How do you think being a part of the covid class impacted your perspective on high school and college?

At the time, it definitely felt unfair. It was the end of my childhood being cut short. I think that a lot of the people in my class felt that way, especially as someone who excelled at school. Retrospectively, my class is not the one that got the short end of the stick. It was pretty bad for the following years too. I think that college kind of helped escape that a little. I took a gap semester that fall but I started that spring semester. While I had a little bit of high school taken from me, easing into college with all of the COVID regulations wasn’t terribly hard to handle for me, but definitely different. I didn’t really know what to expect anyways. 

What were you involved in, in high school?

In high school, my heaviest involvement was theater. During my time at Dominion, I did every single show that went up. I was in the cast my junior year. I was the Vice President of the Thespian Society and my senior year I was the President of the Thespian Society. I worked very closely with Doc, [the previous theater director] who just retired. I was on the Choir Council as well, so I took two years of choir with Ms. Nguyen, and that was very fun. I was a Link Crew Leader my junior and senior year, and then I was also in the Spanish Honor Society and the National Honor Society.

What sparked your interest in theater?

I grew up doing theater. My dad does theater, and he’s been doing theater my whole life. Then as me and my siblings got old enough, we would join him on stage and all do shows together. I was the only one out of my siblings that stuck with it. I did my first show when I was five, took a risk on a kindergartner but it paid off.

Did you receive any awards for theater? 

I was never nominated for a Cappie. My best friend Saskia won our sophomore year for Helen Keller. When I took theater classes, we did One-Act Festivals and in my sophomore year, I was awarded second place for female actress in a one act, that’s my only accolade from high school.

Have you continued to pursue acting?

I have not acted since high school. In college, I continued the leadership [role]. My sophomore year of college, I joined a student theater organization at my college and I was their vocal director. I was part of the executive board making decisions for the company. Of course, in college, student organizations don’t have supervision from professors. It’s all student run, coordinated and planned. The seven of us were communicating with the school as well as the organization and putting up the show.

How do you feel about not continuing to act?

I’m okay not continuing to act. In college, my creative outlet became choir. Choir is really something that I fell in love with and I’ve been singing in choir since I was in third grade. I got to continue with that, and I joined an acapella group as well,so I was still performing. I was still singing, arranging, and being part of an ensemble performing. Now that I’m out of college, I’m a member of the Arlington Chorale. I’ve actually come back to my community theater that I grew up in. They cast me in my first show when I was five and I am now directing a show for them this fall. Acting is something maybe I’ll get back into but I really do like being on the creative team of a show, which is something that I never really got to do in high school. 

Where did you go to college? When did you graduate?

I graduated in December [from] William and Mary. 

What did you major in?

I was a double major in music and neuroscience.

Was that always the plan? What led you there?

The plan was always music and psychology. I did discover in my first semester that I enjoyed biology way too much to not major in neuroscience. This is something I knew in high school when I was taking AP Psychology with Mr. Haberman. When I was a junior, I decided what I was going to do with my life. I decided that I wanted to enter the field of music therapy and that’s the goal.

How did you decide what program you wanted to attend?

When I was searching for colleges, I looked at a bunch of the normal places that most Virginia students look at, all of the big schools. I looked into music education programs, neuroscience programs, psychology programs, and then a few music therapy programs. But because it’s a growing field, there’s the undergraduate degree and certificate training programs that you can do if you didn’t major in it. I knew that I didn’t have to pigeonhole myself and my college experience quite yet. I didn’t have to be that narrow, because I knew I could get there after my undergraduate degree. I fell in love with William and Mary, the campus [and] the people.

After graduating with your bachelors, post graduation, what are your plans? Have you had any internships, or do you have planned jobs and such?

Yes, I graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science. While I was in college, I held an internship for two years where I was a preschool music teacher. Essentially, I spent one year in the internship, going into local preschool classrooms with a mentor and assistant, teaching and gradually transitioning into leading the class. For my second year, I was all on my own, going out into preschool classrooms, and then also the music school that I was interning at offered me my own class of 10 preschoolers. I taught them music for a year, and that was my first exposure to working with kids. I loved [that] it was giving me experience on how to get feedback from people that I’m working with behaviorally, necessarily, asking them, how do you feel about this? Them telling me but [also] noticing their behaviors and adjusting my plan based on that, which I think is a useful skill for my career. After that internship, I wasn’t quite terribly eager to go right back into school.. I’m looking right now at grad school programs for music therapy and researching programs in that area, but because of my experience working with kids, I decided in my year off that I was going to try to work with them more. 

Where are you working now in your year off?

Currently I’m working at Sugarland Elementary School as an assistant teacher in a preschool classroom. I’m also doing research into music therapy programs trying to figure out what comes next.

What is one thing you would tell to your high school self or a piece of advice you would give to current students?

I don’t know how the teachers are going to take me saying this, but you don’t need to take it so seriously. When you’re in high school, it is your world, and it is the only thing that matters. As soon as you graduate, as soon as you leave high school, none of it matters anymore. It just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you got on that one test. It doesn’t matter how many all nighters you pulled. Nobody really cares, those little things don’t matter. What matters is the friends you made, the ways you grew, the battles you overcame. It’s not a flex to be stressed. It’s not impressive. It’s not something to brag about, to be overworked. The world does not need to be a giant competition of who is the most stressed. I think that when I was in high school, I definitely spent a lot of my time trying to outdo my peers, and it’s just not that serious, because we’re all on our own paths, and there is room for all of them. Every path has its own space and you’re always going to be welcome there. It’s good to be serious about what you do. It’s good to invest in it, but don’t take it too seriously. Find the things that you love and invest in those things. In high school, a lot of things were a resume builder [or would] look good on college applications. I would tell her to calm down, high school, Leecy just needed to relax. [But she also] Also got me where I am today. So for that, I’m very grateful [for] her.