Katrina Schwartz: In this special collaboration between The Bay and Bay Curious, we asked four high school students to send us audio diaries over the last few months to bring us into their worlds for a little bit.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: We wanted to know: What’s on your mind these days? What’s getting you excited, worried?
Katrina Schwartz: And today, you’re gonna hear from those students, in their own words.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So without further ado, we’re gonna let the students introduce themselves to you.
Oumou Cissé: Hi, my name is Oumou, and I’m a junior at Summit Tamalpais in San Pablo. I live in San Pablo with my parents and my siblings. I have one older sister and one little brother. My dad works with audio visual tech, and my mom is a teacher. I would describe myself as someone who’s very observant. I pay attention to the smallest details about people or stuff, and it can be both useful and annoying. I would also describe myself as someone who’s creative. Of course, I love art and I love my writing, but I’m also really creative with words. Like if I were to have an argument with anyone, I’m usually the one who ends up victorious. I also have killer comebacks if anyone disses me. What excites me every day is knowing that I’m slowly getting closer to accomplishing my personal life goals, such as making my webcomic, or whether it be like finishing my novel, which I need to do.
Abby Kim: Hello, my name is Abby Kim. I am currently the graduating class of 2026 and I attend Tilden Preparatory School in Walnut Creek, California. I play competitive field hockey, which is a very uncommon sport in California compared to like the East Coast. And as I’ve begun to grow and cultivate a love for the sport that I play, and as I started to make national selections and attend the junior Olympic qualifiers and play on a much higher level than I anticipated I would be playing at, I realized that this meant that I would not only have to commit to practicing and putting a lot of time and effort into my own personal skill and development but I would also have to find a club or a team that would compete with other clubs in the East Coast more competitively. And so little did I know this would essentially entail me driving down to San Diego every weekend during the school year in order for me to play at this higher level.
Olivia Ma: My name is Olivia Ma. I go to BASIS Independent Fremont Upper School in Fremont, California. I’m 17 and I’m a senior. I mean, I feel like to be very frank, the last year aspect hasn’t really hit for me yet. Like people have asked me like, oh, are you feeling sad or whatever? And then I don’t really know what to say because I don’t feel anything when I think about it being my senior year. I think maybe it’ll hit in May when I actually graduate. But I’m just trying to make the most of what I have right now so that maybe I don’t regret it later.
Riya Minglani: Hi, I’m Riya Minglani. I’m in the class of 2025 at Prospect High School and I’m from San Jose. It’s college decision month. Even though I’ve gotten into a couple of safety schools, the schools I really are really dreaming about and I could really, really want to go to are coming out this month, so feeling anxious. I’m also trying to put that anxiousness into excitement.
Oumou Cissé: Hi, it’s Oumou and today is January 22nd, 2025. My favorite kind of music is heavy metal. More specifically, my favorite band is called Lacuna Coil, which is an Italian Gothic metal band from Milan. When I found them at the beginning of sophomore year, I was in this dark moment. I had a fallout with one of my teachers because I wrote a story and she didn’t really like it and I was just feeling all these emotions and I needed some place to put it. My most played song of my Spotify rap of 2024 was Intoxicated.
[Intoxicated Song Playing]
Oumou Cissé: During sophomore year it helped me through those hard times, especially when school was difficult and I was going through friend drama and shifting hormones and puberty and all that stuff. It was just really hard for me to express my emotions without lashing out at somebody. And it’s just, I love that during those dark times heavy metal really got me through it and I could connect with the music itself. People don’t think I like heavy metal because I’m black which is funny because you shouldn’t be grouped in with the certain with a certain race to like a certain kind of music. If you have strong emotions then heavy metal is for you.
Abby Kim: Hello, my name is Abby Kim. Today is January 17th, 2025. And if we’re really specific, it’s 3:55 p.m. right now. And I don’t know, I just been, there’s been a lot on my mind. You know, junior year is considered like rough. Everyone knows going into junior year is academically hard, because everything’s due for college apps and stuff. But playing a sport on top of that really adds to the stress. And then on top of not having your school have the sport you play or sports in general for in my case, it’s hard navigating everything, I think the biggest thing that made me actually, like the allure to the sport as I continued practicing was that I actually saw progress. Like I was like, okay, if I, you know, I used to suck at this one particular skill, but if I keep doing it, I can do really cool stuff with it. I can maneuver the ball this way. I can it this way, I can, like I could be as creative as I want. So that was kind of what made me really fall deep into the sport and fall in love with it. And of course now, as I’m older, it’s the people that you meet, and it’s the different experiences with coaches. Just overall, the sport is so fun.
Olivia Ma: My name is Olivia Ma. I’m a senior at BASIS Independent of Fremont, California, and it’s January 19th. Currently, I go to school in pretty much all STEM grade. I think I’m the only person who’s doing humanities because I’m gonna major in journalism. I’ve had a lot of faith in myself over the years to get myself out of tough situations because I’ve been able to. And while I think that’s a good thing to have faith in myself, I think, I’ve also gotten used to not having a plan B or being safe about things. So like, for example, last week I applied to a scholarship and it was a pretty big one because college is expensive. Anyways, I was gonna apply to a scholarship and it a video scholarship. I spent a lot of time on the video. I worked so hard on it and I was so proud of it and I was gonna submit it at school. But then my laptop died. So I had to call my mom. I begged her to take me home so I could charge my laptop and submit it. I got home half an hour before I was supposed to submit it and then I realized, hmm, I should add some pictures into my video because this section is kind of blank. And my mom kept begging me, like, no, this is a terrible idea. Like, you don’t know what’s going to happen on the website if it glitches. You’re not going to be able to turn it in. I said, it’s fine. And so I submitted it two minutes late because my video kept loading. And it didn’t let me submit. I bawled my eyes out for an hour. It was so bad that my voice, like I couldn’t talk after. My eyes were puffy. My head was like throbbing. And like I emailed the scholarship. And one reply I got was, oh, we can’t have any exceptions. I cried again. And then another email was like, oh we can reopen it for you. I was like oh, that’s so great. And I kept checking my portal and it wasn’t reopening. And I keep emailing this person. I sent them like 10 emails. And they eventually said, oh sorry, yeah, we can’t do anything about it. It’s good to take risks, but also be aware of the consequences that those risks come with. I do work hard, I do plan things out, but not enough. And I’ve realized that I need to be even more strict with myself than I was before, if I really wanna do well when I go to college.
Riya Minglani: Hi, this is Riya. It’s Sunday, January 26th, and I just got back from hanging out with my dad and my brother at the mall. My parents got divorced in 2020, so they were one of those, like, 2020 divorces. My mom moved to San Jose, and my dad got remarried, and his wife, my stepmom, lives in Fremont. And usually every Friday, my dad comes, pick my brother and I up to drive to Fremont and I really like those drives because like those are really the only time I get to talk to my dad because a lot of the times like when I’m at his house like I’ll be doing homework he’ll be working. He like works a lot over the weekend. I feel like there’s this stereotype that immigrant dads tend to be really closed off and you just don’t know much about their personal lives but the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve really actually been able to talk to my dad and learn more about him as a person beyond him just being my dad. He’s so honest with me that I feel I can be super honest with him.
Riya Minglani: So dad, how’s your day?
Riya Minglani’s Dad: Ah yeah, it’s a usual day, busy day at work, a lot of meetings, discussion and planning for what we are going next in the AI driven world.
Riya Minglani: AI driven realm.
Riya Minglani’s Dad: That’s all the people, everybody that’s the company I’m in, all they talk about.
Riya Minglani: I always like these car rides because I feel like we talk the most when we’re driving the car. Do you feel that way too?
Riya Minglani’s Dad: Yeah, I think that’s because we don’t have anything else which can distract us.
Riya Minglani: How do you feel about me starting driving?
Riya Minglani’s Dad: That’s just something I’m nervous about. That’s, um, something really nervous about.
Riya Minglani: Oh my god, I’m not a bad driver!
Riya Minglani’s Dad: You are not, but you need some practice.
Riya Minglani: I do. Okay, that’s fair.
Oumou Cissé: Hi, it’s Oumou, and today is February 4th, 2025, and I’m actually at home. So my school, Summit Tamalpais, has this thing called Expeditions, which is a special time for students to focus on what they want to do. And for me, in the beginning, was to make my art portfolio for college, because I wanted to become an animator, have a show idea that I wanted to do, I was originally gonna make it a TV show, but because it’s expensive and I don’t have any animation experience and I would probably have to go to art school for that and that’s also expensive, I decided to turn my idea into a comic. First it was called Children of Eternity, and I was heavily inspired by Peter Pan, and as well as Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Basically, the plot of the story is that every year, children are summoned to the Isle of Content, which is a star-shaped island on a star, to flee from the troubles of the Elder World, which is Earth. Once they come, they receive a luminescent, a glowing blue ball of light that keeps them young. So the idea is that the isle will be shaped like a star and have the same tropical look to it, like, you know, trees. I was thinking about making the star, like every single point of the star into a cliff. So it would be called the five cliffs because stars have like five points. The main reason why I’m really passionate about making a comic is because it is a form of expression, just like singing or dancing or even writing. And as a writer, I specialize in conveying stories through words. However, now that I’m slowly becoming a better artist, I wanted to try a new approach to my storytelling journey.
Abby Kim: Hello, my name is Abby Kim. It is currently February 9th, 2025. Now, as you know, a junior, I would say there’s a lot more challenges being in California. One of them being that when you’re trying to get recruited, a lot of college coaches, like I’ve had some college coaches tell us, we’re not recruiting any girls from California because they don’t trust the quality of players that are produced here. If I had to sum up recruiting process in one word, I would definitely say stress. I assumed, oh, the main gist of the recruitment process for athletes and field hockey are, I go to a tournament, coaches are there watching you and they will contact you and that is the end of that. While that’s true, that’s simply one factor out of a larger scheme of things. You send over film, you tell them hey I’m gonna be at this showcase please watch me, and you just constantly are kind of you’re kind of like a mosquito you constantly email them make sure that you’re building that relationship and that they know your name you go to their clinics, you just update them about everything, you send them your transcripts of you know, that year, that semester, you let them know what’s going on in your life, so it’s kind of like a report, you basically, you essentially just send them reports of updates of your life. So if you make one bad impression on one coach, you know that other coaches probably have heard of you and know you kind of have this reputation. And so it’s very tricky.
Olivia Ma: Hi, I’m Olivia. I’m a senior at BASIS Independent Fremont, and today is February 14th, Valentine’s Day. So today was my last day of high school. Not like I graduated or anything, but yeah, we ended all our classes and for the next trimester, so the next, I think, two and a half-ish months, I’ll be working on like my senior project. Basically like, I leave school, I do whatever research or volunteer or etc. project I want to do, come back in May and present on it. I don’t know, I was just, it was pretty sad this morning. I never thought that I would be the kind of person to cry leaving school like this. But then in English class today, my teacher who I’ve had since I was in fourth grade, and I started fourth grade when I was eight, so it’s been a long time, he’s my English teacher now and we have this tradition every Friday in our classes where we do like shout outs or like you shout out your family, friends, teachers, etc. And then you like tell the whole class. And on our last day, everyone gave a shout out to our teacher. And I don’t remember my specific note, but it went something along the lines of, shout out to Mr. Becher for being my teacher and mentor since fourth grade. Under your guidance, I’ve learned what a truly open and creative space has looked like. And I think I wouldn’t be who I am today without you. Having him as a teacher in a very, very STEM school, it’s just, it’s helped me so, so much and like with exploring all my interests. And I think he’s always been there to support me and like all of my classmates, no matter what. He’s a very very like understanding and sweet person. And I don’t know, I just started crying. Like everyone else was already crying and I saw everyone else like, okay, I might as well cry now. And then he went around giving everyone little shout outs too. He is like shoutout to Olivia for her passion, leadership and there was a third one but I don’t specifically remember it. But I remember crying in that class but I don’t know, I don’t really know how I’m feeling. I’m mostly just tired and wanna take a nap, but yeah.
Riya Minglani: This is Riya, and it’s March 2nd. What makes me super anxious is like University of Washington in Seattle. I hate that they say it’s just gonna come out March 1st to 15th. Give me a date, give me a date. What if I don’t get into like a super good school? Like are my friends gonna judge me? Like am I gonna feel like super dumb? Like all my friends get into these amazing schools and I get into no good schools? Like that, honestly, I know it’s bad, like I know it’s not healthy. But I think even talking to my own friends and talking about how they feel. They’re kind of like saying the same thing that what makes them like the most anxious is like kind of how other people will perceive their college decisions.
Something I’m so excited for, Senior Assassin. Senior Assassin is basically this game where seniors try to shoot other teams with water guns. I remember watching the seniors doing it last year and it looked like so much fun. I think it is a great way to distract from college applications and like to do something that’s fun and silly when everything feels so like scary.
[Sound of Senior Assassin]
Riya Minglani: Today is March 10th and I got into San Diego State this week on Tuesday and I’m so excited because it’s a great school. I love the campus, it’s such a beautiful campus. They have a really cool journalism program and it’s more affordable because it is in-state California CSU tuition. So options like that have made me a lot more excited.
Katrina Schwartz: After the break, the semester is ending. And the students are wrestling through some tough decisions.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That’s coming up right after this. Stay with us.
Abby Kim: Hello, this is Abby and today is 3-17. It is also a Monday. We have a dance coming up, but I just found out that it conflicts with one of my field hockey tournaments. And it is devastating. I do have to like call my friend and tell her cause like we planned it. We’re like, I told her, I was like, oh, I get to go to the school dance. And so I’m gonna have to tell her I cannot go. Personally, I’ve never gone to a single school dance in high school. I know she’ll be pretty upset about it cause we have been like talking about a lot. We’ve gone, you know, she’s been calling me for dress shopping. Here goes nothing.
Zia: Hey girl, I was literally just about to call you. So my parents said that we can get ready for prom together at my house. So then we can finish up our prom dress shopping and girl, we’re set, we going to prom.
Abby Kim: Zia.
Zia: I love you! Oh gosh, okay, Abby, wait, what?
Abby Kim: Look, I know we’ve been planning prom.
Zia: Oh, Abby.
Abby Kim: But…
Zia: No, Abby, don’t tell me, please, oh my god.
Abby Kim: I do have a big field hockey event.
Abby Kim: To give you a little bit more insight in what my final decision is when it comes to like athletics and my club. There’s one moment that I do very vividly recall. We were doing this drill and when it was my turn and I finished the drill, my coach stopped the whole drill, made everyone drop their sticks and pulled me to the front of all three lines and screamed at me. Essentially, she called me stupid and incompetent in one sentence. It was a moment that I’ll never forget. Now, every time I do a drill, I never wanna be the first in line because I’m so scared that I’m gonna mess up and get yelled at again. There’s this one time where we’re at a big tournament and I had sprained my ankle really badly and I remember telling a coach at a clinic, she just examined my foot and she said, it looks fine to me, I don’t know why you had to lie and say that you’re injured, just say that your tired. It ended up being that I tore three ligaments and my foot was black and blue when I couldn’t play for a month. Which I was told I wouldn’t be able to play for a month, but I ended up playing two weeks, only two weeks after that, because I had individual national selection tryouts, which I was dead set on going.
Oumou Cissé: So, I am interviewing my sister about comics, well, more specifically, my webcomic. So, why don’t you introduce yourself?
Fatoumata Cissé: My name is Fatoumata Cissé, I’m Oumou’s older sister, older, better, amazing, greater sister. I’m just kidding, she’s pretty great too.
Oumou Cissé: No you’re not the better sister, that’s not true. Okay, so first I’m going to have you look into my notebook. Okay, so the first, this side on the, your right, your left side is Seth. So this is just facial front. He’s the protagonist.
Fatoumata Cissé: I like the emotion here. I don’t like that. I like this. I like this but I would say his face is too long. If I had the liquified tool, I would just push his face up. But I really like this one. It’s a good perspective. And this one’s Ori, right? Yeah. I like Ori’s outline in her hair. It’s like the line art of her own hair. I like the stylistic effort in there, it’s giving Black Lightning.
Oumou Cissé: How do you think the story’s gonna end?
Fatoumata Cissé: Well, there could be two endings. One is like the Disney channel version and then one is like the Oumou Channel version. So the Disney channel version is like you know, like become friends again and they’re like, you know Seth is also a friend and everyone is kumbaya, right. The Oumou channel version is that Vin ends up killing Ori or something like that. Well, I just know this is going to be like a bad, not a bad ending, quote unquote, but like a sour, bittersweet ending. Go read her webtoon when it comes out. Probably going to come out, what, 2025, 2026?
Oumou Cissé: I’m thinking about whenever I get my drawing tablet, which is soon, I will start like getting used to it and then start drawing like probably the first episode. So maybe sometime near the end of this year or early next year.
Fatoumata Cissé: Okay, my deadline for you is December 31st, 2025.
Oumou Cissé: You’re diabolical. Okay, thank you so much for joining me. Goodbye.
Olivia Ma: Hi, it’s Olivia Ma, and today is March 11th. I haven’t been to school in a while and, you know, that’s given me time to pick up some new hobbies, so for one, I’ve gotten kind of into latte art. My mom’s been into it for a while, and she has an espresso machine, and you know I’ve like watched her do it before, but I was really busy this year, so I never really had any time to indulge in it. You know recently I’ve been getting into it a bit more because you know my mornings are open now I’m able to get up at what 9:30 and just chill and it’s a new thing that me and my mom do together, and it’s really really fun. [Sound of steaming milk] I’m so nervous okay, okay.
Olivia Ma’s Mom: Go, go!
Olivia Ma: Ok, that’s a shape. Oh wait, this is cute. Mommy, I know you’re a very, very ambitious person. You love, you don’t like wasting your time. You love to explore new things. So when I go to college, a lot of your time will be freed up, tell me what you’re gonna do with that time?
Olivia Ma’s Mom: Okay, that’s a good question. I have been thinking about that and preparing for that for last six months. So with you are gone to college, I’ll have definitely much more time for my work and my team. And I’ve been trying to take singing lessons which I really enjoy very much and other things as well. So I can see myself enjoy those personal hobbies very much and maybe adding new things and meeting new people, new friends. One thing I want to tell you Olivia is that I really enjoy the time we spend together. It’s very important for me and I hope it’s also very sweet memories for you. But now you are going to start a new chapter for your own life. I’m going to start a new chapter for my life too.
Riya Minglani: It’s March 12th, 2025. So I just got my University of Washington, Seattle decision back and I got rejected. And like my heart was racing so, so much when I saw it, like my first reaction was just to like laugh. But like after kind of sitting with it for a couple of like minutes, I’m feeling a lot sadder than I thought I would have. My tears welling up a little bit. Oh my god I’m graduating, like it hits me in waves. Like sometimes I’ll be just like in my friend’s car and like we’re gonna go get food, I’m like oh my god I’m graduating right now. I’m not feeling nostalgia or sadness but like talk to me in maybe even like three hours and like I’ll be crying or like when I listen to like certain songs for example like Ribs from Lorde. [Ribs by Lorde] Every time I hear that song, oh my god it just like is a knife to the heart, it just makes me feel so emotional about growing up.
[Ribs by Lorde]
Abby Kim: Hello, this is Abby Kim. After really sitting down and figuring out what’s gonna be the best for me, I ultimately decided that I will not be continuing on with the club that I’m currently at. It’s very difficult because I tied my self-value on my performance, therefore how I perceive myself is very much contingent on how well I perform as an athlete. I’m gonna essentially take a little break from club field hockey, focus on myself and still engage in active ID clinics and camps. Because I do love the sport, but I think that taking a little break from my club and focusing on myself a little bit and finding balance is something that I’m gonna really have to work on. Because I think with all that travel that I did during the school year, in the middle of the year, that messed me up a little and I have to find, hopefully that, that perfect medium again. I think if I were to approach a new club, I would enjoy the sport more than having to focus on being so technical. And I think that’s when I play the best. When I have the most fun, I play the best, I don’t let my thoughts take over and that’s where I really excel. So yeah, those are the next steps.
Oumou Cissé: Hi! It’s Oumou. Now that junior year is coming to an end, I’ve realized how much I hated this school year. To be honest, it’s probably one of my worst years yet out of my entire high school career. Not like academically but like socially and I’m not proud of it. The only good thing that happened this year was the like me making my webcomic which I’m really proud of that. My hopes for senior year are that I will be able to do better than this year. And I hope I can keep my perfect grade point average. I have a 4.0 GPA, woohoo. I guess I’d also like to find stability with my choices, such as like my career and my future goals and like making my web comic, of course.
I do hope that my peers and I can connect on a deeper level, because I feel like this year we definitely did get closer, but I wanna get even closer and I wanna really strengthen that friendship bond, especially with like the group of girls I usually hang out with. And of course, senior year is gonna be my last year at Summit Tamalpais, which means I can finally leave this school. My friends all know how much I wanna walk that stage and earn my diploma. I really wanna step outside of the confinements of my school, because it feels like a jail. I want to experience life for what it is and find my passion and my path and just follow it.
Olivia Ma: I think that I’m really excited to go to college because I’m going to have a lot more freedom to kind of do what I want. I’m gonna like try to explore as much stuff as I can. Like might sound, basically, joining new clubs. I love performing, and I’ve always wanted to do theater, but I never had time to in high school. So I’m really, really gonna try to dive deep into that when I go to college. I’ve also always wanted learn a second language. This might also come from my mom as well, because I don’t think she’s fluent in another language, but she loves French, and that kind of rubbed off on me. So I’d really love to learn a 2nd language too. And I also love to travel like her. I have very similar interests to her, so I will also really want to study abroad as soon as I can and get as many internships that aren’t super close to home. I don’t know if this part is a positive necessarily, but my mom and I both have this problem where we tend to get too excited and then we can over schedule and burn ourselves out. And I’m just gonna try to be very wary of that, but also try to explore as many avenues as I can.
Riya Minglani: Today is April 5th, 2025, and I finished getting all my college decisions. Um, I got rejected from Berkeley, which was really hard for me. I had an okay chance there and I was pretty sad and I got rejected. But it’s been a couple of days and I’m pretty much over it. Now I’m just kind of choosing what schools I’m going to based on like the options I have. Right now I’m kind of between Cal Poly Slo, like Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and University of Missouri. I wouldn’t say I’m like super disappointed with my college results. Everything still feels so up in the air because I have a lot of wait lists I’m waiting for. Everything still feels like kind of up in the air, which kind of sucks because I, you know, the one thing that’s good about college app season is that it ends. So yeah, a lot is still kind of unwrapped, unfinished, but I’m feeling a lot better than I was a couple weeks ago where I was super, super anxious and just stressed. I think what this college app season has taught me is it’s so stressful to always be thinking about like the past and the future and the best thing you can do for yourself is just like think of the moment. When I’m worried about something it like consumes my whole entire body and my whole entire life, kind of learn like that’s not really the best way to live and I’m slowly being becoming better at that I would like to think.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was Riya Minglani, Olivia Ma, Abby Kim, Oumou Cissé, students on KQED’s Youth Advisory board.
Katrina Schwartz: This episode was produced by: Jessica Kariisa, Alan Montecillo, Kyana Moghadam, Olivia Allen-Price, Gabriela Glueck, Christopher Beale. And us, Katrina Schwartz and Ericka Cruz Guevarra.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: With extra support from: Randall Depew, Cheyanne Bearfoot,, Mel Velasquez, Katie Springer, Jen Chien, Alana Walker, Holly Kernan.
Katrina Schwartz: And everyone on team KQED.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Music courtesy of Audio Network and Blue Dot Sessions. Funding for the Bay is provided in part by the Osher Production fund.
Katrina Schwartz: Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.
