Curious Cardinals Blog

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finding balance

The Summer I Finally Ended My Relationship With Procrastination 🙅‍♀️

For me, it started with avocado toast and ended with a race around the world. I am not kidding!! It was beyond challenging trying to figure out what to write about for my college essay. How could I distinguish myself in 2500 words that would essentially destroy or solidify my dream? As I struggled with where to begin and then how to end, the Hamilton lyrics "I am not going to miss my shot" played on autopilot in my head. Whatever I was going to construct had to be engaging, unique, soulful, poetic, creative, cool, layered, and brilliant. It also had to seamlessly reveal all of my best qualities without me sounding obnoxiously boastful or ridiculously humble. No pressure. No problem.

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4 Things I Wish Parents Knew About Mental Health

May is mental health month and it coincides with end of the academic year, which can be an extremely challenging and stressful time for students. We often hear from our students how grateful they are to have a mentor who were in their shoes recently and get the struggle they’re going through.

We asked Katie Fong (BA, Stanford ‘22), a Curious Cardinal Mentor, about her thoughts on the matter. She reflects back at the four things she wished her parents had known about her mental health in high school to support her better. Read her reflections below.

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Jaidyn Hurst, Hotchkiss ‘23: How Does This Quadrilingual Singer-Songwriter Find Balance and Prioritize?

Jaidyn Hurst, a rising senior at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, is busy, to say the least. When we interviewed her this summer, she was Zooming in from Barcelona, where she was a student on the Oxbridge program majoring in Spanish, taking lessons every day, doing international relations as a minor, and also soaking up the sites of the city, “walking and roaming around and going to the beach.” Just days after returning from Barcelona, she was set to start working at the Colorado nonprofit Valley Settlement, where she is designing a music program to teach in Spanish to adults and children.

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