As mid-fall approaches, on Sep. 23, students of Grade 12 gathered in the Xianmian Annex to welcome Cher Yan as the first student speaker of the year to share her passions and inspirations in the assembly.

On stage, Cher detailed the story of her and her mother’s relationship. Cher’s mother has been her sole source of inspiration for storytelling since she was young, but her mother’s battle with depression soon overtook both their daily lives. For a long time, Cher was consumed by dreadful anxiety that her mother would resort to self-harm and/or suicide. Overtime, however, as Cher turned to painting and other art forms as a method for developing her imagination and expressing her emotions, her mother began to stop shutting her and the world away. She emerged from her isolation, and, together, they began to write, using their shared creativity and storytelling skills. In half a year, Cher had her bookUnder Her Skinpublished on Wattpad and other platforms, where she gained more than a million reads and found thousands of readers who shared her concerns regarding mental illness.

She also emphasized, despite times being hard, especially during senior year, that things will get better; for example, revising personal statements ten times and still witnessing no progress can be frustrating, but we must remind ourselves that we are one step closer to our best results every time we revise them.

Lastly, Cher articulated that we are all storytellers, creators of our own stories; we are the ones who get to determine and interpret our own narratives. “Sometimes, we just need a little inspiration.”

(Written by Helen Wu 12(9) Pictures by Hao Sun Edited and Supervised by Sijia He Reviewed by Qian Zuo)