Did you attend the Culture Fest? If you did, you would recognize one of the people behind it all: Esha Quazi. Esha Quazi is a senior at Athens Drive known as a creative and passionate soul, always carrying some kind of book with her and writing every chance she gets. Esha carries a positive environment with herself and always makes everyone around her happy.
“I like that they’re very creative, they’re just really nice but they also make me laugh a lot. They’re just a nice person overall. They just make me laugh; they don’t always say something positive things sometimes time, but we turn it into something we can laugh about and then I feel better,” said Maëli, senior at Athens Drive and one of Esha’s closest friends
Esha is known to be a very driven person, always ready to put her mind to whatever she’s given and give it her all best. Esha is also a very creative person, using journaling and their love for books to entertain their creativity and continue to let their creative side flow. Her inspiration changed into a better outlook for books after having a class with Barry Peters, a Creative Writing and AP Language teacher.
“I’ve taken Creative Writing 1 and 2, and they were both with Mr. Peters, and he’s my favorite teacher at Athens. His class has really changed the way I look at reading and writing. I kind of looked at it in a different light and put more thought into what I was consuming as a reader after taking his classes, and I just really like writing about anything that comes to mind,” said Quazi.
Her favorite book is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, and they read it right before their junior year. It completely changed their life even though they didn’t think they would be interested in it.
“So I read Pachinko right before my junior year, and at that point of my life, I felt really mentally exhausted. When I read Pachinko it really resonated with me because one of the main ideas of the book is that you need to be resilient no matter what. All of the characters in that book are fighting their own battles very passionately, and it was kind of a reminder for me to never give up, even during hard times” said Quazi.
Esha is someone who cares very deeply and is very passionate about reading and writing. It’s something she
constantly does every chance she gets, no matter the day or where. Journaling is an option for a career for her the job areas weren’t so dim. Journaling is an important part of Esha’s life, it’s something she does as a way to get everything out, ideas, emotions, and so on.
“I like journaling about literally anything; I keep a journal. Whenever I‘m going out whether it’s to a cafe or hanging out with my friends, I keep a journal in my bag to just write about whatever and I kind of write my personal essays if that makes sense I recently started a blog kind of thing where I write like I said my own personal articles, like I wrote about sisterhood and then right now I’m writing a piece about feeling homesick in a place that you think you should belong in” said Esha
Esha is a force in the classroom, making sure to pay attention in class and do what is needed to succeed. She is always very attentive and makes it her goal to be in discussions and give sensitive critiques to students when needed.
“Esha was in my Creative Writing and AP English classes. They were a strong participant in class discussions. She sensitively critiqued the writing of other students. Esha is also an avid reader; she borrowed books from me and wanted to talk about what she read independently. Esha also is interested in the world around her; she sometimes connects the texts that we are studying to current events. Finally, Esha has a great sense of humor. She is willing to laugh at her own foibles, too.” said Peters.
Apart from Esha putting her best in everything they do, she also puts her effort and time into creating innovative projects for global help as well. Esha and some of their friends decided to do a fundraiser to help students who were beaten and received police violence.
“My friends and I planned a fundraiser and we were doing all this planning and like we would meet up at each other’s houses. After each meeting I kind of got this little voice in the back of my head telling me ‘Nobody is going to come to this fundraiser, we’re not going to make any money, and this is not gonna be worth it.’ We ended up raising over our goal: we raised $7,500 out of $5000 which was our original goal, and a lot of people showed up. It was so good seeing my community come together and like that’s what made it really worth it for me seeing all these people come together for a cause that they truly believed in so just knowing that in the end, I’m doing all this work for a bigger reason,” said Quazi.
Esha Quazi, as said by both teachers and students, is an amazing and positive person to be with. They always try to be motivated, stay focused, and be positive to both themselves and other people around them.
“This is for people younger than me: Don’t compare yourself. You’re never going to realize that they are things you are good at, you are a good person, you’re never going to notice those good qualities about yourself. You’re going to be bad at certain things but that’s okay there are things you’re good at, they are nice traits about you, so yeah!” said Quazi.
