Ruicheng Yang

Nihao. My name is Ruicheng Yang. I usually spend my free time playing the bassoon. It looks like a rocket launcher, but instead of firing missiles, if fires music instead. When I’m not doing that, I spend my time either watching videos about chemistry or writing a story. Ok, we got the basics out of the way. What else? Let’s talk about what being a senior is like for me.

Senior year! Hakuna Matata! ON WITH the common app essays and...*sigh*. Ok, so maybe this year’s gonna be a little rough at the start. But hey, it’s not like I expect anything better from the life. Every time I thought life couldn’t get any worse, it still somehow finds a new way to break. But, I’m still here. Because I know that no matter how many times I fail, there is always a way for me to get what I want.

So I guess I’m ambitious, and with these common app essays, I think ambition is just what I need. You know what scares me the most about senior year, though? It’s the fact that it’s gonna end.

What’s the word count now? Wow, almost 200 words! My parents would be rolling their eyes right now if they knew how much time I’m spending right now on this. We didn’t always see eye to eye. Like, whenever the fall season comes, they’d be bugging me every second, ordering me to wear five layers like it’s Russia. Minor annoyances like that just make me want to pull my hair out. But once I step foot into college, the shrimps that my mom packed for me, the clothes my father laid out before me every morning I wake up, gone. All those years I spent stuck with my parents, complaining about how protective they were, then to realize that once you’re finally away from them, you’ll never experience the same level of love ever again.

When I walk past classmates in the hallways, some of them go: “Hey, you’re that kid who gets A’s all the time, right?” Before today, I often thought of that as, yeah, I got one heck of an academic record. But now I realize, that is all so many classmates know me by. So, basically, even though so many “know” me, nobody really knows me. And that’s the worst feeling you can have. That fear, that the good relationships you wanted with so many other classmates, will never happen.

Before this school year, I never had the intent of creating a web page about myself. But in this pandemic, I now know that this might the only way to express myself in this last year of high school. So I’m Ruicheng Yang, and I hope that by reading this, you just learned a little bit more about me.