Self Discoveries 

Trinh Qua is a 16 year old girl who moved around as a child when she was younger, leading her to lean a bit more towards the introverted side. With the experience of moving when she was younger, including COVID, these experiences have led her to discover more about herself. 

When Qua was younger, she moved schools for the first time. 

“It was hard at first because I didn’t know anyone there. And I didn’t know if I was gonna make new friends or not”, said Qua.

But she soon found out that it wouldn’t be that difficult for her at all and that she didn’t even need to be nervous. At her new school, it was very welcoming and treated her how she wanted 

to be treated. Qua said, “meeting new people and seeing all the teachers, like, they were actually nice and the people, they were being nice to me too. And yeah it was just different but I still made new friends”.

When COVID hit, it was a chance for new discoveries Qua had never expected. Qua said, “it affected me, like, a lot of ways cause I found out more things about myself and new things about what I liked and what I enjoyed”. 

Qua later explained that one of the new discoveries she’d find out to like would be anime and said, “I watched a bunch during the summer and it helped me find joy and I didn’t have much to do at home so I would just watch it and be like ‘oh I like it’”, because of the amount of free time COVID gave her, so did an opportunity to expand into more likes and dislikes. 

While at school, Qua would have a packed schedule with schoolwork which wouldn’t really allow her to give herself as much personal time as she’d thought. But on the other hand, it’s been a learning experience where she’s figured out to not be hard on herself, but rather allow the experience to happen to see what she can learn from it. “It’s been pretty hard at first but at the same time it’s also been fun because I've learned to make mistakes and I've learned to grow from them”. 

One of these experiences would be during sophomore year and how she’d get home with the thought of studying for quizzes automatically, not allowing her mental state to have a break.

But through self-evaluations, Qua said that she would review herself and think about what had happened in class that day to get into a study-zone, and if it was too confusing, she’d simply ask for help.

Through this moment, it’s easy to see how Qua doesn’t take anything out on herself, but rather puts herself first before letting stress get to her, Qua said, “I realized if I can ask for help I can grow and be better and look back on my mistakes and be like “oh yeah"