Self Motivation

Junior Self Motivates, Excels in School After Moving to U.S.

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Photo courtesy of Kate Lee

Junior Kate Lee stands in front of the audience playing her flute. “I do music lessons for kids with disability or financial needs at Music Eunited,” Lee said. “It’s so heartwarming and fun when volunteering. I think it’s just the people that make me get involved. I love meeting different types of people and having conversations with them. It’s interesting to see how different their personalities and interests are.”

Kieren Garner, Reporter

Junior Kate Lee moved here only three and a half years ago from South Korea, and has since joined ten clubs at school, and plays four instruments, all while taking

“One of the main reasons that I’m in many clubs is because I want to get involved in many communities,” Lee said. “Also, I think clubs are good ways to have an exposure to specific subjects and areas before you actually decide to go into that field. Since I’m in the procedure of deciding what I want to do in the future, clubs help me a lot in my decision-making.”

Lee also plays various instruments such as guitar, flute and violin, but mainly focuses on piano, as she’s been playing it since she was seven and said it helps her relieve stress. She does music lessons for kids with disabilities or financial needs at Music Eunited.

“It’s so heartwarming and fun when I’m volunteering,” Lee said. “I think it’s just the people that make me get involved. I love meeting different types of people and having conversations with them. It’s interesting to see how different their personalities and interests are.”

Lee is also involved in Math UIL, and said that she wants to get faster and more accurate in her number sense skills.

“Number sense is the equivalent of mental math, which means that all of the calculations have to be done mentally, without any paper or calculators,” Lee said. “We are given eighty questions to solve in ten minutes, and if there’s any mark or calculations on the paper, that question is marked wrong.”

Lee said that number sense is challenging, and she used to be overwhelmed by it.

“As I learned more tricks and principles behind the calculations, I became really interested in this branch,” Lee said. “This became my strongest among the three branches of math in Math UIL.”

While some students have parents pushing them to do a lot in school and outside of school, Lee said she is the one behind her motivation and chooses to be motivated on her own accord.

“It’s mostly myself who motivates me to work hard because I don’t like not giving 100 percent to something,” Lee said. “The satisfaction that comes after hard work makes me so content. Even though hard work doesn’t guarantee my success, I can see myself improving and getting mature through the experiences.”