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Emily Mitnick (12): In middle school, I was at a different school, and we had a snack cart that I was in charge of running and we were selling snacks to students during lunch, and that piqued my interest a bit in business. And so when I was applying to Harker, I noticed there was this DECA team, something related to business, and I knew I wanted to join that. And then I joined it and everything just sort of fell into place. I realized there was this opportunity to apply for the state officer team early in my sophomore year. And I thought, ‘Wow, this is so cool. I would love to represent DECA on a larger level.’

Michael Acheatel, business and entrepreneurship teacher: I think a lot of kids are intimidated by potentially running for something and not getting it. And she just kind of had a great attitude and mindset as far as I’m going to give it my best shot and if it happens, great. If not, then I’ll see what the next best opportunity is for myself. So I really commend her for just kind of, you know, you miss all the shots you don’t take type of thing. And she really just gives herself the best opportunity by taking a lot of shots.

Emily: I went to the conferences and I started winning some things that also motivated me to stay in it. And I would say more than anything, it was the people I met, the experiences I had that were all so new and interesting and inspiring. So I just wanted to keep going and see how far I could go in this organization. I want to be that person that takes an hour out of my lunch time to meet up with somebody and mentor them and help them with some sort of project or idea, because I felt that type of support from people I’ve met. And that’s very powerful.

Emily: I had tried to start a speaker series through DECA and then we realized that this type of program would be better fit in CareerConnect and that’s where I got involved. I’m the co-president this year, so I would say my role is to bring in some new speakers and coordinate certain field trips. But overall, I also just try to make sure our team is working well together and we’re staying on top of our goals for the year. Every speaker event we have, we have desserts, and our signature dessert is chocolate-covered strawberries. And I think what’s memorable is we had a few speaker events where we just ran out of desserts like that because. we had so many people attending. People were bringing chairs from other rooms, and it’s really special that people are excited about these events and want to come to learn.

Emily: I remember reading the course catalog and seeing the Incubator class and that struck me as the most unique course I’ve ever heard of. And I just knew that I had to take for the experience. Coming into the class I was really excited about learning to start a business and create some sort of product. And then as I went through the class I realized it was a lot more than that. It was about building a team, learning how to work with each other, and then creating something that doesn’t exist and bringing it to reality. It’s still a little hard for me to comprehend how I created an instant ramen. When we started talking to manufacturers, that was a very difficult process for us because we heard no hundreds more times than we heard yes. And we were told that this is impossible with our budge, that this is just too complex for us to handle. And at first we were pretty discouraged just because it seems like there was nobody out there that could really help us bring that product to life. But then as things started falling into place, as we started securing one manufacturer after the other—that’s when we realized that this is something that can actually happen. 

Emily: So through volleyball, basketball and track and field, I ‘ve bridged so many bonds and connections with the most amazing people, really hard-working athletes that embody the tenets of our school’s athletic program.

Nat Tan (11): She’s definitely the person a lot of us confide to or we find comfort in when we’re having a bad day because it’s a team of 12-13 girls, and we go to Harker so there’s bound to be something up, but she’s always the one who tells us to keep our head up and she’s essentially one of the biggest pillars of our foundation of our team. And I don’t know what our team would be like without her.

Emily: The sports community here is tight-knit, special and my life would not have been the same without it.

Emily: I’m studying the Hmong people during their time in the Laotian Civil War. They’re really a unique group of people that have never really had their own homeland. They’ve always been pushed from one place to another. And then during that war, they once again had to become refugees and flee the country. And not only did I find that their story connected with me on some level with my Jewish heritage, my family who were refugees from the Soviet Union—but I also found that these people are so resilient, and I wanted to understand how the people that went through such difficult times, how did they keep themselves safe and healthy and how did they stay connected with their culture in light of everything around them collapsing. So I would say this study is really about a study of human resilience. It’s a study about community and how a community can fall and get back up again. It sort of brings together everything I’m passionate about.