Written by Ananya Balaji, Aram Sei Intern
2 debaters. 2 Swifties. 2 Carnatic music students. 1 Zoom call. I came into my interview with Sandhya not sure of what more we could have in common. But as our conversation extended, the thing I became most unsure of was where I would even begin writing with an interviewee as amazing as Sandhya!
Above all, Sandhya is a super genuine person. She speaks with a fresh passion for what she does, and finds herself enthralled in new things everyday. As a passionate debater, she enjoys diving really deep into her research, which she finds as one of her strengths as a debater. As a Carnatic music student, she enjoys immersing herself in music, whether it be in the silence of her room listening with her headphones, or on stage when giving a performance. In her own words, Sandhya finds herself as someone reliable, focused, and hardworking. She extends her ability to dive deep into all the things as her super-power, constantly working hard and in her zone even with less exciting things like school work.
Diving deeper into some other things about Sandhya, one of her other favorite things to do is just watch T.V. She often finds herself accidentally emulating her favorite character’s behaviors, like Leslie in Parks and Rec. Among her many titles, one of Sandhya’s secret ones is “chef.” As an avid baker, Sandhya and I bonded over one of our favorite shows, Just Add Magic, where 3 friends solve mysteries with their magical cookbook. However, one rather apparent title of Sandhya’s is “bookworm.” Her love for reading is so raw and one major thing I left our conversation with was an abundance of wonderful mystery novel recommendations, which is Sandhya’s favorite genre.
In the past several months, Sandhya has been serving as Aram Sei’s marketing intern.When talking about one of her biggest takeaways from the internship, she adds, “I found myself thinking a lot more from the perspective of someone in marketing. Even in things like school projects, I learned how to think about how people receive things instead of just the project alone.” Her favorite part of the internship was organizing the youth drive. She explains,“I haven’t planned anything this intensive before, and when we got to do it, we were so busy that I thought I would hate having to do all this work over winter break. But I actually ended up having so much fun! It was like every moment after each meeting was just in anticipation of what’s coming next and I was just thinking of what I could do to help.” Sandhya also adds, “It was really cool watching something be built from scratch with all of us working towards a common goal. It really made me realize the amount of teamwork and intricacy it takes to make something successful, and I think we really got to learn that from our mentors and other Aram Sei volunteers. Watching them coordinate things together to make an entire nonprofit successful was so inspiring even just in the context of our small drive.” One other part of her internship that Sandhya really enjoyed was the Aram Sei 101 sessions. She discovered a lot of the specific parts of running a business or nonprofit that she really liked through these sessions. In the near future, Sandhya hopes to extend her knowledge from the internship to a tutoring service she has, Path to Excellent Math, that she runs. She donates her profits to various charities. In the areas of marketing, she’d like to re-brand her business and advertise more widely by utilizing skills she learned through her internship. She also hopes to invest the profits of her tutoring into furthering education efforts for the underprivileged, a cause she has become more passionate about since joining Aram Sei.
Looking forward to what she wants to do in the future, Sandhya expresses, “I switch all the time, but what I really hope to do is help people so in that sense I would like to become maybe a doctor or a lawyer/policymaker, since I think those professions would allow me to really give back to my community the most.”
The most typical teenager thing about Sandhya is how she is a huge Taylor Swift fan. However, I find a “fangirl” in Sandhya with everything she does; no, not in an “annoying valley girl accent” way, but in how she is so appreciative and observant of all the things in life. All these little things make the amazing person that Sandhya is! One thing we know for sure is here at Aram Sei, we’ve become Sandhya’s biggest fans, and we can’t wait to see the amazing endeavors she goes into in the future.