it just makes everything happier.”

“I tried to use the best ways to interact with different people so I give different impressions to different people of who I am,” Jack said. “For example, my parents think of me as a completely different person than all my friends think of me. I like to keep it that way so we stay comfortable interacting with each other.”

Ultimately, Jack tries to ensure everything he does is helpful to him, either now or in the future.

“I’m a perfectionist. I feel like a lot of people misunderstand it.” Jack said.” It’s like a way you think. You have an ideal model of how the world should be and how you should be. You might not necessarily achieve it, but then you still have an idea of the perfect you should be like. And I’m trying my best to do that work all the time. I feel like everything I do is worth it.”