Alexis Shim, Junior - Interview Conducted by Nora Wagner
Thursday, October 21, 2021: It is 2:00 pm - the final period of the school day! The rain is falling, the clouds are darkening, and students are huddling in the library for shelter. Despite the weather, the mood is light, and the Human of CPS makes small talk as we get ready for the year’s fourth student interview. I click record. “Welcome, Alexis.” The interview has begun…
Nora: What movie title do you think best sums up your life?
Alexis: Right now I’m really feeling the gifted kid burnout syndrome. Um… *laughs* maybe that’s a little too personal. But, yeah. Definitely Misadventures of a Giftted Burnout Child. Yeah, it’s sort of Diary of a Wimpy Kid-esque.
Nora: What was your dream job when you were younger? Has that dream job changed as you’ve matured?
Alexis: I feel like… My mom was a lawyer, so for a while I also wanted to be a lawyer. She also always said that I’d make a good lawyer. I also kind of wanted to be an actor, but I never really took that seriously. I didn’t think I had that level of talent. Like, who’s going to cast me? *laughs* Now I’d really love to be an artist. I don’t know the specifics, but maybe to go into illustration or animation… I think that’d be really cool.
Nora: What’s your favorite CPS memory?
Alexis: It’s hard, because I lost almost an entire year to COVID. So, I have to think all the way back to freshman year which feels like miles away. Let’s see. I do remember the fall play from freshman year, Radium Girls, because the entire experience in general is such a good memory for me. It was one of the first times I really felt like I belonged in this community. I was, like, new to the school, and I didn’t know what I was doing as a freshman. Specifically, I think the last show, because there are so many traditions we do. There are *laughs* secret drama things that I can’t spoil. But yeah. The entire experience of being in Radium Girls was really nice.
Nora: What fictional universe would you most like to live in and why?
Alexis: That’s a good question! I mean, fifth grade me would’ve said Harry Potter for sure. But like… now I’m trying to think of something a little more creative. I’d probably say Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not the time period when there’s war and stuff, but when it’s nice and peaceful. That’d be a really cool world to live in.
Nora: Do you have any weird special talents?
Alexis: Wow, it’s hard to come up with something out of the blue. I know there must be something. Well, I did learn the alphabet backwards in preschool. But let’s see, what else… I’m pretty good at identifying flavors of things. Like, if I was blindfolded and you gave me some food, I’d be pretty okay at guessing what it’s made up of.
Nora: From what I’ve seen around campus, I can tell that you make a lot of your own clothes. Can you tell me about how you got into that and what the process is like?
Alexis: I learned how to crochet when I was little—third grade or something. For a long time I’ve had that muscle memory, but I picked it back up during quarantine. I didn’t have anything to do and crocheting seemed like a good hobby. It’s pretty mindless, and you can do it while watching other things.
I mostly follow YouTube tutorials and make edits to the pattern as I feel like. It’s usually a combination of my own pattern-making plus whatever YouTube tutorial I’ve chosen to follow. I’m just too lazy to pay for patterns *laughs*. Generally, I’m also just not great at following written patterns. You can crochet—probably knit too—without a written pattern. After that, I just need to get my supplies. It takes me… I mean, I crochet during school, but it used to take me only a couple of weeks—maybe a month—to complete a project. But now projects typically take around two months, because I don’t have as much time. Yeah, it really just starts with finding a picture of something I like on Pinterest and then trying to recreate it.
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