Our students are the heart of what we do. Whether they are just beginning their high school journey or have moved on their dream schools, their stories are our inspiration.
Anika: Learning to live with the questions.
Driven by a desire to answer big questions, Anika has always sought to understand the world through healing. Before becoming a biomedical engineering major and Robertson Scholar at Duke University, Anika started with ReadyEdgeGo at the beginning of her journey to answer the question: what gives my life purpose? Now, she’s learning to embrace living with the questions.
Anika embodies the depth and breadth of impact we encourage our students to consider when committing to herself and others. From baking, singing, and photography to founding an educational non-profit and wellness initiative, she has consistently given her all. Here are some ways Anika has found purpose in her pursuits.
Finding Purpose through Impact
Yobea
Growing up in her parents daycare, Anika was always inspired by the creativity of an unstructured learning environment. However, as she progressed through elementary, and eventually middle school, learning became increasingly structured and less joyful. Wanting to combat this demoralizing experience for students with lack of access and little privilege, Anika founded her non-profit, Yobea (Youth Beacon) to expose students to STEAM education and prepare them for a world of innovation. After four years of dedicated hard work and determination, Yobea has grown to serve over 600 students in 30 schools across 17 national and international locations.
Wellness Initiative
During COVID, Anika noticed a precipitous drop in mental wellness in herself and amongst her peers. Hoping to understand the nature of this collective ennui, she designed a survey to figure out: where has the motivation gone? Even after returning to in-person learning, her friends complained of no longer feeling engaged with their work; it was a feeling Anika shared as well. Surveying the same students, she found not much had changed. Wanting to find a solution to a growing wellness gap, Anika took her findings to her school counselors and other student-serving organizations. The result? A wellness task force at Fremont Unified School District dedicated to finding solutions to promote student health and wellness.
Finding Purpose through Creation
Photography
For four consecutive years, Anika participated in the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)’s Reflections Art competition, which has 5 levels: school, district, regional, state, and national. Students’ entries rise up the hierarchy as they succeed in each stage of the competition to ultimately reach the national level, where about 200 students are given awards of excellence out of 300,000+ participants.
Inspired by her history teacher’s lesson on the fourth industrial revolution and the emerging prevalence of AI in our lives, she created a photo showing me deteriorating (pixilated, to represent AI), with her mom’s hand holding her together, representing how while AI may change the world, it will never represent the bonds we share with one another.
(Photo: Anika Mohan)
Her photo progressed past the school, city, district, and state levels to the national level, where she won an Award of Excellence and Young Artist’s Scholarship in the High School Photography division.
Mr Drop
Mr. Drop (mrdrop.carrd.co) is a medical device Anika’s SIMR (Stanford Institutes of Medicine Summer Research Program) team created. The device aims to improve the administration of eye medication (eye drops) among pediatric, elderly, and motion/vision impaired patients, as well as animals, who are also known to be difficult to administer eye medication to. The device is especially applicable to individuals with diseases like glaucoma and cataract, who often must administer eye drops multiple times a week for years.
Mr. Drop is a handheld device (about the size of a hairbrush) that works by creating a mist out of eye drops to make them easier to dispense, having them disperse over a longer period of time such that medication enters the eye even if the user blinks. This not only improves the efficacy of medication delivery, it also reduces medical waste due to the lower number of drops needed to enter the eye.
Finding Purpose through Connection
Singing
Over the past 13 years, Anika has learned from from a diversity of vocal instructors and fellow singers. From her very first Indian classical singing class at age 5 to her most recent experiences performing at Carnegie Hall and National Honor Choir, singing in choirs and ensembles has allowed her to experience perspectives she would have otherwise never encountered. According to Anika, “Every piece is composed with a connotation and event in mind, and yet, when we perform the piece as a choir, the memory each individual recalls is distinct in its events, yet alike in the emotion it portrays. Furthermore, I’ve made some of my best friends through the experience of bonding on the level of vulnerability and insight music provides.”
Mentoring
In all her activities, Anika finds pathways to mentor younger students in the hopes of providing them with the same opportunities and insights she has learned and received along the way. Even though she is now in her first year at Duke University, Anika still finds the time to make herself available to the students who have created their own Yobea chapters, aspiring photographers, and to our never-ending gratitude, ReadyEdgeGo students who need to hear from someone who has been in their shoes.
We, as mentors, are so incredibly proud of the mentor Anika has become to others.
