Courtesy of Isabelle Gecils

Xu raises her flag in color guard.

Junior Yitian Xu has diverse interests on campus and beyond, so her whereabouts can often be hard to pin down. Luckily, I met her by chance after lunch as she was heading to room 604 for her AP U.S. History class; a couple of days later, I got to sit down with her for a few minutes. 

After letting her know that I had chosen her as the subject of my random student profile assignment, I asked her this question: How would you describe your personality? 

“I would describe myself as a pretty open-minded person, and I’m quite curious about a lot of different topics,” she said.

Xu has many different hobbies such as skiing, sewing and sculpting, but she said her most prominent interest is art. Her interest was sparked five years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic when she had to stay at home, which pushed her to find another hobby. Specifically, she focuses on semi-realistic digital art, anatomy and color theory, learning from online videos.

“I think I like art mainly because of how versatile it is,” Xu said. “In art, there’s nothing we can’t really do that’s necessarily wrong.”

 

Xu enjoys interpreting artworks, especially the creation process and the artists’ inspiration. Art has become a way for her to express and understand others. 

“Despite art being so subjective and having a lot of variety, there’s still a few universal rules in art that really connect all types of art together,” Xu said.

What surprised me is that Xu hasn’t taken any art-related courses at the school. She said she prefers to treat art as a hobby and not a future career because she doesn’t want to feel the pressure of others’ expectations when she creates art.

As a creative person, Xu plans to still incorporate her love for art in the future: She plans to major in mechanical engineering in order to design, create and understand the mechanics behind the products she designs. She values both functional and visually-appealing designs, though she admits that the math in mechanical engineering can be challenging.

Xu believes that she is best at analysis, not only of works of art, but also of literature, such as in English classes and movies. This analytical ability has helped her succeed in studying artworks and analyzing causes of events in history classes.

As a junior, Xu is taking difficult courses like AP Physics and spends much of her time participating in color guard. 

She also plans to become a dual enrollment student in her senior year at West Valley College. After graduating from high school and finishing required classes at West Valley, she hopes to transfer to UCLA. 

To enjoy her life and hobbies, she says she tries to focus on a growth mind-set rather than grades.

“Even if I have a bad grade, as long as I feel I understand and learn the material in the class, that’s enough for me,” Xu said.