A sliver of sunlight emerged from the horizon as the loud buzz and chatter of almost 200 juniors pierced the early morning air, waiting to board the buses headed to the American River rafting site. Friends embraced each other and quickly began recounting their summer activities, laughing and rejoicing amongst familiar faces. However, there was one new student floating among the crowd, introducing himself to each new group that he came across with a shy but warm smile. 

“I remember a few funny experiences on that day,” Brandon Lin (12) said. “People came in groups and said ‘hi’ with their established friends. Everyone was really kind but trying to figure out who I was.”

Even as the only new student in the class of 2020 that year, Brandon quickly opened up and befriended his classmates, his social and cheery personality shining through. 

“You figure out who you’d like to talk to first, and you just try to move on from there,” he said. “I found a good group of friends and everyone was really welcoming and nice. And as a result, I was really confident about meeting new people.”

Now one of Brandon’s close friends from Harker, Joshua Zhou (12) remembers when Brandon first approached him.

“We had the same free period together,” Joshua said. “I was playing surviv.io, and he saw me and he told me ‘Oh, this is what I played at my old school.’ So we played together and bonded over that, and that’s how we first met. He also had a lot of interesting stories, and I really enjoyed listening to them. He was just really sociable.”

Part of that outgoing personality stems from his time living in Thailand for three years before coming to Harker. Although he grew up in the Bay Area, Brandon moved to Bangkok with his family in 2015.

“It’s taught me a lot about meeting new people,” Brandon said. “It’s an international school, so people keep moving in and out. Every year you meet new people and your closest friends leave, and you have to realize every experience makes lasting impressions because you only have so much time with everyone. You want to make the most of every experience that you do.”

Knowing that his sophomore year would be his last year in Thailand pushed Brandon to make the most out of it.

“I definitely tried to meet as many different people as I could,” he said. “I tried to branch out and just talk to different people. I had a small group of like very close friends, but outside of that, I made a whole new group of close friends I still talk to.”

This new group of friends helped him tap into a newfound academic interest that he still actively pursues to this day.

“[My new friends and I] were super focused on public speaking,” Brandon said. “We did Model UN together, we did debate together, and we did this event called World’s Scholars Cup together. They definitely pushed me to do things that I wasn’t comfortable doing. It wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to focus on before, but meeting these new people allowed me to pursue a new interest that I really love today that I’d maybe never considered to do.”

Through making these new friends, he learned a valuable yet simple insight that would go on to define his outgoing manner.

“I think it’s given me a sense that expanding outside of a friend group that you’ve already established is scary initially,” Brandon said. “But after that, it’s not hard for high schoolers to get along with each other. So we should do that more. And we should talk to people.”

David Feng (12), now a good friend of Brandon’s, first met with him in the summer of 2018 to be his shadow buddy. Right off the bat, he noticed how likable the new kid from Thailand was.

“He was authentically himself,” David said. “He would tell you exactly how he’s feeling; he was very open about himself. So that outgoing personality was something that struck me from the very beginning. He was someone that would be fun to hang around, but also someone you could confide in. To me, he was someone I wanted to be a friend with, even before I got to know him a lot better.”

Nowadays, you can often find Brandon at school kicking a soccer ball around on Davis Field, intensely clicking his laptop trackpad in a game of surviv.io in Shah or grabbing a quick bite to eat at Burger King after school. And most of the time, he will be with his friends, grinning from ear to ear the entire time, exuding that same confidence that helped him find his fit at Harker.

“My favorite moments with him are the small ones, like when we sit together in the car and just lose our minds laughing over something stupid, or when we’re working in shah and he always asks to share AirPods,” close friend Naviya Kapadia (12) said. “It’s really fun to be around him. He never fails to make everyone smile.”

Yet however sociable Brandon is, he doesn’t need to always be around others. He also values and enjoys the serene moments of solitude that occasionally emerge within his social lifestyle.

“I’m not sure if I’m extroverted or introverted,” he said. “I really enjoy being alone, not even texting people. When I spend my own time, I end up doing these cool things that I don’t do with other people. I will watch weird videos of sushi chefs on Youtube or how airplanes work or politics videos.”

And whenever he needs to go somewhere on his own, Brandon looks forward to the drive ahead.

“I enjoy driving completely by myself when music is playing,” he said. “I think it’s a really enjoyable experience to reflect on what’s happened in the past. You let your mind wander a bit while you drive, and being alone is really relaxing. I definitely couldn’t operate if I were with people all the time.”

When he is with others, Brandon allows his bubbly and good-humored personality naturally come out, no matter who he hangs out with.

“I think people are pretty universally similar,” Brandon said. “Even though my school in Thailand was a relatively different environment to Harker, we are stressed about the same things, we enjoy the same things, we have the same exact teenage struggles. And it’s awesome. I really wish these different friend groups I made in high school somehow came together because it’s like everyone would get along really well and it would be a super enjoyable experience.”

Brandon’s idea of these equalities between people he knows helps him meet more people to expand his social circle, while also bringing people from different backgrounds together.

“My ability to have fun with a diverse group of people has come with realizing that there’s not a lot of difference between people,” Brandon said. “Even though you might have very different personalities or very different interests, you can still really get along. And it’s easy to listen or talk to someone, and in as short as 10 minutes you find inside jokes and conversation topics to help you get to know this person more.”

This mindset drives all the positive encounters and moments that Brandon shares with his friends from Harker, San Jose, Bangkok or anywhere else in the world. Through every warm smile, every contagious laugh, every goofy gesture, Brandon always looks to make the most of every moment of his life, constantly building new connections and strengthening old ones.