Harker-green banners swaying under the glare of shining sports field lights. Friends chatting in the orchard, the sinking sun’s golden hue embracing their faces. Voices reverberating in the athletic center as the class of 2025, clad in white face paint, shouts, victorious. 

All of these are memories senior Yasmin Eminovic-Miceli cherishes. All of these are memories Yasmin worked to create. 

Yasmin, who started participating in competitive cheerleading in fifth grade, quit Cheer after sustaining a severe head injury in junior year. Despite this setback, she continued to foster a spirited school community through the Harker Spirit Leadership Team.  Having joined HSLT in sophomore year as a media director, she put her love for digital marketing to use by promoting different clubs and organizations around campus, later joining the executive team for outreach in junior year and now serving as vice president. 

“My favorite part of spirit is seeing community engagement,” Yasmin said. “When people step out, it shows everybody around here that you can have fun when you do spirited things like going to a football game. I feel a lot of reward in that — knowing that I can give people an outlet when they don’t have that in this rigorous environment.”

HSLT adviser Kerry Enzensperger observes Yasmin’s leadership skills and proactiveness in promoting spirit. Enzensperger particularly admires how she leads by example and relates to others through her own experiences. 

“She’s super passionate about making school spirit important for everybody,” Enzensperger said. “She’s a really strong, independent person, and spirit has helped her feel more part of the school. I’m super proud of her because she overcame her own personal struggles, from being someone who really didn’t want to be here to being someone who really wants to be here and make it a fun place for everybody.”

In the aftermath of COVID-19, Yasmin noticed a reluctance to participate in spirit events. Hoping to inspire positive change, she and other spirit team members drew up extensive plans to encourage community participation in events like homecoming and prom. 

“I don’t think we started out in the most spirited environment, especially coming out of COVID.” Yasmin said. “That was really depressing because I always had an ideal version of what I wanted high school to look like when I was a little kid. It’s unfulfilling when you come to the environment expecting it to be a certain way, but it’s not. I, along with previous presidents and vice presidents and team members, have worked so hard over the past three or four years to change the way that the community goes about spirit. I’d say that as a whole, we’ve all gotten more spirited.”

Yasmin believes that change in community attitudes toward spirit was a necessity that has become a reality through HSLT’s work over the past years. She finds that, now, community members feel more driven to live their high school years to their fullest. 

“Even taking your masks off and seeing people face to face definitely changed the environment,” Yasmin said. “With that, people have become progressively more open-minded. You realize that you don’t have a lot of time left with your peers, and that need for community and need to bond with each other becomes especially strong. That’s how we’ve tried to change other people’s minds: trying to create memories and finding value in that.”

Senior Avayna Glass, close friend of Yasmin’s since kindergarten, admires her dedication to making the upper school a safe place for everyone. Whether through Yasmin’s involvement in HSLT, cheer or simply her willingness to empathize with others, Avayna appreciates Yasmin’s love for fostering happiness around her. 

“She cares so much about her community, and she cares a lot about making sure that amidst the stress of the school, people still have an outlet to have fun,” Avayna said. “She cares so much about making people feel happy, feel loved and feel like they’re having a good time, and she puts a lot of effort into it.”

While Yasmin has helped other students open up and broaden their horizons through her work in spirit events, she believes that her participation in HSLT has benefited her too by making her more resilient and farsighted. She specifically recalls last year’s homecoming event, when she and Avayna interviewed spectators of the football game with fun questions to boost spirit. 

“I’m a stubborn person, so I’ve been realizing that sometimes things are not going to go your way,” Yasmin said. “You need to figure out how to conform to that and be more accepting of other people’s opinions and teamwork. HSLT has brought me a lot of joy because it’s literally all about community. Being able to bring in a large crowd and also have them dress up a certain way and see that crowd engagement, there were instantaneous rewarding hormones in my brain.”

Psychology teacher Julie Turchin, who taught Yasmin in Psychology and Social Psychology her junior year, attests to her community-oriented nature and character development over time. Dr. Turchin noticed that though many students were capable of memorizing terms quickly and moving on, Yasmin could relate them to her peers’ experiences. 

“She’s very empathetic, so she could often hear something we’re talking about in class and think about it in relation to somebody that she knows in her life,” Dr. Turchin said. “That would help her, even if she was frustrated with them, understand where they’re coming from because she’s like, ‘Oh, this psychological phenomenon is how that person sees the world.’”

Avayna greatly appreciates how Yasmin’s ability to empathize with others translates to their friendship.  She appreciates the immense effort Yasmin puts into striving to understand and uplift those around her.

“I’ve gone through a lot of stuff in the past years that she’s been there with me through and supported me,” Avayna said. “I could tell her any information about my life, and I don’t have to be scared of how she’ll see it. All of her relationships — she puts a lot of care into them, and she isn’t going to do anything half-effort. She goes all-in with anything she does, which is super cool.”

Throughout Yasmin’s 13 years at Harker, she has found novelty to be an important concept to strive toward. Spirit has been one of many outlets for her to switch up every year, meet fresh faces and truly live out the best of what high school can be. 

“Being at Harker for so long, you get stuck in the same patterns of people and routines,” Yasmin said. “I have really tried to expose myself to a larger group of people. So connecting with some of my peers that I necessarily haven’t connected with in the past, or with younger grade levels — that’s a challenge I’ve tried to overcome.”