Ready for the Ivy League Challenge?

Transcript

SPEAKER A

Welcome back to season two of the Ivy League Prep Academy Podcast. Equipping you to successfully pursue the college of your dreams. We believe everyone deserves to reach their full potential, and the admissions process shouldn't hold you back. Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I'm so excited today to talk to Claire Kim. We have a junior in high school who has just gone through the Ivy League Challenge and has an incredible story to tell because if I'm not mistaken here, your mother was really excited about the program. You were really hesitant because you were so busy, but you eventually decided to join. And I just love to hear your story and let you share that story with the rest of the listeners. Also, you're doing some amazing things with your Impact Project. And to be honest, I kind of think that among the thousands of listeners of this podcast, there may be someone who says, OOH, that's an incredible idea. You might be inspiring, able to inspire someone through your Impact Project idea. Or potentially someone could even reach out to you and collaborate with you. So, Claire Kim, thank you so much for joining us today and being willing to share your story with us.

SPEAKER B

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER A

Oh, so exciting. So, let's start from before you began the program. Like I said in my kind of very quick introduction, you're a junior in high school, really busy with lots of difficult AP classes, with cello, with softball. So you're in all of the really time consuming things, heavy academics, music, not just music at school, right. You also work on your own private ensemble and then athletic team. So tell me about what life was like when your mom came to you and said, hey, here's this program you should consider. Can you walk us through that story? What was it like?

SPEAKER B

Yeah, so I just remember it was like right after dinner, I was trying to sit down to do my homework, and my mom came up to me saying, hey, Claire, there's this really great program I found online. I really think you should check it out. It's this thing called the Ivy League challenge. I know you've been super stressed, super busy. It'll be 2 hours for twelve weeks on Sunday nights, but I think it'll be really good for you. And initially, I have to say, when I heard that the first time, I was like 2 hours on Sunday nights. That's when I do all my homework and practice my cello and have softball practice. I don't know if it'll be I know it'll be good, but I don't know if it's worth trying to give up that time to get more out of it. And so this was coming out, this was at the end of sophomore year, and sophomore year was not a workable lifestyle. I mean, I ended up taking tests on three and a half hours of sleep, starting to fall asleep in my classes. I mean, my grades were going down with less sleep. It was not good. But I knew something needed to change. But it was really hard for me to say yes to making that change and committing to that because I was worried, what if it doesn't work? What if I'm just sacrificing time and then nothing gets better and it's actually only making things worse? Luckily, I can definitely say I ended up getting so much more out of those 2 hours every week than I even imagined when I was starting. And honestly, now I feel like I can get so much more done. Even during the cohort, I was getting more done on Sundays than I had been with those additional 2 hours.

SPEAKER A

Amazing. That's incredible. I guess there are about three different ways I want to take this conversation now. So we'll just start with one and we'll go from there. So why do you feel like you're getting more done with less time than if we're taking 2 hours? Is a big chunk of your awake time on Sundays, why are you getting more done, would you say?

SPEAKER B

I remember the first week I was expecting this college prep, here's how to get into college, here's how to stand out. And it was, Guys, you need to make sure you're breathing, sleeping and drinking water. And that kind of blew me away. You were like, you guys need to be getting 9 hours of sleep. And I was thinking, I get an average of four to five during the school year. How am I supposed to almost double that amount of sleep? And so I tried. I mean, I started getting six 7 hours of sleep. I made a conscious effort to drink water, to breathe more. And that really just put me physically in the right space to be so much more productive. And then on top of that, with all the tips and strategies to being more productive with taking breaks, taking productive breaks, I just feel like it's made when I do sit down to do my work, I'm just that much more efficient.

SPEAKER A

Wow. Amazing. So that first week that you're talking about, I jump in with this. Not only are your ambitions okay and should be celebrated, not discouraged, which some adults in the world discourage ambitious teens. And that's because a lot of ambitious teens have some unhealthy approaches to their ambition. So we should not only celebrate that ambition, but also it's common sense stuff that often makes the biggest difference because that common sense is not common practice. And so I imagine you already knew that sleep was important. Why did that first class cause you to say, oh, how am I going to do this? Instead of, yeah, right, whatever? Because I imagine if someone comes to you and says, you need to be getting more sleep, as most teenagers that are listening in, they're literally saying, wait, why did she say, okay, let me try to figure out how to get more sleep. Everyone knows they're supposed to get more sleep. So what was the big deal about that first class that made you feel like, oh, maybe I should actually get more sleep? Maybe this common sense thing should become common practice for me?

SPEAKER B

Yeah, the first time you said it, I was like, yeah, I don't get enough sleep. I know that. I've known that, but I can't really do anything about that. It's kind of a non negotiable. I have to get these things done. There's no way to do it unless I give up some sleep. But then you started going into the science behind it and pointing out that you hit a certain point and you're operating on a negative. You're being actually less productive, staying up that extra hour. And, I mean, I've definitely experienced that, trying to push one more hour, 30 more minutes at 12:00 A.m., 01:00 A.m., if I just get this done, it'll be fine, it'll work out, and then it doesn't work. And I came into this knowing that that wasn't what I wanted to be doing. I didn't want to be going to school on, like, three and a half hours of sleep. And so I think I was just in a better place to receive that advice and try to implement it.

SPEAKER A

Beautiful. Okay. All right. So for whatever reason, the stars aligned, and you realized, okay, I've tried to get by on unhealthy amounts of sleep and not take care of myself, my mind, my body. And sure enough, just like what Steve is saying, when your body can't support your ambitions, then you fall apart. Right. You can't go as far if you don't take care of yourself and take care of your mind. Right. So wonderful. All right, so that is really exciting to hear. I'm also curious about if we can kind of rewind back to your first reply and telling this story sophomore year, then is when your mom brought this up to you. And I'm curious. I believe that you had listened to some of my podcast at that time, or did she just approach you out of the blue and say, you should do the class?

SPEAKER B

I had listened to a couple of podcasts before. I don't remember which ones, but okay. I know I'd listened to a couple. My mom likes to find things and send things to me. So I listened to a couple, and I was like, oh, this sounds really good. And then she found out about the Ivy League challenge, and then she sent it to me like, hey, you should think about this.

SPEAKER A

Got it. Amazing. Okay, so eventually you decided that you should give it a try. Can you define for us what was the problem or the challenge that you were trying to solve or overcome that made you say, you know what? Getting help in overcoming this challenge is worth giving up 2 hours every Sunday even though those 2 hours are so precious to me. What was the challenge you were trying to overcome?

SPEAKER B

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing for me at that time, end of sophomore year, beginning of junior year, college is starting to become real for me. I can't ignore it. I can't just say, oh, it's over two years away. I'm just sophomore. That was really easy for me to do, and I was getting to the point where I would get really stressed and I'd feel overwhelmed trying to think about the future, think about college. It seemed still really far away and super big. It seems like this big decision, this big, not quite life defining, but near. And I was worried about trying to stand out, trying to be different, trying to be interesting, because I felt like especially at my school, everyone's doing the well rounded thing. I felt like I wasn't doing anything unique and seeing reading even on your website on an impact project and that just seemed really exciting to me, and I wanted to learn more about myself and I thought that was a really unique approach to this. That seemed much more logical than just throwing myself at it constantly.

SPEAKER A

Yeah, okay, so you felt at sophomore year, it felt like it was confusing and overwhelming, but you could at least push it off into the horizon. So it was this horrible thing that eventually would come, but eventually was not today. So today you can still live your life, but eventually did come and you said, okay, now there's no way around this. And I just want to point out to those listeners, parents, teachers, college counselors, guidance counselors, and teens I know I have a wide range of listeners here. Actually effective, healthy college prep is not intimidating or overwhelming. It's not something that you say, this is this horrible demon that's off in the future. I'm glad I don't have to face it today. If you actually approach college prep in a way that's healthy, in a way that's more effective, then it's healthy and it's something that builds your confidence early on. There's no reason. I know so many people want to protect young kids and say, don't worry about college in middle school or even in freshman year, grade eight, grade nine, that's way too early. You should still be exploring, and yes, you should be exploring that's part of college prep, but don't be afraid of college and don't be afraid of college prep. It's wonderful. It's so healthy and so inspiring, and it brings out the best in you if you do it right. If you don't, then, yeah, it can feel like this monster off in the distance that you want to put off as long as possible. It sounds like you were trying to put off the monster, and it felt like a monster because it was so confusing, it was so unclear how to prepare well, it felt like the only way to prepare was to be better than everyone at absolutely everything. And that's unreasonable. And so let's just not think about it today. Let's just get through today.

SPEAKER B

Exactly. And honestly, I wish I had decided to do this earlier because I learned so much, and I feel like if I had done this earlier, I'd have just so much more time to really go more in depth, apply myself more, do a full Impact Project. I feel like that would have been just such a blessing.

SPEAKER A

Amazing. All right, so you faced this real serious problem. It felt completely overwhelming. You wish you could put it off, you couldn't, so you had to do something. And then even amongst all of that, you still were really resistant, because what if it doesn't work? What if the Ivy League challenge doesn't help you the way that Steve says it might, or the way that your mom hopes it will? What is life like now, having been through the challenge?

SPEAKER B

I feel so much better, just even as a junior with much, much more work, more things on my plate than as a sophomore. Like I said earlier, I feel like I'm getting so much more done in less time. I feel more self assured and confident in that what I'm doing is the right thing to be doing now. Having gone through and figuring out my core values was a big part of that for me. Being able to articulate that in a couple of words and saying, okay, these are what really matter to me, and everything I should do should help point back to that. So being able to cut out extraneous activities and reevaluate and reprioritize, that was really big for me.

SPEAKER A

Wow, that's huge. Can you take me to the moment in the course? This is a twelve week course, right? We meet every week. And whether that moment was outside of class or inside of class, maybe you were doing one of the assignments, or maybe it was a conversation during class, but can you take us to the moment where it dawned on you that, hey, this is actually solving the problem that I had? That demon, the scary college prep demon. I'm actually not scared of it anymore. Was there a moment, or can you take us to that moment where you realized that?

SPEAKER B

I think I had two kind of epiphany moments. The first is, it was the first time I felt really excited about the future. I think it was the first week we started talking about the Impact Project. After class, I felt myself really excited, really optimistic to see where this would end up. I had all sorts of preliminary ideas floating around, and I was just, for the first time, not stressed, not worrying, not feeling overwhelmed about what could come, but really, really looking forward to it.

SPEAKER A

Wow.

SPEAKER B

And then the second this is not necessarily the turning point of tackling the college monster but personally, the first time we did the activity audit, and I realized, oh, my schedule is not aligning with my core values and not aligning with what I want to be doing. I'm taking, currently four APS. I'll take four exams. I'm taking five AP classes, and some of those are huge. Time sucks, and they're taking away time from what I really want to be doing. So realizing that I don't have to be taking all the hard classes all the time to still excel and do well and get into college, that was big for me.

SPEAKER A

Amazing. Okay, this is so fun to hear. So let's talk about that alignment and your Impact Project. I know there are going to be people listening, and you've had very little time, so let's be clear about that. You've had to kind of really learn and build at the same time. You haven't had a chance to kind of digest everything and then get started, start small, build momentum. But talk to us about your Impact Project today. Perhaps even I love. Over the course of the Ivy League challenge, one of the things that I always do is I stay in the Zoom Room after class until everyone has left. And that way, anyone who needs one on one help with anything they have, questions or whatever else, I'm there. And I can answer those questions at least once a week. And of course, I think you and I met once in between classes as well, just because we needed a longer conversation, which was wonderful. So I've had some updates. As far as the progression of your Impact Project is concerned, can you kind of talk us through your initial ideas and how it has evolved and where it is today?

SPEAKER B

Right. So when I first started, I have a huge passion for Stem, and I love to build things, and it's just been a huge part of my life, and I also enjoy teaching others. I help coach a lot. I do a lot of tutoring. And so I said, I want to help bring this love of Stem that I have to other kids who might not have this opportunity to be exposed to this or to take part in this.

SPEAKER A

A lot of teens are scared of Stem, right? They feel like, oh, that's the hard stuff. That's the smart people stuff.

SPEAKER B

I've had people come to me saying, oh, my gosh, that's so cool. That seems so hard. And to me, it's doable. Even you can do it. Anyone can do it. And so that was a huge thing I saw, and I wanted to help change that. I wanted to show, hey, anyone can do Stem. It's not just this exclusive thing on a pedestal that's reserved for the extremely smart people, because I don't consider myself an extremely smart person, but I can do Stem. Anyone can do stem. And so I started with wanting to do a conference for women in stem particularly. And as I reached out with that, I was able to connect with a past Ivy Challenge alumni who was able to give me a ton of really great insight. And then as I was flushing through my ideas, I stayed back a bunch of weeks to talk with Mr. Gardner and bounce ideas off of him, and my thoughts started to change and progress. And now currently, my idea is to do engineering workshops for students in middle school. And this would be to teach them the engineering design process. To show them how to given a problem here's how you can attack it and break it down and then collaborate and brainstorm. Because I believe that is a super important part of engineering that collaboration. Step and brainstorming. Just like I've done for this project. You have to go through a bunch of iterative processes and then prototyping and learning to fail fast when you are progressing down a path that's not quite sustainable and then building that out and refining your idea and then presenting it. And in the future, I'm planning on doing local workshops. I was able to connect with another girl in my cohort, Alexis, who's also interested in bringing Stem education and awareness to students in her area, and ishita in one of the previous cohorts who did this already and has some really great perspective having done it before. So being able to collaborate with them to do sort of an interstate, maybe online hybrid activity, and then ultimately this would be just amazing. I'd love to take it global to I have contacts in Mexico through my church, or perhaps even to Japan. I've been studying Japanese for eleven years now. I started in elementary school, and I'd love to do a minor in East Asian Studies. Japanese is something that's equally integral to me, I believe, as Stem. So being able to combine these two.

SPEAKER A

Would just be fantastic, so amazing, and it is evolving quickly. So you say that you're collaborating with these other alumni of the Ivy League Challenge, which is true, but together you're figuring out how to do part of the conference, part of the kind of workshop over Zoom so that each of you can participate in each other's conferences, you can help each other and participate. And suddenly you go from having organized one conference in one local area, or three or four. Over time, you'll continue to expand that to having taught this in multiple states and then very quickly overseas. And I love also something that you didn't mention yet, but that is happening. We talked a lot in phase three of the Ivy League Challenge about outreach and finding experts and finding collaboration partners, people to work with. And so I know that you're actively doing outreach to schools in Japan, people in Japan schools, and someone in particular that looks very promising in Mexico. And I'm just excited to see how this takes off. And so those of you who are listening in, even if you're in the United States or outside of the United States, right. You can see Claire's ambition is to go and to help girls. And primarily you're working with middle school girls, right? Not necessarily. Yeah. So to help middle school girls, there's such this really unnecessary and harmful imbalance in the Stem world in academia, a gender imbalance where we really need to support girls in these different subject areas in Stem. And so the conference that she's setting up and it's phenomenal. I'll just pitch just a little bit, if I could. Ishita, who she mentioned as one of the kind of partners that's helping to organize this, ishida took her research and her method of teaching middle school girls how to conduct research and how to present that research. And all of her expenses were paid to go to Harvard, to present her research there at Harvard. And like you said, Alexis and Nashita and you, all three of you working together have done some really cool things already. And so those of you who are listening in and feel like, hey, I've got a classroom of middle school girls that would love a workshop over Zoom or would love to get the help of someone like Claire Ishida. Actually, I've interviewed previously on this podcast so people can find that ishida Koparapu and that interview so you can get to know the girls who would be teaching this camp. If you'd like to reach out to Claire, anyone can reach out to me, and I would be happy to forward those messages over I'm at theiv [email protected]. Claire, one last thought, and maybe you have something else you wanted to share. But one last thought for those parents and teens who are listening in, who are considering the Ivy League Challenge. Some of them are younger, 7th grade, 8th grade. Some of them are juniors. And on each side of this, I always tell the parents and teens that the perfect window is generally the beginning of 8th grade until the end of 10th grade, because your brain has developed enough that you can figure out your core values by about 8th grade, and you're not too busy through 10th grade. But 11th grade gets really, really difficult. So sometimes I have questions on either side of those extremes. Either the 7th grader, 8th grader students who feel like, is it too young? Or the 11th grade students who feel like they're just too busy. Even if it would have been a great idea, it's too late now. I'd love to hear your thoughts, because in the cohort, there were plenty of people who were younger. You've seen this and you can imagine what it would be like if you were younger. And also, you are living that super duper busy junior experience, and you took it on, and we've already heard your results for yourself. But what advice would you have to those parents and teens listening in who are on the fence about this program.

SPEAKER B

I would just do it. I would just commit and do it. You will get so much more out of this than you might even think that you will. And I mean, for me in my cohort, I think we had a 7th grader, she was in middle school and I was just blown away at how much she was able to the ideas she had. And it was super inspiring for me seeing that even these younger kids are going to make such an impact starting this early. And it's not the whole start early to prep even more, but I would definitely do it, do it yet, sooner rather than later. Personally, I would have liked to do that. I don't think that a 7th or an 8th grader would be too young for this, because it really is meeting you where you are and helping you do what you can do. And then these are skills that will be applicable and helpful for really the rest of my life to help me grow and having more time to work on that is really awesome.

SPEAKER A

Claire, thank you so much. And what about from the junior perspective? How do you feel for those kids who are listening in and saying I wish I could, I really do, I just can't fit it in, there's just no way.

SPEAKER B

I'd laugh at myself now because I definitely said that and if I heard myself say this now three months ago, I would have been like, no way. But honestly, if you're saying that, then you really, really need to be doing it. Because I was one of those kids and I think I needed this the most because what I was doing was not going to work and it was not going to be sustainable. And so me not thinking I had 2 hours, I couldn't rearrange stuff just to come for 2 hours and learn some more. That should have been telling for me.

SPEAKER A

That'S the evidence that you need it more than anyone else. Oh Claire, that's so wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your incredible story, sharing your wisdom, and thank you for executing on this incredible Impact Project. I know it's just the beginning, even though you're finishing up your first semester of junior year now you have the winter break and then you have next semester and you'll have all summer and I can see the ideas bubbling up and I've heard you talk about potential ideas on how to expand this. I can't wait to see what happens with your ideas and your impact project. The small seed that is being planted now in creating these workshops is going to become something amazing over the next ten months before you apply to college. And I just can't wait to see how you grow as a human being. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your story and your wisdom. And thank you for being open to help those listeners who might reach out with either questions for guidance or to join your team and help support you as you continue to support these girls in Stem. And thank you for supporting girls in Stem as a teacher, as a high school teacher. The world needs more women in Stem. It's just that's the reality. The world is going to be a better place because of you. And thank you for all that you're doing.

SPEAKER B

Of course. I mean, thank you. This wouldn't have been possible if not for this course in those three months that I spent with my Cohort. And it was just amazing.