Being the best i can

By: Jen Lopez

We are often told that we don’t do enough, or we have nothing to stress over since we’re still just  “kids” that haven’t experienced what life actually is. 

17-year-old Jian Nazareno is a high school senior that is a prime example that you don’t have to be an adult to experience a busy life. Not only does she go to school, but she also has a whole life outside of school that she has to balance. 

Having a job, extracurriculars, taking advanced classes, and on top of that, having the ability to take care of school work and studying, takes patience and time. 

Going into senior year, Nazareno began to live such a busy life. She has club events, a job, involved in organizations in and out of school, AP classes, as well as dual enrollment classes. She hardly has any “free time” anymore, but she still has a way of finding happiness and having a distraction from everything.

Nazareno: “..social media–I see a lot of funny things because of my algorithm, but overall I think that’s it”

Having so many responsibilities as a teenager can be really overwhelming, and most people aren’t sure how to balance it all. Nazareno has her own ways of keeping everything balanced out. 

She knows how to stay on track with all her work, finding every open space she can to just complete all her homework and studies. She also has the ability to know her work schedule and finds ways to work around it. 

Nazareno wasn’t always so involved with anything other than school alone. She never liked doing anything as a kid, she always avoided being involved in things she currently does. 

Nazareno: “I really wasn’t involved in anything at all, and I wasn’t even in sports–I wasn’t in like asb, leadership–I wasn’t in anything like that.”

When junior year hit, she started to realize the amount of things she can actually do, how much more she could involve herself with.

 She felt a bit pressure from everyone else doing a lot, saying how Junior year is the year where everyone should be staying track on their work, being involved, and just doing everything. It led her to push herself out of her boundaries and put herself out there doing so much more stuff. 

More so, what motivated her to do more was constantly comparing herself to how much her peers do. She felt like there was something she needed to fulfill

Nazareno: “I really just wanted to fulfill, me being not as outgoing and doing stuff, and I wanted to change that, just like, as a person and not really as a student trying to look good for college, but also just me in general”

No matter how overwhelming everything can be for Nazareno, she manages to push through it all with motivation and inspiration because of the person she is creating by doing all of this.

 Having so many friends that are as driven as she is by all the hard work and feeling like you’re doing something really pushes her to keep going. As well as having her friends there for any brief moment, small chats, small breathers–it’s a good reminder to really ground herself and be with her friends. 

Nazareno: “I think, the drive of it all. I feel very–I guess confident that I don’t think I’ll ever have like, a breaking point or “I can’t do anything at all”, like “I don’t wanna do this” I think it’s just like–I think what helps me is a lot of the things I am partaking in are things that I am, I guess passionate about”

Part of what keeps her going is her older brother. She stays in contact with her brother who is currently in the air force. He is always away from home and family, but she manages to find the time to still keep in contact with him. Whenever they talk, he is always motivating her to keep going and that she has the capability to do whatever she wants, she needs to face it and push herself. 

Nazareno: “I think in general he always motivated me to be someone that I am also but, on different levels–a lot better than I am before”

Overall, Nazareno continues to articulate hard work in her extracurriculars and still finds a balance between school and herself with much support along the way. Her accomplishments of creating who she wants to be–a hardworking girl–has really helped push her drive to keep going and push through, no matter the stress.