When did you originally find out about your achievement?

K: Rumors had been going around because people had been calculating it since sophomore year. It’s ridiculous and kind of insane and I didn’t care enough to do it.

D: No, yes she did, she did.

K: What do you mean?

D: Every single day, “When is Mrs. Alexander telling us about valedictorian?

K: I just wanted to write my speech before IB tests.

D: It started off as a joke that what if there is some secret Asian we don’t know about?

K: And then it was Yvonne. She was flying under the radar.

What does it take to be valedictorian or salutatorian?

Y: It comes down to the stupidest things. You have to be in full-IB and MUN.

D: You have to load up on as many honors as possible.

Y: You have to get an A in every class. I’ve had the 89.5 moments a lot.

Do people purposely plan for it?

K: Maybe Danny did…

D: No I just showed up and was like “yeah school” and here we are today.

How would you describe your relationship with each other?

Y: I’d say we are pretty close.

K: I went to London with Yvonne and I have to deal with Danny in five different classes.

D: Yvonne and I read Tumblr blogs together about social justice.

Y: We have deep TOK discussions together.

D: Are we truly color blind? It’s an inside joke in our TOK class.

How would you describe yourself?

Y: These sound like college application questions.

K: I feel like none of us are your stereotypical valedictorians. I don’t study as much as people think.

D: You try so hard. I’m just being honest and frank.

Y: We are hardworking but we do go outside.

How do you use your free time?

Y: I nap a lot. Sleeping, eating and reading.

K: We hang out together and get food a lot.

Y: The money I spend on food is drastically increasing and I’m scared for my health.

D: That’s me but replace food with clothing. I online shop in every class.

K: I look over all the time and I’m like, Danny’s shopping on Supreme again.

D: Yeah, this tablet almost ruined my life. I also shop a lot at Holy Grail, where people go and resell their high-end stuff for a lot cheaper than the actual price. The whole point of it is to find your ‘holy grail’ of clothing.

K: I don’t really have that much free time but if I do, I’d probably hang out with friends, watch a movie or go to the beach.

D: Well I do real things too like I run track, I play club soccer in the fall, I go to Duck games…

Y: I hate sports.

What are most looking forward to about college?

K: Not wearing uniforms and wearing shorts that do not have a 6-inch inseam

D: Wow that’s really scandalous.

Y: Honestly I have no idea what I’m going to do in college but right now I’m considering switching into the journalism school at Northwestern. After that I have no idea what I’m doing.

What advice would you give students at SMCHS?

K: Don’t take yourself too seriously and you’ll get into the college where you’re supposed to. Y: Don’t do activities just so you can get into college because you can only put 10 things on your common app anyway and it’s a waste of your time.

D: High school matters but not as much as you think because obviously you need to try hard to get into a good college but it’s more of like the effort you put into the rest of your life that matters more.

K: If you can say you did something because you enjoyed it and you have passion for it, then colleges want that more than the kid who’s like “I’m in science club but I hate science with a passion”.

What is the most valuable lesson you learned from your four years of high school?

K: The life you surround yourself with, the people, the activities are what make your life. So you have to shape what you want your life to look like, but you can’t force it either. Things will happen for a reason and you’ll look back and understand them but you might not understand them now.

D: Yeah, again, just live your life for yourself and just try to enjoy things. Try and laugh at the dumbest things you can because if you can do that you’ll get more enjoyment out of little things and be a lot happier. Find friends you can be dumb around.

Y: I think for me, it’s just that everything is going to be okay. There are so many times when you wake up in the morning and you’re so panicked and you honestly think you’re going to fail everything. Sometimes there’s so much going on that you physically do not understand how you will get out of it. Like there are moments that I look back to and I’m like I have no idea how I got through that day but somehow it happens, somehow everything turns out.

D: In the darkest of places you can find the dankest of memes.