When she entered high school, senior Avery Wang wasn’t sure if she should continue yearbook, which she had done for two years in middle school. She decided to pay a visit to the then journalism advisor Ed Larsen, who said she could join Yearbook her freshman year without taking an introductory journalism class, and she decided to give it a shot.

“I don’t think I truly understood how much I actually liked yearbook until high school,” Wang said.

She enjoyed it so much that she participated in it for four years and became co-editor. 

Wang will be attending UT this fall and majoring in Physics. 

“I look forward to attending a college that’s away from home that quite a few of my friends will also be attending,” Wang said. “Austin is a really nice area, so I think it would be fun to take some hiking trips or just explore the city with my friends. I also really look forward to being able to focus on an area of study that I am genuinely interested in. UT has a really great Physics program, so it’ll be fun to get to work with the professors and a group of students who share similar interests.”

Wang, who ranked ninth in her class, was automatically accepted to UT since she made the top 6 % cutoff

“I think some things that have helped me academically have been learning how to keep focused on the future and not dwelling on the past,” Wang said. “It’s easy to get caught up in regrets and to beat yourself up over things that happened, such as underperforming where you could’ve done better, but once I realized that it’s much more beneficial to just learn from these experiences and move forward instead of wallowing in misery, my academic career has gone by much more smoothly and it’s also helped me avoid burnout. Another thing that has helped me has been flexibility. I used to be a lot more stubborn about doing things in certain ways, whether that be studying or getting work done, but I figured out that the same method doesn’t always work for different classes, so it’s important to be able to adjust yourself to different environments.”

Her flexibility and growth mindset helped her become a national merit finalist and receive a dependent scholarship from Chevron (her father’s job at Chevron). On the extracurricular side, she was involved in Art Honor Society, Photography Club, Track and Field and Chinese, though she was “in and out of” these clubs. 

“I am in Key Club and held the position of historian for two years,” Wang said. “I have also volunteered for some cultural organizations outside of school such as Taiwanese Youth Society and Formosa Association of Student Cultural Ambassadors I earned the President’s Volunteer Service Award in these two organizations.”

Nevertheless, she was most involved in Yearbook: she was a member of the national journalism honor roll and the yearbook she edited was selected as a national sample by Balfour, a yearbook publishing company.

“My favorite part is getting to work with a new group of people every year,” Wang said. “The dynamic of our team changes with every school year, and it’s really fun to see how that reflects in our book. This aspect of yearbook has also helped me a lot with developing leadership skills and learning how to adapt to different work environments.”