Urooj Ali is currently a senior at John F. Kennedy Memorial High School. As a member of the Class of 2022, she endured multiple methods of education throughout her high school career due to the Covid-19 pandemic. She is a very caring and compassionate student, and is involved in many organizations that work toward benefiting the community. She is the secretary for the JFK chapter of Future Business Leaders of America, the co-media director in the National Executive Secretary’s Council, and a member of YAPAKIDS: a nonprofit organization that provides online education for students at the elementary and middle school level. 

How has your high school experience differed from what you expected it to be?

Urooj: Okay, so when I started high school I was in Connecticut and I had lived there for 10 years. So, when I started high school I had a whole plan of what classes I was gonna take every year and I was pretty sure I was just going to stay there until I graduated and went to college. I wasn’t expecting to move at all since we had already lived there for so long but then at the end of freshman year, we made the decision to move and it was to a different state and it literally threw me off. It was really crazy to me especially because the year was ending. Then we moved schools and it was already weird to move once but then I moved schools again. Initially I thought I was the type of kid who was very set on going by plans–having everything planned–but I couldn’t do that anymore since everything was out of control and [because of] the circumstances. It taught me to learn to just go with things instead of just having to worry about everything being set in stone.

Are high school football games really worth all the hype?

Urooj: No! I got so bored! I’ve only gone to one football game in the entirety of high school and I was expecting–I think the problem is not the actual football game but the types of expectations that it’s put against. I thought it was going to be like the movies which is wrong to begin with because no movie is ever realistic, especially a high school movie. I had such a messed up perception and I had never gone to games before. I feel like maybe if I was more athletic it would be different, but since I’m not that involved in athletics I didn’t get it at all.

Speaking of stereotypes about high school, senior year is often stigmatized as the year of high school where you have less school work and more freedom. How true do you feel that this stigma is in accordance with your own personal senior year experience?

Urooj: I think our senior year experience in general was really messed up and that’s because our junior year was online. This is my personal opinion, but I feel like I was kind of piled up with work from junior year and this year, so I’ve just been dealing with it all at once now that we’re in in person school. I’m actually having to deal with my responsibilities outside of a screen so I’m taking care of things I didn’t do in my junior year that I didn’t know that I was supposed to do. Especially regarding college and my career, I had no idea what I was doing and when I started this year, it hit me like a truck. I had to sort everything out in a couple months and it was really scary, and I wish I was taking easier classes or chilling, but I’m not and it’s because I didn’t do that last year when I was supposed to.

Are there any colleges that you feel comfortable sharing that you’re looking into?

Urooj: Well, I applied to Montclair [State University]. I think a lot of people did. Then I applied to some colleges in New York. I applied to Syracuse University because I take a class that they offer–a SUPA class–and I was like, “I might as well.” Then I applied to Northeastern University because I lived in Connecticut so I like Massachusetts. 

Has high school impacted your music taste?

Urooj: Not at all. And that’s because I think high school students kind of feel like we have to be very basic to fit in with the rest of the crowd. There’s the basic music taste: popular artists that are played on the radio that most people listen to but I feel like most high school students they try to get themselves outside of that circle and in that process they end up listening to basic artists that aren’t considered basic but are still basic. Does that make sense? So it’s that niche genre that is widely popular but people claim it’s not because it’s not on the radio. Anyways, high school never influenced my music taste because the internet did more. When I was younger I had people I talked to at school but I was more active in my online persona: through social media and having internet friends. So I wasn’t that influenced with high school because I just thought that taste didn’t fit me and I just didn’t correlate with it.

If your high school career was a coming of age film and you had to choose one song to play anytime you entered a room, what song would you choose and why?

Urooj: This is such a hard question. Hold on, can I turn on my Spotify? Oh! This is my all time favorite song ever. I don’t why I had to even–Spotify didn’t even help me–but probably BTS’s Run. That song–if I could wish my life was a song it would be that song. It’s very nostalgic for me and it takes me way back to like 2017 and 2018, if not earlier. That’s really nice so I’d probably choose that because I love that song so much. 

Is there a hobby that you’ve picked up that you feel that you wouldn’t have survived high school without?

Urooj: Journaling! This is my favorite thing to talk about, I have like three different journals. I have my poetry journal and I write down my poems and I add little drawings next to it. I love this journal. I was initially very scared to write down my poems because I write them down in my notes app or I type them out because I don’t like writing down with pen and making mistakes. I would always keep only rough drafts and I never edited them because I was afraid I was going to mess them up. When I started this journal I began to edit my poems more and refine them without changing the initial message, which I was really scared to do but it wasn’t that difficult once I tried it. I think it was a matter of me overcoming my fears and getting used to dealing with my emotions after I had gotten them out. Writing down stuff when I’m feeling very intense emotions and going back and reading it and feeling it again, is very intimidating but once I got over that I was able to start this journal. I recently finished it which was a really big accomplishment for me because I used to not–I had like five poems–I couldn’t stick with it but having my finished journal I’m really proud of myself. 

So, I have my poetry journal and then my actual journal which I have had since middle school. The first entry is from 2017 and I’ve had the same [one]–because I’m very bad at journaling. I either go a whole month where I journal every week or I go a few months where I don’t write anything and then I go back to writing so I’ve been able to stick with this one journal for so long and I still have pages left. I want to finish it by the end of this year because the idea of having my teenage years in one journal is insane. 

I have that journal, then I have a K-POP journal. I started it over quarantine but I never finished it. I had so much fun with it because I’m always on Pinterest and this was like making Pinterest boards but doing it on paper. I was scrapbooking and it was really good. I got to use stickers! Those are my three journals. I love journaling; I feel like if I didn’t have that through high school I would just be boring. 

Are there any clubs that you’re a part of that have been extremely important to you?

Urooj: Yes! [JFK] STARs! When I started going to the meetings they were online [and] I had no other club I was in. I’m very extroverted but I wasn’t talking to people and I was inside. All that indoors [I] didn’t have a lot of friends so I went to the meetings even though they were online. Not a lot of people would show up but they were very chill and I got to talk to other people that I wouldn’t have talked to otherwise. It was really cool and after going to the meetings in person and recognizing some of the people there I was like, “Oh, this is so cool.” That was really fun for me so definitely [JFK] STARs. 

Could you explain what STARs is?

Urooj: [JFK] STARs is a club that helps raise awareness for the LGBTQ+ community. They do fundraising and charities not just for the LGBTQ+ community but overall making sure everyone is feeling accepted regardless of their race, sexuality, [or] gender.

What do you want to be known for in the world? 

Urooj: I want to be known for–I always think about this a lot. I don’t like thinking about the future because I feel like if I make my expectations for the future too big I’m going to disappoint myself and be too hard on myself if I don’t reach them. I like to keep my idea of the future very vague and in order to do that I like to focus on–even though I don’t know what I’m going to do in the future–what type of person I’m going to be. I like to focus on that instead. It gives me some peace of mind not worrying about accomplishments that haven’t happened yet. I always think about it like, “Who do you want to be?” I just want to be someone who is happy in the place that they are in. Whether it’s my mental health state or someone I’m with, I just want to be content and remembered for being someone who was very true to themselves. It’s very cheesy but I don’t ever want to be someone I’m not and I don’t want anyone else to remember me for that either so I just want to be someone who is very authentic.