Interview conducted by Samana Siddiqui
Thursday, November 9th, the day before Global Faire. It’s a little chilly out, but the sun is shining. Ka and I make our way to a bench on the Gym Deck as they offer me a confection they baked for Global Faire. I munch on it as we sit down and the interview commences.
Samana: Okay! Welcome.
Ka: Helloo.
Samana: What's something you're passionate about?
Ka: I mean, baking! As you can see. (laughs) But yeah, definitely baking. I'm planning on going to culinary school and working before college, so you know, that's gonna be fun.
Samana: (brief pause while chewing) -I can tell you're going to be great.
Ka: (laughs) Thank you.
Samana: Okay, what's one of your favorite songs?
Ka: Lemme pull out my phone. I'm terrible at anything with names, but I do know what they sound like… I just need to track it down in one of my like, fifty playlists- one of my three playlists- I don’t have that many playlists.
Ka: Ah sh[oot]- that's the wrong button. I'm gonna swear, you're probably gonna have to cut out the swearing. Let's see... I'd have to say- oh! I am a really big fan of DGT Off And On. It's a song from a Romanian artist. Okay, I’m half Bulgarian so I like the sound of Slavik languages sometimes. There's not that much Bulgarian music out there, so I make do. But yeah it’s a good song.
Samana: Mkay, what's one item on your bucket list?
Ka: Bucket list eh? Oh, I’ve got to do laser tag sometime…
Samana: You haven’t done laser tag?
Ka: I haven’t! I need to, yeah that’s definitely on the to-do list.
Samana: Are there any items that used to be on your bucket list which you’ve done throughout high school?
Ka: Ah, talking to strangers online? I just like making online friends; I suppose I've done that now.
Samana: How have you changed during your time at CPS?
Ka: You would not recognize me from before CPS. I’m an entirely different person. For starters, I was not on my antidepressants. But I've changed a lot- I used to be really socially anxious. Maybe that's just the drugs. By drugs, I mean antidepressants, for legal reasons.
(collective laughter)
Ka: No it's actually antidepressants.
Samana: Okay-
Ka: Um but yeah, probably I'm less anxious now. I’d say I’m probably calmer as well.
Samana: …“Ka”-mer…
(collective laughter)
Ka: Oh- My name also changed! I changed my name in sophomore year, but I used to be a lot more hyper than I am now.
Samana: Woah okay. Solid. And last question. What's one of your favorite CPS memories?
Ka: Oh, this one’s interesting. Ooh, here's a good one. I think it was my sophomore year– you know Malaya?
Samana: Mhm yeah.
Ka: I don't know if you've interviewed her yet or not. But, during sophomore year, we organized like a Common Classroom Easter egg hunt.
Samana: Oh that’s so fun!
Ka: So essentially, I think I had 30 people max or 20 people max, but we took over the second half of the campus. And for the few days before that, we were making chocolates. Like we made homemade chocolates. So well, Malaya actually knew how to make them before because she made chocolates for Valentine's day before that. So we just kind of went over to my house and did that and then we also made this cake that was like half chocolate half vanilla that we decorated. It was a bunch of fun.
Samana: Yeah, no that sounds great-
Ka: Yeeeah.
Samana: It must have been a lot of work.
Ka: Oh, yeah. Also, I ended up trying to do a coding thing where like people cross off the eggs they found because we numbered them so we’d know when one was still missing. There’s probably still eggs on campus, somewhere, rotting away– or someone found them like two years ago and we don't know, eh, or someone just forgot to cross stuff out- anyways.
Samana: (laughs) And that's all! So thank you.
Ka: Alllriight! Thank you.