Kellie Zh.

Slideshow Visual (:

My life can easily be separated into a few important categories: my friends, family, work, and my track/running career.

The pictures of my friends were from both the past and present. Throughout high school, they were the people I turned to whenever I needed them. We’re not a huge group like we used to be able to because there was a couple of fall-outs within the group. I used to wish for friends like the ones I saw on “Friends” or “How I Met Your Mother” but I realized I was fine with the way things turned out to be. I kept my most important friends right beside me. My family is big deal to me. On my father’s side, altogether there’s about thirteen of us kids, ten of them being cousins and the three are my younger brother, my older sister, and I. Even though our birth years range from 1985 to 2006, every time we get together for a family day we end up having fun. The pyramid photo was taken in 2007, and years later, we managed another pyramid, this time with twelve of us in the shot. Over the summer, we spent every weekend together, despite all of our busy schedules, and even managed to go on a five-hour trek up and down Bear Mountain. Work is another important aspect of my life. The reason being is that I’ve worked with little kids, and they never failed to cheer me up on my worse days. I went back to visit them today after not seeing them for an entire summer, and they swarmed around me as if they hadn’t seen me in years. My parents went back to China after almost twenty years, and that was how they toured Beijing, with panda hats on. They are the dorkiest almost fifty year olds that I know. I’m stuck with my parents, so I try and make the best out of every situation that I’m in with them, even if it means I have to listen to my dad’s thirty plus minute lectures about keeping my room clean when I’m the one who does his laundry. Joining track is an experience I’ll never regret and for me, is one of the best decisions that I’ve made of my adolescent lifespan. I was able to learn that I was stronger than I ever thought I could be. My coach and my teammates were a second family to me and I still use my coach as motivation while I’m running on a treadmill these days. The silhouetted picture is one that my coach took during a cross-country practice run around Flushing Meadow Park. It’s a picture I stole off of the bulletin board at Forest Hills High School during my senior year because I couldn’t bear to part with it. I’m standing on the second from the right of the last picture, waiting to hear the sound of a shotgun that starts off every race.